The Great Guns Marketing Blog

For many of our clients, identifying key decision makers and approaching them from cold is something that is a lot harder in practice than it sounds, which is why they come to us to do it for them. In this market the success of engaging with decision makers from cold relies heavily on approaching the right decision makers with strong, personalised messaging (not a script!) as you don’t get many chances to make the right impression.

One of the tools we find really useful for researching prospects and their companies is LinkedIn. Here are some tips as to how to use it

1. Look up company profiles. This will give you lots of information including numbers of employees, sectors, website details, office locations and you can even follow the company to hear about new hires so you can engage with them as soon as they start. You will be able to see employees who fall within your network and your groups so you have a name, job title and conversation point for when you want to engage. Tip – now LinkedIn has hidden some names, if you copy and paste the job title into Google it should come up with the full name on their search results.
2. Search for individual people. If you already have a name, look them up on LinkedIn. This can tell you a lot about them – their hobbies and interests, groups they are members of, other decision makers they work closely with  and discussions they are involved with. If they have a blog, follow them to learn even more about them.
3. Connect. Once you’ve met or engaged with a decision maker, connect to them. Do this immediately and they are more likely to accept your connection when you’ve just met. This allows you constantly updated information on them – if they do leave the company you are trying to build a relationship with then you’ll have a new contact in another company at least!
4. Join groups. Once you start identifying which groups your prospects are members of, join the same group and more importantly, be active. Focus on a few groups which are most relevant and join in the discussion. Do not be tempted to over sell your company, you want to be seen as a thought leader not a sales person!
5. Search for key topics relevant to you.  You can soon see who are the thought leaders contributing to the discussions and starting them. Connect with them and join in their discussions. They’ll soon start noticing your contributions and click on your website, downloading your content in return.

This can take some time so you need to focus on targeting people you really want to build a relationship with and stick with it, or alternatively contact Great Guns and we can do this for you.

I spend quite a lot of time with fellow entrepreneurs and recently had the pleasure of interviewing Nick Claxson of Comtec.  Whilst speaking to Nick, it became apparent that although he is ridiculously successful and has managed to build an organization from scratch to a £12 million turnover business, he has little regard for material things.

Nick works really hard, long hours to achieve the ongoing brilliant results, and it has certainly paid off.  Thinking about it though, for a lot of people work is something they do to allow themselves to have a lifestyle out of work.  I have heard many people say things like “I work to live, not live to work”!

But as I sit here and write this blog at 4.00am with my family sleeping and my brain going a hundred miles an hour brimming with excitement about Great Guns it strikes me that perhaps I, and others, have an addiction to business.

Nick clearly loves what he does. He has started many companies in different fields and seems to have a genuine passion to grow them.  Even though this means he has to make sacrifices like working a 6 day week most of the time.  Of course Nick is well off and drives a lovely Bentley but that doesn’t seem to be much of a reward for him.  Building the business it definitely what excites him.

I believe some business people get the same thrill out of running a business as some sports people get out of running or working out.  I hate exercise and never understand when folks talk about being addicted to it as it’s my worse nightmare but I’m beginning  to see that I get the same buzz out of business that they get in the Gym.

I don’t think anything will challenge the brain and nerve like building a business. There’s definitely nothing more competitive than pitching, and the feeling of winning a deal and collecting an order form as your trophy makes you feel like Lewis Hamilton on the finish line.

So I don’t think we should ever feel sorry for business leaders who work hard and long. It’s their drug and even when business is hard you’ll find that some of these girls and guys will be buzzing and on a ridiculous high.

So is it wrong to have this love for work and this passion for business?  If it was a charity we would all be applauding, but people like Nick employ many and create secure, successful and honest working environments which I think is an incredible contribution to society.  Why then do you see so many civil servants and charity workers in the New Years honours lists while business people hardly get mentioned?!

Also here in the United Kingdom, unlike in the United States, when business owners achieve great success in their field we often say things like “well, they were given more opportunities than others” or try to unpick their success in some way.  Look at the bad press and judgement that leaders like Phillip Green and Alan Sugar get.  Whatever your view they have created many jobs and a great deal of wealth in the UK and world economy.  In my view, if we’re now heavily reliant on private business for economic recovery, I would like to see the business people who take the risks and ride out the recession creating jobs rewarded for their contributions.

Getting my MBE was a lovely reward for me and I appreciated it but I don’t think I was any more deserving than many other business people I know. Yes, ultimately private business owners aim to profit from their efforts but they also create employment opportunities for many thus contributing massively to our society.

It’d be great to see these contributions regarded with the same esteem as other national “heroes” such as Olympic Medalists like Kelly Holmes and scientists like Sir Mansel Aylward.

If you want to watch my interview with Nick Claxson, then take a look at the video casts below:

Selling would be a whole lot easier if someone hadn’t invented objections, wouldn’t it?

Telemarketing would be a lot easier without objections and that’s why, at Great Guns, we spend a lot of time training and coaching our telemarketers on handling and overcoming objections.

Objections are the reasons voiced by prospects for not wanting to buy exactly what you’ve recommended, or for not wanting to buy at all. I find it best to think of objections as hidden requests for more information – you can then consider them to be buying signals.

I like to get the objections on the table during the selling process and I find that asking questions like these will usually flush them out:-

• Is there anything I’ve not covered or that you are unsure about?
• Are there any reasons why we can’t go ahead with this?
• What needs to happen for you to go ahead with this?

Once I understand the objections, I can then clarify them by asking further questions like “Do you mean that the offer is too expensive or that you are not confident of it achieving the outcome and hence not giving value for money?”

Once I clearly understand the real objection, I can then set about tackling it.

I usually finish up the objection discussion with something like “so if I can overcome that to your satisfaction, will you go ahead?”

Once I get a ‘yes’ to that, then the way ahead is clear.

As a specialist B2B new business generation agency, we’re used to generating sales appointments for our clients. A meeting must be fully qualified to pass the Great Guns management checks, and we expect our clients to convert an average of 30% from our meetings to sale. Our telemarketing process involves us gaining as much information from decision makers as possible on every call to enquire such high quality of meeting.

Here are our top B2B market research questions our clients want us to ask:

1. Which decision makers are involved in the buying cycle (how many and all their contact details)?
2. Do they have a current solution in place?
3. Is this outsourced or internal?
4. Are there any areas they feel they want to improve with their current solution (requirements)?
5. What timescales are they working to?
6. What options have they considered?
7. If there is no requirement now, when may they be considering reviewing?
8. Would they be happy to speak to us when the time is right?

You may be asking why budget questions are not there. This is a sensitive question and one not many decision makers want to discuss at an early stage. If you feel you have a good enough bond with the decision maker then you can ask probing questions about how much budget they have. If you don’t feel it’s right to ask this questions however, if you know the options they are considering and timescales they are working to you can often get good feel of whether they are a suitable fit for the budget you need from them.

At a recent ABBA (Association of Business to Business Marketing) meeting, we had a really interesting discussion about the cost of “pitching”.  Many companies don’t measure their cost of attending meetings and their conversion rates.  Here are some key facts from an agency who did measure this:

1.  The conversion rate was 1 in 3, therefore 2 out of every 3 pitches were lost.
2. The average cost of just going in for a meeting was £2K (research, travel expenses, preparation, follow up etc).
3. The cost of responding to an RFP was £3K-£5K.
4. A second stage pitch with strategy included was £10K.
5. A third stage pitch with strategy costs £20K upwards.

25% of this company’s overheads were spent on sales pitching costs – 25%!!!.

Doesn’t it make sense then that one of the key things that can make an instant impact on the profitability of your business is to reduce the cost of going to poorly qualified sales pitches?

This is one of the reasons we stick to our beliefs of only generating the best quality meetings for you. Whilst you may have to reduce your expectations slightly with regards to the numbers of meetings you should expect to go to, you will still win the same number of clients and you can massively reduce your costs.

Here at Great Guns Marketing we work alongside our clients to ensure their telemarketing campaigns are a successful part of their overall sales activity. Calling upon our 12 years of telemarketing experience we know how to get the best results.

