4 things to do immediately when sales start drying up

FOUR things to do immediately when sales start drying up (and a personal invitation from Chris Newton at the end of this email) ...

The current economic conditions are a fact of life.  But it’s no time to curl up in a corner in the foetal position.  

Now is the perfect time to be actively looking at new (or old) ways to turn things around.  Smart players boom in these times.

Let me give you four basic action steps to get sales pumping through your business again.

1. Tighten up your sales processes.

OK, I rant about this regularly.  But I get to look inside lots of businesses, and I have to tell you ... SALES are being lost every day for the want of some simple changes. 

• What about when the phone rings with a request for information?  Realise it’s NOT a request for information!!  It’s someone wanting to BUY.  Organisations are so laid back, they accept sending of a brochure and bland form-letter as handling the ‘sale’.  It’s NOT.  You need an elite team of trained ‘green berets’ hungry for sales, who make sure every possible (ethical) avenue has been covered, systematically and consistently, to get the sale.  And you need to track what’s happening ...

• What’s going on in the business?  In the ‘good times’, it’s so damn easy to ignore things that make you cringe, and be too busy to do anything about it.  Times aren’t ‘good’ right now.  FIX these things internally that eat away at your market share.  What sort of things?  Customer enquiries sitting for days unattended to.  Poorly worded letters going out, often with grammatical or spelling errors.  That square peg in a round hole person who should never be handling sales enquiries, who is still there.  I could go on.

• Sales skills.  Presenting at a conference recently, I invited a gentleman up on the stage.  Like most of the people in the room, he thought he was pretty good at selling.  But about 45 seconds into our role play (with me as the customer), he was stumbling, uncomfortable and disoriented as to how to handle my basic questions on price and why I should buy from him and not his competitor.  To relieve him of his discomfort, I switched roles.  With limited knowledge of his products, I showed him and several hundred other business owners how easy it is to keep control of the sale.  The whole room agreed this change in approach would work for them.  But up until then, almost NONE of them did these things.  Bottom line, if your ‘green berets’ aren’t seriously honed in the skills to handle a prospect’s enquiries, you are losing market share.  And with the “shrinking pie”, that’s a luxury you simply can’t afford.

2. Mass Marketing vs Boutique. 

I’ve talked a great deal in the past about ‘mass marketing’ strategies.  It’s time to think about ‘Boutique Marketing’.  This is awesomely powerful. 

There’s a wonderful story about how David Ogilvy arrived in New York, from the UK as an unknown, and went on to build one of the largest and most successful ad agencies on the planet.  How?  He focused in on exactly which companies he WANTED on his client list. 

He wrote a list of the FIVE ‘blue chip’ companies he wanted to get.  We’re talking Shell, Lever & Kitchen, Rolls Royce.  The big guys. 

He stuck his list of these five giant corporations on his bathroom mirror.  And every day, would not leave that bathroom until he had at least one initiative to get one of those companies one step closer to being a client.  The rest is history.  

He ultimately got all five. 

You see, when you break your market down into small ‘boutique’ numbers of prospects, you can bring enormous focus and energy to bear, just on them!   You can ‘afford’ to stand out and be noticed.

Fed Ex a package to the 5 decision makers, find ways to add value to them, create a dialog with them.

In tough times and in the ‘good times’, almost no one goes to this effort.  If you can be a bright star on the horizon for your prospect list, odds are you will ultimately win the prize.

3. How many ‘dead leads’ do you have? 

Just like some ancient reptile in Jurassic Park waiting to be reawakened, many of your dead leads may not be dead at all.  Chances are, they’re just waiting for someone to come along and poke them into action. 

One business owner said to me the other day that he has 50,000 unconverted leads in his database!  It’s taken the tight times for him to think about re-approaching these people. 

What if he can stir even 2% of them into life and they buy from him?  For his business, the recession would be over!  Do you have leads and past client names that are really just dormant, waiting to get a great offer from you?

4. Remember ‘Shoe Leather’? 

I love this story.  One of our clients is a very successful chiropractor. 
We’ve been writing his ads, supporting collateral and client referral and reactivation pieces on and off for years.  But he has just pulled off a coup of his own.  With ‘shoe leather’ marketing. 

