Questions? Feedback? powered by Olark live chat software
Apr 16 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

5 Ways to Turn Transactions Into Referrals

In today’s inbound marketing, content driven, socially connected world organizations have become very, very good at building trust, providing education and moving prospects to the point of buying, but not always as good at transitioning all the warm fuzziness to the actual purchase experience.

small_2534651587I’ve long contended that repeat and referral customers are born during the first transaction.

The simplest of touches can turn an uneventful transaction into an experience worth sharing with friends.

Below are five steps to consider as you build a customer purchase system that will turn the process of buying your products and services into a brand building asset.

1. Remove all friction

Sometimes we make our customers do things that don’t make sense to them because we try to over automate. I’m all for automation, but we need to think in terms on how it impacts the customer experience and not always how it impacts our workflow. Convenience is a tremendous relationship builder and differentiator. Look to add technology that works every time, doesn’t require needless steps and treats a customer, well, like a customer, instead of a robot. Sure, this kind of stuff takes more time and effort, but it takes you competitors more time and effort too!

2. Over orient

Again, one autoresponder acknowledgement message won’t cut it. Create an entire process where you orient your customers on every aspect of your business, their transaction, expectations and next steps. Build a “new customer kit” and make this form of education an integral part of bringing customers on for the long haul.

3. Surprise them

Over deliver and surprise your new customers with something they didn’t expect. People love good surprises and few things get people talking faster than something they didn’t expect. Lots of people get this idea, but also don’t forget your long time customers. Sometimes in the rush to get new customers we forget about the ones that got us here. I remember a few years ago I brought out a new product and offered a special deal in a promotion. I had a few customers that had paid full price prior to the promotion. I went back and offered them the discount and I’ve since lost count of how many customers one of those recipients has referred.

4. Get input

I love that technology can allow us to better understand the interactions we have with our customers, but I really love that by taking the time to get feedback you can avoid disasters and improve places that don’t seem to work. By creating a process that asks customers how likely they are to refer your business you can automatically get referrals and testimonials and you can learn when something went wrong. People often don’t offer feedback unless asked and that includes those that simply go away and tell their friends to stay away. Give them a chance to be heard and fix problems as they occur – it’s amazing how often a detractor can be turned into an advocate when you respond. (Visit this post for some ways to do this.)

5. Show gratitude

My mom taught me this and it’s still great advice! You know you are thankful for the fact that people put down their hard earned money, but sometimes in the rush of business it’s easy to let the acknowledgement slip. Build it into your process. Write handwritten notes every Friday, connect with another local business and send their products as a thank you, pick up the phone and simply call to say thanks. Figure out how to make this a habit, you’ll get as much out of doing this as the person receiving your gratitude.

photo credit: Dot D via photopin cc

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing Tagged With:
Apr 11 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

Why Every Small Business Needs Great Content

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s gust is Natalie Chan – Enjoy!

What-is-content2It’s no longer enough for a small business to build a website, Facebook page or twitter profile and hope that people will flock to it, bringing new business.

To ensure a strong online presence, you need good content. Great content means interesting, high quality and highly shareable content that allows you to capture your audience with engaging information, advice, stories and more to provide value – not a hard sell.

However, while nine out of ten organizations market with content, (Source: Content Marketing Institute), continuously creating great content can be a challenge. Especially for small businesses who are already time-poor and resource-stretched.

Repurposing your content allows you to streamline your efforts and make your content work harder for you at no extra cost.

Here are a few tips to boost your content marketing:

1. Subtract the sales pitch

Content marketing may require different tools and a different mindset than direct marketing, but that doesn’t mean the two can’t play together. Use some direct marketing materials you’ve already created and subtract the sales pitch to isolate the relevant, engaging messages for the casual consumer.

You can turn a press release announcing a new product into a blog post addressing the problem your product attempts to solve and educating consumers on other solutions or points of consideration they should be aware of. Take a pitch deck, remove the hard-sell, and turn it into a webinar with useful information for consumers independent of your product. That’s the difference between providing value and extracting it from consumers.

2. Multimedia is Multipurpose

Multimedia assets can greatly increase the flexibility of your content execution. An Instagram photo can live in a blog post, which in turn can become an appealing thumbnail in your Facebook update. Video is one of the most flexible assets you can develop. You can embed videos on your YouTube channel into articles and blog posts, turn them into thumbnails on Facebook, link to them on Twitter, adapt them into podcasts on SoundCloud. Each of these channels present sharing opportunities as well, and by extension further repurposing.

