Entreprenuer
6 Ways to Improve Your Focus and Energy at Work
While interacting with customers and selling vehicles, it can sometimes be challenging to maintain high energy and focus. As the hours go on, minds can wander and exhaustion can creep in. This can have a detrimental effect on performance, not only affecting individual salespeople but the dealership as a whole. Sales managers need to find ways to keep their teams motivated, focused, and full of energy, ways that go beyond monetary incentives. Some of these tips may seem a bit too simple, but the overall effect they have can be enormous and far-reaching.
1. Organized Work Area
One of the keys to maintaining proper focus throughout the work day is keeping your work area organized. Think about what your work desk is like right now. Is it cluttered? If so, chances are it will be easy for essential tasks and paperwork to quickly get lost in the mess. Organized workspaces ensure everything has its proper place and salespeople can focus on the things that really matter. It also makes a great impression on people seeing your office for the very first time.
2. Sufficient Exercise
One of the best ways to improve your energy levels is through exercise. Whether that means getting up and doing some jumping-jacks in the middle of the dealership, or getting some regular exercise outside of business hours. Above all, this can be nearly any type of activity: jogging, swimming, basketball, cycling, yoga, etc. Getting your heart pumping after you wake up helps people be more energetic throughout the day. In addition to more energy, exercise is merely a great way to stay healthy.
3. Healthy Meals
At the same time, you’re getting enough exercise, be sure you’re eating healthy foods as well. A balanced diet filled with fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, and more is crucial to keeping your energy levels up. Sugary foods like candy may provide a momentary kick, but they’re certainly not a sustainable lifestyle and won’t lead to better performance. You should also make sure that you’re eating at the right times during the day. It is important to know your body, some people do intermittent fasting. While others don’t go more than 3 hours between meals.
4. Cognitive Boosters
Perhaps you need that extra boost to improve your focus and increase your energy, something that you normally don’t get with your current diet. Many people choose to go with things like energy drinks or coffee for that boost, but the energy is only temporary, and there’s usually a big crash that comes later. As a healthier alternative, you may choose to go with special cognitive boosters called nootropics. Nootropics are a type of supplement specially designed to enhance the brain. As the Neurohacker Collective nootropics page explains, “nootropics are substances which can enhance a person’s cognition, leading to better executive functions such as improved focus.” Nootropics feature more sustained benefits with supplements that are safer than the typical stimulants people use.
5. To-Do Lists and Goals
Every salesperson should have a goal in mind while at work. This provides motivation while also helping them focus on what they need to do. Many goals, however, are for longer term ideas, such as monthly sales goals. A monthly goal is certainly helpful, but to keep focused, short-term goals should be set, such as for the week and even the day. Salespeople can break down these goals even further, creating a to-do list that they can adhere to. Some people may even have an extensive list of what they should do for each hour they’re on the clock. Knowing what you need to do at all hours of the day will help everyone keep focused on what’s most important.
6. Regular Sleep
Sleep is how people get refreshed and replenish their energy reserves. Jeff Liff said in his 2014 TedMed talk, “So what this new research tells us, then, is that the one thing that all of you already knew about sleep, that even Galen understood about sleep, that it refreshes and clears the mind, may actually be a big part of what sleep is all about.” If someone isn’t getting enough sleep, they’re going to feel lethargic during the day. Optimizing the amount of time in bed to get the right amount of sleep may take some experimentation and may change depending on the amount of activity in your life. For that reason, make sure you’re getting plenty of sleep so you’re rested and ready for your job. Sleep is so important that some offices actually allow people to take naps during work hours. Chances are you won’t have that opportunity, but that just makes it all the more important for you to get a full night’s rest.
As you can see from this list, some of the ways to improve your focus and energy can be done while you’re on the job while others are done outside of work. Many require planning ahead of time, but the benefits you can get from them are certainly worth it. A focused salesperson who has a lot of energy is simply going to perform better. They’re qualities every employee should strive for and every sales manager shoulder encourage.
