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Archive for the ‘sales and selling’ Category

11 Surefire Ways To Make Your Start-Up Fail

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I stumbled on this post by written by Jacek Grebski of F3FundIt and wanted to share it with our clients. Great stuff!

Here are just a few ways to completely and utterly dig your startup into the ground, as such read them, and do what you can to avoid them.

1. Have a poorly defined value proposition. Having a poorly defined value proposition will cause you headache after headache when looking at and presenting your business model. You have to know who you are targeting, what you’re offering and why they would want to use your product or service. Who is your customer?

2. Setting unrealistic objectives in your development and deployment pipeline. No matter what you think you will not underpin the world in a year, you will not have income of €20.000.000 in year one, and you will be greatly disappointed.

3. Focusing on the bottom line instead of on the service / product you offer your customers. Your customers are your lifeblood, if they are unhappy your bottom line will suffer, if they are happy, they’ll be repeat buyers, and even help market your product. Simple as that.

4. Involving yourself and your business in ethically questionable practices. Unsavory marketing practices, overly creative accounting are just some of the things that will in the end ruin your business, don’t do them.

5. Developing a product without adequately deploying resources to market it effectively. Sure, you may have a product that could cure cancer, end world hunger, and fly humans to the moon, but if no one knows about it, no one will use it. Market it, and market it effectively.

6. Going on a spending spree. Meaning, poor cash management. You may have €250.000 that you received in the form of F3 (Friends Family Fools) Capital and you think it’s great so you pay a premium for services that could otherwise be outsourced, delivered in a more cost effective way, and get everyone a brand new Mac Pro to write e-mails on. Not a good idea.

7. Launching too early or too late. Timing is everything, think about the market, the economy, the sector you’re in, where is it now, where will it be in 3 months, 6, a year or two. You don’t have to change the world today, and launching today may lead to failure.

8. Flying solo. Think you can do everything yourself? You can’t. Involve others. Even if you’ve decided to start alone, bring in friends, talk to your network, and see if people will help you out. You don’t have to give them an equity stake in the beginning see how you work together. If you work well, ask them if they’d like to come on board.

9. Forgetting about scalability. Good ideas scale well, multi-million ideas scale at their core. How big can your product realistically get? Who is your customer, and how can fast can you grow without compromising service.

10. Secrets are no fun. Talk, and share your idea with people you trust, friends, family, colleagues, these people are inevitable to the success of your business, you don’t know everything, and collaboration can more often than not fix problems before they arise.

11. Doubting your idea early on. Doubt is natural, you will have ups and downs, this is completely natural, but if you doubt your idea within the first month, or three of your start-up career. Chances are you’ll become disheartened quite early on and quit. Save yourself the trouble and thoroughly analyze your concept before taking the plunge.

A friendly message from the people at F3FundIt, and with that. Good Luck!

Original blog post written by Jacek Grebski and found here.

badidea

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Posted in business start-up, entrepreneurism, entrepreneurs, marketing, operations, sales and selling, small business, small business consulting, small business marketing, start-up advice, start-up help, tips and tricks | 3 Comments »

How To Network To Increase Sales And Gain New Customers

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Let me say from the onset that networking is not multilevel marketing (MLM) or a pyramid scheme. Having said that, networking is the building of business relationships. Note that the primary focus is on building relationships.

