Sales & Marketing Authority, Bestselling Author & Business Motivational Speaker

As true as these two rules are for marketing, they are also just two general guidelines for life, and should best be applied every time that you leave the house. However, today we’re going to discuss their applicability to the marketing world, and to your marketing campaigns.

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

As you prepare for your next sales meeting I urge you to consider whether or not you are prepared to address the “5 P’s” of selling. What are they, you ask?

• Product
• Pushing through
• Personality
• Persistence
• Price

The concepts are pretty simple. To begin with, do you know your product inside and out? You need to know enough about it to answer any questions, make quick comparisons to the competition, and point out its benefits and features.

You need to have the skills and knowledge necessary to continue pushing through even if your sales presentation does not at first seem to be going well. Combine this with your winning personality and stellar sales skills and in many cases you can turn the attitude or mood in the room around.

It’s also important to remain persistant throughout the process. Just because the person you are speaking to isn’t interested today does not mean he won’t want your product in a month, six months, or maybe even a year. A high percentage of sales are made not on the first try, but on the follow up.

Lastly, be conscious and aware of your price point, how it compares to the competition, and whether or not you have room to apply discounts based on the needs of your prospect.

Put the five P’s together and you’re guaranteed a successful presentation – even if you don’t make the sale on the first try!

Sean

Sales Expert - Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker

As you move forward in your sales and marketing career you’re going to discover one thing.

Most of the sales models you encounter are going to tell you the same things the other have already told you. They’re just going to use different words and theories.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As you have probably already noticed, not everyone learns the same way. This includes your customers. Having different methods for getting your point across is incredibly beneficial.

With that in mind, today I’d like to introduce the AIDA selling model. The acronym AIDA stands for the following:

• A = Attention
• I = Interest
• D = Desire
• A = Action

Pretty simple, right?

The AIDA selling model believes that in order to sell a product you must draw attention to it, garner interest, move a person from mere interest to desire, and then inspire them to take action and purchase your product. Sometimes this is easier said than done.

The real problem is that you can’t do all four of these things at the same time. You’d be presenting too much information and overwhelming your clients. In order to make this type of selling model work you need to have an incredibly well thought out advertising campaign. The advertising campaign itself must be set up in stages, each one aimed at taking your potential customer through each stage of the process.

Now, take this information and combine it with what you learned about the FAB sales model and you will see how all of these different concepts and ideas work together. The more you know about your product (as outlined in the FAB model) the more likely it is you are going to be able to create a great AIDA campaign!

Sean

Sales Expert - Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker

When you’re looking at your sales model and attempting to write your marketing plan, how will you determine what information to include? What information will your potential customers and clients really want to see?

What you need is a fabulous sales model – one that gives them everything you’re looking for in one glance. You need the FAB (get it?) sales model!

In the FAB acronym, the letters represent the following ideas:

• F = Features. What are the main features of your product and what is it designed to do?
• A = Advantages. What will your product do to solve your prospect’s problems?
• B = Benefits. How will your product help people gain or avoid problems in the future?

If you can answer all three of these questions, in detail, than you’ll end up with an incredibly effective sales model. Take those answers and keep them in mind as you write your sales copy, design your marketing campaign, and go out on sales calls. In the end you’ll have a fabulous sales strategy designed to maximize results!

Sean

Sales Expert - Marketing Consultant – Motivational Speaker