Entreprenuer
Combine Email and Facebook for a Supercharged Marketing Campaign
Those who consider social media and email marketing to be separate entities are probably leaving a lot of money on the table. While it’s true that email has been with us since the dawn of the Internet Age and is viewed by some as a slow, ponderous, hopelessly anachronistic relic of the 1990’s, smart marketers realize that they are different sides of the same coin and can be a powerful business force when combined. The good news is that it probably won’t be difficult to tweak your current social media strategies to include good, old email. Here’s how.
The Miracle of Facebook Audiences
Okay, maybe miracle is too strong a term, but it’s pretty amazing how this Facebook feature can supercharge the amount of demographic data available for collection on a customer. Let’s say you sell a service or product online. Anytime a purchase is made using a credit or debit card, you likely end up with the email address of that customer. Most email marketing companies like Mailchimp or Aweber allow for the export of of these lists to a .csv file, which can then be uploaded into Facebook under the Audiences section of the Ad Manager dashboard.
Facebook’s software will fiddle around behind the scenes and spit out a new list with the raw emails you entered matched up to (with a hit rate of 20-70 percent) actual Facebook users. As you probably realize, Facebook is an insatiable collector and aggregator of demographic information and, once you can put a user profile together with an email address, you have struck gold when it comes to being able to more precisely target your marketing efforts.
Create a Lookalike Audience
Would you like more customers? That’s exactly what another Facebook feature - the lookalike audience - can provide you with. Using Audiences, you’ve gleaned a ton of demographic information about people who are already customers based on email addresses alone. When you ask Facebook to create a lookalike audience, the software goes to work again, searching its massive database to create a list of users who have similar interests and demographics. It’s a mirror audience of your customers with a crucial difference; they probably haven’t bought from you yet and might not even know you exist.
So what are you going to do with this lookalike audience? Put on the mantle to look at? Not hardly. You’re going to market the heck out of this new list because, since they share characteristics with people who have already bought from you, there’s a good chance at least some of them will respond favorably to marketing by buying your product or service.
Launch a Simultaneous Campaign
This next idea gets into the real nitty gritty of creating a two-pronged Facebook and email marketing approach that takes advantage of how people interact with each medium to gain maximum exposure for your next campaign. Most people check their email first thing in the morning. Use a drip email campaign that starts several days or even a week before the big sale starts. On launch day, that last drip email arrives promoting some sort spectacular deal you’re offering. For the rest of the day, take advantage of humanity’s tendency to frequently check their social media feed with follow-up reminders posted to Facebook several times. This is a synergistic way to use old (email) and new (Facebook) social media together for a bigger bang.
Use Facebook as a Funnel
An old sales adage tells us that it takes multiple exposures to a sales message to turn a potential customer into an actual customer. Trying to do this with Facebook alone is a hit or miss proposition because Mark Zuckerberg and his minions control the game. Even if you buy advertising through Facebook, there’s no guarantee your ad will show up in any particular person’s feed, which makes it hard to complete that whole ‘multiple exposure’ idea. What you need to do is post content to the social media giant that encourages people to click a link leading to your website. Once there, your primary goal is to get them to give you their email address. A common tactic is to give away some free digital information. This is how you build that all important email last that YOU control and can market to at your leisure.
The Bottom Line
The big idea here is to stop thinking of email and social media as cats and dogs that can’t get along without a big fight. Instead, concoct strategies to take advantage of the inherent power of each so you end up with marketing campaigns exponentially more robust than using either alone.
1 Comment
AWeber
Hi Angela. Great post! Completely agree that email + social make a powerful duo. We put together a free guide - I'd love your feedback on it!
Entreprenuer
A Simple Beginner's Guide to Marketing Automation
Much has been made of the drive towards automation in business. While these innovations come as no surprise to developers and IT professionals, it has taken quite some time for the concept of true automation to find its way into the casual workplace.
The key to understanding the field of marketing automation is to define the basic terms first. Marketing is one of the most misunderstood terms in all of business. At its core, the process of marketing is putting a product in front of people who are the most likely to buy it. This is why detergent is sold during soap operas and trucks are sold during football games.
Automation, on the other hand, is at least ostensibly a term most people claim to understand. Having a machine do the heavy lifting without human involvement is the key method by which human labor can be multiplied. The most obvious example is the construction industry where machines literally do the heavy lifting. It would take a long time to build a 40-story building if the workers had to rely on shovels and wheelbarrows. Either that or it would take ten times as many workers.