  • Sales and business connections are often developed from the relationships we have with other people, and networking provides the opportunity to meet people and expand your contact list.
  • Choosing the right group to join or event to attend is crucial, otherwise you will meet people who have very little or no interest in what you have to say. Focus on the quality of your contacts not on quantity. Getting two quality contacts who will answer your phone calls or read your letters are better than having ten who will not.
  • The first impression your contact gets about you could be what cement the relationship or take it apart. A firm handshake, a pleasant facial expression, a demonstration of interest in your contact, and attentiveness to his/her name and line of business will convince your contact that you are not only there to sell some product, and quickly move onto your next victim.
  • Your first meeting with a contact should be about understanding his problems, needs and concerns and collecting contact information. Clearly state what you do in 15 seconds and in 30 seconds what you have done to help people with similar problems. Don’t use the initial meeting to promote your credentials. Your contact is not interested in your credentials, not yet, but in how your solution can solve his problem.
  • The follow up after a networking event is where many small business owners come short. Send a handwritten card to the people you met the next day, referring to the networking event where you met. Within two weeks send them letters arranging to meet for lunch or coffee to learn more about their businesses and how you can help.
  • If a month goes by with no communication between your contacts and you, they may forget about you, and potential customers may be lost. You may talk to your contacts by phone, but you will get better results by using a letter, newsletter or articles in your blog to demonstrate your expertise or the value of your product by sending them useful ideas and suggestions they can use immediately.
  • The average person is estimated to know about 250 people. This means each person you meet has the potential to connect you with over 60,000 people. The more people you meet, and the quality of your relationship with them will take your name and products to places where alone you could never have reached.
  • This reach will allow you to become a powerful resource for your contacts. The quality and regularity of the ideas and suggestions you send to them will keep your product on their minds, and be the first person they come to when they need help.
  • Your contact list will further expand when you follow up on referrals that others give you. Contacts who give you referrals have confidence in your expertise, reliability or the quality of your product. They have found your solution to their problems helpful, and would like to share with their family and friends what they have found. Be sure to follow up on your referrals.
  • Social medias like facebook, twitter, myspace and linkedIn are providing networking opportunities for millions of business people on the Internet. But you will agree that eventually you have to meet your contact in person and shake his/her hand before you feel comfortable enough to sign that $100,000 contract.
  • If you are not networking, you are losing thousands of potential customers who have money to spend and need your service or product, but do not know that you exist. Go to events where you will meet large number of people. Initiate conversation with people you meet. Ask to be introduced to people you don’t know. Express genuine interest in your conversations. Give out your business cards, and follow up on your contacts.

The primary purpose of networking is the building of business relationships; the buying and selling of goods and services are its byproducts. Only when you have developed those relationships will you get their byproducts in increase sales.

By Ben Aidoo

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Posted in branding, marketing, sales and selling, small business marketing, tips and tricks | No Comments »

How Do I Prevent My Small Business From Failing?

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Why is my business failing? Thousands of businessmen and women have asked the same question at one time or another, especially during the early days of their businesses. To be sure, the marketplace is a high-tech jungle where only the fittest survives.

The bottom line reason your business is failing is that you are not selling enough of your product (goods or services) to cover your operating expenses and make a profit. But the problem is not with the product, it is with the elements that make the product what it is. What are those elements?

  • Do you have the right product for your target customers? Obviously if you don’t they will not buy it, at least not in the quantity that will make you a profit. Choose a product that already has a demand, but emphasize a unique benefit of the product that your competitors are not. It should be a product that is consumable, so that your customers will come back to buy more.
  • Is your product quality and durability comparable to your competitors? The quality of your product is the primary element to which all the other elements are anchored. If you do everything right but have a bad product you will not have repeat customers. Majority of your customers will be one-time customers, and the bad news about your business will spread like a virus.
  • Is your product easy to use or consume? Customers are irritated when they spend their hard-earn money on an item, but cannot get it to work. Next time when they go out shopping they will choose an item that they won’t need the brain of a biochemist to get it to work. Choose products that are customer friendly.
  • Is the price of your product competitive? If a customer can buy your product at half the price from your competitor two block down the street, why would he buy your product? Look around and do some comparison shopping to check on your competitors prices and adjust your price accordingly.
  • What is the platform from which you sell your product? Do you sell your product on the Internet or in a brick and mortar store? If you sell on the Internet, is your website or blog pleasant to the eyes, easy to read and navigate? Being mindful that if a visitor to your website is not able to solve a problem he encounters on your website in 3 seconds you’ve lost him.
  • If you sell in a brick and mortar store, does the layout of the store give customers easy access to your product? Are the price tags conveniently displayed to avoid having the customer to ask for the price of each item? Are your salespeople informed about the product enough to answer customers questions? Your aim is to give your customers a pleasant experience in the store to make them want to come back again.
  • Once you set up your website with quality content and products, nobody will know that you exist until you advertise it. How much it will cost to do so will depend on the type of ad, and the competition in your line of business. You may choose to submit your website to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN or Bing, and wait for months to have your website pages indexed, or buy ‘pay per click’ (PPC) ads that will send visitors to your website within 24 hours of signing up.
  • You will need to know about keywords and their placement on your website. When a visitor goes to the Internet for information, s/he types in a word or phrase. The search engine checks through its indexed web pages for websites and blogs with keywords or key-phrases that match the visitor’s query, and present them in order of relevance. Search engines are scrupulous in their selection, because if they provide the wrong information they will lose the visitor, and that is bad business.
  • Advertising a brick and mortar store normally involves running ads in the local newspapers or on TV. Since this can be expensive, you may want to set up a website or blog and encourage your customers to go there for discount prices and information about your product.
  • When you attract customers to your website or store, and they buy your products, the next step is turn them into repeat customers. Ask for their names and email or postal addresses. Because this information is valuable to your customers, offer something for it. Give them a discount or a coupon in exchange for their personal information.

