The post 5 Marketing Success Elements appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Sales is tougher than it used to be, and for some, much tougher. Salespeople who keep selling the 20th century way are running into walls. These walls have been erected at many of the same prospect companies that used to have doors swing wide open. Quite literally, doors to lobbies with friendly receptionists were open to salespeople to come in and inquire about how they could help the company with their products & services. Telephones rang off the hook. Half the calls were from customers & vendors and the other half from salespeople. Selling was a lot of fun back then!

 
Formerly and still potentially excellent salespeople will tell you how they used to kill it in the 1990s (20th century) and maybe up to the post 9/11 boomlet. Something began to change around 2003 and then very rapidly in the years following. That change is now complete.

 
The number one sales problem that many CEOs will tell you is they can’t find any good salespeople and many complain about the ones they have. They aren’t delivering results. There are fewer good salespeople in the market because sales is less sought as a career and 20th century strategies are still in place along with the corresponding tactics that fail.

Unless you have an inside contact name and a referral, you’re shunned. Just try cold calling your way into an enterprise class or big business today. It’s sometimes possible but extremely difficult. If a live operator actually answers, it’s likely they are prohibited from putting a call through without a verifiable appointment or relationship. Cold calling can still work at small businesses, but if you’re going after the real money B2B client, you need a pre-established relationship or good luck Charlie!

 
My point here is to encourage salespeople and executives to sell successfully. The successful career salesperson today is a branding, marketing and networking expert. Their name is already familiar to their prospects. Their company is known for being in the top tier of providers in their category. When prospects are ready to buy, they get called in.

 
Every salesperson has the opportunity to brand himself or herself in a way congruent with their company branding. They can be their company’s Marketing Mini-Me and deliver hot leads. Ready to learn how?

• They can attend copious networking events, establish relationships and build an organic database.
• They can join trade organizations, Chambers and other B2B organizations, contributing knowledge and skills.
• They can send branded email newsletters free or super cheap.
• They can have personal websites with great blog content, also super cheap.
• They can have searchable LinkedIn profiles and network online 24/7 free.
• They can tweet pithy, relevant messages and reach thousands or more daily.
• They can print their own unique and memorable business cards and flyers cheaper than ever.
• They can support their marketing teams with field intelligence for more targeted messaging, driving more inbound leads.
• Their wise CEO or division VP can accompany them on sales calls and show prospects how serious their company is about delivering the best value in the market.

If a salesperson is still behind in catching up with 21st century sales opportunities, they can work extra hours at home. It might take a year or two to catch up, but the new way of selling is a lot of fun too!

The post Be a Marketing Mini-Me appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

You may not realize it but you are a brand manager. If you’ve experienced any kind of success in business and professional life it’s because you’ve managed your brands by  communicating with people in a way that supports what your business stands for and why it’s valuable to your customers. Your company brand, product brand and personal brand all work congruently in the market. People know you and your company the way you want them to know you. Your Brand is first in the Fortuitous Foursome.

Your LinkedIn profile is up to date and your online connections are growing. You regularly post comments, share links and participate in LinkedIn Group discussions. People in your network regularly see those posts and gain more awareness of your brand. As you develop more business relationships, you include more of those folks as Facebook Friends. You directly message someone in Facebook after you’ve had trouble reaching them by phone or email. The response is friendly and instantaneous. You start to notice that people are favoriting and retweeting your Twitter posts and you start getting business inquiries from around the country and the world. Your blog posts are increasing search visibility for your website and more quality traffic generates conversions and new business. Free Online Marketing is the third player in the Fortuitous Foursome.

The post The Fortuitous Foursome of Professional Success appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

We can all understand why some executives need to protect themselves from interruption and time wasters. But anyone in sales, which includes most CEOs, should be accessible because the public at large includes all potential customers and other opportunities. A company to remain nameless lost my potential referral this week and a smaller, more approachable competitor will get it.

Big companies that fold ultimately fail for one reason. They become irrelevant to their customers. They can do this many ways. One big way is failing to make 2-way communication easy or deliberately making communication one sided, pissing off customers and potential customers. I see you nodding your head.

