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

People respond much better to a phone call than they do to a lot of other sales devices. Not only is a phone call much more personalised than, say, an email or a Facebook wall post, but it gives you an opportunity to tailor your speech to what the customer wants to hear, and gives you an opportunity to overcome their objections.

However, as powerful a technique as the phone call is, it also provides you with considerably more opportunity to alienate your clients that you get with most other sales techniques. Follow these three techniques to optimise your results when calling clients over the phone.

Bypass the Guards

As they say in sales, timing is everything. This is true in the most literal sense when you’re dealing with telephone marketing. The time of the day that you call can make or break you chances of success.

If you are calling a new client while they’re at work, you run the risk of getting stopped by gatekeepers, particularly if they’re a busy professional or manager. Gatekeepers are the secretaries and administrative personnel who surround your potential client or partner, and insist on taking a message. Bypass them by calling after before 9 am or after 5 pm. They’ll have gone home, leaving your client to take calls for themself.

Avoid Calling Your Clients at Home

Lastly, you run a risky gambit by calling people at home after work. People’s schedules vary widely, and you can never be sure that you’re calling at an appropriate time when you reach someone at home during the week. Calling a client during dinner or while they’re unwinding later is one sure fire to ruin the relationship. Unless it’s an emergency, save it for the daytime or the weekend.

Always Smile

Its sounds silly, but make sure that you’re happy while you’re talking to your clients. You can project confidence and enthusiasm through the telephone, and a lot of this is controlled by whether you’re smiling and thinking enthusiastically about building the relationship or selling your product.

On this same note, make sure to sound professional. Even more so than in face-to-face conversation, you can’t rely on pauses like “um” and “uh” to break up your sentences in a telephone call, and you must remember to be polite, and fill your speech with “thank you” and other words of consideration.

By following these few simple tips, you can improve your existing client relationships, and build new ones, over the telephone.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

To take a simple example, imagine that you were running a hotel. In looking to make your hotel the best one on the market, you could go onto a site like orbitz or expedia, and look at the reviews of your competitors, the other established hotels in your area and price range. However, by focusing on the lowest reviews, you could find exactly what customers didn’t like about the hotel, and find ways for your product to pick up on opportunities that were missed by your competitors.

You can do this in any industry, and with any type of business. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, and how to properly turn the negative feedback into useful and constructive advice.

Begin by knowing where to look, and what to look for. This depends primarily upon your industry. There are hundreds of industry-specific review websites and social networks out there, some of them better known than others. Twitter and Facebook are obviously great places to start, as are social media sites like Yelp, provided that they are relevant to your industry.

To find additional review sites, just browse through what people are linking to on Twitter and Facebook, or do a Google search for “your industry + reviews.” You’ll be surprised just how many sites there are out there.

Once you find negative feedback, you’ll need to incorporate what you’ve learned into your business. So if you see a lot of customers complaining about a business practice that is common in your industry (even if the complaints are specifically directed toward your company), then you know to change that practice. For instance, if you see a lot of complaints about online marketers sending out too many useless emails, you might want to take a step back and think about whether you’re personally guilty of that sin.

On the other side, if you see a lot of people complaining about something that doesn’t exist, then you may have found a niche for your business to profitably expand into.

At the end of the day, it’s always good to know what customers are saying about your business, and the other businesses in your industry. And considering that people are 10 times more likely to post a negative comment than a positive one, looking for negativity is a great way to start.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

As a general rule, creating interest in your product is among the most surefire ways to drive an increase in traffic, and to ultimately drive an increase in sales. Being interested means showing that you care about your customers, and making every possible effort to engage them and please them.

Be Interesting

While it’s never been easier than it is today to create an interesting product, and to generated natural interest around the product, there’s also never been nearly as much competition as there is now.

YouTube is the perfect example – while the popular video-sharing site has made possible the previously unthinkable idea of creating and distributing a video advertisement with no cost associated except the time that it takes you to product it, it has also driven allowed your competitors access to the exact same set of tools.