You can stop your business from failing by selling more of your product to satisfied customers who will buy from you again and again because you sell the right product, high quality product, easy to use and at competitive price; because they know where to find you from the weekly information you provide them by email, letters, on your website or blog about new products, discounts and coupons. Shall we get to work now?

By Ben Aidoo

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Posted in branding, business coaching, entrepreneurism, entrepreneurs, marketing, sales and selling, web design | No Comments »

Lonny Magazine: Merging Innovation And Tradition

Friday, November 20th, 2009

We know that the print industry is suffering these days. Advertisers are pulling out of print and even with a devoted reader base, long-standing magazines like Blueprint, Domino, House & Garden and Vogue Living have folded.

In the December edition of Vanity Fair, former Domino magazine exec Patrick Cline and Michelle Adams combined their vision for a web based magazine that integrated ads into editorial content for Lonny Magazine, a word made from the fusion of London and New York.  Here, the web magazine mimics the reader experience of hard print, even the ability to flip pages. How many times have you jumped pages in a magazine to get to the editorial content?  Readers can mouse over articles or pictures of interest and can connect with a click to the retailer. See an idea you’d like to try in the editorial? Click on it to find out where you can get it.

Financing a new magazine was no easy feat given the status of the many big names that have folded. Lonny Magazine raised their money through the most traditional methods: their team worked for free, borrowed money from family, kept their day jobs and because they had no money for marketing, relied on the internet buzz generated by bloggers, facebook and twitter to spread the word of their launch.  Their first edition cost $11,000 to produce, 10K of photography, processing, and equipment was donated by friends and companies; 1K for various out of pocket expenses; even the car was borrowed from Adam’s parents. Now that’s what I call bootstrapping.

No calls or pleas for hundreds of thousands of dollars,  they got their noses to the grind stone and just ‘did it’, making their product, proving that it was feasible and profitable,  believe in their product, and paid their dues. Now they’re in Vanity Fair and in a much better position to receive financing than if they did nothing at all but brainstorm on a piece of paper.

Lonny’s next issue comes out in December, check them out at www.lonnymag.com.

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Posted in business start-up, entrepreneurism, entrepreneurs, raising capital, sales and selling, web design, women in business | No Comments »

How To Sell More In A Down Market – The Leadership Secrets To Dynamite Sales Results

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Accepting the basic premise of How to Sell More in a Down Market is vital for success in selling more in a down market. The premise is for you to “take a leadership approach to your sales responsibilities”.

This leadership approach is straightforward and practical. It has six elements.

1. Accept full accountability for your results
2. Adopt leadership attributes for success
3. Become inspired and motivated
4. Become a personal productivity champion
5. Learn to plan like a leader
6. Take responsibility in further developing your leadership and sales professional skills

Although a number of leadership elements comprise an exceptional leader, How to Sell More in a Down Market focuses on each of the elements of leadership mentioned above to help you improve your sales results.

Accepting Accountability

Sales volumes are at record lows; you’ve never sold so little, and your commission checks have never been so small. You need to sell more, and you need to make more money … and you need it now!

Is it possible that:

* Previous good markets turned you into an order taker, and you forgot how to sell?
* You’ve worked your trap line for years, and it’s finally dried up?
* You’ve convinced yourself that there is no business to get?
* You just aren’t trying anything new to get new business?
* Your selling skills are a little rusty?
* You are talking too much and not listening for opportunities?
* You just don’t know what to do about it?

If you are not selling as much as you’d like or if you’re not making as much as you’d like, don’t blame it on the markets, competition or others. It’s time to forget the excuses and begin to accept accountability for any shortfall in sales volume or your paycheck.

Leaders are always accountable for results. If you are going to manage your sales responsibility as if it is your own business, you need to accept full accountability for the results.

Becoming a Personal Productivity Champion

As a sales professional, how is your time management, or as I like to refer to time management, how is your personal productivity?

It is essential for leaders of organizations to master the art of personal productivity. Yes, just like selling, personal productivity is an art form. A CEO who leads a worldwide organization cannot afford to waste a single minute when trying to profitably grow their business.

There are as many different ways to be personally productive as there are CEO’s. However, I think few leaders will argue with these five “big picture” items as the solution to being productive in their responsibilities.

* 1. Plan – you have to plan your business and your time. Without planning factors such as where you are going, how you’re getting there, when you’re getting there, who is helping you get there, what you need to get there and why you want to get there, you will likely fall short of your goals in both good and bad markets.

