Category: Sales Management

What are you Really Selling?

Coco Chanel once said, “In the laboratory, we make perfume. In the store, we sell dreams.” Do you know the answer to the question, “What are you Really Selling?” It’s only by understanding your fundamental business that you can ever hope to reach your true potential.

For example, you do not sell grass seeds. You sell a greener, lusher lawn.

You don’t sell air conditioners. You are selling warm, cosy winter nights and cool summer days.

And you most certainly don’t sell shoes or clothing. You are selling image and comfort.

The million-dollar question is, what can you add, adapt or offer that complements what you now have AND satisfies the needs and desires of your present or an entirely new target market?

Remember the old advertising adage “Don’t sell the sausage … sell the sizzle?”

Back in 1781, Samuel Johnson understood this well. When he was appointed to auction off the Henry Thrale brewery, he announced, “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Get the idea?

Whenever you are selling anything, always ask, What you are selling?” Don’t stop until you’ve got a long list of answers. Then, test your best, one by one, with advertising, press releases or market surveys. The difference in responses will often astonish you, open up unsuspected new markets, and create more opportunities to raise the question: What are we selling?

But we’re just getting started. Let’s think even bigger…

If you want to grow rich, start asking this same question about a single product or service and your entire enterprise.

Some revolutionary examples:

A hundred years ago, the railways dominated the travel scene in the Western world. If you had asked the railway chiefs of the day what business they were in, they would have replied, “The railway business, of course.”

But had they raised our 5-word question, they could have realised they were in the transportation business.

That simple insight could have allowed them to dominate whole new transportation industries that would soon emerge—motor cars, planes, and trucks whose combined revenues now dwarf those of the railways. But the railwaymen never saw these upstarts coming. They were blindfolded by the familiar. They were in the railway business, full stop.

Now, a positive example:

When a man named Ray Jacuzzi was getting nowhere trying to sell his whirlpools to physical therapists, he refused to give up.

Instead, the answer to our questions catapulted him to stratospheric success.

Yet another creative example:

By the late 60s, almost every Australian family owned a big square white refrigerator. As long as it kept the milk cold and didn’t conk out completely, families would let it sit in the kitchen forever.

So, how do we sell more refrigerators when everybody already owns one?

The answer is to start selling refrigerators as kitchen decor.

Produced in decorator colours in styles to suit every taste and fashion. This way, when people remodelled their kitchens, they’d want new refrigerators to match.

That insight quickly became (and largely remains) the driving force behind new refrigerator sales.

So think for a moment…

What are you selling?

Are you sure? What else could it be? How might you repackage your product or add to it to trigger new demand or crack open a whole new market? Think big!

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Everyone I meet these days and half the emails that hit my inbox discuss Lead Generation.

In recent months, I have also received four different connection requests via LinkedIn offering Lead Generation services, which seems to confirm that many businesses are struggling to get new clients.

For many, SME’s Lead Generation is the biggest challenge in their business, which is not surprising because, without new leads, you will always struggle to grow your business.

For some clients, the issue is converting leads, and for others, it’s generating the inquiry in the first place. However, regardless of the problem, the issue at the heart of it is usually Targeting your Ideal Client.

Businesses are either attracting the wrong client or not being clear about what they offer so that the right client can identify them as a possible solution to their needs.

Identifying precisely who your ideal client is will determine everything else in your marketing armour.

It will help you:

• Create your USP – why you do it better than anyone else
• Develop your marketing messages – what need you to address or desire you fulfil
• Create your 30-second elevator pitch – Your verbal branding when you meet a prospective customer
• Grow your business – happy clients will tell others about you
• Identify opportunities for product/service development – in what other ways can you assist your target market?

So, how do you identify your target audience?

I have found the following six steps extremely helpful in determining the target market for our clients:

1. Identify who you believe has the most significant need for your product – the more defined, the better. If you try to be all things to everyone, you will be nothing to anybody.
2. If you have been in business for a while, look at your customers from the last 12 months. Who did you enjoy working with? Who was a good referrer? Who was a good payer? Who embraced your product or service? Now group these people and identify what they have in common by demographics (age, income, gender, location, size, turnover, etc.) and psychographics (buying profile, needs, lifestyle, etc.)
3. Look at your customers’ needs. Are there any gaps in the marketplace? View your product offering from their perspective. (The best way to do this is through research. It doesn’t have to be expensive or big. Some face-to-face interviews or self-completed questionnaires on a platform such as Survey Monkey will usually give you what you need.)
4. Now, combine all you have learned in the previous three steps and create a profile of your ideal customers. Remember, it needs to

• Be well defined
• Align with your company mission/values
• Have enough customers/demand for a business
• Be capable of evolving

1. Now, test market it. Ask your clients or if you are starting family and friends. Give them samples of your product or service and your messages.
2. Refine and launch.

Identifying your target market and describing it in detail will be a challenge for many, but the rewards for getting your Lead Generation right will be immeasurable.

Some people fear that if they are too specific, they will miss out on opportunities. This definitely will not happen. You will save money because your marketing message will be clear and concise, and your choice of marketing channels will be easy. You will also experience the growth you desire, as prospective clients will be drawn to you because you have communicated what you can do for them.

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In our first post on the 30-second Elevator Pitch, we covered the importance of developing the pitch. In our second, we addressed ensuring the message is consistent across all your presentations, proposal materials, communications, and digital media. 30-Second Elevator Pitch Part 3 closes the loop.

In this post, we want to show you a simple but highly effective way of carrying the message into your sales meetings that will help convert cold sales leads into warm opportunities and increase conversions while providing a strong point of difference between you and your competitors.

No matter what industry you’re in, the cost of putting a salesperson in front of a potential customer is high, so anything that increases the sales conversion rate is a good thing, Right?

Now, we can’t provide an example that is applicable to everyone who reads this post, given that many of you will come from different industries. Instead, I can tell you what we do and hope the example stimulates you to think about creating a concept that could work for you.

Part of a message the Marketing Services Company I owned used in our 30-second elevator pitch was about helping businesses flourish, a simple message that resonates with the service and the outcomes our clients want to achieve from any marketing activity.

Our home page slider uses images of plants growing in size and reads, “Our Goal is to Create Marketing That Enables Businesses to FLOURISH and Realise Their True Potential.”

Reinforcing the message

Using this simple message to cultivate and reinforce the concept of helping a business flourish, we sent prospective clients a small packet of seeds before any face-to-face call. The accompanying message centred on what was needed to allow seed to grow and flourish, and we drew comparisons with business examples.

Building on the message

Post-meeting, and only in instances where we think there is a strong possibility of conversion, we hand deliver a small desktop plant packaged with this same message that the potential client could put on their desk and see the results of nurturing the seed.

Reinforcing the message

Our follow-up meetings from this point forward reinforce the message.

Now, admittedly, we did not have any control over how well the plant was maintained, and if the plant were to wilt, one might argue the message could be lost or work against the effectiveness of our sales approach. That was not the case for us because the whole idea of any program designed to flourish is the process of nurturing, measuring and corrective actions, all of which were part of our marketing philosophy, so regardless of the plant’s health, we had the basis of an ongoing discussion around the concept of flourishing.

Summary

Because we strongly believe in the need to measure the effectiveness of our marketing programs and report on the outcomes, we know how much our clients flourish.

30-Second Elevator Pitch Part 3 is the final post in this series. We hope the concepts provided show the importance of the 30-second elevator pitch and how weaving a simple message through the sales process can increase your sales conversion rate.

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Lead Follow Up

Your 30 Second Elevator Pitch Lead Follow Up is just as important as the Elevator Sales Pitch itself.

Based on the enormous response we had to the post, and the comments posted on LinkedIn, and other Social Media, an overwhelming majority of readers believed the idea was simple and a highly effective way of communicating the essence of what business they are in.

So perhaps you exchanged business cards or better still made an appointment to present your product/service, but it is more likely you both walked away with business cards.

What do you think is going to happen next?

The person could;

• Look up your profile on LinkedIn to see if the message is consistent with your pitch
• Look up your other Social Media to research you and/or your company
• Go to your website and review your content
• Compare you to their current provider
• Refer your details to someone internal who may do all of the above
• Do nothing

Importantly Here is the Big Question

What will they find out about you and your company?

Will it be consistent with your Elevator Pitch?

Is your website offering consistent with your Elevator Pitch?

Does your website offer a compelling reason to act?

Is your Social Media consistent with your Elevator Pitch?

Are there any negative Social Media comments?

Hopefully, your 30 30-second elevator Pitch created enough interest for them to make contact with you and to find out more about the product/service you offer.

But what if they walked back into their office and straight into a meeting, had to take a couple of phone calls or had a deadline that just needed their attention and your 30 30-second elevator Pitch simply faded from memory?

Now you could leave it with them and hope something comes from the 30 Second Elevator Pitch or you could…..

Read more in our next post.

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Overcoming the biggest fear of networking: Your 30 Second Elevator Pitch

As small business owners, we all know we need to network. But for many, being invited to attend a networking event strikes a fear so pervasive they will do anything not to be available.

As small business owners, we all know we need to network. But for many, being invited to attend a networking event strikes a fear so pervasive they will do anything not to be available.

Why?

Because of four little words…

So Bill, what do you do?

It’s amazing how four little words can create such paralysing fear. For many summing up what your business does without sounding like you are reciting the front page of your website or applying for a bank loan, is a real challenge.

Some business owners feel they offer so many possibilities; that it’s hard to know where to start or end. And, as for the response sounding natural or conversational, that’s almost impossible.

Many resort to the simple, but not very useful, “We’re accountants” or “We’re IT specialists” as if that should give the requester everything they need to know.

So what is the solution?

I recently attended a networking event where the guest speaker shared his strategy for approaching the response to “THAT” question, and it is so simple I thought it was worth sharing.

You begin with “Well you know how…<insert a problem your typical client has>and <the
benefit they get from you>

For example, “You know how many small business owners can never find time to do their BAS and worry about getting fined, well we take the pain out of GST and ensure they never have to worry about it being correct or submitted on time.”

Or< “You know how many small business owners don’t have a receptionist and divert their phone to voice mail when they are in a meeting, well we handle all their calls and make sure they never miss an important business opportunity again.”

Simple, isn’t it?

In a few short words, you have told the person who your ideal client is and how you can benefit their business. And by phrasing it as “You know, how….” It doesn’t sound rehearsed, and you can tailor your response to the type of issue they may be experiencing.

So, give it a go and let us know how your 30-Second Elevator Pitch worked for you.

Conversely, if you think it can be improved Drop us an email and let us know how.

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