Marketing & Sales
(31 Topics)
A small business cannot be all things to all people.
A good marketing strategy recognizes this and reflects the need for the
business to analyze its markets and its own capabilities so as to focus on a
target market it can serve best.
This seminar explains the core concepts of a marketing strategy for small
and medium-sized enterprises. It explains how to identify target markets
that a small business can serve better than its larger competitors and how
to tailor product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts and
services towards that particular market segment.
Today’s successful companies are the ones that
revolve their business around their customers.
Yet how often are products or services dreamt up, produced, marketed, sold
and distributed without any input from a potential customer? And how often
are the internal procedures of a business set up to suit the business’
convenience rather than to enhance the experience the customer has with the
business?
Unless the customer, and the customer’s needs, are the real focus of the
business there can’t be any concerted effort to providing superior value.
This BGR discusses how to focus on adding value by designing processes such
as technology, training and internal processes to support a strategy of
customer-centricity throughout all areas of the organization.
3. Branding
Branding is the consistent execution
of your business's unique personality. It's literally your face to the
world. It's your name, how that name is visually expressed through a logo,
how that name and logo are extended throughout all of your communications,
and what people think about when they see or hear it. It's the one thing
that you can own that nobody can copy or take away from you. The time, money
and care that you spend in building, growing and nurturing your own brand
can pay off handsomely, not just here and now in awareness, reputation and
sales, but as an investment in brand equity.
This topic is an introduction to Branding at a broad level. It introduces the branding concept and sets out current business thinking on how branding works, its value to their business, and some of the issues around developing the most obvious aspect of a brand - the logo.
4. Business-To-Business
Marketing
For companies whose primary or sole client are other
businesses, getting a foot in the door of good prospect companies can be a
difficult task. And even after you do have a contract in hand, maintaining a
business relationship in the face of rival vendors can be a hard road.
The problem is, that often the company wanting to get into B2B work hasn’t appreciated that marketing to another business (B2B marketing) is quite different from marketing to consumers (B2C marketing).
This BGR explains the way businesses operate between each other and the marketing strategies that firms who want to break into B2B must utilize to be successful. It covers all the stages from initial client targeting, to building and maintaining long term relationships with business clients.
5.
Classifying Your Customers for Increased Profitability
For most business only a small portion of customers yield the majority of
a
business' income, while a much larger proportion contributes much less per
dollar of sales. This is the 80/20 rule in action.
In this seminar learn how to classify customers into groups so as to increase profits and simplify working arrangements. The result will be increased focus on those "A" class customers who are both easy to deal with and generate the largest share of profits. This seminar also explores suggested strategies for culling the "D" class customers - those who are least pleasant to deal with and/or provide the lowest returns per dollar of sales.
6.
Converting Contacts To Sales
Staying in business means
selling. So it means moving contacts on through to being customers – and the
better your system for doing this the more likely you will be to close the
sale.
This topic examines the steps in the selling process – acquiring contacts,
managing them through the sales process, and closing the sale. Getting any
one of these steps wrong and you are likely going to miss out on an income
opportunity.
We cover the importance of calculating contact-to-sale conversion rates and
outline what they can tell you about the success of your selling system.
There are tips on how to increase sales conversion rates and a discussion of
how to recruit and reward members of the sales team.
A business has to sell –the information in this topic will help it sell more
effectively.
7.
Crafting
Customer Communications
This topic looks at how to craft marketing messages and
design marketing material delivery schedules that will keep you in regular
and effective contact with your existing customers and clients. If you make
regular contact with your customers you can significantly increase the
length of time they do business with you and you can convince them to
increase the range of goods and services they purchase from you.
We cover best practice hints for creating marketing materials including choosing the right tone for your message, follow up mailings, writing tips and effective phone scripts. Communication schedules are looked at in detail with a review of the various methods of scheduling effective delivery of communications to targeted customer groups so as to maximize the likelihood that they will result in a sale.
8.
Creating A Profitable Sales System
Many business owners don't focus on their sales function -
mainly because they aren't comfortable selling and prefer to concentrate on
what they do best. But what would be the financial impact on your business
if every team member could double his or her sales? We look at the sales
process in a way that will break it down into the nuts and bolts, and make
it less mysterious and daunting.
This topic covers:
-
The sales function and why some people are not comfortable with it
-
Why it is ultimately an internal process that you must systemize like everything else in your business, and how to do this
-
Some key selling strategies
-
Ways to manage the sales process
9.
Customer Lifetime Value and Profitability
This topic explores why it’s important to
understand the value of the existing customer base, how it can be segmented
to give a profile of individual customer value and how to quantify the value
of different customer groups.
When it is understood that some customers provide very little profitability
to a business, it’s an easy step to realizing that not all customers are
equal. The different segments can be marketed to and serviced differentially
to improve customer satisfaction, save the business time and money on
marketing and ultimately improve profits.
Also covers how to use the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) metric as a
management tool to evaluate and monitor the potential and actual results of
marketing and loyalty campaigns.
10.
CRM
- Managing the Customer Relationship
CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship
Management’. It’s about knowing your customers and using this knowledge to
form profitable relationships with them. We hear a lot about ‘CRM’ these
days but most of us don’t really know what it means. This updated BGR topic
will put you in the picture of what CRM is and how it is being applied in
businesses.
What is new about CRM is the development of software applications that can
be the basis of a customer relationship management system in any business.
This BGR reviews how these systems can be made to work, and why they often
don’t.
You'll see how CRM can deliver a profitable focus on customers that can
really pay off for any size of business. The BGR also covers the steps of
developing and implementing a CRM strategy and what it can and can’t
achieve. You'll also learn how to tell if you’re getting value out of a CRM
system and which are the most important metrics to monitor.
11.
Dealing With Customer Complaints
Statistics vary, but for
every customer who makes a complaint, you are likely to have between twenty
and thirty dissatisfied customers who say nothing. Or at least, they say
nothing to you, but they're happy to tell other people. In fact, customers
are likely to tell between eight and ten people when they are dissatisfied.
And each of these is likely to pass the word on to several others.
There is a positive side to complaints however: they can be used to improve your business processes AND even cement customer loyalty. Complaints are a valuable resource. They provide low-cost feedback and if you handle customer complaints well, you can confirm customer loyalty. Good complaint resolution can actually assist in turning even customers who have a complaint into long-term clients who will recommend your business to others. This topic will show you how to handle complaints effectively and use them to actually improve your business.
12.
Developing Quality Marketing Materials On A
Budget
Businesses often scale back on
marketing in difficult or uncertain economic times. However, the challenge
in tough times is to continue marketing effectively, but at a lower cost.
The way to do this is to develop a sound marketing plan in line with your budget and market to your strengths. Your marketing materials should not focus on the features of your products and services, but rather what those features can do for your customers.
You may find
that keeping persistent, low-key contact with your customers, using
inexpensive materials, will give you just as good a result as more costly
campaigns.
This topic explores the range of low-cost materials that could be used in
your business, such as flyers, hand-outs, business cards, faxes, emails,
postcards, and giveaways such as mugs, buttons, pens, or ornaments, and how
you can use them most effectively.
You might think that only big companies have a
brand but almost every business has a brand – including your clients, no
matter how small.
Brands can be worth a lot of money to a business. They can be very good when
looking for new customers or for retaining existing ones. But they do
require good management to be effective.
In this topic we have provided a walk through of what branding is about at a
broad level. The idea is to introduce clients to the concept and give them
current business thinking on how branding works, its value to their
business, and some of the issues around developing and managing their own
brand.
14.
e-Commerce - What Is It? What Can It Do For My Business?
This topic is an introduction to ecommerce and its
potential to change the way we do business. The rise of the Internet has
brought a new aspect to business: the process of buying and selling goods
and services online.
eCommerce is a new playing field with new rules. It is a far more evolved
form of business, and real-time knowledge has its benefits, costs, and
drawbacks. But for many companies the future lies in ecommerce. This topic
looks at the advantages and potential cost savings ecommerce can offer you.
The following areas are explored:
- The benefits of selling to consumers on line
- Why people buy on line
- The hidden costs of ecommerce
- e-Procurement - the real benefits of doing business online
- How to implement an e-procurement strategy
15.
The Elevator Speech
Have you
ever been presented with that golden opportunity - a chance meeting with a
potential big customer? Suddenly you scored one short window of opportunity
to get this person interested in your products or services. And you blew it!
You need to develop an ‘elevator speech’!
An ‘elevator speech’ is a concise, carefully planned, and well-practiced description about your company that your aunt should be able to understand in the time it would take to travel a couple of floors in an elevator.
This presentation shows you how to put together your ‘elevator speech’ - what to put in and just as importantly, the turnoff statements to leave out. It also shows you how you can develop it to work anywhere from in the elevator to a business club meeting.
16.
e-Marketing:
A Plain Guide
eCommerce is now a major way in which buyers and sellers communicate and
goods and services are located, researched and bought and sold. Marketing
strategies need to change to incorporate the shift or businesses will miss
their opportunity to receive full value from activity on the e-market. Now
marketing needs to be done through emails, e-newsletters, e-zines and online
PR channels.
There is a raft of these e-marketing techniques - but which ones work and which don’t? Which are suitable to SME clients? How do you collect lists of customers email addresses? What does all the jargon mean? How can you use them most effectively to maximize ROI? And how do you test their effectiveness in a marketing campaign?
This seminar answers these questions and others in a plain English, practical guide to what e-marketing is about, its role in a marketing strategy and how to decide which formats are most useful to a business.
17.
Features And Benefits
Your customers are generally only interested in product features that
translate into benefits. So, whether you’re developing a new product or
exploring a way to repackage an old one, it is important to think clearly
about the benefits you provide. Product features are not important in
themselves. Great as a product may be, customers won’t love it for its own
sake. They’ll only love it for the benefits it provides.
This topic is about translating product features into benefits that meet the
needs of your customers. It covers market research to identify benefits from
the customers’ perspective, how to develop a Unique Core Differentiator and
how to incorporate these benefits into marketing strategies to provide you
with long-term growth.
A healthy business targets and achieves growth.
A business that isn’t capable of finding new sources of business will
eventually become unsustainable and fail.
This seminar shows how to set growth targets for a business and measure progress
towards them. It covers the many ways of finding new sources of business
with an emphasis on those ways that will generate a growth in business but
not a huge growth in expenditure.
It also outlines a process for analyzing a business and deciding which will
be the best ways for it to achieve growth.
19.
Getting The Most Out Of Your Advertising
This seminar takes a broad definition of advertising to cover not only
promotions in the media, but also a wide range of other ways in which a
business advertises itself – through its branding, its vehicle fleet, the
appearance of the workshop and offices, the way the phone is answered etc.
There are tips and tricks on making each of these work effectively so that the business is ‘advertised’ by everything it does, as well as advice on designing and delivering the more traditional direct marketing, radio and television type advertisement.
20.
Guarantees - A Sales Opportunity
A good guarantee can give your business a significant
marketing edge. It can help you win new customers and cement existing
customer relationships. This is because a guarantee has credibility.
Consumers know that guarantees and warranties are legally binding. This is
important as consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical about advertising
claims. A direct, generous, and unambiguous guarantee can cut through this
skepticism. The stronger the guarantee, the more selling power it has.
This topic is a general introduction to some of the factors business owners need to consider when offering a guarantee. When you implement a guarantee you will want to look over your procedures and make sure that all parts of your business will live up to the guarantee standard. Run your business on sound quality management principles and you will be able to tell the world about it through your guarantee.
Tracking
return on investment (ROI) for each marketing activity in your annual
program is essential for effective marketing planning. If you know your
total marketing expenditure, and with some figures on sales per channel you
can really drill down into what’s working and what’s not.
But, without detailed ROI tracking for each marketing activity, you have no
objective way to determine which tactics were most effective and which
provided lower returns. In other words, you can't see the trees for the
forest! Detailed ROI information is critical for deciding which marketing
activities to pursue for next year.
22.
Making
A Promotions Plan
Your promotions plan will keep you focused on marketing. It's difficult to
come up with marketing ideas when you are busy solving short-term business
problems. So follow good time-management principles and set time aside for
long-term planning. Take a global and strategic look at your business,
gather all your marketing options and rough out a schedule for the year.
First look at your marketing plan and considering your overall objectives, the nature of your business and its products and services. Map out the year, with predictable and seasonal features highlighted. Then make a list of all the marketing strategies that are suitable to your business and match the strategies to the different events in your business year, ensuring that you have at least one thing planned for each month.
You then have a promotional plan. Follow it and you will have a higher and more reliable stream of revenue into your business.
Statistics indicate that e-business is becoming a
standard way of conducting business for many organizations. In addition,
consumers are beginning to expect that businesses will provide their
services and, in some cases products, online.
Unless businesses look to what opportunities exist in this market they stand
to lose competitive position. The real challenge is to identify where there
are opportunities in this environment and carefully plan the timely
integration of e-business solutions into their existing business processes
and operations.
This seminar covers the range of solutions commonly used by e-businesses, the
major technological challenges to developing an e-business capable website
and the primary importance of developing an e-business strategy to assess the
opportunities and risks in terms of possible ROI before becoming involved.
There’s advice in this seminar for both the business with a website and
those considering the option of building one.
24.
Perceived Indifference Disease - Are You Suffering
From It?
Most business owners will say that their customers'
key concern is price - that customers will only buy if the price is right -
and in fact actually inquire about price first before anything else. However
research continually shows that the single most common reason a customer
leaves a business for a competitor is Perceived Indifference. Perceived
Indifference is when customers have the impression that you couldn't care
less if they buy from you or not. Almost 7 out of 10 of the customers you
lose walk away because they feel you are indifferent towards them. They felt
that you didn't care enough, didn't take time for them, and really didn't
make a difference.
This topic looks at how much perceived indifference could be costing your business. It reviews the 19-point checklist of common areas where perceived indifference occurs and discusses ways these can be improved.
25.