We’ve all experienced frustrating web forms that attempt to gather too much information or corral us into areas we don’t want to enter. We’ve also called for service or questions only to the dead end of non-options offered by the auto-assistant.

A percentage of customers may accept this unacceptable kind of relationship but a juicy, potentially lucrative portion of the market will bounce off the web page or hang up as soon as they sense a programmed waste of their time. They will make a beeline for the nearest competitor with a friendly agent ready to help them (buy something) and serve up a great experience!

The accessible business that lets the public speak with real caring people wins every time in the long run.

Aside from utilities and sometimes limited options, I choose to do business only with companies willing to have a relationship with me. I know they primarily want my money, but they are willing to keep earning it by taking time to help customers and potential customers – giving us a good reason to send them new customers.

Here are a few ways to avoid the false efficiency of limited service options and auto-attendant call processing.

• Answer the phone! Always let callers have the option to talk with a person. Make it the first option.
• Require only the minimum needed information on web inquiry forms.
• Respond to voicemail and web inquiries fast! 24 hours max.
• Fire customer-facing employees with bad attitudes. Fill in for them yourself if necessary.
• Hire only smart “people persons” in those jobs.
• Go the extra mile to delight or satisfy every customer for every dollar they spend.
• Don’t worry about the clock when you are providing excellent service. It’s not a zero sum game!
• Manage growth. If new business actually threatens your quality delivery, make that very clear to the prospect. Some might even get on a waiting list if you’re known as the best in the market.
• Be creative with add-ons and freebies that cost you little but are valuable to customers.

If any of the above sound like too much labor or cost, just think about what you already do when presented with vendor choices. Read the list again. The Golden Rule is so amazingly simple, isn’t it?

The post Make things easy for customers and they’ll help you grow! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Engaging your audience is easy when you know what motivates them. You can grab their attention, hold it and then persuade them to take action with more ease if you use one or more of The Six E’s of Audience Action.

Way back during the dawn of social media marketing development (like around 2010) I worked for a marketing agency that talked about the “3 E’s of social media engagement.” They were Ego, Entertainment and Education. I knew there was more to it than those 3 things so I’ve been striving to come up with a short yet comprehensive list of motivators that would cover all or most of what moves us humans to take action, and maybe even buy things.

Striving for simplicity, so I can understand my own concepts, I wanted a simple guide or formula that could make business communications resonate with target audiences. I wanted a set of guiding principles which work across a broad spectrum of constituencies and media. Serendipitously, the 6 best keywords I considered happened to start with E. Therein is the simplicity of my new guide to audience engagement.

When you examine each of the motivating factors that move people to action, you’ll see that each one fulfills a strong human desire or need. Beyond basic survival (food, clothing, shelter) these motivators are all part of our instinctual nature. In a manner of speaking, we were born to respond to them, and so they are very effective when used for strategic communications. Let’s take a look at the 6 E’s:

Ego

Empathy

Education

Enrichment

Enthusiasm

Entertainment

These are not in any particular order other than making a word pyramid, but Ego being at the top is actually quite helpful. We all have an ego! To discount it’s power over the individual would be remiss. Everyone loves to be recognized and we love hearing our own name called out in a positive way.

So, let’s look briefly at all 6E’s of Audience Action:

1. Ego – You make it happen. Thank you!
2. Empathy – I totally identify with you and know exactly how you feel.
3. Education – Understanding this material is the key to your success.
4. Enrichment – This will bring you security, comfort, fun and enjoyment.
5. Enthusiasm – You are delighted by my energy and excitement.
6. Entertainment – You will enjoy passing the time this way for hours.

• Egos aren’t stroked by manipulation.
• Empathy can’t be faked. You have it or you don’t.
• Education should edify or it’s meaningless.
• Enrichment can’t be given if you don’t have value to offer.
• Enthusiasm can’t be put on or faked because it’s an internal gift.
• Entertainment is the result of real talent, creativity and skill.

The post Motivate Your Audience with E’s appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

While analyzing the reports from our first round of email newsletters, my client instinctively knew where to focus on improving open rates and conversion results. Before I could begin to demonstrate my experience in this area, the client was already talking about the subject line and the newsletter content itself. The other part of our discussion concerned the mailing list – how it was gathered and the company’s relationship with the contacts on the list.

