S&MM SoundOff

A Very (Very) Exclusive Club

Unlikely as it may seem these days, it appears recession-proof industries do, in fact, exist outside the realm of unicorns and dignified reality TV programming. In fact, according to industry research firm IBISWorld, a lucky handful of said industries aren’t just surviving—they’re actually thriving. Here’s a list of the top 10, as ranked by their projected 2009 revenue growth:

1. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers (20.1 percent).

2. E-commerce and online auctions (12.6 percent).                           

3. Biotechnology (10.3 percent).                                   

4. Engine, turbine, and power transmission equipment manufacturing (10 percent).                        

5. Scheduled bus service (9.2 percent).                            

6. Court reporting services (7.7 percent).                         

7. Community housing services (7.5 percent).                       

8. Search engines (6.5 percent).                                   

9. Family counseling (6.1 percent).                                

10. Video games (5.8 percent).                                      

Anyone reading this contemplating a career change yet?

Do You Speak in Code?

A few weeks ago the company responsible for our lawn care sent a quotation for the upcoming season’s work. One level of program included the following: Beneficial nematodes in the spring and fall. Beneficial nematodes? What the heck is that? So, I called the company and asked them to tell me about that treatment and found out that it was grub control.

My immediate thought was, “Then why not say that?”

However, it is interesting how often this occurs in the sales process. Too many people use terminology, jargon, or phrases that mean absolutely nothing to their prospect or customer. In some cases, people will ask for clarification but why put them in this position.

Industry jargon or terminology should only be used when dealing with someone who understands and is familiar with it. And in most cases, it should be avoided altogether. The best sales people know how to clearly present their ideas and get their message across in simple terms.

What does this mean for you? During your next sales call or face-to-face meeting, make sure you speak the language of your customer and that you don’t speak in code.

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals reach their sales quotas and targets by showing them how to close more deals at higher profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.Fearless-Selling.ca. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

Digital Marketing Success Means More than Shifting Marketing Spend

By Graeme Foux, founder & CEO at Knexus

In a marketplace weighed down by poor sales performance, online appears be a rare silver lining. Time and again companies report continuing growth online whilst faltering elsewhere. Google recently demonstrated this resilience, posting positive earnings for the fourth quarter of 2008.

For marketers faced with shrinking budgets and reluctant consumers, this is one of the few bright spots. So you might think, accelerate the shift in spend from traditional to digital marketing and everything will be fine. If only life and business was so simple. Marketing directors face new and unfamiliar challenges to deliver a successful digital marketing strategy. Firstly, the complexity of digital marketing and its rapid, unrelenting pace of change is a culture shock to many traditional marketers. Oh for the days of lavish advertising campaigns and huge TV audiences. In digital, the audiences are more fragmented, the campaigns require a greater mix of activities, and both the technology and consumer behavior keeps changing. Forget about a one-year strategy, digital marketing success requires careful measurement and constant adjustments to marketing plans and thinking.

A second key challenge, often unspoken in the delicately balanced eco-system between agencies and brands, is that there are insufficient agencies with the strategic digital marketing resources that major brands require. How many times have I heard marketing directors bemoan the lack of new ideas coming out of their agencies. Curiously, in some cases it’s the brands pushing the agencies to take on new digital ideas.

And of course it’s not just agencies that are racing to recalibrate their capabilities. Whilst marketers enthusiastically debate the merits of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, the truth is that many traditional marketers are struggling to understand how to respond effectively to the social media phenomenon. In fact, brands have a major challenge across their marketing and communications teams, not only to improve understanding of the new medium of digital, but to make a mindset change around consumer expectations and the competitive threat. With tough economic conditions resulting in lower staff levels, this problem is exacerbated.

For marketing director’s, there’s a clear message here. You may well need to target more of your spend towards digital marketing, but also be prepared to change the way you operate and support your team to deliver success!

Accept Rejection

Rejection. A sales person’s greatest enemy. Let’s face it, unless you possess a Driver’s mentality or have very thick skin, rejection WILL affect you. You can’t ignore it. The key is learning how to manage it.

 

Most sales trainers tell you that rejection isn’t personal; that your customer or prospect is NOT rejecting you; they are turning down your product, service, or solution. While this sounds great in theory, the reality is a bit more complicated because rejection affects everyone differently. Some people feel hurt; others criticize themselves, while other individual’s stew over the loss. You can tell yourself that it isn’t personal but that doesn’t always work. I know it certainly hasn’t worked for me. However, here is a different perspective.

 

Accept the rejection. Tell yourself that you were rejected. Go ahead, say it aloud. “I was rejected.”

 

Once you accept the fact that your product, service, or offering was rejected by a prospect or customer, the easier it is to move on. I personally hate being rejected by a prospect and losing a sales opportunity; however, I have found that using this technique helps me deal with it which means I can get focused on other opportunities much faster.

 

Go ahead, accept rejection.

 

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals reach their sales quotas and targets by showing them how to close more deals at higher profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.Fearless-Selling.ca. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

And Now for Something Completely…Positive?

Longing for the days when reading news from the business world wasn’t an exercise in masochism? Well, rare as they seem to be nowadays, there are oases to be found in this desert of economic discontent. Case in point:

Center for Companies That Care—a not-for-profit dedicated to enhancing the well-being of employees, families, and communities—has named 37 U.S.-based companies to their 2009 Honor Roll. These distinguished employers were singled out for their employee satisfaction and community service initiatives.