The key to creating buzz is indirect advertising. In this age where one can access nearly everything they want, totally free of charge, nobody wants to watch an advert. Instead, create a funny or informative video or article, and just include a link to your site. If you can be interesting enough that people share the article, then you be sure to have some of the excess interest spill over onto your website.

Be Interested

However, it’s not sufficient to just be interesting. You must also be interested in your customers. Thanks to the rise of the internet, its now possible to do this better than you ever could before.

Set up a blog and a Facebook fan page where you can see what your customers are saying, and where you can respond to them directly. Modify your marketing efforts to more accurately target your customers, and change your products if your customers are looking for something different.

The rule of being interested also applies to competitors within your industry. Read their adverts, both online and off, to see what they are doing, who they are targeting, and how they are doing it. Read the blogs of industry leaders, comment on them, and share their insights via your Facebook page.

By showing interest in your industry, you’ll not only learn more valuable information, but you’ll ultimately draw more attention to your own site, and your own products. And as we all know – more attention means more sales.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

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

Once your new lead has entered their details and clicked “submit”, they will usually find themselves on a conversion page which will say something like “Thank You, you will receive your report shortly”, confirming that they have been successful in their submission.

Even though these leads will no doubt be followed up through one method or another, for some businesses this is where the importance of the conversion page ends…but should it?

Here are 4 key ways you can optimise your conversion pages to ensure they do much more than simply say thank you and wave goodbye.

Add A “Download Here” Button
These leads have taken the time to fill out your submission form and given you access to their important contact information so the least you can do is give them access to the content they’ve signed up for there and then.

This instant gratification will bode well with some of your new leads, who are very busy and just want everything now. For those who don’t want to have to view and download your content there and then you must, of course, ensure that you email this out to them anyway.

Don’t Just Have A Call To Action – Shout It From The Rooftops!
Your conversion page should already have some type of call to action within it, which encourages your new leads to access further information you have on offer or suggests they enquire for further information – but could you be doing more?

Start by bringing back any navigation on your site which you may have removed to encourage the lead to sign up in the first place – this will give your new leads a chance to have a browse around your site and learn more about the company and your products and services.

On top of this, encourage your new leads to link up with you on your social media sites, and – depending on whether these leads have landed on your company website or your blog – direct them to any alternative sites you may have to encourage further interaction with you.

Make Your Social Sharing Buttons Pride Of Place
The leads which have made it to your conversion page obviously thought enough of the content or deal you were offering to part with their contact details in order to get their hands on it so why not give them the option to share this great offer with their social media followers?

By displaying all manner of social sharing buttons on your conversion page you are allowing your new leads to pass on your information for you BEFORE they leave your site, ensuring that you squeeze this extra advertising from them while they are still enthused about you and your company.

You Have The Gold, Now Make It Valuable
The way you choose to follow up with each of these new leads will be different depending on each company’s current sales and marketing processes, but where possible you should feed all new leads into an on-going email campaign, to ensure that they are consistently being updated with new content and ideas which will make sure they remember you and don’t just take your content and run.

The whole point of a lead generation page is to generate leads so ensure that these are properly monitored and followed up through whichever method suits your company best.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

Make or Break

Never forget that, more than any other type of sales, face to face selling is a make or break opportunity. People are busy, they have short attention spans, and typically they aren’t very interested in what you’re selling, at least initially. Which is all the more reason that it is absolutely essential to open strong and close quickly.

Capture Their Attention

Once you get the first few seconds of someone’s attention, you can easily build from there. But getting the first few seconds is the tough part – how do you get someone to take a break from their busy life and listen to what you have to say? By making a creating appeal to their emotions, or by offering them a deal! Even the busiest among us are always looking for a way to save a couple of quid, so give them a chance to do just that.

Create Urgency

Along with being make-or-break, face to face selling needs to move along quickly. As opposed to internet-based sales, where you bring in your customer slowly with free information before offering them an opportunity to buy, face-to-face sales need to close quickly.

If your customer walks away without making a purchase, you will likely never hear from them again. So build urgency in whatever manner you can. Stress that there is only a limited amount of your product left, or that the offer you’re giving them will not be good forever.