3. Use Hyperlinks

One of the easiest – not to mention cheapest – methods of repurposing your content and extending its shelf life is creating hyperlinks back to it later. These links can be placed organically throughout the new content you produce as a way to get readers to engage with related or otherwise contextually relevant content. As a best practice, be sparing with the number of links you use so as to not to distract the reader or encourage too much bouncing.

4. Leverage Recommendations

There’s no better time to engage audiences than when they’re thinking about what to experience next. Whether on yours or other publisher sites, using discovery platforms to recommend more content you’ve produced for consumers to check out next is a great way to keep them engaged and extend the shelf life of your content.

N ChanNatalie Chan is a Marketing Manager at Outbrain. Outbrain helps people discover the most interesting, relevant and trusted content wherever they are. Outbrain provides personalized recommendations across a network of premium publishers, including CNN, Fox News, Hearst, Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Fast Company. Through Outbrain’s all-in-one content discovery solution, publishers, brands and marketers are able to amplify their audience engagement by driving traffic to their content – on their site and around the web. Outbrain is currently installed on more than 100,000 sites and generates more than 85 billion page views per month.

 

Filed Under: Content marketing, Referral Marketing, Small Business Marketing Tagged With:
Apr 1 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

Anatomy of a Perfect Introduction

Introductions are gold – in fact, the right introduction can be far more powerful than the typical referral, but there’s a right way and wrong way to make them.

Introduction

photo credit: Peter Gerdes via photopin cc

We’ve all had that conversation where a friend or colleague will say,  “hey you should meet John” and next thing you know you get an email that says Suzy meet John, John meet Suzy, you two take it from here.

Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the introduction, but now both of us have to figure out how to have a conversation or whether we even really want to. It’s not the worst thing to happen, but there is a better way.

The other day I was having one of those brainstorming conversations with a friend and I mentioned a need I had and he said he knew someone I should meet. Then he proceeded to send us both what I think just might be the perfect introduction email.

I’ve deconstructed it below, while changing specific details, to amplify what makes this work and give an example for the next time you find yourself making an introduction.

John,

By way of this e-mail, I’d like to introduce you to (name of person.)

(Name) is an expert on how to build partnerships with the media. Currently he leads (name of relevant org) and recently came out with his latest book; (Name of book.) In addition, he played key role in helping me start (Name of company) my coaching company for financial advisors. He’s very interested in leveraging his talents to build up a higher profile as well as an information marketing solution.

For more background (his website)

So, in one paragraph he:

  • Explained who the person was
  • His expertise and credentials
  • How they knew each other
  • What the person was looking for

Then he added the same about me and consequently enabled us to establish very quickly who each other was, why we might have a conversation and, at least initially, what we might talk about.

This approach is such a useful way to make an introduction and adds value to both parties. There’s even a call to action at the close!

Take the time to make thoughtful introductions and you will increase the value you bring to every interaction.

Just so you have the complete email, here’s the rest. Oh, and we are meeting this week.

Name

By way of this e-mail, I’d like to introduce you to John Jantsch.

John is in one of my mastermind groups and is a very successful marketing entrepreneur.He is most known for his Duct Tape Marketing brand providing insights and coaching to small and midsize businesses. He’s very interested in learning how he might be able to leverage his content to generate joint promotions with media properties in the small to midsize business market. He also has a successful blog and podcast where he could help increase the awareness of your new book.

For more background http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/about

I would recommend that the two of you schedule a phone appointment to meet and see if there are any synergies.

All the best,

John

Filed Under: Referral Marketing Tagged With:
Mar 22 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

The 3 Keys to Success

Enjoy this guest post from Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Joe Costantino.

large__2035597695

photo credit: seeveeaar via photopin cc

What separates the good from the great in any endeavor?

What allows one athlete to compete at a consistently high level for many years, while another, who may appear on the surface to possess great talent isn’t able to achieve even close to the same level of success?

Why do some kids go on to achieve very high levels of success in academics, sports and careers, while others never quite get there?

Why are some coaches, consultants and professional service providers able to operate their businesses at a very high level, making a very good living and living the life they imagined when they went into their own businesses, while others languish, never quite ‘figuring it out’?

I don’t think that success in any endeavor can be explained ONLY by intelligence, hard work, luck or ‘good’ genes. Obviously some or all of these factors do help, but there is something else that separates the top 5% of the people from the rest.