* 2. Evaluate your progress – you have to take the time to evaluate how you are doing and make adjustments to your plan if necessary. This prevents you from wasting time on tasks that aren’t working in both good and bad markets.

* 3. Organize – leaders need to be personally organized, so they can organize their team to execute the plan. You know without organization you will be less effective in getting results in both good and bad markets.

* 4. Prioritize – leaders have a great number of things to do and decisions to make. Without properly prioritizing, they can waste their resources focusing on the wrong areas in both good and bad markets.

* 5. Schedule – leaders schedule their day, week, month and year. Their daily schedule is set like television programming; you know what’s on at what time and the only way that will change is if there is an earth-shattering development that needs to be communicated.

Get and Stay Motivated

Self motivation is an important ingredient to the successful sales professional regardless of the current market place. When the market is down, it is even more critical to create a self-motivating environment.

If you still are having a difficult time finding passion in the down market, here are a few suggestions for you to consider:

* Stop listening to the depressing news on talk radio and the 24-hour television news channels.
* Create a list of things that make you happy, and keep a copy with you wherever you go.
* Keep a photo of something that makes you smile near your side.
* Before you get in your car in the morning, walk around the yard and smell the roses.
* Find a mentor-someone you can talk to who will keep you on a positive track.
* Don’t hang around people who aren’t fun and exciting to be around. Find upbeat, positive, forward-looking people with whom to surround yourself.
* Find your favorite motivational quotes, write them on index cards, and keep them with you to read anytime you feel a need.
* Turn on some music, and dance like no one is watching* Phone someone you haven’t talked to for a long time, and make them smile. I guarantee you’ll feel good about it too.
* Write down what you’re thankful for.
* Make one more sales call; don’t give up; think positive* Get some exercise to clear the mind and rejuvenate.

Plan Like a Leader

Leaders spend a large portion of their time creating plans, implementing plans, measuring/monitoring plan performance and adjusting their plans.

In this section, we will cover the element of planning your business-your sales responsibility.

The components of a sales responsibility plan I recommend include:

* A mission statement,
* A SWOT analysis,
* A set of objectives that help you achieve your mission,
* Tactics or action plans to achieve your goals.

To develop a mission statement, here are the steps I typically recommend you process through:

Step 1: Brain Storming – Either sit down with a blank piece of paper, a white board, sticky notes or a flip chart paper, and start writing your values; your attributes; what you do; what you want to do; where you are; your strengths; what your customers like about you;, your company’s products, services and systems; and any other relevant issues specific and unique to you or your sales responsibility.

Step 2: Identify – Begin to identify key words that are actionable and unique, and separate those from the others. Group the others into obvious categories such as “products,” “services” etc.

Step 3: Form – Using the actionable and unique words, with one eye on the other word groups, begin to form a collection of different brief mission statements.

Step 4: Decide and Finalize – Using the process of elimination, select your favorite and tweak it if necessary; your mission statement is now finished.

As mentioned before, this is a process. It doesn’t and shouldn’t happen in an hour. It also helps to involve others to ensure you benefit from different perspectives. To demonstrate my point-with over 15 year’s experience, I relied on a Mentor/business coach to help me finalize the mission statement for my business. She asked me a few questions that triggered a spark of inspiration and BOOM, a direction was set. Visit www.ethos360.com so we can show you how to do the same.

Self Development

For some reason, many companies elect to slow down, minimize or entirely eliminate the expense associated with training and developing their people when there is a down market.

Most sales professionals don’t typically set time aside for self development. They’re usually too busy looking after customers or solving problems. You may have an individual development plan, but is it really aggressive enough to help you sell more in a down market?

Although there is this wealth of knowledge available to you online, there is also a wealth of knowledge available to you within your own company.

* Start with product knowledge. When was the last time you went through your company’s manufacturing plant to get a detailed understanding of how the products you are selling are made?

* If there was a product knowledge test today, would you pass? Maybe you passed years ago, but would you pass today?

* Do you have a mentor within your company? You should because there is a wealth of knowledge and experience from which to benefit.

* Ask your boss or mentor to role play a realistic scenario of your choice. Upon completion, review with him/her. Question and ask feedback on your strengths and weaknesses throughout the situation.

* Re-vamp your value proposition statement delivery.

* Create a series of elevator speeches to answer basic questions like: 1. What you do for your company. and 2. Why someone should buy from you.

Closing thought;

Successful implementation of the six elements of leadership should help you sell more in a down market, and when the markets return – and they will albeit at a level less than the recent glory years – you will have developed some new habits to contribute to your continued success.

You will also experience leadership thinking, behaving and performing, which will elevate your career if you desire a management or leadership position in your organization.

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