Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Business Motivational Speaker

Unless your business deals with a newly invented product, or you’re truly a business revolutionary and you’re operating in a marketplace by yourself, chances are that you have competitors in your industry. Depending on your industry niche, they may be direct competitors, who offer an identical or similar product, or they may be indirect competitors, who offer a different product but offer it to the same group of potential clients as you do.

One of the hallmarks of a great business person is how they respond to competition, how they rise above the challenges presented by it, and how they make their business stronger and more competitive in the long run.

Know your Enemy

When a new competitor enters your marketplace, the first step is research. Look at what they’re doing, and how they’re trying to take your customers. In any case, the key is to explain why your product is better, not what your competitor’s product is worse. Bad-mouthing your competitors makes you sound childish, and puts you on the defensive. Instead, just explain why you have the best solution on the market.

Just as important is knowing what your competitors are doing – what services are they providing, where are they advertising, how are they trying to reach your customers, and where do your own marketing efforts overlap with theirs. By understanding exactly what the competition is doing, you stand a much better chance of outmaneuvering them and putting yourself into the most profitable piece of the market.

Keeping your Customers

The key to preventing your competitor’s making inroads into your customer base is by building and maintaining relationships with all of your customers. Of course, this is something that you should do all the time, but is especially important when a new competitor is courting your customers.

Customer relationships are built on two pillars – loyalty and incentives. Loyalty is getting to know your customer, and getting them to like and respect both your business and your product. Loyalty can be analogized to the way you might feel about your favorite restaurant – you keep going back because you know what you’re going to get, and you like it.

However, when you’re confronted with serious competition, your relationships need to go beyond this. It also needs to make financial sense for your customers to stay with you. Provide your loyal customers with incentives – free products, free upgrades, anything to make them know that you appreciate their continued business.

Rise above the Competition

The last thing you want to do when confronted with competition is fight them directly. This will only make you look bad, and cut into your profit margins. The key to beating the competition is rising above the competition. Focus on your unique selling point – what makes your product better than everything else on the market – and stick to it.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Last week I talked about face-to-face sales techniques. The elevator pitch is a perfect example of how you can benefit from powerful face-to-face sales techniques no matter what industry you’re in.

While the elevator pitch isn’t actually used in elevators (although it could be), the name alludes to the fact that it should ideally take about the same amount of time as a typical elevator ride.

The basic idea of the elevator pitch is to give potential customers an idea of what your business does, why it does it better than your competitors, and how you can translate your past successes into future benefits for them.

Keep it Updated

It’s essential to keep your elevator pitch updated as your business changes, and as your role within your business changes. You wouldn’t air the same commercials year in and year out, would you? Neither should you use the same sales pitch to clients from year to year.

Related to this is the importance of tailoring your speech to different groups of customers. While one subset of customers may care more about the potential cost savings afforded by your product or service, another group may be much more concerned with effectiveness, quick delivery, or any other aspect of your business. Stress the parts of your business that are most likely to appeal to the customer you are currently pitching to.

Nail the Delivery

Like with any kind of face-to-face sales, the key to your elevator pitch is in the delivery. You only really have one chance to delivery your pitch perfectly, which means that you have to understand your customer and understand what they are looking for.

Even more importantly, you have to make your pitch relevant and exciting. Open with an appeal to emotion, with a surprising statistic, or with anything that will catch your potential client’s attention and get him engaged. Once you’ve done this, you  can move into statistics, or the nuts and bolts of what benefits they stand to gain by using your product or service.

Above all, be confident. If you aren’t 110% sure of your product, then nobody else will be either.

Keep your elevator pitch relevant and updated, and when you get a chance to use, make sure that your delivery is perfect. In this way, you can make sure that when you get a chance to speak with a potential customer, you can bring them in every time.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

A nice incentive that many businesses can offer as part of their holiday sales pitch is the addition of a gift bag for purchases over a designated amount.  The up sell is a great way to get more out of your customers.  Sales people should always be pushing for the next big thing in selling.  Instead of simply allowing a customer to stop, a good sales person should always mention current promotions and sales as way to increase customer interest.  A promotion that often drives customer interest is a gift bag.  There are several different ways to offer this type of promotion, and you should consider them all and how they can integrate into your current sales model.

Discount Gift Bags

One of the more common offerings for gift bags is to package together several different items and offer them all at an incredibly low price.  You might even take a loss on those items, but as long as the base purchase of items at full value is met the loss is over taken by the sales.  For example, if you package a gift bag that has retail value of £50, your cost is probably no more than £25.  If the gift bag is offered for free, then it would need to be given out only with purchases that exceed £100 at retail cost.  This should then leave your store with a profit of approximately £25 on each sale.  Another option would be to charge a minimal fee for the gift bag.  If you charge £15 for a bag worth £50, but only if consumers make a purchase of £100 or more, you still stand to make a profit of £40.  This is only an example and your numbers and price points may vary, but you can see how this could improve your holiday sales.

Future Sale Gift Bags

The other way to use gift bags to your advantage is to offer them to customers with large purchase amounts.  However, instead of filling the gift bags with items that can be used immediately include samples and coupons for future purchases.  Samples are a great way to allow customers to try out products before they make a purchase.  You should already have samples for many of your products on hand.  This makes it easy to add coupons and cute packaging to come up with a give-a-way that customers will enjoy.  When you let a customer know that spending an additional £5 will save them £20 next week, they are more likely to go ahead and spend the extra money now.  They may or may not ever use the coupon, but you gain the immediate up sale.  Of course, do not forget to personalise your gift bags, as they can act as additional advertising.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

It seems like one of the big marketing pushes today is offering customers loyalty programs or rewards programs.  You are probably familiar with them.  Stores ask consumers to provide contact information and then consumers are given a store reward card to present every time they make a purchase.  These cards might allow the customer to partake in sale prices or earn rewards points.  Over time if the consumer spends enough money they might receive store credit to spend on whatever they wish.  The real question is this:  Do these programs actually drive customers through the door?  Would people be shopping at the specific shop without the rewards programs?

Often, the answer is both yes and no.  In some cases the rewards program can bring in customers, depending on how it is structured and advertised.  In other instances the reward card does nothing to bring in consumers.  If you are considering adding a rewards program for loyal customers keep the following in mind:

No Deal is No Deal

A sale that isn’t, is more likely to annoy customers than anything else.  If you are offering loyal customers a sale opportunity that you market as a special price for loyal customers, then it is important not to give it to anyone else.  If rewards card holders see non-card holders getting the same prices, they lose faith in your advertising.  Also, if you have free give-a-ways along with a purchase to rewards members, make sure that there is a large enough quantity not to run out early in the day or in the first few days of the promotion.  While customers that are arriving at the end of the day may understand if you run out, someone there only a couple hours after the shop opens will be less understanding.

 Make it Worth Their While

A rewards card can serve multiple purposes, but one of the most important is visibility.  Every time someone pulls out their keys or opens their wallet they will get a reminder about your shop.  However, if they don’t realize any benefit to carrying your card, they will stop.  After all, why carry around something that never does any good.

Don’t Be Seduced By Technology

The shiny and new is always attractive, but for loyalty rewards programs it is not necessary.  Traditional punch cards that show how many times a customer has visited in a given time frame can be just as effective as the sleeker cards issued by major corporate shops.  For the small business person, those types of rewards programs are often not worth the expense.  A traditional buy 5 get the 6^th free is just as effective as the point building models, in many ways more so.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker