We often refer to the brain as having two hemispheres, the left, and largely responsible for logic and the right, predominately responsible for creativity. This description fits what we know to be the cortex or new brain, however there is a third dimension, the hypo-thalamus or pre-historic brain which is in fact the brain stem and is solely responsible for instincts.
Bruno Catellani of the Institute of Communication, Management and Sales in Switzerland refers to the pre-historic brain as the ‘Guard’ or ‘Gatekeeper’. The ‘Gatekeeper’s’ sole function is to decide whether you are a friend or a foe, it is incapable of thought or rationalisation and reacts purely on instinct by how it perceives your approach.
If your initial approach stresses the ‘Gatekeeper’, it will switch on the fight/flight response and part of this process includes shutting down all other message receptors which means any opportunity you had to communicate has just been totally closed off.
It’s absolutely true that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Building the language of trust is the first step to successful customer service, which translates into building sales.
So, if the ‘Gatekeeper’ doesn’t think, does the initial ‘Language of Trust’ have to be verbal? No, the first impression you deliver is based on instinct alone. The signals that you need to give out in the first 10 to 20 seconds are instinctive, eg. your body language translated by your movements, gestures, facial expression and eye contact are open and relaxed. Your voice modulation and tone are calm, the speed of your speech is controlled and gentle and finally, you must not invade the customer’s space.
Other factors, which will influence the ‘Gatekeepers’ decision whether you are friend or foe, are, your appearance, clothes, smell, enthusiasm and posture. Once you’re past this initial first impression you can get on with developing a relationship with your prospect.
Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA broke communication down into three V’s as follows:
• Verbal; The message itself eg the words you use
• Vocal; The sound of your voice, intonation, projection, pitch and speed of your voice
• Visual; The posture and gestures, facial expression and eye movement that people see
The Thomas Gordon Institute added another dimension to this research and came up with:
• Words; Verbal
• Voice; Vocal
• Face; Visual
• Body; Visual
Both Institutions measured the effectiveness of each component of communication and it’s contribution to believability, here are the results of their respective research:
UCLA Thomas Gordon
Verbal 7% Words 7%
Vocal 38% Voice 23%
Visual 55% Face 35%
Body 35%
100% 100%
So, the first step in delivering Great Customer Service to Create Great Sales is:
• Approach and greet your suspect/prospect with open, friendly body language coupled with soothing, gentle voice modulation.
Our total focus in this step is to get past the ‘Gatekeeper’ so that we develop and build rapport and open the prospect’s message receptors. The words themselves are not that important, a simple “Hi, how are you today” is a good ice breaker.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The True Measure of Marketing Success!
It’s called testing and measuring. Most people hate it. That’s because it Means ‘there is a chance, however remote, that every marketing strategy you try will not work the first time’. In other words, it’s possible you’ll spend money without seeing any returns.
But consider this – you’ve probably been testing and measuring all your business life. Remember the newspaper advertising you tried that ‘didn’t work’, and the radio spots that ‘did OK’.
That’s all testing is… Testing what works and what doesn’t…
The next step is to do it properly, here’s the five steps to successfully working out what ‘works’ and what doesn’t…
1. Start asking people where they heard about you.
Start right NOW, immediately. If there’s one thing I stress to business owners when consulting with them, it’s this – if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not, you can’t possibly make informed decisions and you’ll never know which ads to run. You may keep running an ad that never brings a sale, and accidentally kill a good one.
Customers usually come from so many sources, it’s impossible to judge how an ad is working on sales alone. You need to find out for sure. Create a tally sheet, including the ways someone could hear about you – newspaper ads, direct mail, fliers, phone directory, referrals, walk-by traffic etc
Every time someone buys, ask them this question – “By the way, can I just ask where you heard about my business’.
Make a mark on your tally sheet in the relevant column. Keep track, and ensure every member of your team does the same. At the end of 14 or 28 days, tally up and get the figures.
Now you can start making decisions…
2.Prune, modify and increase.
The first thing to do is see what’s not working. If you ad is getting a very low response (which means the profit margin from the sales is not at least paying for the ad), kill it straight away.
