Smart Strategies to be on the Forefront of the Recovery

I just returned from attending the Orlando Business Journal's Panel Discussion on Reinvesting in Resources, hosted by Oracle.

This article is not intended to teach you how to improve your business. It is also not going to teach you how to generate more leads or more traffic. What I hope it will do is to suggest some things you need to think about to develop your own business. Things you need to be doing to ensure your own success. Because in essence, regardless of your position in your company or business, you must be your own marketing director and your own marketing department. In this whole process, you’ve got to be pro-active and not reactive. Further, whatever will work for one business, might not necessarily work for another. Your challenge is to find what works for you.

To begin with let’s distinguish between marketing and selling. Marketing means making your potential customer aware of your product or service, and creating the five key ingredients of ATTENTION, INTEREST, DESIRE, CONVICTION AND ACTION in order to develop sales opportunities for you. Selling on the other hand means demonstrating your product or service to a customer, resolving their objections and asking for the order. My personal experience is that lots of people have extraordinary skills in developing, operating, or producing a product, but many of these very talented people still think that marketing means stopping for a loaf of bread and some milk on the way home. 

Developing a successful marketing program means that your challenge is to get your product or service in front of enough people. The problem is that they have to be the right kind of people, and you have to make sure they hear or see your message. But all too often today, many business owners think that all that has to be done to be successful is to open the door, put up an attractive sign and run an ad or two in the newspaper. Unfortunately, that only works sometimes. 

I talked with a small business owner in an onsite service industry a short time ago. He was very frustrated. He said to me, “You know, I’ve already visited my competition and tried to compare our two businesses. I have a much more attractive facility, my prices are not only competitive, but in some cases, lower than theirs are, and with I offer a better selection.”  And yet”, he said, “They are doing twice the business as me. I don’t know what the problem is. I run ads and I have an internet web site, and I have very classy brochures, what can be wrong?” 

What’s wrong is that his ads have not been in the right places and his brochures are kept in his facility and only given to new customers when they show up.  What’s wrong is that the public, his potential customers, don’t know anything about his terrific facility. They simply don’t know he’s there. 

I used to counsel separating and retiring veterans on developing effective marketing plans for job searches in the civilian world and one day an individual

brought in a newspaper clipping about a guy in San Diego who made up a sign saying I NEED A JOB and then stood out on a traffic island at a busy intersection during rush hour, in a business suit, with copies of his resume in hand. Everyone thought that was pretty creative. I think he really limited his ability to find a job by limiting his marketing only to people who happened to drive up and down that particular street. 

A truly effective marketing program is multi faceted and relies on a whole range of methods to get your message to the ultimate consumer or buyer, not just through one or two information and advertising channels. So how do we get there?  In many ways, it’s a lot like hunting or skeet shooting with a shotgun. The hunter fires a shotgun shell with lots and lots of little pellets, yet it only takes one pellet to hit the target. So why fire so many? The answer is simple: Because you never know which ONE is going to hit the target. But hitting the target improves a lot if you know exactly what you are shooting at, and you know where it is located. 

I’m on the side that says first you really have to understand your customer. That starts with Identifying who your customer is, corporately or individually, then figure out how to get to them in as many ways as possible. That process can be a lot like fishing. A good fisherman knows exactly what type of fish they are going after. They know exactly what that fish likes to eat, and they know what sort of tackle it takes to bring them in. With some study, they also know exactly what time the fish likes to eat, and finally they know where they hang out.  What they don’t do is go fishing for trout with a surf rod and shrimp for bait, or for sea bass at some lake in the mountain or using a simple fly rod. 

But in business many of us make that mistake. We buy ads in publications that our customers will never see or read. Or, we run ads on the wrong days because we have not done an effective market analysis to understand customer trends. We develop really classy brochures and business cards and keep them in our office to give out to people who we actually meet in a sales situation or visit our place of business only, because they are very expensive to print. We also fail to attend functions, activities or gatherings where we can have an opportunity to meet or have our business be exposed to potential customers. 

Another major challenge you face in creative marketing is developing or designing your whole marketing theme. Usually we work we with artists or other designers to come up with something we feel comfortable with, and something that we will be proud to use to showcase our business. Unfortunately, we’re not the folks who need to be attracted to the business. 

I used to be an Army recruiter and our challenge was to be able to develop advertising to appeal to an 18 to 24 year old man or woman and get three 55 year old generals in the Pentagon to approve it. Right now there’s a major firestorm going on with the Army who scrapped their well known slogan of “Be All You Can Be”, in favor of ………….”An Army of One”……..Everyone in the Army was up arms, writing letters to the editors of service newspapers, calling their Congressmen and more. Guess what…………….they hate it! But the young people of America love it.  Personally I didn’t have a clue what the slogan means, but guess what else? They don’t care what I think. They’ve already gotten all the service they could out of me. It’s getting much more play among young people who really understand the message. Your message for your business is no different. You’ve got to find something that will appeal to your potential customer and not necessarily to your self. 

So, how do you think creatively? How do you get your thinking “Out of The Box”? I think you’ve got to be aware and critically evaluate what you are doing to promote your business. Are you personally going where your customer does, and are you getting your message into their hands and making them aware?  I think this multi faceted approach begins with looking around saying to yourself……….”What can I do?” Should I offer something free as an inducement to visit your place of business? Where do I put it out and how do I showcase my business.  

Questions you need to ask yourself include: 

• “Am I a member of the Chamber of Commerce and taking full advantage of my Chamber membership”?  
• “Do I belong to the appropriate industry or professional associations and am I attending all the functions, wearing a name tag with your company name on it and handing out business cards?”  
• “Am I working strategic alliances with other businesses that are not in competition but can help cross-refer customers to each other?”  

For example a tanning salon might want to get some brochures into gym or  health spa, or even into a dentists office. People who value their smile might want to make sure they have a nice tan to go with it, or people with a nice tan might be interested in getting rid of a few of those extra pounds. And tan, fit people might be candidates to have their teeth whitened.  If you have a web site you can’t just sit there and hope someone will stumble over it, you have to promote it in other advertising and get it listed in as many categories as you can on search engines. There are lots of companies to help you do that, or you can buy a simple program and do it yourself if you hsave the time and expertise. 

You have to spend a good portion of every day thinking about how you can attract new and more customers. Remember, every brochure and every business card in your possession is worthless to you. The key to whole process is to think like your customer. Decide what will appeal to your customer, and then find as many ways as possible to get your message in front of them 

Finally, remember this quote from an unknown source who said, “Even if you’re on the right track, if you don’t keep moving someone will run over you.”…….

Find more articles like this one and a wealth of information on sales and selling techniques at http;//www.sales.train.com.

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Ever thought about how to find people to whom you can make a sales presentation? Well if you've been in the sales profession for more than an hour, it probably absorbs a good bit of your time. Most sales people have a positive attitude and truly believe that if they can get in front of a potential customer, they have a strong chance of making a sale.