Here are our top 5 tips on how to run a successful telemarketing campaign:

1. Ensure you have good quality, clean data.  Much of the early work that goes on in telemarketing campaigns is identifying the right decision makers and checking what opportunities exist within companies. If this work is carried out with some data cleansing activity up front then the telemarketing activity can focus on speaking to the right people at the right time, making it much more effective.
   
2. Make your message relevant. Think about what keeps your target decision makers awake at night. Have a few solutions to their problems ready to discuss, and make them compelling rather than the same as everyone else’s.  This is what makes them want to meet with you.
   
3. Don’t push an appointment too early – give it time. A good appointment should come naturally. If you’ve found a pain, you can offer a solution and they like you then they will naturally want to meet with you and do business with you. Stick with the telemarketing activity and it will pay off, don’t throw the towel in too early!
4. Have the right attitude. People want to talk to people who sound interesting, listen and are passionate about what they are discussing. If you sounds like you don’t want to be talking to prospects then they won’t want to talk to you. Enjoy it and your prospects will enjoy talking to you and open up more, giving you all that important information you need to find their pain.
5. Have strong case studies to back up your message. It takes more than just one conversation for people to trust you, you are starting the “relationship nurturing” process when you are telemarketing so have some good case studies to back up your messaging and treat your prospect with respect.

Here at Great Guns Marketing we are passionate about the art of conversation – and for those of you who know me, you will know how much I like to talk!

This ethos is shared by the team of Great Guns telemarketers who excel at conversing via the telephone on behalf of our clients.  As an organisation we firmly believe that talking directly to prospects (and customers too) must be at the heart of our clients growth strategies and not undertaken in isolation from broader sales activity.

Here’s our top 5 reasons why picking up the phone is an essential part of the sales mix:

1. Talking builds relationships: People buy from people and connecting directly instills confidence and trust. This should be part of your relationship nurturing process.
2. It’s two-way: Prospects want you to listen to them and they need assurance that you understand their business.
3. It’s information rich: Talking provides opportunities to gather critical data, to identify decision makers and to understand specific needs.
4. It drives efficiency: Telemarketing focuses efforts on the right contacts. Find out instantly if a lead is an opportunity, ascertain quickly if you are targeting the decision maker.
5. It increases your ROI: By openly discussing options and solutions you can overcome barriers to buy. This will increase conversion rates and the ROI of your lead generation spend.

As August approaches the murmurs that it’s always a ‘dead’ month are getting louder and louder and I personally think this is a deafest attitude. Whilst I know that things do tend go a bit slow due to staff, prospects and customers taking time off for summer holidays, this is no excuse for shutting up shop and sitting back waiting for September to come round the corner.

Here are my top 10 reasons why August is a great time to keep your foot on the pedal and build your new business opportunities:

1. Be positive. People really only ever take a maximum of 2 weeks holiday . What about the other 2 ½ weeks of the month when prospects and customers are at work and so are ‘open for business’?
2. Promote. There tends to be less ‘noise’ from your competition so it’s a good time for those who do promote to get their message heard.
3. Pick up the phone. Typically many ‘gatekeepers’ and PA’S take some annual leave. Why not find out when they are away and pick up the phone? In many cases the decision maker you need to get through to will be answering their own calls and managing their own inboxes.
4. Use your time wisely. Undertake those things on your to do list that you haven’t had time to do, such as updating your prospect database (don’t forget we are offering 10% off our data cleansing services for new orders undertaken in August).
5. Innovate. August is a great time to softly test new ideas, messages, campaigns. Gently dip your toes in the water, reflect and learn.
6. Get ready. Making the most of August will make September a more successful month.
7. Recruit and train. August is a great time to recruit new staff – be it school, college or uni leavers or even those parents looking to get back to work if their children are starting school in September.
8. Smile. Fingers crossed this year we will have some sun. When the sun is shining people smile, feel more upbeat and are generally more positive and therefore receptive to new ideas and proposals.
9. Enjoy. We get a bank holiday! I know some think this is costly for businesses to honour however in my experience we squeeze 5 days work into 4 so lets all be thankful for that extra day off.
10.  Think ahead.  Its only 4 months until xmas, start planning now!