Now you only have one option – improve your ad to ensure you get a great response.
There’s a couple of things you can do to make the task simpler.
First, go back over your past ads and think about how well each one worked. Pull out the best couple and see if you can pick what gave them their edge. Next, read a couple of books, or at least flick through them. Last, look at what your competitors are doing. Do they have an ad which they can run every week? What can you learn from it?
Go through this process with each marketing piece that you are currently using… Kill, examine, modify… Kill, examine, modify…
Remember – the true test of a marketing strategy is whether it pays for itself. If you run an ad and it costs you $600 and makes you $1300 in profit, it’s a good ad.
Also run through each of the strategies you know are working in depth, examining why these are producing results and the others aren’t. See if you can pick the one important attractive point about each. This in itself will teach you a massive amount about your business.
Next, think of a way to use each strategy that is working on a larger scale. If it’s fliers, the answer is simple – drop twice as many fliers. That should bring twice the sales. If it’s an ad, run it in more papers, or increase its size. If it’s in a phone directory, book a bigger space next time.
But whatever you do, don’t meddle – just do the same thing on a larger scale.
3.Test and measure for another two weeks.
Measure the enquiries with the new revised strategies. Also compare this with how much you’re spending on marketing.
You’ll probably find you barely miss those dud strategies and the ‘larger scale’ working strategies are paying out nicely indeed. If it’s not, return to the original size.
4.Check your conversion.
Conversion is the number of enquiries that become sales… So many times when analysing a business, I discover that poor marketing is not the problem – it’s inadequate sales techniques. There are stacks of businesses that have ample leads, but no skill to make them sales.
Be honest with yourself – how many leads do you convert into sales? Is it possible to increase this ratio, even just a little?… In almost every case, it is.
You just have to give the customer a reason to buy from your business. Price is not the only reason a customer spends with your business. What if the salesperson at the more expensive shop actually took an interest in your needs? And what if they were that little bit friendlier? And what if they were willing to back their product with a guarantee? And what if they offered free delivery? All of these ‘what ifs’ add up, and can tip the sale your way.
5.Consolidate.
Leave it for a month or so, just working on converting the supply of leads you have. A better conversion technique, plus more leads from bigger scale successful marketing strategies should give your business a boost.
6.Branch out.
Remember all those marketing strategies you examined and modified? Now is the time to pull them out of the drawer, and give them a run.
Do one at a time, and track the result meticulously. Note down exactly how many leads it brings you, and how many of those turn into sales. Compare that with the marketing cost, and judge whether it has been a good strategy.
If so, add it to your list of ongoing strategies. If not, try it again – testing a different headline, medium, offer, look etc… If it doesn’t work again, give it another try…Very soon, you’ll develop a collection of marketing strategies that work, and weed out all the costly ones. Now that’s a business success formula!
But consider this – you’ve probably been testing and measuring all your business life. Remember the newspaper advertising you tried that ‘didn’t work’, and the radio spots that ‘did OK’.
That’s all testing is… Testing what works and what doesn’t…
The next step is to do it properly, here’s the five steps to successfully working out what ‘works’ and what doesn’t…
1. Start asking people where they heard about you.
Start right NOW, immediately. If there’s one thing I stress to business owners when consulting with them, it’s this – if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not, you can’t possibly make informed decisions and you’ll never know which ads to run. You may keep running an ad that never brings a sale, and accidentally kill a good one.
Customers usually come from so many sources, it’s impossible to judge how an ad is working on sales alone. You need to find out for sure. Create a tally sheet, including the ways someone could hear about you – newspaper ads, direct mail, fliers, phone directory, referrals, walk-by traffic etc
Every time someone buys, ask them this question – “By the way, can I just ask where you heard about my business’.
Make a mark on your tally sheet in the relevant column. Keep track, and ensure every member of your team does the same. At the end of 14 or 28 days, tally up and get the figures.
Now you can start making decisions…
2.Prune, modify and increase.
The first thing to do is see what’s not working. If you ad is getting a very low response (which means the profit margin from the sales is not at least paying for the ad), kill it straight away.
Now you only have one option – improve your ad to ensure you get a great response.
