New to Marketing/Sales, can some experts give some idea about how to
market/sell a product?.

If I want to market/sell some product, How can I do that?. What is the
positive way of talking to Distributors/retail shops?.

I called some local retail shops to promote my product, they were
telling me, brand is very important, but whatever I want to poromote is
from new brand, how can I promote this product?. I should stop this and
look for some other job?. I am verymuch interest in Business,
especially I want to promote some products into market through some of
the Distributors/retail shops?. Can some experts give some ideas about
Marketing/sales?.

Thanks in advance.

In article <112lkjhcmkonb31@news.supernews.com>,
santa19992000@yahoo.com wrote:

> New to Marketing/Sales, can some experts give some idea about how to
> market/sell a product?.

I cannot give you a marketing education in short USENET posting.
Anything I do tell you in this brief format would probably do
more harm than good. You are going to have to do some work on
your own. No risk, no reward. How about signing up for a few
marketing classes at your local tech college or university?
Or pick up some books on the subject and do some reading. Once
you get up to speed and try some things, then you are ready
to start asking focused questions and picking the brains of
people who frequent his hangout.

-john-

--
================================================== ====================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john@johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ====================

It really depends on your product. What is your target market? There
are many ways to market your product without spending a lot of money,
but you need to make sure you have an understanding of the market,
competition and your overall marketing objectives.

A great way to start is to generate some press releases and make sure
you have a solid marketing plan in writing that will allow you to stay
focused. There are a bunch of great PR websites out there that allow
you to post your press releases free of charge. This would be a good
start. Let me know what your product is and perhaps I could provide
some additional advice.

Chad
http://www.bplans.com

<santa19992000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:112lkjhcmkonb31@news.supernews.com...
>
> New to Marketing/Sales, can some experts give some idea about how to
> market/sell a product?.
>
> If I want to market/sell some product, How can I do that?. What is the
> positive way of talking to Distributors/retail shops?.
>
> I called some local retail shops to promote my product, they were
> telling me, brand is very important, but whatever I want to poromote is
> from new brand, how can I promote this product?. I should stop this and
> look for some other job?. I am verymuch interest in Business,
> especially I want to promote some products into market through some of
> the Distributors/retail shops?. Can some experts give some ideas about
> Marketing/sales?.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
Sales and Marketing Tools That Really Work




By
Wayne Lundberg CMfgE
Sales and Marketing Tools That Really Work
(Guarantied )
1997, Wayne Lundberg

If sales and marketing were really difficult humanity would still be in the
hunting/gathering tribal state of being. Sales and marketing is no more
difficult than the most elementary of all social activities - getting a
date.
To some, this simple act of getting a date, may be frightening, challenging,
scary and may create nightmares. But by and large most of us figure it out
and eventually join the crowd, make babies and live in relative harmony.
If you can sell yourself to a mate, you can succeed in sales and marketing.
The principles are the same.
A major problem is the cultural belief that sales and marketing is
difficult, requires a lot of math, is expensive, requires spe******ts who
charge a ton of money, and can only be performed by those anointed with an
MBA. The major problem in sales and marketing is having your own mental
roadblocks - usually.
Lets get to the point.
The secret to a successful sales and marketing strategy is in your ability
to visualize the emotional reaction of the person who will be using your
product, idea or whatever it is you will be selling.
Since this statement is so obvious, so simple, so uncomplicated, most will
ignore it and read on searching for the real meat of my claim that this is
the most practical and down to earth sales and marketing manual ever
written.
Stop now!
Everything will depend on how well you visualize the emotional reaction to
the person on the receiving end of your efforts.
Do it now and look for the answers to the following questions as you imagine
that end user of your offering. What age, how are they dressed, where do
they live, what is their family income, what is their educational
background, what do they do to pass the time, are they readers, are they
couch potatoes, are they healthy, do they have imagination, are they leaders
or followers, what made them buy your offering, what will they do with it,
how will they explain the expense to their most significant other, how long
with they be interested in it, will they share their joy with others, will
others listen to them, can you come up with something later to keep them
interested in your offerings, will that person be a customer?
Now, where in all of these questions is there a single word about the
quality, price, specifications, details of your offering? Where is there a
mention of cost of production, cost of distribution, cost of advertising,
profits and loss?
Yet it is in these last items that the overwhelming majority of books on
sales and marketing focus.
Lets recapture your visualization and tackle a few of these questions.
First of all, once you have profiled your end user you have defined your
target market. You have identified the kind of people most likely to buy
from you.
You will discover that successful sales and marketing is nothing more than
breaking down every element of this visualization into projects and into
tasks; each a step toward success. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a
time.
Next is the absolute must in all sales and marketing efforts. Convert this
visualization exercise into a daily ritual in which you spend no less than
20 minutes with eyes closed, in a quiet place, to experience the pure
un*****erated joy of sharing the good feelings of your customers enjoy your
offering. See them in great quantities, in all parts of the world, of all
races and cultures, of all political beliefs. Explore the many ways these
customers enjoy the results of your work, your business. Believe it to be
true. See it as reality. Let your inner self believe it is true. Block out
any negative thought by replacing it with enthusiastic and positive images
of joy.
Immediately after your visualization period, take a piece of paper, lay it
horizontally, draw an ellipse in the middle of the page and write a single
word for the strongest intuitive message or feeling you have at that moment.
As ideas spring into your mind draw lines from the ellipse to the edge of
the paper and write a word or two to name the picture in your imagination
stemming from the intuitive message.
Stop and do an experiment in visualization now. Take a few deep breaths and
exhale slowly, tell yourself you will be visualizing people using your
product, service, idea with joy; happy to have it. Begin the visualization
and linger as an invisible observer reading their mind, sensing their
feelings. Let your imagination run wild. Even if you do it for a few minutes
you will be rewarded with some new insight, some new idea that will help you
make this vision come true .
This is the secret of the whole process. To get new insights that will lead
to projects and actions to make the visualization a reality.
Nobody knows your offering as well as you. You cant delegate sales and
marketing strategies to outside consultants. This is something only you, the
inventor, the entrepreneur, the commissioned sales rep can do. The strategy
must come from your passion, your sincere belief that your visualization is
reality and all you have to do is make it happen.
Michaelangelo is said to have told his patron that his David was in the
block of marble and all he had to do was remove the excess marble to reveal
the completed statue.
The same with sales and marketing. You must believe it is already in place
in order for you to make it real.
We are being conditioned daily to watch television, to listen to radio, to
read, to be passive. To receive information but do nothing after receiving
it. What are we expected to do as we watch a terrorist hold hostages? Our
body and mind are conditioned to accept and not to do. It is imperative that
we must break this yoke, this tougher-than-steel prison and escape into a
world where we are in charge. You start by imagining it. Flip Wilson said it
years ago: What you see, is what you get Change in the way we think is an
imperative.
Dont think of the cost of advertising, sales or marketing at this point. If
you think of limitations you will limit your imagination and block your
success from the get-go. Imagine you have a magic wand in your hand and that
with the tapping three times on the kitchen table you will receive
everything you have visualized. Then visualize as though the magic wand did
its thing.
Nobody really understands what happens but like electricity and magnetism
(which nobody understands at all) we can see the results. They are as
predictable as are the mathematics of electricity and magnetism. How clearly
you see it, how strong your ability to self-hypnotize yourself of its
reality, is in direct proportion to the end results. There is no force on
earth greater than the power of the inventor. The inventor who simply will
not take no for an answer. Which is the common characteristic of successful
people.
You have now set into motion the motor, and the fuel to make your sales and
marketing come true. Now to the actual steps to make your dream come true.
By invoking the infinite intelligence you have opened your imagination to
ideas that go beyond the normal. You are no longer being blocked by prior
models of what is standard and routine. You will be getting flashes of
insight from outside the box of normality. Only through innovation can you
hope to achieve success. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart says it most
eloquently. Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional
wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, theres a good chance you can
find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared
for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you youre headed the wrong
way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a
town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very
long.
The process for converting a vision into reality is called Project
Management.
Select a date from sometime in the future, write it down, and write the
sales volume you will be realizing on that date. Dont try to be realistic
by thinking of costs, money, staffing. Be bold and let the numbers reflect
what you really want. If you have not done this before, do it now.
Take a piece of paper and draw an XY graph, for example:



