So how can marketing and automation be combined?
Automated Communications
The most obvious and practical channel for a customer pitch that can be automated is e-mail. There is no more effective marketing method at the moment, so having a mailing list and regularly communicating with its audience is often at the top of most businesses' priority lists. Most companies retain an email marketing agency for this purpose.
Delivery of a mailing list can be automated, and so can responses to questions from customers. What appears in a mailing list varies from time to time, but with sufficient lead time even that material can be prepared ahead of time and rotated into a regular publication schedule at need.
Segmented Targeting
The complete record of a company's customer list usually comprises interest in numerous product types and marketing programs. When that list can be broken down into smaller lists based on category, it produces "segmentation." Through the use of testing and response rates, even segmentation can be automated.
Email marketing is becoming a larger and larger business as these solutions become more resilient and less expensive. But even if segmentation works, how can a business know they are putting their product in front of an audience most likely to buy it?
Testing
Computers love to do two things: count and make lists. Fortunately for the marketing business, those are the two things that need to be done the most often. One of the key methods for determining if customers want to see a message and then want to buy the product being offered is to test two different pitches for the same product or pitch two different products to the same audience.
The one that performs best becomes the new baseline and then another comparison can be made. Computers can perform these operations on their own if they are set up properly. Ultimately they can be designed to present the top-selling product using its top-selling pitch. Every successful e-commerce company is built on this principle.
But even if you are able to determine the best pitch and you can communicate that information to your audience, how do you know what product to sell in the first place?
Data Mining
Once a marketplace has been measured for a long enough period of time, the "noise" in the data will start to dissipate and leave behind the true measure of what product sells, how fast it sells and what message made it sell. That information is golden to any future product designer or marketing business because they don't have to spend the time or the money guessing what will work. It's right in front of them. In fact, the top-selling product probably has a little flag next to it identifying it as such. Search engines have already automated this process.
Knowing the Competition
With this information, a marketing company can determine with specificity what sells and at what price. A computer can do so in a fraction of a second and further, can do so on a regular basis. The moment one product falls out of favor and a new product takes its place, an automated solution can measure and store all the necessary data and apply it to its own algorithms.
This level of automation will produce a mathematically proven model that can not only be communicated to customers, but tested relentlessly until it is fully optimized. Granted, this level of sophistication is rare, even among the best marketing programs, but at the same time the reward for getting it right is virtually unlimited profits.
Automation is poised to become more and more popular, and promises to put incredible power in the hands of even the smallest business. The results will be the same as all successful markets: higher quality and lower prices.
1 Comment
DrivingSales, LLC
THANK YOU for sharing this information, Angela! I, for one, have a hard time wrapping my brain around automation, so I appreciate this for sure.
Entreprenuer
Our Marketing Strategy for Emails
Build A Quality List
Once you begin collecting emails from potential customers and people who are interested in your products or services, you can't just rely on sending them sporadic emails whenever the mood strikes. Maintaining a quality email list includes making sure that the email addresses are current and that you are following CAN SPAM laws. Often, email addresses become obsolete in a short period of time or people give you fake addresses so that they'll stay off of your list. Apache Kafka has real-time data processing that can help with large sets of data. Make sure that you are following up on any spam complaints and work on keeping your email list healthy.
Mobile Responsive Emails
With the explosive use of smartphones and tablets, you must make sure that your emails will correctly open on mobile browsers. When people using mobile devices have a problem reading your emails, they will simply tap the delete icon and make your email disappear. It's surprising, but statistics indicate that 89 percent of individuals who use email marketing lose leads by not having their emails optimized for mobile browsers. Don't become one of those statistics.
Re-engage Old Subscribers
It's always a good idea to see how many subscribers are actually active readers of your emails. Research indicates that 63 percent of subscribers to lists are inactive and unlikely to read the follow-up emails that you send. When this occurs, the best way to handle the situation is to employ a re-engagement campaign. Experiment with a catchy title and see if you can grab the attention of people who subscribe to your list but never read your emails.
It's Worth It
Social media marketing has emerged as a hot new area that businesses should definitely pursue. However, when it comes to email marketing, engaging with a list is twice as effective as engaging with customers on Facebook or Twitter. An 18 month study was conducted by SocialTwist that showed how important email marketing is to someone who wants to sell more products or services.
Offer Valuable Incentives To Sign Up
People love getting free stuff. However, this does not mean that you should offer a potential subscriber a free incentive that has no real value in exchange for their email address. You'll find that offering free content that is packed with useful information will actually prime subscribers to purchase your premium products. The philosophy is that if a subscriber sees how valuable your free stuff is, they'll be willing to pull out their pocketbooks to unmask even better content.
Use Automation
If you haven't already, you really should be automating your email marketing by using email drip campaigns. This allows you to create a bundle of emails and have them automatically sent at periodic intervals so that you can take customers through an optimized funnel. This process could include an introduction to your company that's followed by a quick discount on a premium offer that is followed by a call to action for a less expensive product. Automate your email marketing efforts to save time and focus on other marketing strategies.
The Little Things Count
Your emails will be opened on a more consistent basis and more sales will occur if you focus on the smaller, important details. This includes:
- Sending emails when they are more likely to get opened -- do some research with your list
- Use strong headlines that grab a reader's attention
- Give a clear message on what you want a reader to do -- click a link for more information or to buy a product
- Be sure to get straight to the point and relay the message that you want to tell
Continue To Grow
It's inconsequential if you have a list of 1000 people or 250,000 subscribers on your email list. There is always room for more people that can engage with. The internet is an amazing tool that gives us so many advantages as marketers. Grow your list as big as possible so that you can offer the solutions to people who are in need of your products or services.
By following these tips, you'll find that your email marketing campaigns will increase your sales. Always be refining and working on this important segment of your overall marketing strategy.
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Entreprenuer
How Email Marketing Helps Boost Sales
Email Marketing Helps Build a Strong Audience
Through the use of squeeze pages, landing pages, or even a pad and pencil at a local trade show, you can start amassing a huge audience for your product or brand message by simply capturing email addresses and consistently marketing to your target audience.
Keeping your brand in the forefront of people's minds is key to developing and retaining the interest of your readers. This is why it is so important to keep up the momentum and let your name (or your company's name) become a regular part of your list's email experience.
For even better results, consider responsive email templates that cater to a mobile audience. More than half of all emails today are read on phones or tablets and that number will increase to close to two-thirds within the next year or two.
Email Marketing Helps You Establish Trust
A consistent flow of relevant, high-quality content into your customers' and prospects' inboxes is a sure-fire way to position yourself as friendly, knowledgeable, and – most importantly – trustworthy. You want to develop a sense of not just relatability with your audience, but one that emphasizes your readers' need to pay attention to and follow your lead. That only happens when people trust you.
Email Marketing Positions You As An Authority
On the heels of establishing trust, your next job is to consistently communicate your authority within your niche. People should do business with you because you understand both your business and the customer's need better than anyone else. You establish this by delivering information-rich content that anticipates questions and objections and deals with them before they arise.
If your readers feel like you're already inside their heads, they will look to you as an authority and that kind of reputation positions you well to steer people toward any kind of conversion you wish to facilitate, including making a purchase.
Email Marketing Reinforces Lead Nurturing
While it can take a bit of time and effort, good email marketing practices can help those of your readers who are on the fence make confident buying decisions. The process of getting them through the consideration phase of the Buyer's Journey is called Lead Nurturing and it is a vital element to increasing conversions.
Start by inching the reader toward the purchasing stage by including calls to action to simply click through to an article or video. You can then segment your list to target those who both open the message and respond to the call to action within. If you can get them to do that, you have established trust and positioned yourself as an authority. It is at that stage, where people are apt to start considering making a purchase.
Email Marketing Increases Conversions
The final stage of the Buyer's Journey is where email can prove most effective. Once the reader has gotten into the habit of opening your emails and responding positively to your lesser calls to action, it is time to take the all-important step and ask for the sale.
If you are patient with your readers and have been tracking the segments of your list that are most likely to convert, your attention should now be on making the sale. Don't come across as pushy or desperate; keep the conversation light but keep the focus on the goal: providing a product or service that meets the buyer at his or her point of need.
Final Takeaway
Consistency is key in any successful email marketing initiative. Let your readers know that you are the best source of knowledge and information in your niche. Keep your brand in front of them with a steady stream of targeted content, and they will choose you when the time comes to make a purchase.
If you feel you could use help getting started, seek the assistance of an established email marketing agency or copywriter who understands the ins and outs of successful email campaigns.
2 Comments
Beltway Companies
@Angela nice article! I am curious, too as to what is the standard for open rate, click rate, and conversion on click rate? With all of the mobile action - it is apparent, and evident that customers convert higher on mobile traffic, and multiple times too! Dealers should also be sourcing the traffic in their CRM's using API's regarding lead nurturing given that there are articles that offer a customer could take as much as 90 days to purchase their vehicle.
DrivingSales, LLC
Thanks for this post, Angela. I found the graduated steps for a lead nurturing campaign to be especially helpful.
I wonder if there is a significant difference between the open rate on desktop and the open rate on mobile?
Entreprenuer
3 Reasons Email Marketing Is a Must for Dealers
Email Campaigns and Dealerships
In today's day and age, nearly everyone has an email account. There is great potential in reaching out to email users, and some industries have an easier time in doing so than others. The automotive industry is one such industry that is ideal for communicating with potential clients through email. Not only is it convenient, but for car dealerships, it is a requirement in order to receive the desired sales volume and fight back against the competition.
Platform Matters
As people go about their busy days, over half check email on their cell phones. It is vital to create emails that are appealing and effective when seen on a computer as well as on a mobile device. Once the email is opened on a phone or tablet, and it is not engaging on the smaller device, a person is highly unlikely to reopen the same email on a computer, where it would be more visually appealing. Before engaging in sending email to customers, be sure to test it on a mobile device or tablet first to ensure its accessibility.
In regards to what type of email to use, try avoiding popular providers such as Gmail. Invest in an email service provider that will be able to gauge how effective the emails are. Such a provider will be able to report the percentage that opened the email, the amount of people who shared it, and what links were clicked on by the consumer within the email. Email data such as this is a powerful tool to wield in building a strong consumer base.
Surprising Statistics
Only 22 percent of dealerships are currently utilizing email campaign management services. For an industry that would find great success in emailing customers, this is a major loss. In regards to gathering the people for the email lists, the majority of people were collected through leads exchanged for money. The least productive way to gain access to email addresses was through advertising campaigns at occasions such as concerts or sporting events.
The most alarming statistic found that 73 percent of car dealerships do not categorize their email lists among buyers. The automobile industry has one of the most recognizable group of buyers. It would not be ideal to email an advertisement of a gas-guzzling truck to someone who advocates for the environmental benefits of a hybrid vehicle.
Online Shopping
When looking to purchase a car, most people will now browse online for their ideal vehicle. It is highly accessible to search multiple dealership websites in order to compare makes, models, colors, and most importantly, prices. Whereas, browsing at a physical dealership location, the choices are more limited. With that fact in mind, it is imperative to assume that the customer has already browsed, gathered a reasonable amount of information, and is aware of the car he or she is willing to buy. Online services are obviously more important to the consumer than sales conversations at dealerships.
Since shopping online has a greater impact on consumers, emailing platforms would be ideal to target the audience. It would be the perfect scenario for an individual who was browsing online for a car to conveniently receive an email advertising great offers on the buyer's specific choice in vehicle.
Staying Ahead
Emailing customers is prominent for advancement in sales. Focusing on the necessitates, of email, consumers will noticeably respond in a positive manner. As the world is moving towards a digital era, it becomes mandatory to keep up with online demand. Email campaigns are not just ideal marketing techniques, they are a requirement for the automobile industry to stay ahead and to rise above the competition.
2 Comments
Magnolia Innovative Solutions
I agree. Creating segments, lookers, purchasers, leasers, etc. and building campaigns around those segments provide opportunities for tremendous growth.
Sales Professionals of America Recruiting
If our industry is staying the same it's falling behind. With so many GM's fighting to stay afloat you would think things like email marketing training, social media training, and sales training would be high on the MUST have list. Too many still operate with the 2000's business model and will feel the effects as others adjust. Great post!
Entreprenuer
5 Secrets to Motivate Your Sales Team
Crafting a well motivated sales team can be of paramount importance for businesses and organizations seeking to improve sales figures or to optimize the efficiency of their operation. From improving internal communication to providing all sales personnel with the tools and resources they need in order to get the job done, effective leadership can make a critical difference in improving overall performance. The following five secrets can all make a measurable difference in the effort to better motivate and fully actualize a sales force.
One: Enhanced Communication
Poor and ineffective communication can do far more than impede efficiency, it may actually blunt motivation and rob professionals of the edge they need in order to capitalize on future opportunities. Enhancing and streamlining internal communication ensures that a salesforce will be better able to utilize available resources, address and resolve potential issues and contribute to larger tasks and projects. Allowing ineffective communication to sap morale or impede efficiency is a common problem that may end up costing many business owners, department heads and team leaders far more than they might imagine.
Two: Removing Obstacles Quickly and Efficiently
Situations that are unable to be resolved in an efficient manner can easily result in high levels of frustration and wasted effort. Whether you are a developer designing and deploying kafka on aws or a sales manager at a small used car lot, efficiency is crucial to your success. Devising and implementing policies and operational processes that will ensure potential bottlenecks and professional obstacles can be more quickly identified, readily addressed and successfully resolved helps to ensure that employees are able to spend their efforts in a more efficient and productive manner. Getting stuck on the same problem over and over or being unable to resolve an issue that may be chronic and ongoing can quickly lower morale and drain motivation.
Three: Providing Incentives
While there is no real substitute for hiring ambitious and self-motivated professionals, providing incentives or implementing a rewards program can help even the most dedicated sales team to reach their full potential. While the chance to compete for prizes or earn rewards can result in a noticeable difference in performance, just having the chance to be recognized for their efforts, hard work and past success can spur many employees to go the extra mile. Ensuring that a salesforce is able to be properly recognized, commended or rewarded for their efforts is a proven way to ensure sales professionals are able to stay focused and well motivated.
Four: Utilizing the Right Tools and Resources
Motivation can be difficult to sustain, especially in situations where fatigue may become an issue. Access to the right tools, services and solutions can provide workers with the means to streamline their working process and optimize the effectiveness of their efforts. From automated phone dialers to external logistical support services, finding ways to lighten the workload a little is a great way for leaders to improve the motivation and efficiency of their team. Sales professionals who may be wasting their efforts on minor tasks and support work are rarely able to direct their full efforts, focus and concentration on the situations and opportunities that will make the most difference.
Five: Creating and Maintaining a Superior Working Environment
The social landscape and atmosphere of the workplace is an important concern, one which often goes overlooked in the quest to improve worker motivation. A working environment that is more lively and engaging can be a powerful motivational tool, one that may be used to inspire workers to greater success. Expecting a sales team to do their best while depriving them of an environment that may afford greater stimulation or more rewarding social and professional interactions is an approach that is rarely effective. Employers and team leaders who are struggling to find new ways to motivate their staff and associates would do well to consider the type of environment and atmosphere they are providing.
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Entreprenuer
5 Ways to Recruit Salespeople Who Can Deliver Immediate Results
Salespeople are the heart and soul of nearly every enterprise. without the right salespeople, your business will not be able to grow or profit. Even the best customer service will not be helpful if there are no customers to serve. But recruiting the best salespeople can be a challenge -- after all, they are often being courted by multiple companies at once. Here are a few tips for getting the best talent into your offices.
1. Be Specific About What You Need
Salespeople are not all made equal. There are different types of sales and there are different types of product -- you want sales personnel that fit your niche. Some salespeople are used to making high volume, low cost sales. Others are used to making low volume, luxury sales. By being very specific about your job listings and needs, you'll be able to find the sales individuals that are best for your business.
2. Get Aggressive With the Interviewing
Selling is an aggressive act. Sales professionals need to be able to keep cool under fire and be able to respond accurately and eloquently to difficult questions. Be as aggressive as you can with your interview questions -- not in tone, but in specificity. Your salespeople should be able to answer your questions very thoroughly and in-depth.
3. Offer Them the Right Tools
From dialers to ergonomic equipment, making your salespeople as comfortable as possible is often one of the best ways to recruit them. Whether you are integrated with apache kafka on aws or just using emails, being organized in your processes is key to reaching sales goals. Sales personnel are very aware of the day-to-day tasks that they need to go through, and they will be looking for anything that can make the process easier and more pleasant for themselves. The more advanced the equipment, the more productive your sales personnel will be.
4. Don't Rush to Hire
From the initial phone interview to the final in-person interview, you should always be very careful and conscientious about recruiting. Though it may be tempting to simply get a body into the office, you need to consider that it costs money to hire someone. Not only in terms of salary, but in the cost of the training that is required. It is better for you to wait a little longer to hire the right candidate than to go through an endless process of training new hires and then letting them go.
At the same time, however, you should always be looking for better talent. Keep your eyes open and don't hesitate to contact sellers that you believe would fit into your company -- you never know when you might discover the perfect match.
5. Develop a Comprehensive On-Boarding Process
Don't just throw your staff into the pit and expect them to start selling. Instead, create a three month on-boarding system that is designed to acclimate them to company culture and train them to operate alongside the requirements of your business. This will make them far more effective and will enforce consistency and unity across the board. Sales individuals should go be thoroughly analyzed for performance after this initial process to determine whether or not they are truly suitable for the sales department.
Of course, getting the best salespeople is one thing -- keeping them is another entirely. Sales professionals tend to experience very high churn, many of them lasting only months in each position. To reduce this churn, you need to be able to listen to your employees and ensure that they have the technology and support that they need to succeed. By maintaining a strong sales team, you'll be able to steadily grow your business and improve upon your bottom line.
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Entreprenuer
Why Being Personable With Clients Will Lead To Higher Revenues
Being personable with clients can really get great things happen. Business owners that get personable with clients by creating tailored customer experience both offline and online have experienced an increase in sales and become brand leaders in their niche.
According to statistics by the e-tailing group and MyBuys, over 40% of clients buy more products and services from business owners that are personable across all channels. The research study also indicates that a further 41% of clients buy more from business owners that utilize email tracking. Also, 39% of clients buy more from merchants that personalize web recommendations. The following reasons are manifest evidence that being personable with clients will lead to higher revenues:
1. Humans Love Attention
It's natural that humans crave recognition and get attracted to care and familiarity. A business that personalizes their customer buying experiences by expressing an interest in their personal lives and treating them as friends end up with a large customer base. However, businesses today don't directly interact with clients to know them better, but flourish on their data. They leverage details like age groups, time zones, geographic locations, payment methods and utilize these details to customize marketing campaigns for these very clients.
2. Customer's Desire for Control and Rescue from Information Overload
The clients feel more in control if they know that a suggestion, product or an email is dedicated to them; and that they are not just receiving what others are. A personalized suggestion makes the product look relevant to the clients and make them believe that what they are experiencing is exactly what they need and saving themselves from tons of information available online. Being personable with clients will help them maneuver through the crowded and noisy world of marketing in a guided, relevant and ultimately rewarding way.
3. More Customer Engagement
Personal interactions with clients makes conversions easier, for instance, the Amazon's One Click Purchase model. Personalization provides smooth payment checkout by only memorizing a few details about the client. Clients like the hassle-free checkout and a few minutes they just saved afford you more customer engagement.
4. It Makes You More Money
Business owners or e-commerce marketers that implement personalized marketing witness profound return on investment, by promoting products and offers which are relevant and meaningful to their clients. According to research by Econsultancy, businesses that utilize personalization techniques are experiencing a net uplift of 19% in sales. Additionally, 59% of marketers indicated that their personalization strategies are yielding handsome returns on their investments.
With Personalization, enterprises are in a good position to automate manual aspects of their merchandising techniques, through made simple stream processing. Hence, freeing up quality time that marketing teams can use to build up potent customer relations that result to long-term loyalty; enhancing client's lifetime value. All of this leads to higher sales and hence bigger revenues.
5. Your Competitors are Doing It
According to a report by Econsultancy, 94% of businesses concur that being personable with clients is critical to the current and future success of the business. With that said, there is a greater probability that your competitors are already implementing this strategy. It is, therefore, imperative that you keep with the speed and read from the same hymn book than risk the wrath of dissatisfied clients moving to the competitors where the experience is a lot more personalized, more enjoyable and above all relevant.
Business owners or marketers should always strive to do more on a shoestring budget, overcoming IT and technology barriers to forge ahead. With the desire to separate their business provisions through immaculate service, enhancing client experience should be on top of to do list. Those marketers or business owners that don't embrace personalization should not opt for lower-impact techniques that would not help them drive up sales. As an alternative, they need to a true personalization technique that matches current and future needs to make sure their customers are delighted and keep buying from the site.
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Entreprenuer
Five Lessons I Learned Through the Trials and Tribulations of Selling Automobiles
Growing up as a kid, I suffered with severe anxiety of interacting with anyone outside of my family or social circle. I often had nightmarish visions of being called to the front of the classroom, having to ask for help from a stranger or even approaching the staff inside of the store. This trauma soon became one of the biggest factors in my life and would often prevent me from meeting people and having experiences that I knew I would enjoy. It wasn't until I entered the fast-paced world of sales that I learned the tools to happiness.
Fearless
The biggest obstacle selling cars taught me to overcome is the ability to be fearless. I remember my first day on the job: A manager pulled me to the side, realizing I wasn't a natural salesman, and told me to put on an act. "Even if you're trembling inside, act as if you've done this before. This is nothing to you," he repeated. From that point on, specifically when I felt anxiety and fear of approaching a customer, I would become a performance artist. I was a master salesman. Sure, not everyone purchased a car from me or greeted me with a warm smile, but I didn't care. I could do anything.
Dealing With Rejection
In sales, and almost any career path in life, you will inevitably be rejected. It hurts and it doesn't make you feel good about yourself. Maybe the man or woman of your dreams just rejected you. Perhaps you were turned down for that promotion you thought you would easily attain. What's more alarming, the pain from rejection and heartbreak feels as real as a physical pain in the body. The lesson I learned, through a series of setbacks and failures, is that rejection is part of the process. No one goes from zero to hero with 100% success. There are failures and massive rejections along the way. In car sales, I faced that demon every single day and learned to become fond of it. Getting rejected by one customer meant I was closer to an agreement from another.
Self Development
Great leaders are often some of the people who've devoted time, resources and money to grow themselves on a personal level. My mentor--a multi-millionaire and self-made sales professional--pulled me to the side one day and gave me some of the best advice I'd ever received. He said, "leaders are readers. If you harness the habit of self development, you can achieve anything you want in this world." This always stuck with me. From that point forward I knew that I would devote my time, energy and spare income to developing my personal character.
Intimidation
The biggest way I became happier through car sales is the ability to deal with intimidation. I remember a general manager meeting where I was to contact the biggest salesperson in my city. I still remember her Lipsense lipstick and her ability to make me feel very small and unaccomplished. I approached her with confidence and was soon fascinated by her story. She'd become a multi-millionaire several times over while juggling a family and social life. My initial intimidation towards this woman soon turned into admiration and astonishment.
Sales is the Lifeblood of Success
Whenever I think of the biggest companies on the planet today--Amazon, Google, Wal-Mart, Target, etc.--I realize how critical the sales process is. Even in my car dealership, we only kept he lights on if our team accomplished their goals and hit sales targets. My belief was soon proven to be true when Mark Cuban, a multi-billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, reiterated my belief. "There's never been a business that has succeeded without sales," Mark said in an interview with Inc. Magazine. From that point on, I knew I had the tools and strategies to become successful.
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Caboose
Thanks for sharing! Glad to hear you've overcome your fears. This may sound silly but if you are feeling hung up on a past rejection or mistake of any kind, just replay it in your head with the Seinfeld theme song over it. That will take it from stressful to comical.
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