Power
Of Word Of Mouth
Businesses have always known that a good reputation
is key to success. They know that if they keep their customers happy, word
will spread and their business will grow. Equally, bad news can travel fast.
If a business provides poor service or sells poor quality products, word
will soon get around and hurt sales.
Word of mouth marketing is emerging as a key tool for many businesses as traditional advertising becomes less effective due to increasing consumer skepticism. Consumers are more likely to make purchase decisions based on the opinions, rumors and anecdotes that they hear through the many informal networks they belong to. Good word of mouth can be the greatest marketing asset of a business.
However, most businesses are only just becoming aware that there are strategies they can use to generate good word of mouth. This topic looks at how to use networks to facilitate the spread of good word of mouth about your business and how to capture the interest of opinion leaders and early adopters to ensure your message is passed on.
The best sales people know
better than to wing it through a prospect meeting. They have a systemized
sales process to work with. And the most effective system is relationship
selling – selling based on getting to know a customer’s real needs and
fitting your products and services to them.
Relationship selling doesn’t involve high pressure or manipulative methods.
The salesperson here is a problem solver, a helper, and an advisor to the
customer. They learn to identify the customer’s needs and sell them a
solution that fits the need – not just a product. It moves the emphasis from
price to value as a differentiator and provides a powerful advantage over
competitors.
This seminar walks through the 5 key elements of the relationship selling
process and explains the interpersonal techniques that will help you build
relationships. Specifically business owners and managers will learn:
- How to use objections to further the sales process
- How to close, but only once, and successfully
- How to prepare a sales pitch so that saying ‘yes’ is the next natural thing to do
- How to build relationships so strong that your clients won't think of going anywhere else
27.
Sustaining Competitive Advantage
Basically there are three strategies by which a business competes in the
marketplace:
-
Price
-
Serving a niche market better than anybody else
-
Promoting the individuality of a product or service
Which of
these is the better long-term strategy? Undoubtedly a lower price than the
competitor is an immediate advantage - but will it deliver a continuing
competitive edge? Differentiating your products from your competitors will
provide a much harder to match advantage for your business. This seminar
concentrates on how to deliver benefits exceeding those of competing
products, by developing a differentiation strategy.
Drawing on some of Michael Porter’s ideas on how competition actually works
in the business world, this seminar explores the value of performing a
competitive analysis on your business. This information will enable you to
focus on how your products and services rate against those of competitors –
setting the stage for you to make informed decisions about the best of
strategy to use with your product to gain a lasting competitive advantage.
28. Testimonials And Referrals
Endorsements in the form of testimonials and referrals from satisfied customers are major sources of new business for many SMEs, and yet a method that often remains underutilized. Frequently this is simply because nobody thought to use them, but it can also be because it’s outside the comfort zone to go out seeking them from customers.
This seminar discusses how to gather testimonials in order to enhance business credibility and then leveraging these endorsements in their marketing materials to assist in creating a referral system that will provide an ongoing flow of new customers in an inexpensive way.
Every industry has trade shows and exhibitions.
Research shows that 91% of decision makers in business prefer trade shows as
their source of purchasing information, so there’s a sound commercial reason
to add trade shows to any marketing mix.
This seminar examines the merits of trade shows and how to put their selling
power to work. It runs through the basics of any show – how to compare the
costs of one show with another, how to plan a display, how to get the team
ready for the event, and how to calculate the value received after the show.
It tells how to qualify prospects at the show, how to evaluate them, and how
to convert that first meeting into a long term business relationship by the
right kind of follow-up.
For anyone that’s never exhibited at a trade show before but always wondered
what it was all about, this seminar is essential. And even for seasoned
exhibitors there’s a lot in here to help make the next show a real success.
30.
Using Offers to Win Business
An offer is a proposition you make to your customers
to prompt a response from them, to entice them into a purchase. An offer
gives a potential customer a stronger reason to try you out. Essentially it
is the carrot designed to push the customer over the edge and have them buy
from you.
This topic looks at the way special offers can increase the range and volume of your sales, how they can introduce you to new markets and differentiate you from your competitors. By including an offer in your ad or marketing piece that appeals specifically to the people you want as new customers, you can dramatically influence the decision-making process and generate a far greater response for your marketing spend.
Learn about a number of techniques for making offers that will win customers and increase the likelihood of repeat business.
31.
Yellow Pages Marketing
Your clients will discover how to design a killer phone directory
advertisement that not only lists their contact details but markets their
firm. This information will allow them to leverage a phone entry into a
marketing strategy they can use to attract as many telephone calls as larger
operations.
The topic also looks at telephone techniques that will systematize the way your clients deal with inquiries to help solve their customer’s needs easily and efficiently. And in the process they will learn how to convert a telephone inquiry into a sale or a meeting thus increasing sales via the phone.