However, here you must be careful to steer away from hackneyed phrases like “limited time offer,” and “only available for a short time.” People are so accustomed to these phrases being thrown around that they won’t believe you even if you’re telling the truth, and you’ll damage your credibility by looking like a pushy, amateur, salesman.

In today’s age of faceless promotion and internet marketing, face-to-face sales are more effective than ever. However, the key to effective in-person selling is understanding that your customers are busy, making a powerful appeal, giving them an offer, creating urgency, and closing deal without coming off as pushy or annoying. Sounds like a tall order, but the only way to get better at it is by practising.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is the new SEO and it can do wonders for your business in terms of generating more leads and increasing awareness of your brand – so how can you optimise your corporate social media accounts to get the most out of them in 2012?

Well, there are two basic components to any good SMO campaign. Firstly, you need to link your social media sites to your website and blog content through the likes of social media share buttons. By adding a Facebook “like” button, a “Tweet This” button or Google Plus’ “+1” button to your content your audience can easily share your content with others and give recommendation to your work, which any visitors to your site will be able to see through the number of likes and shares each your posts or pages have had.

The second component to a successful SMO campaign comes from the contributions you make yourself – by providing high quality content which continuously engages your audience, then sharing this to all of your social media platforms yourself so that all of your followers have regular updates to keep them interested.

It is also very important when creating improved SMO for your business that either you yourself, your marketing team or your company as a defined brand itself interacts with your audience directly, through posting comments on your own sites, interacting with your followers and engaging in discussion and debate on other relevant blogs and forums. Simply plastering your content all over your social media platforms is not enough – you need to engage your audience and interact with them in a way which drives discussion and sparks further interest.

In basic terms, in order to be successful with SMO your content needs to be engaging and up-to-date, and it needs to be made easy for your audience to share this content across as many social media platforms as possible.

SMO is just as important for your business as SEO has been, as not only can it drive traffic to your sites, creating increased lead generation and in turn boost your sales, but it is also aimed at increasing your direct contact with your current followers – which in turn will push your online reach out across your targeted markets and allow you to engage with more and more potential clients.

The main downfall with pursuing an SMO campaign is that it can be very time consuming, and if you don’t have a dedicated team to push SMO it can be very difficult to maintain a strong online presence for your business – so look out for future posts about some great online tools which can help streamline your social media efforts and increase SMO in one foul swoop.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

So, what can you do to give your social media strategy longevity in 2012? Here are a few tips to help you consolidate your social media activity for the New Year and beyond.

1. Stop saturating and build your brand

Once you have really got to grips with using social media as a business tool it is very easy to overdo your efforts and start to saturate your social media platforms with lots of content, from each department of your company, and for each separate product or service that you offer. Whilst you might think this gives you a broader reach and a better web presence, you are probably just confusing your followers by making it too overwhelming to receive all the content you are putting out there.

So instead of saturating your social media platforms, start branding all of your company’s departments and products or services under one main name. You can still keep separate accounts for marketing, management, sales etc but ensure you only have one contact from each department and include the company name in all of their usernames. This will help to consolidate and group together your team and products under your main company brand.

2. Post for the platform, not for your own benefit

Each social media platform is different. The way your followers use Facebook in comparison to the way they use Twitter is different, and the reasons some of your audience chooses to interact with you on LinkedIn rather than on Flickr will be different as well – they are looking for different content and are expecting different interaction with you depending on which platform they are using.

You probably already know how to use each of the platforms for your own benefit, but use 2012 to really tune in to what your followers want from you on each platform.  If they’re friends with you on Facebook then they probably want to see a more personal side of you, if they are following you on Twitter then they probably expect regular and consistent updates about your new content and if they have connected with you on LinkedIn they are clearly looking to engage with you in a more professional way.

Consider what each platform is used for and research the way people on the site interact and then tailor your involvement to these conforms – you’ll be amazed at the results.