“President Obama is calling for individuals and businesses to get involved in community service, but our Honor Roll is already walking the walk,” says Marci Koblenz, president of CCTC. By way of a sampling: One company trains unemployed adults in tree care for their city, another increased employee volunteerism by 89 percent, and yet another canceled its internal incentive trip—donating the excursions to charities chosen by its employees.

At a time when companies of all sizes and across all industries are fighting for their very survival—a time when you’d duly expect to see social responsibility initiatives pushed onto the back-burner—it’s refreshing to see organizations who recognize such initiatives transcend corporate fad status. Hopefully, their examples will inspire others to follow suit. To view this year’s honorees, visit www.companies-that-care.org.

test by TJ

Let's see where this goes.

No or Know?

Every sales person has had a prospect say, “No” to a product, service or solution. During a teleseminar I conducted last week, my guest expert (Tim Breithaupt) suggested that you question whether your prospect or customer means “no” or “know”.

The first version (no) means they are not prepared to move forward for one reason or another. The second version (know) means that the prospect simply needs to KNOW more information. The key is to understand the difference. Here’s how you can do that.

When the prospect says, “No” respond by saying, “No problem. Tell me, what barriers are preventing you from moving forward?” Then sit back and wait for their response. In many cases, you will find that they haven’t made the connection between how your product will help them solve a problem, the key benefits they will derive from using your product, or in some cases, they need more information about your product. In those situations, you can take a few moments to expand on your presentation and demonstrate the value of your product, service or solution.

The next time a prospect says “No” find out if they mean “No” or “Know.” It could mean the difference between a sale or a “no”-sale.

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals and businesses discover new techniques to improve their sales and profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.Fearless-Selling.ca. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

Are Deep Discounts Deep-Sixing Your Brand?

As you’ve no doubt heard a million or so times already, our current economic apocalypse has prompted some major belt tightening among consumers. Accordingly, discounting your company’s products and services (in order to make them affordable to said consumers) seems like a perfectly reasonable strategy.

Not so fast: According to a new study by the Futures Company, offering deep discounts during a recession may well be setting up your brand for long-term damage. Some 70 percent of consumers surveyed interpret such price cuts to mean the product or service in question was overpriced to begin with. Worse still, 62 percent assume these cuts are indicative of an attempt to offload old or outdated merchandise.

“Lowering prices during a recession clearly raises suspicions among consumers,” says J. Walker Smith, Ph.D., executive vice chairman of The Futures Company. “Drastic price cuts like those seen during the past holiday season create a double-barreled risk for brands. First, such price cuts generally fail to generate enough business to pay for themselves, although clearing inventory is of some value. Second, they create long-term difficulties in terms of consumer expectations.”

Once prices have been slashed, Smith explains, consumers anticipate they’ll come down ever further…leading them to hold off on making purchases. “These expectations of deflation are difficult to break and can keep a category mired in unreasonably low prices for years,” he says.

And contrary to popular opinion, resisting the urge to cut prices is hardly a one-way trip to disaster. When asked their impressions of a brand that doesn't lower its prices during tough times, 64 percent of respondents said they assume the product is “extremely popular” and a “good value.”

Take Your Time & Let Your Competitor Win

It never ceases to amaze me how long it takes for most companies to respond to requests that are submitted via their website, especially sales opportunities.  In the last week I submitted half a dozen inquiries for two different services (spam filtering and payment gateway). These were done through the company’s websites and in each situation I was informed that someone would be in touch with me shortly. I don’t know about you but to me, shortly means within 24 hours. However, of the six companies I contacted, only one responded within a day. The remaining either did not get back to me or took so long that I had found another supplier.

 

Let’s face it, people are under serious time crunches and don’t have the luxury to wait for information. In today’s highly competitive sales world, if you take too long to respond to a prospect’s request, you increase the likelihood of losing the business to a competitor who has the systems and processes in place to quickly get back to people.

 

If it takes you longer than 24 hours to respond to any type of sales request, you need to improve this because I can guarantee that you are practically giving your competition new sales and letting them win.

 

Kelley Robertson helps sales professionals and businesses close more sales at higher profits. Receive a FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.Fearless-Selling.ca. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or by email.

Change is Just a Click Away

Those of you who’ve read the January/February issue of Sales & Marketing Management have already gotten wind of the big plans we have in store for the SMM brand. But for those of you who haven’t yet seen the magazine, permit me to give you the 411:

Beginning this month, all of the great features and columns you’ve come to expect from SMM are now available exclusively at www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com, rather than in print. One happy consequence of this change: Being free of the magazine’s constraints, we’re now able to provide you, the reader, with substantially more content updated far more frequently.

Also on the digital front this month, our e-newsletter is getting a facelift. Now renamed SMM Monitor, it will be delivered to inboxes every other Tuesday, featuring the latest sales and marketing news. To subscribe to the e-newsletter, please visit www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com.

But SMM is far from done with print. During the remainder of the year, subscribers will receive five special white papers, each focusing on one of the following themes: Talent Management, Outsourcing, Technology/CRM, Retail, and Travel/Hospitality. Each of these will feature best practices, case studies, executive Q&As, and cutting-edge research. Nor is that all—in November, we’ll also be sending out an Executive Summary of our annual consumer data Bible, the Survey of Buying Power. For more information about the 2009 edition of the Survey, go to www.surveyofbuyingpower.com.  

It’s an exciting time for all of us here on the SMM staff, and we’d love to have you along the ride. Best of all, there’s no waiting involved—click over to www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com, and start experiencing the new Sales & Marketing Management right now!