Noted in the previous paragraph are the three things on which you must focus for your email marketing to be successful.

• List
• Content
• Subject Line

We’ll offer a succinct overview of each email marketing success component. The technique I will mostly use here is to ask questions. The answer machine in your head will guide you toward improving your email marketing.

Who is on your list? Who should be on your list? Who should NOT be on your list? Are your contacts signing up or opting in from online and offline marketing and events? Is your sales team gathering prospect contact info with each conversation and at every networking event? Simply mentioning that you have an informative newsletter and would like to send a free copy will add willing new recipients to your list. Include as many prospects or potential referral partners on your list(s) as you and your team can gather in your prospecting work.

Your content must be excellent. Your target audience is mostly indifferent regarding how successful your email will be, so how can you reward them for opening the email and reading it? Promise them something in the subject line and deliver it the content. Ask a compelling question that exposes pain in your customer’s or prospect’s business. Deliver solid recommendations and solutions. Include research, strategy and tactics when possible – provide meat for carnivorous consumption. You may also want to veer off topic with something of general or human interest as your audience grows to know you.

The subject line must arrest and attract. A good subject line will make any inquisitive professional pause and read an email now or mark it for an edificationbreak when they have time. Examine your own behavior when it comes to scanning through your emails. Which sources do you consider authoritative? What in a subject line makes you pause from the delete button and think: “I better have a look at this one…”?

To close this article, thank you!  I’m extremely grateful that you took a few minutes with me today to read this blog post. I hope that you find value, even if just reminders, in the 3 success drivers of email marketing.

The post Email marketing success – 3 things you must do well appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

The law of sowing and reaping is old, really old, and it won’t go away. The biblical metaphor of the farmer who persistently and patiently keeps sowing good seeds always reaps rewards, eventually, no matter what. The late Jim Rohn made a fortune telling this story many times as his own way of sowing, and his business grew internationally making him among the most respected (and richest) business motivators of the last century.

There are beaten paths, rocky roads, choking weeds and all manner of hazards, some of of our making, that interfere with the growth of the crop (business) we’re trying to plant and raise. It’s easy to plant the seeds of business development and then quit after the first few plantings fail to yield. We can easily be convinced the seeds are just no good or we’re not cut out for the business we happen to be in. Giving up too early is tragic when all that is needed for success is a patch of fertile soil, and the world is filled with such patches even if they’re temporarily hidden.

There is a lesson in persistence here but there is so much more to the parable – story – metaphor. There are many different kinds of thieves – some internal, some external – that rob us of faith and steal our motivation to press on. These thieves are cunning and baffling.

So often have I been experiencing direct success from a sales or marketing activity when at the same time someone is telling me they tried it and it doesn’t work. They signed up and made the team but quit when they missed their first shot on goal. It’s easy to be convinced it won’t work if it doesn’t succeed after one or two tries. Don’t fall for the lies of self deception and beware of the other naysayers out there!

The first quarter of 2014 is gone forever!

Now is the time! Spring is the season of rebirth and renewal, bla bla bla… See, there goes my little demon telling me that positive messages like this are trite; that I need toget my head out of the clouds and look more at scientific metrics. But you know what? I’m going to keep on keeping on: sowing seeds in the form of publishing newsletters, attending business events, public relations, sponsorships, social media networking, online marketing and, yes, even good old sales calls!

We have good seeds to sow and as we keep sowing, some is bound to land on fertile ground. If you know where that ground is, great! Stay there an nurture it. No matter what, keep sowing wherever you’re going. If you happen to find the seed of a good idea in any of our newsletter/blog content, would you please plant it in the mind of another?

The post The wealthy sower – so old he’s new! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

On March 20, you can learn to save a ton of money for your business! Learn what free marketing is all about.

• Learn how to build a brand…
• Market a company…
• Increase sales…
• All using free tools and methods!

Come to the hands-on single day course: Social Media & Free Online Marketing at Manchester Community College on March 20th!

Register here with CRN # 20774 and Course # NCTD055.

If you have questions about how to register, reply to this email or call me at 603-345-7223.

The post Spend a day, then don’t spend another dime. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Business development is a hybrid profession that has evolved over the last couple of decades. The very term “business development” seems to me a response to a marketplace that became weary of so many salespeople parading through front doors, entering back doors and prying open every chink in the walls of companies with money to spend. “People love to buy but hate to be sold.” So measures have been put in place to make it hard for salespeople to simply call business people and sell their stuff.

Marketing and sales have become more interdependent and the trend is that these two functions are becoming intertwined. Sales is still where most of the glory is when it comes to impressing the boss. Sales rules business and always will because businesses live on cash flow and new business is lifeblood to organizations. But sales work has changed to business development (think relationships) and effective business development must utilize marketing principles and tactics to open doors to new business opportunities. Again, “people hate to be sold but they love to buy.” A salesperson must get his message out to prospects who are truly in the market to buy.

Every salesperson’s computer can now be a broadcasting and receiving station, i.e., a media outlet. And guess what? Airtime is free. Paying for a boost with advertising is always an option but one can reach thousands in a target audience by spending only time, learning and using the free tools: Social Media, email and networking. Many thriving businesses have been launched with no marketing budget. 

If you already have a computer, Internet connection, cell phone and car (and who doesn’t these days?) Then you have the infrastructure to effectively grow a business. The only thing else you need is time and willingness to work hard (Oh darn, we had to go there!). It’s really wonderful to implement an effective marketing campaign which makes business development efforts much easier (think warm inbound leads), all with no need to spend media dollars. Those dollars can be invested instead toward product and service improvements which will make your customers the best sales force you could want.

Do you or people you know want to learn how to build a brand, market a company and increase sales using totally free tools and methods? Come to the hands-on single day course: Social Media & Free Online Marketing at Manchester Community College on March 20th! Register with CRN # 20774 and Course # NCTD055.

If you have questions about how to register, simply reply to this email or call me at 603-345-7223

The post Free Marketing Tools – Big ROI appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Sometimes this blog brings some hands-on marketing technique information to readers such as better SEO practices, how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. But it focuses mostly on building skills that help business owners, marketing directors and salespeople do their jobs better. Let’s look at just a few key skills that will help you in your business, whatever category you’re in; professional services, manufacturing, construction, business services, retail, legal, real estate… you name it.

3 skills every business person needs to succeed:

1.  Networking & Building Relationships:  If you can’t listen well and carry on a mutually pleasing conversation with someone you may as well go back to your cubicle and fight carpal tunnel syndrome. That may be fine if you program or crunch numbers better than anyone else but chances are you’ll always work for someone else or need someone else to help you grow your business. There is no substitute for people doing business face to face. Clients and customers gravitate to people they enjoy being around and prefer to do business with people they like.

2.  Consistency:  Stay focused on what you do best. The jack of all trades is master of none and today’s customers want the best that’s out there. If you try to be all things to all people, you will be known for nothing. None of us can be best-in-class in more than one or two specialties. Resist the temptation to position your brand as an expert generalist. There’s really no such thing and customers know it. Business owners often fear they will miss out on opportunities unless they cast the broadest net. It may work in politics but not business. When you carefully develop your business strategy and clearly communicate your brand positioning by being known well for one thing, customers from all over the place will be attracted to that message because they want that one thing from the best in the business.

3.  Customize experiences:  Do your homework! “When you walk in empty headed, you’ll walk out empty handed.” There’s another brilliant quip from Jeffrey Gitomer. It means preparing for every unique customer interaction. If you have an appointment with a prospect or new customer, go in knowing about them and what makes them tick. How can your product or service experienced be customized to fit them like a comfortable glove? This takes research. It takes extra time and work on your part. Do the extra work and you’ll stand up head and shoulders above your competition. Your genuine confident smile will set your clients at ease and let them know they made the right choice when they called you.

We subtitled this “3 skills…” but here’s your bonus: Believe and have faith in the power that is greater than you – from whence all success is derived. Whatever your understanding of this power, know this. It exists and it isn’t you. I choose to call Him God. All of your skills and talents are given life to serve others and you are the instrument through which they are carried out in service. The most precious habit you can nurture is prayer and meditation to start your day – every day.

The post Soft Skills that Deliver Hard Assets appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.