12 blogs of Christmas; number 9
What are your plans for selling to the public sector in 2012?
The Government are still trying to balance the books in UK PLC! Just like any business when a company has gone through the sort of trauma that the country’s finances have suffered over the last couple of years, and it’s in the sort of debt that the country is in, costs have to be cut back substantially in all areas of the businesses.
The coalition’s austerity plans continue and we’re still hearing about public sector spending cuts. It’s clear that the public sector doesn’t have the money to spend that it used to have and spending will no doubt continue to be under the microscope for plenty of time to come.
The private sector, of course, funds the public sector in various ways and I hear David Cameron talking about the need for businesses to grow and become more profitable so that they generate more tax revenues to bring some balance back to the country’s accounts.
So what impact has all this had, and having, on your business with the public sector? Are you continuing to drive your marketing team to go after what business does exist in the public sector? Are you also increasing your targets for private sector sales to replace any public sector sales that are missing, or that may go missing in the future.
There’s an awful lot of business to be had out there, it’s simply a case of targeting the right areas with the right products, services and messages – both public and private sector.
Good selling in 2012.
12 blogs of Christmas; number 8
Are you ready for the New Year?
Only a week to go before Christmas! It’s the time of year when the media turn to reviewing the year coming to an end; ‘A review of 2011’ and all that sort of stuff.
How was 2011 for you? What were the highlights of the year?
Someone once said to me that running a business is like driving a car. When driving, you spend a lot of your time looking forward through the windscreen and take an occasional glance in the rear view mirror. You do this in a similar ratio to the size of these 2 lumps of glass. You have a large windscreen and look through it a lot and you have a small mirror that you look at a small amount.
So it is in business – spend most of the time looking forward with the occasional glance into the past! After all, no matter how good or bad the past has been, you can do absolutely nothing to change it; you can do everything to change the future.
So, looking forward, how is your New Year looking? Do you have plenty of opportunities lined up to convert to business and get 2012 off to a flyer? Having a great start to the New Year makes the rest of 2012 seem much easier to achieve.
Have a great, prosperous and successful New Year!
12 blogs of Christmas; number 7
What does everyone REALLY think of all this positive thinking stuff?
Whether you get your news online, in a newspaper, TV or whatever, it all has something in common these days; it’s all very depressing and very negative. It’s easy to get sucked in and let it get you down, isn’t it??
I have lived my life convinced that what I think has a massive impact on how I perform in every aspect of my life. I am the classic ‘glass half full’ person and spend my life focusing on the positive in any situation. Sure enough, I have my share of issues and problems to address but I never immerse myself in them and spend time thinking what would happen if this or that problem arose.
There are plenty of positive thinking techniques that can be used but one that I have been involved in, and continue to use, is HeartMath. One of the very spooky things with this is that you can plug a heart rate sensor into your laptop, run the HeartMath application, and you can see your heart rate variability on the screen.
The HeartMath technique involves breathing and visualisation exercises and as you carry these out, you can see your heart rate varying in front of your very eyes. This goes some way to prove the link between your thoughts and the way your body behaves. Fascinating.
Our month on month business growth this year is running at over 20% – and this is our 15th year in business. This is no small way due to the way we set targets. We completely ignore SMART goals! You know the ones – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. It’s the realistic and achievable that doesn’t work in our view!
We set goals driven by ambition and then really go after them. That forces us out of our comfort zones and forces us to be really creative and innovative in amassing the resources we need to get to those targets. The results speak for themselves!
12 blogs of Christmas; number 6
What makes a great telemarketer?
Someone once said to me that the statement ‘our people are our greatest asset’ is said so many times in so many places that you’d think it was a requirement of the companies act! In a telemarketing company like ours, our people are pretty much our only asset! Sure we have desks and computers and stuff but the real value is in our people.
Our people are the service we provide. Their skills, motivation, capability and everything about them is what makes us a successful company. Add to that our accreditation by the Institute of Customer Service with their prestigious ServiceMark accreditation, and you can see that they do a great job for our clients.
So what is it that makes a great telemarketer? Well, we look for great personality first; people that are bright, bubbly, engaging, confident and easy to speak to. Above all, they demonstrate that they are client oriented and that they have good selling experience and a track record of success. They have something about them that instills confidence that they will do everything they can to deliver the results our clients need; every day!
If your business sells to other businesses, then your telemarketing challenge is greater than business to consumer sales. In business to business, your telemarketers need to engage in business conversations with senior decision makers in other companies. They need to be bright, alert and skilful enough to develop and hold those conversations and to steer them towards the outcome that you require, be that a lead, a sales appointment, or whatever. It’s a skilled job so you need great people to do it.
We work really hard to maintain a family environment where people feel part of something good and fulfilling. It’s an environment where people feel motivated and supported to achieve what our clients want them to achieve.
Great telemarketers are a brilliant asset to any business that use this technique to grow their sales.
Like this:
12 blogs of Christmas; number 5
Will you do it, or will you try to do it?
I have a book at home with the same title as this blog. I’ve read some of it but never read it all. Once you’ve read the title, and understood what it’s about, you really don’t need to read the whole thing; but it is a point that is crucial in achieving success.
You know the scenario; and you’ve no doubt experienced it! It’s fairly common amongst trades people in my experience. You talk to them about a job you need doing and they say “I’ll try to get to you by the end of the week”. Now, unless your experiences are very different to mine, you can be pretty sure that you are not going to see that person before the end of the week.
You can’t really complain, of course, because the person only told you they would ‘try’ to get to you; presumably they tried and failed and you can’t really complain about that.
On the other hand, if someone says to you “I’ll be with you on Thursday at 11 o’ clock”. Then you can feel more confident that it will happen. What the person has done is to clearly set your expectations of what they are going to do and when. Not only have they given you a firm expectation, they have put a firm action on themselves.
‘Will you do it, or will you try to do it’ is a challenge to us all about how we make and keep commitments. Once those commitments are made, do we always deliver on them at exactly the date and time we committed?
If it is a promise to call a prospect at a particular date and time, it may be your first opportunity to demonstrate your company’s professionalism – so it could be critical.
Blog number 6 of my 12 blogs of Christmas will be posted tomorrow!
12 blogs of Christmas; number 4
How do I build a prospect list??
This is the 4th blog in our series of the 12 blogs of Christmas. In the 2nd of this series we looked at maintaining a good and accurate prospect list. In this blog we’re going to look at how to build that prospect list from scratch.
Well, one of the many prospect list providers is a good place to start. Like most things in life, though, you need to have an idea of what you’re looking for before you start searching.
You will find that there are limits to what is available and what you can search for. The more specific you are with the people you want to target, the more difficult it will be to get hold of a list, and the more expensive it will be. For instance if you want to know which companies in the UK have an Avaya IP500 telephone system to more than 30 extensions, that’s going to be expensive, if you can find it and if it is accurate and up to date.
There are over 3 million businesses in the UK (assuming you want to target the UK) including limited companies, PLC’s and LLP’s, sole traders and partnerships. Of those, it is reasonable to expect to create a list of, say, 10,000 – 12,000 prospects that it is worth having a meaningful conversation with about the benefits of your product or service. Clearly that number will vary considerably depending on the size of your company, who you want to target, and so on.
You need to define the sort of companies you want to target, in what industries, in what geographies, etc. You also want to decide who, by job title, you want to target within those companies.
You will find that you can search for prospects by various factors such as company turnover, employee numbers, number of sites, etc. So you’ll need to use these types of parameters to search for the prospect you want to target.
Have a chat to some of the list providers and they can give you more detail on what’s available and how to approach the task of buying a list. Once you decide what you want, expect to pay something like 20 pence a record for company name, address, telephone number and decision maker name. Talk to companies like Corpdata and Marketingfile.com and they can give you a good steer.
Have a great marketing and selling day!
12 blogs of Christmas; number 3
Life is a journey, so is Marketing
Having been involved in marketing for many years, I often find that I’m taking prospects and clients on a journey. Journeys, by definition, start at a starting point and end at a destination. So it is with marketing journeys.
Take a website, for instance. Once someone arrives at your website, be it at your home page or on a landing page, what your website needs to do is to take them from that starting point and lead them towards the destination you want them to arrive at. That destination may be your online store, an enquiry page, a button requesting a call, or whatever.
This is equally true in a telemarketing environment or in a face to face sales meeting. It’s also true of social media where the journey starts with linking with someone and hopefully ends in some business being done.
In telemarketing, when we call one of our client’s prospects, the journey may start with ‘I’ve never heard of you’ or ‘yes, I know the company name’ or whatever. We then attempt to go to the next stage of the journey which is to create an interest by talking about the benefits of our client’s product or service.
We then use a number of steps to get to the destination which is hopefully a lead or qualified sales appointment for our clients.
So as our journey through 2011 comes towards Christmas and the start of the journey through 2012, let’s think about the journeys we need to take people on in order to attract prospects, delight clients and grow our businesses.