So don’t write August off. Be realistic about what can be achieved. Plan and budget accordingly, and most of all don’t panic – there are always sales to be had, you have to get out there and find them.

I am looking for a PA at the moment and so I am spending a lot of my time reading CVs and interviewing potential candidates. Interestingly, I am doing this at a time where a record number of applicants are trying to secure a place at university – which leads me to think about what is important to me in a potential candidate?

Certainly one of my major considerations for anyone that I employ here at Great Guns is that they are customer centric, meaning that they have that sense of urgency about them in making sure that we particularly deliver on our promises to clients/prospects. This usually seems to link up with individuals that have great people skills. Therefore people skills are always at the top of my tick list, no matter what job they are applying for! The customer touches every area of your business when they engage with you, the accountant, receptionist, PA and even IT at times. This gives us an opportunity to leave a great impression as they touch each point.

So, do you acquire better people skills if you have been to university? My view is probably no. I think people skills generally come earlier on in life. I think children that are exposed to a wide range of age groups and walks of life and who converse with adults and not just their peers respectively generally are more versatile in their conversation skills. Children that are encouraged to step outside of their comfort zones and ask questions usually develop more of an interest in the world around them and the opportunities available to them. I think this generally makes them more interested in their surroundings and more ambitious in their own personal achievements.

Therefore, university education for somebody who is self motivated and has a desire for academia (and the pocket to pay for it!) would only enhance their people skills and obviously their education and put them at the top of the pile for an interview line up.   Having said this, if somebody already has excellent people skills and chooses to go down an apprenticeship route it is my belief that not only will they achieve great skills and job experience but ultimately they won’t build up debt for themselves. Certainly these people in certain careers will be ultimately be favorable.

In my profession, experience definitely tops academic achievement. Especially as so much of what we do is about the ability to engage with people through all mediums whether we are representing ourselves or our clients. In the main our job is to get people to like us, and people buy from people! Of course it stands to reason that people skills means nothing if you can’t read and write or can back up what you say with real delivery but it’s not that difficult to get a good accountant or administrator but add great people skills to the job spec and you’ve got yourself a challenge.

It’s that time of year again – we’re heading into the summer and in the B2B world, things start to slow down a little – particularly in August when everyone heads off to sunnier climes!

That’s not to say that at Great Guns Marketing we down tools and head for the park – quite the opposite in fact. We have been working really hard over the last few months to develop our services so our clients can use this quieter period to focus on the areas that they are usually too busy to deal with. And one of those is the perennial problem of data cleansing.

As we all know, successful sales and marketing lead generation requires an accurate and well profiled database. With B2B data decaying faster than consumer data, at 30% a year compared with 7% with B2C, if you let your database degrade then you are wasting at least a third of your annual sales and marketing budget by targeting out of date contacts. And with the economic climate bringing an increase in restructures and redundancies, your prospect database is at risk of becoming obsolete at an even faster rate.

However, not all B2B service providers realise the importance of maintaining, profiling and building their contact databases and those that do quite often don’t have the resources in place to undertake this ongoing task. But it’s critical that companies recognise the value that up-to-date data delivers to sales and marketing efforts.

A well-maintained database will ensure reduced waste by eliminating duplicates and poor-quality addresses, ensuring companies focus their efforts on ‘live’ contacts. In addition, an enhanced database will offer alternative routes to communicate – for example if you don’t hold email addresses for contacts then why not undertake some telemarketing to gather this critical data, after all, email marketing is a relatively quick and cost effective way to interact with prospects and customers.

Overall, cleansing and building your database should be something that companies get into a routine of doing regularly. To be in with any chance of generating leads, it’s essential that the people on your records are the right contacts, to save you wasting valuable time and of course, money.

Fortunately our clients are starting to recognise the benefits of data cleansing and are working closely with us to get their database up to scratch, but there are still far too many companies out there losing opportunities by the minute because of something as simple to rectify as bad data.