There’s a couple of things you can do to make the task simpler.
First, go back over your past ads and think about how well each one worked. Pull out the best couple and see if you can pick what gave them their edge. Next, read a couple of books, or at least flick through them. Last, look at what your competitors are doing. Do they have an ad which they can run every week? What can you learn from it?
Go through this process with each marketing piece that you are currently using… Kill, examine, modify… Kill, examine, modify…
Remember – the true test of a marketing strategy is whether it pays for itself. If you run an ad and it costs you $600 and makes you $1300 in profit, it’s a good ad.
Also run through each of the strategies you know are working in depth, examining why these are producing results and the others aren’t. See if you can pick the one important attractive point about each. This in itself will teach you a massive amount about your business.
Next, think of a way to use each strategy that is working on a larger scale. If it’s fliers, the answer is simple – drop twice as many fliers. That should bring twice the sales. If it’s an ad, run it in more papers, or increase its size. If it’s in a phone directory, book a bigger space next time.
But whatever you do, don’t meddle – just do the same thing on a larger scale.
3.Test and measure for another two weeks.
Measure the enquiries with the new revised strategies. Also compare this with how much you’re spending on marketing.
You’ll probably find you barely miss those dud strategies and the ‘larger scale’ working strategies are paying out nicely indeed. If it’s not, return to the original size.
4.Check your conversion.
Conversion is the number of enquiries that become sales… So many times when analysing a business, I discover that poor marketing is not the problem – it’s inadequate sales techniques. There are stacks of businesses that have ample leads, but no skill to make them sales.
Be honest with yourself – how many leads do you convert into sales? Is it possible to increase this ratio, even just a little?… In almost every case, it is.
You just have to give the customer a reason to buy from your business. Price is not the only reason a customer spends with your business. What if the salesperson at the more expensive shop actually took an interest in your needs? And what if they were that little bit friendlier? And what if they were willing to back their product with a guarantee? And what if they offered free delivery? All of these ‘what ifs’ add up, and can tip the sale your way.
5.Consolidate.
Leave it for a month or so, just working on converting the supply of leads you have. A better conversion technique, plus more leads from bigger scale successful marketing strategies should give your business a boost.
6.Branch out.
Remember all those marketing strategies you examined and modified? Now is the time to pull them out of the drawer, and give them a run.
Do one at a time, and track the result meticulously. Note down exactly how many leads it brings you, and how many of those turn into sales. Compare that with the marketing cost, and judge whether it has been a good strategy.
If so, add it to your list of ongoing strategies. If not, try it again – testing a different headline, medium, offer, look etc… If it doesn’t work again, give it another try…Very soon, you’ll develop a collection of marketing strategies that work, and weed out all the costly ones. Now that’s a business success formula!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
How long have you got?
Wow... I just got off the phone with a friend that I hadn't spoken to for about 6 months. When I asked how he was, he replied with "great now that I am back on my feet"... I asked what had happened?
What he told me next knocked me for a six. At the age of 38, he was diagnosed with high grade prostate cancer, 1 month before his latest addition to the family was due to be born!
Amazingly, he has been given the 'all clear' now and is getting on with life. The Dr told him if it wasnt picked up and surgically removed, he wouldn't have made it to fourty!
So why am I sharing this with you? I think it's a nice reminder that we shouldn't take any day for granted. What have you done today to get yourself closer to your goal? It certainly made me stop and think!
What he told me next knocked me for a six. At the age of 38, he was diagnosed with high grade prostate cancer, 1 month before his latest addition to the family was due to be born!
Amazingly, he has been given the 'all clear' now and is getting on with life. The Dr told him if it wasnt picked up and surgically removed, he wouldn't have made it to fourty!
So why am I sharing this with you? I think it's a nice reminder that we shouldn't take any day for granted. What have you done today to get yourself closer to your goal? It certainly made me stop and think!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Market Share or Wallet Share?
Did you know it's 6 times easier and cheaper to get an existing customer to buy from you again than it is to get a new customer.
Let's face the facts! Generating new business is risky, and can be expensive if your marketing isn't effective and statistics say 80% of marketing fails!
And why would you work on generating new business when you're not maximising your return from your current clients, in other words, maximising your share of their wallet!
Here's a couple of tips to get you started towards making sure you are getting a good wallet share.
1. Does every one of your customers know 100% of everything you offer? If not, then get on the phone, send them an email and send them some direct mail. Let them know about everything you do, chances are they're buying something you offer from someone else!
2. Think about what else your customers need, for example, if I were a removalist then I could offer a packing service, a storage service, a carpet cleaning service and the list goes on. I don't even need to provide the services, I could align myself with a business that does and get a commission!
3. Set up a regular form of communication, this could be a newsletter, a direct mail piece or as simple as a monthly call, this will ensure that when your customer has a need you're likely to be the first they think of!
So there you go... focus on maximising your return from your current customer base, it's a guaranteed way to grow your wallet share and your profits!
check out my website for more info on how to grow your business!
Let's face the facts! Generating new business is risky, and can be expensive if your marketing isn't effective and statistics say 80% of marketing fails!
And why would you work on generating new business when you're not maximising your return from your current clients, in other words, maximising your share of their wallet!
Here's a couple of tips to get you started towards making sure you are getting a good wallet share.
1. Does every one of your customers know 100% of everything you offer? If not, then get on the phone, send them an email and send them some direct mail. Let them know about everything you do, chances are they're buying something you offer from someone else!
2. Think about what else your customers need, for example, if I were a removalist then I could offer a packing service, a storage service, a carpet cleaning service and the list goes on. I don't even need to provide the services, I could align myself with a business that does and get a commission!
3. Set up a regular form of communication, this could be a newsletter, a direct mail piece or as simple as a monthly call, this will ensure that when your customer has a need you're likely to be the first they think of!
So there you go... focus on maximising your return from your current customer base, it's a guaranteed way to grow your wallet share and your profits!
check out my website for more info on how to grow your business!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Can you really manage time?
If you can stop the clock or add an extra hour to the day then give me a call... you have a very special talent!
The reality is that time management is all about self management. Time is a LIMITED resource and once a minute, hour or day is gone you can never get it back! So you need to make sure you make the most of every second.
If every one of us has the same amount of hours in a week, how is it possible that people like Donald Trump, Bill gates and Richard Branson have become so wealthy?
It's what they do with their time that matters the most. Stay focused on the activities that are going to get you closer to your goal. identify when and how you get distracted and work on reducing these moments!
A great way to get focused is to write a daily to do list every afternoon for the next day and prioritise your tasks to make sure you're completing the most important things each day!
The reality is that time management is all about self management. Time is a LIMITED resource and once a minute, hour or day is gone you can never get it back! So you need to make sure you make the most of every second.
If every one of us has the same amount of hours in a week, how is it possible that people like Donald Trump, Bill gates and Richard Branson have become so wealthy?
It's what they do with their time that matters the most. Stay focused on the activities that are going to get you closer to your goal. identify when and how you get distracted and work on reducing these moments!
A great way to get focused is to write a daily to do list every afternoon for the next day and prioritise your tasks to make sure you're completing the most important things each day!
A piece of pie
As this so called economic crisis continues I am amazed at how quickly people are willing to blame it for them not achieving the results they were after in their business. I am going to show you a totally different way to think about things, so you can get your head around how to grow your business in any economic situation.
Firstly, what percentage of your market place do you have... in other words... what piece of the pie do you have? If it is less than 100% then you have room for improvement. I would guess that your market share is less than 5%, it could be even lower than 1%...
Now ask yourself, "If I doubled my current market share would I have a good business?", I bet you answered YES!
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and build your business. Now is the time to take ACTION. Every other one of your competitors is sitting and waiting for the economic situation to get better so use this time an an ooportunity!
Firstly, what percentage of your market place do you have... in other words... what piece of the pie do you have? If it is less than 100% then you have room for improvement. I would guess that your market share is less than 5%, it could be even lower than 1%...
Now ask yourself, "If I doubled my current market share would I have a good business?", I bet you answered YES!
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and build your business. Now is the time to take ACTION. Every other one of your competitors is sitting and waiting for the economic situation to get better so use this time an an ooportunity!
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