Sales Archives - Page 7 of 9 - McLellan Marketing Group

What is the next step?

April 25, 2012

That’s the question you should ask yourself as you create any marketing piece. “What is the next step I want the prospect to take?”

Whether it’s a Facebook fan page, an enewsletter, a TV spot or a blimp with your logo on it — you have earned their momentary attention. What are you going to do with it? Where do you want to take the conversation/connection from here?

Do you want to give them the opportunity to contact you?
Do you want them to share your content?
Do you want them to ask you a question?
Do you want them to laugh so hard that they have to tell someone about it?
Do you want them to try a sample?
Do you want them to redeem a coupon?
Do you want them to click, text or call to give you a donation?
Do you want them to sign up for your enewsletter or blog?
Do you want them to stop by the store?
Do you want them to recognize your name when you call?

There is no magic right answer other than — you should have an answer. Sales is a series of tiny baby steps. But you always have to be asking…what is the next step.

After you know what the next step should be — you need to help your audience know what the next step is. And by help I mean — tell them. Don’t be shy or subtle. Tell them.

Last week, I was fortunate to speak at a conference held by the Oklahoma Restaurant Association*and as part of their event — they hosted a reception where many of their members got to show off their best entrees as guests mingled through a large ballroom — nibbling on snack sized portions of all these good eats.

One of the restaurants, The Rib Crib, had clearly asked the question “what do we want them to do next” because as they gave you the sample-sized sandwich, they also handed each person a wooden coin that offered them a free entree at their next visit. They were clearly telling us what to do next. “Come experience our restaurant” is what they were saying to us.

Start looking at all of your marketing materials. If you can’t clearly identify the next step — how do you expect your prospects to?

* Many thanks to my friend Scott Townsend for paving the way to the invitation to speak.

Can packaging help you sell in a new way?

March 27, 2012

How we package our products and services often communicates more than we think.

Sometimes — a fresh look at packaging can introduce you to a new buyer, make you more attractive to prospects you’ve known for awhile or reinforce a buying decision for your current customers.

I was in Walgreens the other day and a end cap display caught my attention. They were little boxes of pills but rather than being named/described as some generic brand — they were packaged according to why you might use them.

“Help, I have the sniffles.”
“Help, I have an achy body.”
“Help, I can’t sleep.”
“Help, I have a headache.”

I thought it was a brilliant strategy. Rather than get into a brand war with the category leader, why not just re-define how the category is packaged and go right at the consumer’s need. I’ll be curious to see how this new line sells.

We had a bit of the same problem at McLellan Marketing Group. Everyone assumed that we could only work with large clients with really big annual budgets. While we love those kinds of clients — we also love working with entrepreneurs and small businesses.

But how do we communicate that to the marketplace? We repackaged ourselves.

We knew that this group of potential buyers had very unique concerns about working with an agency:

I won’t know how much it’s going to cost
I don’t have a big enough budget
I don’t know what I’d be buying

And we repackaged ourselves to eliminate those worries. We literally created packages — with a pre-determined monthly fee. Think of these packages as the garanimals of marketing.

The buyers can pick and choose from the menus and with our help, create a custom package that fits their business’ needs.

(You can download a PDF of the MMG packages for easier reading by clicking here)

But they have 100% control over the cost (because they decide which monthly fee they want to pay) and they can see all they get for their small budget and they know exactly what they’re going to get.

This packaging strategy has brought us a whole different category of clients — who are enjoying agency expertise at a price they can afford (and control!).

How could you re-package yourself or a particular product or service to either overcome buying hesitation, to introduce yourself to a whole new audience or to do an end run around the category leader?

What you don’t know about your sales funnel

January 30, 2012

We all think and talk about our sales funnel a lot. We’re always saying things like:

We need to keep it full.
We need to stay active with the prospects that have been in it for awhile.
On average, it takes a prospect X months to move through it.
And so on….

But consider the statistic to the right. 60% of your sales efforts are what happens before you have actively put someone into the funnel. In other words — it’s not you who is doing the selling.

Who is?

Your existing customers
The customer who left and is working with your competitors
Your vendors
Your website
Review sites
Your social presence (or lack thereof)

How much do you know about your pre-funnel sales machine? Do you know what’s being said? Maybe the bigger question — how should you be influencing those conscious and accidental sales efforts?

Think about how you shop — whether it’s for work or something for home. Do you beeline for a salesperson or sales collateral? Or do you do a little bit of investigating first?

Get out a piece of paper and do this exercise. Write down the bullet points I have above (starting with your existing customers) and next to each bullet point — describe what you would ideally like a prospect to hear/see/experience from each source.

Then — go to each source and see what’s actually being said/experienced. I’m guessing you’ll identify some areas that require your attention.

After all — your prospects are paying attention to these sources — shouldn’t you?

Marketing Insights Question: Calculating the lifetime value of your customer

December 12, 2011

What is your customer worth to you?

Over the next few weeks, as we head towards 2012, I want to get you thinking about your business in a new/fresh way. I’m going to ask a single question in each post — but I’m warning you, these aren’t slam dunk questions.

I’m hopeful that as you ponder my question — it will give you some ideas for making 2012 a break out year for your organization. If nothing else — this exercise should fine tune some of your marketing efforts.

What’s a customer worth? I’m always surprised when people don’t know the answer to this question. If I said to you “for every $100 you give me, I will give you a client” – is that a good deal for you? How about for every $1,000? $5?

The truth is, most business owners have no idea what a customer is worth to their business. If that’s the case – how do you know how much you can afford to spend to get one?

Why does this matter? What kinds of decisions do you think you’d make in terms of acquiring new clients if I told you that over the lifetime of your relationship, every one of them is worth $500 in profit? How would your choices change if I said each one is worth $10,000?

How do you figure out the lifetime value of a customer?

You need to know this number. (Want to bet that your ideal customers are worth a heck of a lot more than your so-so customers?)

Not sure how to calculate the lifetime value? Check out this great infographic (from kissmetrics)which does a nice job of modeling how you can get a good ballpark figure.

Once you know that….you know what you can do to earn a customer. And what it costs you when you lose one.

Lifetime value of a customer infographic

Stock photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com

I already know you’re an expert

September 13, 2011

…they already know you’re capable

When I get hit in the forehead twice on one day with a marketing tip — I know it’s time to share.

Incident One: I’m on the phone with a potential new client who is telling me about his previous experiences with finding the right agency.

He’s describing one agency visit and says, “pretty much all we talked about were how many awards they won. I already knew they could do the job, I just wanted to know if I liked them.”

Turns out he didn’t like them…but apparently they sure liked themselves.

That agency didn’t get it.

Incident Two: Later that evening (around 11 pm) I’m working in my home office. I notice a drip of blood that has fallen, apparently from me. The one drip becomes many and an hour (and two rolls of TP) later, when I still can’t stop the nose bleed… I figure I’d better head to the ER.

We have a new hospital minutes from my house, and fortunately, this was my first visit. I walked in and within 10 minutes, a nurse is coming out to get me, apologizing for keeping me waiting. In the holding pen (exam room) the nurse doesn’t tell me about his education or skills, instead he empathized with me by telling me how he used to suffer from nose bleeds and how glad he was I came in, rather than continuing to try to stop it myself.

Doctor comes in 10 minutes later — again, does not tell me his med school GPA or diploma. He introduces himself by his first name and begins to solve my problem.

(Turns out the solving my problem involved cauterizing — really do not recommend that.)

After the “procedure” — both the doctor and the nurse checked back in and encouraged me to come back in if I couldn’t control the pain or the bleeding started back up.

The entire experience — they focused on me. They anticipated my questions, concerns and even that I felt a little silly bothering them with a nose bleed. As the nurse was walking me out to the front door, again he apologized that I had to wait here and there.

They got it.

In today’s age — if someone is approaching you to potentially buy something, they already know you/your product is capable. No one buys anything today without doing a little research on the web or by asking their network. If you’ve gotten to the “I want to meet you” stage — they’ve already given you props for your capability. Now they want to know how the chemistry is.

Here are the questions running through their mind at the interview/first visit stage:

What would they be like to work with?
Do I trust them?
Will they make me look good?
Do they care?

So pitch the PowerPoint slides that blather on about you. Don’t lead with the awards or credentials. Just roll up your sleeves and be valuable by being about them.

Marketing tip #83: You really can’t make the horse drink

August 26, 2011

You can’t make a customer buy!

Here’s an uncomfortable marketing truth: With few exceptions, you cannot control potential buyers.

No matter how great your product, how spectacular your price or how unparalleled your customer service reputation — if they aren’t ready to buy, they just are not ready to buy.

Yes, as the old adage says — you can lead them to the water. But once you get them there, you only have two choices. Try to force their head into the water or entice them to hang out by the water trough until they’re actually thirsty.