Divide the bottom X axis into yearly or monthly segments by writing the
dates, divide the Y axis into segments and write the figures.
This is now your roadmap upon which every activity by you and your
organization must live by. Every action and every decision must be bounced
against this map with the following question: Will what I am about to do
take me even one step closer to my goal? If the answer is yes, then do it.
If the answer is other than yes, then redefine your proposed action. Here is
where you apply the rules of doing what is important or doing what is urgent
(usually the urgent is something of benefit to someone else or because
something is broken and must be fixed).
Your next step is to build a path to your success. The elements to a project
are time, objective, resources and activities. You have written the time and
objectives, now you must develop the resources and activities. Some
resources such as a loan from the bank will be the result of carefully
planned and executed activities. As you will see, when a firm goal is in
mind, you will be able to get all the resources needed to make it a reality.
With your imagination enjoying the trips to that day when as many people in
the world as you want are using your product/service/idea, start a list of
things that need to happen for it to become reality. Dont worry about costs
nor even think about the reality of such tasks. Just make a list of things
that need to happen for you to succeed. Believe in the simple truth that
deep within you and from the infinite intelligence you will clearly define
each item along with the cost in time or money to reach your objective. This
is the most important lesson in this paper; that through this questioning
and these activities, you will discover the exact things you need to do to
make your goal a reality.
Please notice that there has been no discussion on personal wealth, getting
rich or the like. It is a universal law that wealth will come from the
results of your passionate quest to bring joy and happiness to your
customers through your offering. Yes, you will be counting money and using
money but primarily as a means of getting your idea to market and to satisfy
as many end users as you have visualized. If you do it right, you will end
up with a percentage of the sales dollars you generate. This applies to a
one person business as well as to Bill Gates and Microsoft and everyone in
between.
You must have a profitable company if you intend to make your dream a
reality.
The biggest mistake made by most businesspeople is in focusing on money
rather than the purpose of the business which is to grow customers.
Yes, grow customers should be the natural objective of your efforts.
Lets get into the money aspects.
What would be the loss to your enterprise for the loss of one single
customer on that day in the future when you have achieved your first major
goal?
Do the math. If you are a grocery store you know the average family buys
something like $100 a week. Your margins (not profit) are something like $15
on that $100. Thus, a typical customer buys $5,200 a year leaving you with
$780 in cash to cover rent, insurance, wages and the like. Over the life of
a good customer, say 15 years, the cash lost to you for one customer is $780
times 15 years = $11, 700 Dollars. Apply the same basic thinking to your own
business and write down a figure you can believe in. The cost of loss to
your company for losing one customer that day in the future when business is
booming.
Now shift your thinking and look at it from another point of view. What is
the wealth creating capability to your organization for each customer you
gain? The answer should be exactly that of the cost of loss.
It is very important for you to go through this mental gyration of cost of
loss and revenue potential from each customer. This will be the key element
in driving your projects to completion. It will be the cornerstone upon
which you will finance your operation. You must get money to make money. Or,
you must convert your only other asset your time into some form of
wealth, or cash to finance your business and/or expansion. For example
wealth -- the grocer who leaves the store to knock on doors and recruit
customers. Each new customer is $11,700 in the future bank. A clear case
of converting time into money. Build on this logic for your own business.
Figure out exactly how many customers you need to grow in order to achieve
that objective you have set for yourself. If you dont do this you will
simply be going round and round in circles never knowing where you are going
nor when you get there.
Sales and marketing is a numbers game as well as a psychic one. As you make
calls or respond to ads and referrals you will begin to discover how many
contacts you must make before developing a customer. As a salesman for
cemetery lots years ago I knew I had to knock on 12 doors to get one
appointment and from three appointments I made one sale. If I wanted my
weekly goal I had to sell three families a week. How many doors did I have
to knock on?
The important thing here is to recognize that once you have discovered the
ratio, your mind-set can easily accept the 97 Not interested for the 3
Thank you so much! My commission in those days was $30 (factory workers
were making $0.90/hr). So in effect I made a Dollar for every door I knocked
on - which only took a few minutes.
You get money from converting your time to cash through commission sales or
swapping your expertise for something of value. Or you get it from Aunt
Martha as a gift or purchase of stock, or you go to the bank for a loan or
you sell stock on the open market. Most businesses are started today using
savings, funds from friends and family and credit cards. Expanding a
business will require a line of credit from a bank or an infusion of capital
from investors or factoring purchase orders into working capital among other
options.
Maybe were jumping ahead just a tad. Lets get back to the idea of project
management for a moment.
You must take each item on the list and break it down into the following
segments: Time when it must start - usually depending on some other task
which must take place first. Resources in the form of people and money
required to pull it off. And the expected measurable result once completed.
You then draw a line to represent the time for each on a Gantt chart such
as:

Project Name

Task Resp Jan Feb Mar April May June July Aug Sept Oct
Design factory all
Buy Land

Contractor

Build

Buy Machines
Install

Hire

Train

Start production


These two graphics are vital to your success. They are the tools which best
communicate your goals to yourself and to the people who will be joining
your effort. Everybody must fully understand where you are going and what it
takes to get there. When everybody knows where you are going, it is easy for
them to help. These two charts keep you on course, keep you focused, makes
your efforts measurable, gives you immediate feedback to allow for course
corrections before it is too late. These tools, the visualization, making of
lists, converting lists into action items, knowing where you are going, are
the building blocks to your success. You see how really easy this whole
thing of success in sales and marketing can be?
The thing is, that when you have a plan, you dont waste energy in useless
stuff. The difference between success and failure is only a 10% matter. Its
not what most people believe - some huge luck factor or genius factor or
wealth factor that differentiates success from failure. Its a matter of 10%
better focus.
Lets see what happens once you have done the above.
Youre at a party sitting next to Mr. Bloe. Youre chatting away and Mr.
Bloe suddenly says: Youre such an enthusiastic person, why are you so
happy? To which you reply with a gleam in your eye with the fabulous
service you are providing an endless number of customers around the world.
Mr. Bloe will want to be part of the action either as a customer or advisor
or employee or friend. Your energy has just recruited a customer. You have
just put $11,700 Dollars into your bank. Thats the value of a customer,
remember?
When you call on a supplier the gleam will be in your eye and the
salesperson will want to do everything in their power to give you the
absolute best deal. The gleam will be in your eye when you interview your
first employee and that employee will be totally committed to your vision if
you give them a chance to play the game with you if you make them part of a
winning team. Your prospects will see and feel that gleam in your eye and
soul and will want to be part of it as well.
Yes, it may take time. But your schedule is on the wall for you to see every
day and it will encourage you to take that extra hour to visit an extra
prospect or write that extra letter or make that extra phone-call. This is
where the formula for success in sales and marketing really hits gold. The
power of your imagination to see your product, service or offering as a
value added something to so many people that you are compelled to do the
impossible for them to enjoy those fruits.
Lets move ahead.
There are several cultural lies which you must recognize and once recognized
do everything in your power to not be influenced by them any more.
The first is that work is a pain. Most people have been duped by the labor
union movement and actually believe that hard work is for the dullards of
the world - to be avoided. Yet we all know that real happiness comes from
achieving something worthwhile. If you believe that work is a miserable
state of affairs you will communicate this to your first employee who will
gladly make your concept a reality. But if you know that work is one of the
best ways to happiness then you will share this concept and hire only those
who agree with you. Suddenly you will be working with people who enjoy work.
The second great cultural lie is that great ideas and major improvements
come from above, from the established companies, from authority. Nothing can
be further from the truth. Change invariably comes from the outside, from
the entrepreneurs who are quick to see an opportunity and who are willing to
risk it all to see it come true. No vacuum tube manufacturer ever shifted to
transistors, no buggy whip maker shifted to making tires, the Swiss
watchmakers lost 85% of their market overnight when the world went to quartz
even after their own people had invented quartz timepieces. The list is
long - Bell was laughed out of Western Union offices - they didnt want a
toy! - Kodak and IBM fussed over dust left by Carlsons Xerox device on
their desks after his demonstration - telephone switching was developed by
an undertaker because the town operator was the competitors wife - nylon
losing out to polyester - the PC revolution. Just a few reminders.
The third major cultural lie is that you motivate people and that you can
correct their errors through a good chewing out. False! A chewing out is a
form of reward to nearly a third of the population. Since recognition is at
the top of the human needs list. Think of the sandwich brother; a favorite
baby for a while, replaced by the new baby who gets all the attention later.
What do they do? They break things to get a spanking since thats the only
way they can get attention.
As to motivation, you dont motivate anybody. People come to work motivated.
Then slowly through this rule or that they become demotivated. The best you
can do is to let their energy blossom by listening to them and making them
part of your team. The truly motivated people are the people who are allowed
to do things, who are allowed to participate, who are listened to and who
are permitted to contribute!
Chew these cultural lies until you fully appreciate their true destructive
power in our society. Then use that knowledge to build a truly exceptional
team because you cant grow without getting people involved either as
helpers or buyers. Breaking these cultural lies will make you a leader.
OK, lets go back to the first page of this paper. Take another look at your
horizontal page with the ellipse and the lines with the names of mental
pictures. Visualize again the kind of person who will be enjoying the fruits
of your labor. Make some lists to define the various characteristics. This
will become your prospecting guide and advertising guide. Your sales and
marketing efforts will be directed to this kind of person. Where will you
find them? How will you reach them with your message?
Decide now and forever never to advertise in any medium without the ability
to measure results and without the ability to test one version of your sales
message against another. Direct marketing is the fastest growing method for
getting things into the hands of the customer and one of the reasons is that
it is completely measurable and very cost effective.
The trend in the world today is to bypass middlemen and go directly to the
end user. You see it every day as Gevalia Coffee, Gourmet Wines, PCs, music,
books, teas, clothing, electronics and a zillion other things are delivered
to your home by the mailman, UPS guy or other.
Which will be your method of delivery? How will you put your stuff in your
customers hand. Here again, your power of visualization must determine
exactly how it will be done. As you put yourself in the customers shoes you
will see, feel and hear how they got it.
Prove it to yourself right now. Make a list of the things youve bought over
the last few months. Make an analysis as to value added as you see it, and
money spent in actuality. Your own experience and your imagination will
determine how your idea will be sold and marketed. Again, no consultant is
required.
Direct marketing is not the same as direct mail. The image we have in mind
when thinking of direct mail is the tons of junk mail and our response to
it. Direct marketing on the other hand is a method in which the buyer place
their order by phone, fax , mail or email and receive the product via mail,
package delivery or the like. The thing that gives you the information about
the product could be magazine, radio, television, magazine, direct mail,
email, home-page, blimp in the sky, sky-writing airplane, etc. Direct
marketing should create an image in your mind of factory direct to consumer
via the quickest way.
In international trade we are seeing a major movement toward one-on-one
marketing. Kino from Nigeria saw a reference to pottery in a newsgroup. He
followed the string and ended up in Creative Industries Potters Wheel home
page. He jotted a short query in the response section of the page. Next day
he got a reply, one he liked. He asked for price and delivery information.
Later he paid with a credit card and back in El Cajon, California, a
shipping clerk loaded a disassembled potters wheel onto a FedEx truck. Gone
are the days of complex paperwork, middlemen and banks getting in the way of
simple transactions between maker and buyer.
If you pick up on this trend in marketing you will succeed.
Sometimes you may need a direct salesperson to make that informational call
on the prospective buyer. Your magic may have to be demonstrated as vacuum
cleaners were once demonstrated before they became commodities. But even
commodities are being bought and sold via direct marketing.
Now that you know the method for letting your prospects know of you, and how
you intend to fulfill their orders you may want to think of the message
itself.
You see how everything works backwards in this business?
First you see the end result, clearly, in your imagination. Then you make it
come true.
So what is that message that will encourage your future customer to buy from
you?
Well back to your visualization and sensing the emotional pleasure your
customer is getting from using your (fill in the blank________________). The
message in your sales presentation, ad or press release will tell the reader
they will have this feeling once they have bought your (fill in the blank
________).
It all boils down to this fundamental piece of information. Not price, not
quality, not competition but how your customer will feel once they have it
and how easy for them to get it.
You see it in car advertising. Its ***, glamour, being better than the
neighbor, sense of beauty, power you name it. Could be good health,
happiness, joy, escape. Could be faith, wealth, luck or anything in between
When you sell life insurance youre selling an idea that the wife will have
something when youre gone. Its a form of expressing love. Its not the
insurance, its the promise of love. When I sold cemetery lots while working
my way through college I did not sell holes in the ground, worms and back to
dust ideas. I showed, through words that created an image in my prospects
mind, the wife not having to go out in a blizzard to select a burying spot
for her beloved husband. The husband would do anything to prevent such a
thing. It was their love that was the force behind the purchase of a
cemetery lot years and years before either would need them. Today, some
thirty years later, some of my customers are beginning to use that which
they bought and paid for years ago at bargain basement prices compared to
todays inflated prices. So you see, we all win when the idea is sound and
there is something of value for all.
Customers are your best source for future business by either buying more,
buying more frequently or referring you to others who will benefit as they
did. Make this another cornerstone of your sales/marketing strategy.
Customers love to brag when they have discovered a business that delivers
Wow! into their lives. You must put into motion some form of method to
capture this information. Some form of frequent flyer miles or the like. A
gift for every referral. Another year warranty on your PC for each referral
that buys something, anything, from you.
The only real asset of any company is the client base. Protect your database
under lock and key. Do not leave it unattended. Ever. Each customer is as
we discussed before thousands of Dollars in your asset column even though
not yet cash. Customers are your only reason for being. When you assign a
value to the gain or loss of a customer you have the accounting you need.
All other accounting is for tax purposes and both are seldom the same. One
dollar in fines is a loss. One dollar in getting a new customer is an
investment. Yet on the standard accounting sheet it is shown as advertising
expense. You must separate the two accounting systems by inventing one of
your own which properly expresses the value of a customer over the value of
assets, cash in the bank, commissions and the like. Then you run your
business on the other-than-tax system.
What you are reading may not sound much like other things you have studied
in sales and marketing. And that is good. You should take the time to think
both approaches through and using your own gray matter come to conclusions.
The key element is that the secret to your sales and marketing plan is
within you and your life experience. My effort has been in helping you reach
into your inner self and into the infinite intelligence to find the formula
best suited for your particular and unique problem. Few books or articles do
this. Thus, I hope to be one voice in many that will be heard, understood,
and above all be of value added.