No, he didn’t go door to door in desperation.  He leveraged himself.  He secured an invitation to go to the local gym, and for a nominal fee, offered to give the members a spinal check. 

The result?  Out of ONE visit, he’s gained 25 new clients.  A good morning’s work?  You bet!  His ‘lifetime value’ of a client is worth some $4,000 to him over the next four years. 

That’s $100K in new future business in a morning.  Now that’s inspiring.

What’s the bottom line on all of this?

Tough times are not for sitting in an ivory tower and worrying.  They’re times when different strategies, including well thought through ‘shoe leather’ marketing, can pay massive dividends.  May you boom in the ‘tight times’.  

Personal Invitation from Chris Newton:

Okay, this next bit is an invitation to work with us on your marketing ... if it's appropriate for you right now.  Go to the link below to hear:

www.resultscorporation.com.au/offer.mp3

(If you have trouble with the link above, you can also listen to the offer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agQgmvuGiM&feature=channel_video_title)

Chris Newton

Mapping out your Master Strategy

If your business is like most businesses out there, you may sporadically do some unconnected, unrelated promotions, but have no real master strategy. 

As I'm sure you have discovered, this approach produces varying outcomes, and offers virtually no measurement or accountability. 

And when these random promotions DO capture leads there’s typically no system for handling them. They'll get misplaced, left so long they go cold, or mishandled because there is no follow-up system and no one has been assigned responsibility.

This results in massive wastage of marketing dollars, and massive inefficiencies, and ‘leakage’ of sales opportunities that should have been in the bag.

Now, this may not accurately reflect your situation. But even if there is a shade of truth in this scenario, you need to fix it now! 

TEN STEPS to a Lead Generation Master Strategy

A Lead Generation Master Strategy involves mapping out a series of highly logical steps, from lead to sale and beyond. This should be done before even considering the ‘creative’ elements of the pieces. 

1. Set Sales Targets. How many new sales (as distinct from repeat customers) are required in a given period to achieve the revenue targets outlined in the overall marketing plan. Define this targeted figure and you can work backwards to determine the activity required to get it. Starting with …

2. How many leads are required? Determine the conversion rate of leads-to-sales which will determine how many LEADS must be generated to achieve the sales targeted in step 1. 

3. Determine the ‘acquisition allowable cost of a lead’. As a simple example, if the company is prepared to invest $1,000 to get a SALE, and 1 in 10 leads turns into a sale, then the ‘allowable’ to get a LEAD is $100. Simple concept, but few companies know these figures.

4. One Step or Multi-step? Clearly, the bigger the buying decision, the more steps will be needed from initial lead to serious prospect. EACH promotion will have its own strategy. A website generated enquiry for example, may be followed by a qualifying phone call, sending of information with a promise to follow up, a follow up phone call, fact finding meeting, demonstration, proposal, further follow up call … and so on. It’s a system, not ad hoc activity. 

5. Sales Processes. What process will maximize sales? This depends on the nature of the product or service, and how ‘warm’ and ‘pre-educated’ the lead is. 

6. Target Markets. The correct selection of target markets impacts on your outcomes up to 1,000% or more. This one fact provides you with more leverage than virtually any other in your entire marketing thrust. What are your best target markets for new leads? The logical ones are not necessarily the best. 

7. The Matrix of Activities. When the various media options are selected, a matrix can be drawn up. This matrix shows at a glance all the efforts to be tested, dates, response lead times, and most importantly, the cost per lead and cost per sale from EACH promotion. Like the conductor of an orchestra (with the overall objectives as your music sheet), you can increase the intensity of various promotions, add new ones and reduce or fade out others as the individual performances are analyzed.

8. The Allocation of Responsibilities. Once the processes have been flow charted, responsibilities need be established to ensure that the processes identified actually happen.  

9. The ‘Creative’. Being creative is fun. But actually, it should be the LAST thing you focus on. Here’s a key fundamental truth: Once the strategy is right, the creative will come. But good creative with poor strategy will never work effectively. 

10. The Review Process. At key points in the implementation of the Master Plan, perhaps monthly for some objectives, perhaps campaign by campaign for others, review the outcomes. Are you achieving what your overall plan requires. If not, what change in direction do you need to take to get back on course?

This approach takes discipline and constant attention. But it’s so analytical, and structured … it forces you to be more successful in your marketing. And how bad can that be?