And trust me, if you’ve spent any time around horses or a stubborn prospect, you know that you cannot force their head into the water. No matter how badly you’d like to!

Sadly, to stay with the analogy — most companies don’t have any carrots or sugar cubes at the ready. Which means their “horse” wanders away. And by the time they’re ready to buy — probably has wandered to someone else’s watering trough.

I see so many companies that can get a prospect in the door but if they don’t buy that instant, have no way of staying in touch, creating a relationship or keeping under the prospect’s nose until it’s the right time for them to buy.

Imagine this scenario: Someone who would be the perfect sweet spot customer called today and chatted with you on the phone for 15 minutes but wasn’t ready to buy — what would you do/say to keep them connected to you until they were ready to buy?

Could you hold their interest for a month? 6 months? 3 years?

If you didn’t have an answer or don’t think you could keep them around the water trough for as long as you need — you are letting sales walk out your door.

So…now what?

Five elements to writing an effective sales letter

June 28, 2011

…make me feel like you know I’m unique

Writing an effective sales letter for a cold list? Are you kidding me?

Cold calling doesn’t work. Blind sales letters go right into the circular file cabinet. E-mail solicitation to strangers get flagged as SPAM.

All of that is true. Most of the time.

And while I will never be the guy advocating for blindly reaching out to people who have no idea who you are, have no burning need for what you’re selling and in fact, will probably see you as a nuisance, not a trusted partner — every once in awhile I see someone who does it masterfully enough that I admit, never say never.

We got an e-mail sales letter today that not only got me to read it but — got me to respond. And that hardly ever happens. I thought I’d share the letter with you (I did trim/paraphrase for space) and then we can identify why it worked.

“You can stop wasting time chasing after the wrong ones and simply attract the ones who are your perfect fit. Customers who love you aren’t about the transaction. They’re about the relationship.”

Now, some would call the above quote plagiarism, but let’s assume none of those people are here. This quote was lifted from the MMG website because it’s simply one of the smarter lines I’ve read on an agency’s website in quite some time. It’s honest and effectual, and it speaks volumes of the work your company does. It makes advertising geeks like me want to get to know MMG and what the company is up to (and possibly get one of those sweet nicknames. Not going to lie – I’m a little jealous ‘Girl Wonder’ is already taken).

I just wanted to reach out and introduce myself as your new – or possibly first – rep for Company XYZ.

And now that I’ve explained why I want to work with you, I’d like to come in and tell you why you would want to work with me…

If you’re not familiar with Company XYZ, here are the Cliffsnotes: [Two short sentences about what they do] On top of that, we swear by our customer service and I can promise you’ll be embarrassingly doted on as a client.

I’d love to swing through Des Moines office and get the scoop on what’s in the works at McLellan. Do you have any time available for lunch (liquid or otherwise – pick your poison) or a meeting the week of 8/1?

Looking forward to working together!

Sarah

Bravo Sarah! Let’s dissect her efforts to see what elements made this work:

Show me that you know me. I’m sure she used the same technique of quoting a prospect’s website in all her letters, but in this one — she quoted us. And she referenced our job titles. It felt like she “got us.” No one wants to be prospect #2,843.

Cop our attitude: Our website is written with a bit of attitude and Sarah captured it perfectly in her e-mail. It feels like we speak the same language.

Talk more about me than you: In the entire pitch e-mail, two sentences are about the company she works for. The rest is about us. And who doesn’t like to talk and read about themselves.

Keep it short: Whether it’s e-mail or snail mail — you don’t need to tell me everything in one fell swoop. Hit the highlights and whet my appetite.

When you talk about yourself, talk about me: Even in the two sentences she wrote about her company’s offerings — she talked about them in relation to how they could help us serve clients better.

Notice how many times I used the word “me” in the call outs above. That’s why most sales letters don’t work. Because they’re not about the prospect at all. Most sales people don’t take the time to do their research or tailor the letter.

Which is why most sales letters go right in the trash. But if you build in the elements that Sarah so deftly demonstrated — you might be surprised at the results!

Is retro marketing the way to sell?

March 16, 2011

The retro Mountain Dew can

It makes some sense. How do you appeal the the 75+ million baby boomers? You help them take a trip down memory lane by giving your product a retro make-over.

I saw this Mountain Dew can on the shelf a month ago and immediately noticed how blatant they were in their efforts. They’re calling it a throwback and making no apologies.

An added bonus — teens think retro is cool too. With one packaging shift, this trend has captured the two buying groups with the most disposable income. Teens and boomers. Pretty smart.

And it’s not just a gimmick. It’s a smart sales strategy. Pepsico is reporting that after a few months, the retro can have added one share point to sales, which equates to about $220 million in annual sales. (They’ve also released a retro Pepsi can but my Coke preference precludes me from putting the other cola’s picture on my blog!)

It’s not just food products who are jumping on this retro bandwagon. Nike launched the Air Jordan retro sneakers in February, Disney put huge dollars behind their Tron sequel and look at how many VW beetles you see on the road.

Last month, we had a lively conversation about what sells better — pointing to the past or the future. How do you think the idea of retro fits into that mixture?

What sells better — the future or the past?

February 14, 2011

Is this the future or the past?

Here’s what I am pondering today. In terms of connecting with a consumer’s emotions, what works better — pointing to the future or the past?

I’m 48 (albeit a 10 year old boy trapped in man’s body) which puts me a little behind the line in terms of baby boomers and a little ahead of the curve for Gen X. But I’ve noticed over the past several years that many advertisers are reaching back into my childhood for inspiration.

The music of my youth, classic toys like slinkys and key moments in my life’s history seem to crop up in TV spots, print ads and headline references.

On the flip side, many advertisements promise us a better future, thanks to their product or service. From the his and her outdoor tubs thanks to Cialis or the joy of an engagement accepted via Kay’s Jewelers — we do love the pictures they paint.

Do we react more strongly to memories of days gone by or the promises of days not yet experienced? And which makes us pull out our wallets?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Which do you react to more strongly?

I got thinking about this idea after reading Harry Beckwith’s most recent post over at Psychology Today. (read it here) about progress. I began to wonder if it was the emotion of the future’s promise or the actual realization that mattered most to us.

Speaking of Harry — I have 2 copies of his new book Unthinking that I highly recommended last week to give away. I’ll do a random drawing among the comments on this post… so don’t be shy, weigh in.

The past or the future — which one drives right to the wallet and why?

Do you know who you’re selling to?

January 27, 2011

Selling isn't a one size fits all proposition. I'm not telling you anything new when I say — the more you know about your prospect, the better the experience for all concerned.

We've all read the sales books that talk about being observant when you walk into someone's office. You know — noting that they have pictures of their Irish Setter, their golf outings and their twin boys on their desk — you strike up conversations about those interests and make a connection between you and the prospect.

That's all well and good but especially if you have a product/service with a long sales cycle you'd better know who they are long before you step foot in their office.

RainToday ran a very smart article that talked about the 8 buyer personas. (click on the link to read) The article describes each personas' personality and how to best sell to them. Well worth the read. You will meet:

Decisive Danielle
Collaborative Claire
Relationship Renee
Skeptical Steve
Gradual Greg
Warp 9 Walt
Analytical Al
Innovator Irene

But for many of us — in this world of social media, consumer driven content and a 24/7 world — we start talking to our customers before they're even on the radar screen as a customer. They're aware of us long before we're aware of them.

How do you make sure you're talking to them about what matters? One of my favorite ways is to create personas…not based on their buying style but based on who they are and what they care about. I wrote about that, using this blog as an example several years ago. (click on the link to read)

I have to tell you, as this blog has grown and gained more attention — I still write for Ian, Erin and Patrick with every post. And I'm guessing you are very much like one of them or you wouldn't keep coming back.

Keep in mind what selling is all about. (or at least my opinion of what it's all about) It's about putting yourself out there as you genuinely are and inviting people in for a look. If you attract the right people — they'll buy.

As I said in the opening paragraph — the more you know about your prospects, the better the experience. Part of what makes that experience good is that you aren't trying to sell ice to eskimos. You're attracting the right kinds of buyers — people and companies who truly need or want what you sell. You don't have to ram it down their throats. People hate being sold to — but they want to buy.

Use both versions of personas (mine and RainToday's) to have a good, honest conversation with the right prospects. Talk about them, what they care about, and where they need some help.

Then, be ready to make the sale.

Remember — RainToday is closing their Selling Consulting Services course on Friday, January 28th. You can check it out here. Once you click the link, you can also download their free report (whether you sign up for the course or not) The New Rules of Selling Consulting Services in 2011.

Full Disclosure: While RainToday has offered to pay me a small commission if anyone signs up for the course, I am sharing this with you because I think you’ll find tremendous value in it. Otherwise, I wouldn't put your trust on the line.

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