Some Sources and Some Ideas

Now that you have profiled your target market you should do the next logical
thing which surprisingly, few people do, even though its free write a
press release and send it to the magazines, periodicals, radio and TV
stations that beam their messages to that kind of audience. In visiting with
dozens of clients each year I have yet to find more than one percent who
actually take advantage of this tried and true method. Ad salespeople in the
media are always looking for new prospects. They know a free press release
will generate some interest for your product. This makes it easy for them to
knock on your door to sell you space or airtime in their media. Its a
win-win kind of thing that few people know about or are afraid to use. A
good color photo of your offering and your emotion packed message is all it
takes.
Mailing lists are available for virtually every kind of profile you come up
with. Search the Internet for keywords such as mailing lists, profile
lists and the like. Check your library magazine rack and reference desks.
Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages and call a few
direct mail companies who will gladly quote you list prices plus printing
and mailing to 500 1000 5000 or however many pieces you want to get
directly into suspects hands.
Everyone in your organization should make it an absolute and inviolable rule
to take the name and all particulars of everyone they meet socially, in
business, on the golf course, plane, train or bus. A person to person
contact followed by a personalized note with a brochure of your offering
could easily generate a good portion of your business. Keep track of these
names in a computerized database such as Q&A, Alpha Four, Access or the like
.... You will be using it again and again. Remember, this database is the true
wealth of your company.
Any advertising on the Internet or through any media should be interactive.
This means it must be easy for your target audience to talk back and for you
to listen, to establish a dialogue as close as possible to an actual face to
face meeting. Even if you automate responses on the Internet they must
appear to come directly from the CEO and even when people call in to the CEO
s phone number have whoever answers say Office of the CEO.
Avoid the use of automated phones! You may think you are saving money by
having people handle paperwork and administrative duties rather than answer
the phone but you are dead wrong. Nothing irritates a prospective customer
more than to be answered by an electronic voice. Bounce this idea against
the cost of loss of a customer and cost to get a customer and see if Im not
right. Make sure your phones are answerable any time of day or night. Have
each member of your team take a day or two a week and forward the calls to
that person. Or find another solution but make it responsive! Bernie Weiss
our leader at the International Trade Center suggests that even if the
answering machine (after hours!) tells the caller that someone will call
them right back, is better than not responding. This is especially true if
you are marketing beyond your state, into the US and beyond, into the world.
Think of the tremendous advantage you will have over your competition who
will be sticking to their automated systems because by gosh! we were
supposed to save money! The difference between success and ho-hum is only a
few percentage points in efficiency, friendliness, courtesy and customer
service. While you sleep Mitsui in Tokyo is wanting to buy from you! Make it
easy for her.
Consider all avenues in sales and marketing, experiment with as many as you
can, but keep accurate records. Each sales or advertising campaign must be
measurable and you must measure each experiment. It is the only way you will
ever be able to get better and better at sales and marketing. In the
yesteryears advertisers said you must repeat and repeat the message (of
course to stimulate long contracts). The reality is that you test and test
and test again and continue improving and testing.
The Internet is opening a whole new world of opportunity but it must be
worked. 99% of home pages are nothing more than display ads and are useless.
This is true because home page designers are not sales/marketing
professionals they are page designers. Since the vast majority of business