3. Schedule your posting in advance

It’s always good to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, and the same rule applies with posting. Is what you’re posting really relevant? Will it be of interest to anyone? I would hope it would be otherwise why would you be producing it – but it doesn’t hurt to ask the question every now and again!

Scheduling posts in advance also stops you from overwhelming your followers with massive amounts of content, or ignoring them completely due to the fact you’ve had no time to create anything that day. If you schedule a weekly or daily plan for what you will be posting about and what content you will be distributing on which platform, you will soon find you have a nice on-going structure for each site making the whole process much more automated and easy to follow.

A great way to schedule social media sharing is to draw up an editorial planner at the start of each month, which gives you a chance to plan the bulk in advance and then add in more topical updates at times when you have less scheduled content going out. This will give your followers enough to keep them interested and ensure you don’t overwhelm them with information and scare them off.

The best advice I can give you for 2012 is to reassess where your social media campaign is at currently and where you would like it to be by this time next year – then simply put actions to your words and make it happen. Ask yourself these questions:  If you were a follower of your company on each platform, what opinion would you have of them? Are you getting what you hoped you would from engaging with them in this way? And is there more they could do to keep your attention? Then make 2012 the year you give your social media plan real depth and long term value.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

With only 140 characters to play with, some Twitter users tend to get carried away and try to saturate their page with second by second updates of their every movement. Others ignore the fact that the average shelf life of a tweet is no more than an hour and hardly post anything at all to keep their followers interested with. So, how do you get the balance right between just enough and too much? And more importantly, what should you be doing with Twitter to help boost your following?

Well, here are 3 big mistakes to avoid when managing a successful Twitter account.

1.       Avoid cheesy and stereotypical Auto-DMs

So someone follows you and then receives an instant Auto-DM saying “Hey, it’s great to tweet up!” – No, bad move! They have probably had the same message from nearly every single person they have followed…so what set’s yours apart from all the rest?

If the answer is nothing then you need a rethink. If you are going to use an Auto-DM, it should be original to you and should offer your new followers an extra little something as a thank you for following you. That first direct message is the first thing your new followers will see so you should make the most of that first introduction – even in the limited space. Don’t just send a generic “Thanks For Following” message, it’s unlikely to even be read.    

2.       What’s your ratio?

Twitter really is all about ratios, and your following to followers ratio is more important than you might think.  There are two ways you can get this wrong; firstly, following more people than you have following you, and secondly having loads of followers but hardly following anyone else.

With the first point it’s easy to see why having few followers isn’t a great idea, as the less followers you have the less people you are able to share your content with. However, it also doesn’t look good for any new followers who land on your page, as when you’re seen to be following loads of people it makes you look like your desperately clawing for followers – which is only made worse by the fact you have few followers in return, and it begs the question “Why aren’t people following this person?”. Not a good look.  

On the other hand, the issue with having loads of followers but hardly following anyone back means that you appear to be somewhat of a Twitter Snob; happy to share your content with all who want it but not interested in what others have to share. Again, not a good look.

The best way to keep the balance right is to regularly cull who you follow and get rid of anyone who you have followed for a while but who hasn’t followed you back. It may seem harsh but if you’re not gaining anything fantastic from them in terms of their content and they’re not following you back to receive your fantastic content then surely there is no point in keeping them on there? Having a more equal following to follower ratio will make your profile appear more neutral and follower friendly to anyone who lands on your page.

3.       What are you talking about?

As a business professional you are more likely to be Tweeting about events that are happening or sharing links to your content than Tweeting about what you had for dinner last night – but it is still so important to be clear and concise with your tweets. Using business jargon that only a select few would understand, or being very vague when tweeting  – for example, saying things like “Well that was an interesting meeting…” – will not go down well with your followers.

Although you only have 140 characters per tweet you should make the most of those if you want to get people interested in what you are distributing. Be clear, to the point and tweet something that will be well received by many rather than few.

These are  just a few ways in which you can help to keep up a successful Twitter account, by not only keeping your current followers interested but also striving to attract some new ones as well.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

(Image by Rosaura Ochoa)

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker