Sales and Marketing

Internet Advertising

SBOCTeam — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:21:00 GMT

When does it make sense for small businesses?

By Christopher Freeburn

The Internet has been a great leveling technology, evening the playing field between small and large businesses by giving small companies easy and cheap access to a worldwide marketplace. The Internet has also provided unprecedented advertising opportunities for small business, permitting not only access to a global marketplace, but the ability to target and alert potential customers on a local, regional, national, or global scale for a fraction of what traditional marketing programs would cost.

The Growing Online Ad Market
Internet advertising totaled over $21 billion in 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), putting it far behind television, close to magazines, and ahead of radio as an advertising medium, based on ad revenues. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 32 million Americans have made an online purchase after clicking on an online advertisement. Social networking web sites, which boast more than 86 million users are almost exclusively run on advertising revenue.

In testimony before Congress in June, Randall Rothenberg, president of the IAB, noted that Internet advertising is particularly advantageous for small businesses. "Online advertising has created regional markets out of local markets, and national markets out of regional markets. Items once sold in local garage sales and pawn shops are now available nationally and internationally via advertised interactive auctions, in which some 40 million Americans participate annually," he said. "Importantly, the online networks not only enable small businesses to communicate to niche communities through small sites; they allow large brand marketers to reach narrow communities as well, contributing to an unprecedented democratization of the media landscape."

So, how do you get your company's ads on the web?

Advertising options
Before selecting a particular type of online ad, you must determine what works best for your business and suits your level of online capabilities.

Search Engine Advertisements
These ads are posted on search engines' web sites. Since most people begin their Internet browsing with a visit to a search engine, advertising on these sites is often a logical place for a small business to place its ads. The two largest search engines, Google and Yahoo, have created advertising programs tailored for small businesses that want to advertise on their sites. The ads usually appear as links to your business, highlighted and set apart from the other links generated by the search. The ads appear whenever a user searches for specific keywords or phrases in the search engine. These keywords or phrases will be related to the sort of product or service your business offers. So, for instance, if you run a business providing surfboards, you ads would appear whenever someone searches for information on surfing. Other search engines offer similar programs.

The cost of these advertisements varies and is often dependent on how many people actually click on the ad and visit the advertisers web site. Each time a potential customer clicks with their mouse on the ad and visits the advertiser's web site, the advertiser must pay a "click fee" to the search engine. Such fees are usually pennies per click, depending on the search engine hosting the ads.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engine use is so popular, and the traffic generated by search engines so considerable, that in addition to posting "pay-per-click" ads on search engine web sites, many businesses seek to "optimize" where their web site will appear during a keyword search. Search engines scan millions of web sites every day, tagging them according to key words and phrases that appear on the web site. When a user searches for a word or phrase, the search engine lists web sites whose content has been tagged with that word or phrase.

In order to improve the number of hits your website receives from search engine queries, a number of online media firms will "optimize" your web site's content. These services start by examining the type of customers who comprise the market for your products or services and will adjust your web sites content and language so that the programs that scan and tag web sites will be more likely to list your web site near the top of lists generated for a given keyword or phrase. Fees for this service vary among search engine optimization firms.

Banner Ads
Usually appearing as rectangular patches or horizontal bars containing text, pictures, animation, or company logos at the top or bottom of web sites, banner ads date back almost to the beginning of commercial Internet use. Internet users who are interested by the ad will be directed to your company web site when they click on it. Most banner ads use simple HTML code to convey text or pictures, but more complicated ads can be created using popular multimedia applications like Java and Flash. The latter, while more eye-catching, are considered somewhat risky since many browsers do not come with Java or Flash software built in, and consumers are not likely to wait to download and install such software just to view your ad.

Banner ads are deployed on other web sites either by direct agreement with that web site for a specific consideration (you pay another web site owner to host your advertisement, or agree to host his or her banner ad in exchange), or by paying a banner network company (such as DirectClick or Flycast) that will post your banner ad on a number of web sites for a specific fee.

Pop-Up Ads
A Pop-Up ad is a paid advertisement that automatically causes a user's browser to open a new window when visiting a particular web site. The new window, which is
generally small and opens in front of the page the user intended to open, contains the advertisement. Unfortunately, while eye-catching, numerous surveys of Internet users indicate that most people find them highly irritating, and many browsers now come with features to disable pop-up windows. Thus, pop-ups have declined significantly in popularity and are now considered a poor advertising choice.

Radical Sales And Marketing For Your Small Business

SBOCTeam — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The meaning of the adjective radical is "not bound by traditional ways or beliefs." Here are the "must dos" of a seasoned business unit's radical salesperson and marketer.

By Profit_Repair

No stone goes unturned in your search for new leads and clients; no sales idea is too silly or stupid to try; you sell to everyone, every day, no matter what their size; you sell more than you market; you utilize yield management techniques; you just do not leave collateral, you collect a database for follow-up; you go down swinging and then get back up for another round; you are always in "selling mode;" you network, not just talk to people; you are "it," no one but you can make it happen; when you fail, you succeed by learning from it; you start your day with a goal and focus on its achievement; you look for ways to sell to prospects that others are not; you carry your business cards with you everywhere; wherever you go you see a future client; no matter how many no's they have given you, you write down phone numbers from passing businesses on the street; you see customer obstacles as an opportunity to get testimonial referrals from them by meeting their expectations; you work on the probability theory; you radiate confidence and bring direction to clients; you take ownership of your sales 100%; you are out finding new revenue generation that your competition never knew existed and selling to them before they do; you see doors of opportunities, not slammed ones in your face; you are asking for the sale every time, in all possible ways, with each client you communicate with; you are a relentless "door knocker" and grass roots marketer; you look at your sales reports for new business that purchased from you; you drive the desire and passion for each sale with every presentation; you fight tooth and nail to retain a client and make new ones every day when you come into work; you smile until it hurts just to go to bed and wake up to attack your business leads all over again tomorrow.

Are you ready for the challenge? Are you ready to become a radical salesperson and marketer for your business unit? Why not? Are you afraid to get a little emotional about your sales and marketing? Only emotional selling sells to clients on a regular basis with consistency. No one wants an order taker in their sales department; your product line is not that special to afford you that luxury. If you are not emotional about the product line that you represent, your sales will never reach full capacity.

Keep it (sales and marketing campaigns) simple (KIS theory) for the biggest bang with the fewest bucks! Oh, by the way, the above sentence is the longest sentence in this blog. Do you know the reason why? Because it is aggressive and unconventional and "not bound by traditional ways or beliefs," just like what a radical sales and marketer for your business unit needs to be.

Go be radical today!

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Dedicated to the Mission!

Tom Marquardt, The Profit Repairman®
(239) 561-2591
(239) 561-3589 (fax)
tomm@theprofitrepairman.com
http://www.theprofitrepairman.com

Fighting For Sales

SBOCTeam — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:57:00 GMT

Did last year's sales lag behind your projections? Here is some solid advice to get you going in 2008

BY MICHAELA CAVALLARO

When Jennifer Younge joined New York City marketing communication and design firm Ross, Culbert & Lavery Inc. in late 2001, the company had a long established method of drumming up sales: It sent prospects a portfolio of work it had done for other clients. The message, says Younge, was simple: "Look what we did for this company; we can do something even better for you." That method worked well when the economy was humming. But in the downturn after Sept. 11, the portfolios lost their magic. In part, Younge says, that's because the approach was essentially passive. "Once a potential client has the package in their hand," she says, "they have no reason to meet with you." The downturn was obviously bad news for the newly hired Younge, not to mention the company's owners and staff. Desperate for a more active way of engaging prospects, Younge began cold calling the professional services firms that were Ross, Culbert & Lavery's target. The problem? "I had no clue what I was doing," Younge says, laughing.

That's where Wendy Weiss came in. Weiss, a New York sales trainer who specializes in what she prefers to describe as "introductory" calling, bills herself as the Queen of Cold Calling. "Most people know how to talk on the phone to friends, but they don't know how to get a perfect stranger's attention on the telephone," she says. "Selling is a very specific communication skill. The more skilled you are, the better your results will be." Younge worked with Weiss to construct a new strategy for contacting potential customers. Younge now uses cold calls to set appointments for introductory meetings, and she's made a crucial mental shift: Rather than assuming that she's interrupting or bothering prospects, Younge acts and speaks as though she's helping them do their jobs better. "Even if they don't hire us, it's still in their best interest to know what's going on in the marketplace and what their competitors are doing," she says. "People pick up on that authority and confidence in my voice and conclude that they want to hear what I have to say." The result?
Today, the majority of the firm's clients come from Younge's cold calls a vast improvement over the send a portfolio and cross your fingers days. More efficient cold calls are only one way to drive sales and boost a company's bottom line. We asked sales experts both consultants and entrepreneurs to tell us what they've learned about how to approach sales. Here's what they told us:

Believe in what you're selling.
Many entrepreneurs worry that they will come across as a stereotypically pushy salesman who won't take no for an answer. But, says Weiss, "If you've got that in your head, you've got to get it out, because it's going to make you ineffective."
Take a cue from Younge and shift your mental picture:
Rather than worrying that you're manipulating people or asking them to do something they don't want to, consider the ways in which your product or service will help them, professionally or personally.
Don't try to be everything to everyone.
Many small business owners are reluctant to define their best customers, or their most profitable markets, for fear of turning away paying customers. But it's difficult to focus your sales effort if you don't define your market. Ardath Albee founded Einsof, a small Minneapolis firm that develops online marketing and sales portals, in 2000. Albee believed she needed to define the industries Einsof served but she was afraid to rule any industries out. As a result, the company's sales effort was haphazard and unfocused. In addition, turnover among the sales staff was high, meaning that Albee had to devote more of her already scarce time to hiring and to managing existing customers' accounts during the transitions. Those results were ironic, considering that the firm aims to help clients improve their own marketing and sales efforts. More recently, Albee has come to realize that the defining factor in choosing her clients should be a potential client's needs, which might not be determined by its industry. A solid prospect, she says, posts annual revenues of $80 million to $100 million, has already worked with a Web developer, has a functional website, and needs a better website that enables two way communication with customers. Of course, defining the market in this fashion makes sales reps' jobs initially a little harder than, say, simply calling all of the health care companies in the Yellow Pages. There is no directory of firms pondering a move from static to interactive websites. Still, the extra work is worth it. "We've closed far more clients so far this year than we have in any other year," Albee says.
Hire sales reps that fit your business model, are confident, and love to sell.
For Albee, defining her best prospects also helped clarify the characteristics required of a successful Einsof sales person: "We need sales reps that can call in at the VP and director of sales level," she says. "They have to be self starters. We need people who can organize themselves, work a network, and get themselves in the door." As Albee's example attests, your sales reps may need skills specific to your industry or your company's mission. Beyond that, successful sales people share self confidence and a positive outlook. "Passion is the single hardest thing to teach," says Bob Waks, president of The Training Center for Sales & Business Development in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. "If a rep doesn't have that desire to sell, they're unlikely to develop it within your company or in a class."
Develop a sales methodology.
For many companies, this means starting with your goal and working backwards. Let's say you want to produce $1 million in annual sales. You will need to know how much revenue a typical contract brings in. If that typical contract is $50,000, then you need to sign 20 contracts a year, or roughly one every two and a half weeks. You'll also want to build in room for error, in case a client unexpectedly goes under or the economy goes into a tailspin. Let's say you typically have to meet with five qualified prospects in order to get one signed contract. Now you know that you'll need to have 100 meetings (five prospects multiplied by 20 contracts) over the course of the year, or about two a week. And if you usually have to talk to six prospects in order to get one that's qualified, that means you need to have 600 conversations a year, or about 11 a week, in order to keep your pipeline filled. "This is the stuff nobody wants to talk about," says Waks. "But it's the discipline you need."
Don't discount the power of referrals.
"A prospect who comes to you by referral or recommendation from somebody who knows you is infinitely more likely to actually become your customer than someone who comes to you from any other source," says CJ Hayden, whose San Francisco firm, Wings Business Coaching, specializes in sales and marketing strategy. That doesn't mean you have to sit around waiting for referrals to roll in; quite the contrary. Hayden recommends actively building word of mouth about your business by networking with other business people who are likely to know when someone needs your product or service. One of Hayden's clients was able to use this technique as she started a graphic design firm whose primary target was other startups. The designer thought systematically about what other professional services startups need attorneys, printers, accountants, bankers, and so on and set about getting to know competent and reputable people in those categories. She started with the professionals she knew and trusted, then asked friends and colleagues for the names of professionals they would recommend. Ideally, she would ask the professionals to refer clients to her, and if she felt comfortable doing so she would agree to do the same for them. In the end, the exercise helped the designer get her business off the ground and develop her own sales process. "Now my client knew where to network, who to approach, and how to go about prospecting," Hayden says.
Remember the value of the personal touch.
Ralph Roberts, a real estate broker in Warren, Michigan, is the author of Walk Like a Giant, Sell +Like a Madman and 52 Weeks of Sales Success. He's a firm believer in the shotgun approach: Make sure everyone you meet knows what you do, and pass your business cards out everywhere you go. "If you're out to eat, leave a card for the waiter along with the tip and a note that says, ‘Thanks for the food and great service,'" Roberts says, joking that if the meal was lousy, you can just leave the card. Roberts also swears by handwritten thank you notes, which he sends after hearing from a prospect by phone or in person, and he is all for gimmicky tactics like buying a box of old 45s and sending them to clients with a handwritten note that incorporates the title of the song. "It suits my personality," he says. You'll want to come up with your own gimmicks, of course. A good rule of thumb: If you wouldn't feel comfortable using a particular sales tactic on a friend, then find another way to approach your clients.
Don't overemphasize closing...
"The sale does not begin at the end, when you're asking for the business," says Hayden. "It begins back at the beginning, when you first interact with the client." Hayden doesn't advocate the "always be closing" style of sales made famous in movies like Glengarry Glen Ross. Instead, she and other experts favor a more consultative approach that involves asking potential clients lots of questions about their needs. "All the focus should be on the client and his or her problem," says Bob Waks. In practice, that means you first need to be sure that you're talking to a person authorized to make a decision about buying your product or service. Your conversations should focus on gaining a thorough understanding of exactly what the potential client's problem is. You also need to determine, fairly early on, whether the prospect's firm has the funds available to invest in a solution. "By the time you get to the point where you would normally make a big presentation, the sale should pretty much be done," Waks says.
...but don't forget to come right out and ask for the sale.
You can forgo the contract signing ceremony with the fancy pens but at some point you do need to get your prospect's commitment to doing business together. "When you think the time has come, you might want to summarize where you are and see if that's where the other person thinks they are, too," says CJ Hayden. Whatever response you get from your prospects is fine, because it gives you information. If they want to see more samples of your work, provide them. If they're ready to do business with you, then go ahead and get to work.

The David and Goliath Approach

Small companies often gaze wistfully at the names on the Fortune 500 list, pondering how great it would be to get a piece of that business. Yet most small companies never even try to fulfill that dream and that's a mistake, according to Jill Konrath, founder of St. Paul, Minnesota based SellingtoBigCompanies.com. That said, getting in the door at a multibillion dollar corporation isn't easy and it may require tactics different from those you use to sell to small firms. Here are a few of Konrath's tips for breaking into the big time:
Be persistent. Getting through to corporate decision makers takes multiple attempts. Most people, says Konrath, give up after five tries, but it's not at all uncommon that you'll need to make contact likely via a combination of phone, e-mail and snail mail 10 or more times before you get a response.
Think small. Don't necessarily start with the corporate purchasing office. "The best way to get into the corporate market is get a client in a department of a division of a business unit of the enterprise," Konrath says. Finding the right person will take some work, but your prospect may have a bit more time to entertain your pitch than her counterpart in the corporate office.
Still, understand that the biggest obstacle to your success is the status quo. "Corporate decision makers are so busy that the mere thought of change is painful," says Konrath. "They will stay with vendors or systems that aren't perfect just so they don't have to change." That means your sales message should spell out in precise and appealing terms the business results you can provide. For example, when pitching her own services to a corporate client, Konrath's message is "I help companies shorten time to revenue on new product introductions" rather than "I do sales training."
Spin your company's size as an asset rather than a liability. This can be as simple as pointing out that your firm's low overhead makes your prices more reasonable. It might also be worth noting that since the contract would represent a significant portion of your annual revenue, you will have the incentive to provide top notch customer service.

Michaela Cavallaro is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Down East, Mainebiz, and the Industry Standard's Grok Newsletter.

Giving Away The Store

SBOCTeam — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:13:00 GMT

If your customers find your products or services antiquated, why don't you?
By Reed Richardson

Last fall, retail giant Wal-Mart announced it would end its 46-year-old layaway service for its customers. Once a popular way of buying big-ticket items, layaway was now costing Wal-Mart more than it was worth, tying up precious warehouse space for months while forcing stores to track small, often infrequent, payments. In addition, executive vice president for Wal-Mart store operations, Pat Curran, noted that in an era when nearly everyone can get approved for a credit card of some kind, "demand for layaway service has declined steadily." In fact, many other retailers long ago abandoned their expensive and under-utilized layaway services. So the real question might be: What took Wal-Mart so long?

To be fair, Wal-Mart is by no means alone. Many businesses, both big and small, often fall victim to a kind of business version of Newton's First Law: A service or product line on sale tends to stay on sale, no matter what the customer wants. But succumbing to this inertia, either by ignoring flagging sales or by not being attentive to consumers' evolving habits, can end up costing your small business time, energy, and resources. So, instead of waiting until your small business runs off the cliff of obsolescence, consider these five tips to ensure your goods and services don't fall victim to the blahs.

1. Measure true value. If it's a product, analyze its production and marketing costs versus its sales revenues to determine if it's really adding to your bottom line. If it's a service, include it on a survey to see whether your customers value it, ignore it, or hate it.

For decades, both national and local banks alike took the time to mail back every original check to their customers, despite the fact that many customers saw little value in this service and some even considered it a nuisance. Years after the technology existed to efficiently mail scanned copies of checks or, cheaper yet, electronic copies via email, banks continued to stick with this tradition. It wasn't until two years ago that banks finally realized that this "service" wasn't earning much, if any, loyalty from their customers and they stopped it, thus saving an estimated $2 billion a year in sorting and mailing costs.

2. Watch your competition. There's rarely a good outcome for a business if it is the last in its market segment to accept a significant change. Keep up with industry best practices and any changes in your competitors' marketing and advertising.

3. Stay on top of technological changes. If a new product comes on the market that could make yours obsolete or a new service becomes available that could render yours quaint, it might be better to accept the change early on-by either upgrading or phasing out your product or service-rather than cling to an old-fashioned technology that could cause your business to lose market share in more promising areas.

By 2002, DVD players were far outpacing VCRs in U.S. consumer sales and it was evident this new, more versatile technology would supplant the VCR. Despite this, and the fact that the price point on DVD players quickly equaled if not undercut VCRs, companies like Pioneer and Philips continued to build stand-alone VCRs through 2004, selling many of the units at little or no profit and dedicating valuable production time in their factories to a rapidly dying technology.

4. Be attuned to changes in customer behavior. If more of your hotel guests are asking where to find the nearest Wi-Fi connection than the closest shoe shine stand or post office, its time to ditch the old electric shoe buffers and hotel stationery from each room and instead install high-speed Internet access.

5. Send the right message to the right customers. Carefully examine what kinds of signals your products and services are sending to consumers. If they're geared toward a market or demographic your business is moving away from, you might be better off making a clean break rather than muddying your brand by trying to squeeze out a few more quarters worth of diminishing sales.

Another reason Wal-Mart dropped its layaway program was that the change fit in with its ongoing brand restructuring program. Buffered by claims that its products were of increasingly poor quality and lacked cachet-Wal-Mart shoppers have an average household income of $30,000 to $35,000 a year, while customers from one of its main competitors, Target, have an average household income of between $50,000 to $60,000 a year-the retail giant has begun moving more aggressively to court customers with a higher income and more readily available access to credit.

Reed Richardson is managing editor for Business 24/7 magazine.