owners are computer illiterate they depend on their kids friends to design
the page while they stand idly by, hands in pocket, wondering what its all
about. Only 1% of the sites contain the kind of stuff that will facilitate
getting customers. Up front your page should welcome inquiries and chats
with the CEO. Somebody should be surfing the net maybe a college intern at
home, on commission searching for like minded people in the newsgroups and
in the news. Collecting these names and sending them personal invitations to
share the wonders of your product and relationships through your home page
where they will meet other like-minded people and see the neat stuff being
offered for their continued enjoyment of life. Again, sell the end result of
your offering through the emotional response. Refrigerator companies should
not sell refrigerators, they should sell the convenience of having a full
assortment of ingredients to make a succulent dinner. Car manufacturers no
longer sell the car; they are selling the ego trip that goes with owning
their car. In the near future they will be selling trouble-free miles
through some form of leasing and perpetual preventive maintenance plans.
Clothing manufacturers don't sell the quality or detail of the sewing, the
fabric or weight of the garment - they sell what the garment will do for the
wearer through the eyes of beholders looking and admiring the wearer of the
garment. Emotional stuff. Nothing else. Even business to business selling is
emotional. You may think you are selling based on competitive bids, but the
reality is that your character, the way you sound on the phone, your
secretarys voice, the way the material is presented, and just how lazy can
the buyer be to make the transaction. In other words, how easy will it be
for the buyer to buy? And how hassle-free will the end result be? (Why do so
many middle managers buy IBMs when clearly there are better machines at
better prices? - Nobody will hassle them for buying a name brand).
First and foremost is for everybody in your organization to know the key
points and to be able to recite them quickly and with enthusiasm. Imagine a
15 second commercial into which you have to pack everything thats important
through creating a mental image of the thing you are selling plus the
benefit to the listener. Most important is the benefit. Whats in it for
them. What emotional bang will they get from it. Develop your sound bite on
paper using the horizontal page and ellipse concept. Then write it and say
it. Get others to listen and get them involved in improving it. Work on it
until you have it down pat. This becomes your business mantra. Every time
anybody listens to it you are putting coins in the cash register. Not
everybody will buy but you will increase the number of listeners and since
we are talking about a numbers game (sales and marketing) each time you pull
the lever you are closer to a jackpot. How many jackpots is a function of
how many times you recite your mantra.

Checklist:
1- In a few words define your customer
2- How will your offering be delivered and paid for
3- What is your guaranty and how will you fulfill it
4- List three possible ways your message can reach your suspects
5- Write your sound bite in 15 words or less
6- What will be your sales volume one year from today
7- Write the key milestones for this to happen
8- What are the key emotions your customer will enjoy from your offering
9- How many people on this earth would want your product/service/idea
10- How many nos before you get a yes today
11- Tomorrow?
12- List two advertising campaigns along with how you will measure them
13- Make an idea folder and keep your scribblings in sequential order
14- List the key points you must get across before the prospect can be
convinced
15- List the visual aid - graphic or story - for each key point
16- What is the future bank value of one customer
17- How much time are you willing to convert to get one customer
18- Does everybody on your team understand the time conversion formula
19- Can everybody on your team recite the 15 word sound bite
20- How many doors do you have to knock on to get one new customer
21- How many doors has your group knocked on last week
22- Based on last week door knocking, how will this tally with your one
year objective