I have coached youth athletics for many years, trained hundreds of coaches, consultants, sales professionals and professional service providers in how to grow and improve their businesses and I have identified what I believe are the three most common (or maybe not so common) traits in the most successful:

  1. Commitment
  2. Action
  3. Persistence

But, I truly believe that the best of the best not only use this approach, but they understand that implementing all three of these behaviors together and in this exact sequence is required to bring them success. Let me repeat this thought. The most successful people I have ever met, whether it is a kid trying to learn how to play the game of baseball, a mother trying to raise fully functional children or a business owner trying to operate a successful business, all these folks seem to understand, whether it is consciously or unconsciously, that in order to achieve greatness, they need to follow the sequence of COMMITMENT, ACTION and PERSISTENCE in order to achieve remarkable results.

Once you understand these are the three things that will lead you to success, then you need to develop a laser-beam focus to outlining what your vision is and what you are trying to achieve (commitment); then developing the proper success factors to get you there (action) and finally developing the ‘fire in the belly’ attitude to keep at it until success is realized. (persistence)

In my next post, I will go into greater detail defining commitment, action and persistence and more importantly the ‘how’ to develop the proper mindset and habits to achieving greater success.

Remember, you have the power to change your business and your life with commitment, action and persistence.

Think differently to achieve amazing results.

28.thumbnailJoe Costantino is the founder of Business Marketing Success, Inc. and is President and Managing Partner of Duct Tape Marketing Coaching, LLC. Joe Costantino help coaches, consultants, and independent business professionals turn their professional expertise into money, magnificence and meaning. He does this by packaging their expertise, properly positioning them in the marketplace and utilizing the best tools to attract more qualified leads and turning those leads into paying clients.

Filed Under: Coaching and Consulting, Referral Marketing, Small Business, Success Tagged With:
Mar 21 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

How to Sell More by Focusing On Less

Today’s guest post is from Sean D’Souza. – Enjoy!

rarefind

Image Credit: Sean D’Souza

I remember flying to Pittsburgh in the year 2004.

It was a 7am presentation in front of about 40 people who I didn’t know. And who didn’t know me, either. And by the time the presentation was done at 7:45am, I asked the crowd a simple question.

“How many of you would like to buy this product?”

And over 50% of the hands in the room went up. Which, by the way, wasn’t the most interesting part. The most interesting part was that I hadn’t told them much about the product, or the price, or the delivery. So why were so many of those in the room willing to buy the product?

The answer lies in a discussion I had early in my career with an amazing salesman

I was new to sales and marketing back in the early 2000s. And I ran into this multi-millionaire called Brian Tracy. And his advice on sales was the best definition of sales I’ve ever heard. He said: Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another.

Oh darn, so that’s what was happening — enthusiasm was being transferred!

Indeed, I’d made a good presentation. Yes, the content was very interesting and useful. But it’s the enthusiasm that caused people to brush aside the rest of the details and make a decision to buy the product.

But it’s one thing to say “be enthusiastic” and quite another to do it. So how do you create enthusiasm?

The answer lies in a concept called “isolation”. It doesn’t matter if you are selling offline or online, you can’t be enthusiastic if you’re bogged down with seven hundred features and benefits. So instead you isolate just one. Just like Steve Jobs did when he presented the MacBook Air. Instead of simply rattling off every feature, the drama was centered on just one thing: the fact that the MacBook Air was so thin, it could fit in an envelope.

The BBC presenter, David Attenborough, creates this same moment of enthusiasm

There he is, standing in the middle of the forest, surrounded by thousands of trees,  bushes, insects chattering endlessly and what does he do? He drops to his knees and he shows you a flower. And then his eyes light up as he goes into detail about that flower, while ignoring everything else around him. What he’s doing is zapping that enthusiasm right into you, but he does so by creating isolation first—and then getting his message across.

Enthusiasm doesn’t mean you have to be loud or boisterous

The best sales people aren’t those who get in your face. Enthusiasm means you feel very strongly about that one feature of the product. So much so, that you’re willing to drive home that point in detail. And if you’re exciting enough, the audience feels this surge of excitement. Yes, your product has a ton of features, but they want that one feature, and they’re willing to raise their hands for it.

This method of sales can be done both online and offline

Offline, you drive home the point in person by demonstrating or showing a particular feature. Similarly, online you pick that one feature and drive it home using more pictures, more explanations, thus isolating the importance.

Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another.

To feel that enthusiasm you need to isolate one feature of the product that’s extremely exciting to you.  You then transfer this enthusiasm to your audience.  And then, like the Pittsburgh audience, watch as their eyes light up and their hands go up.

Yup, just like that.

sean_croppedSean D’Souza is the author of  The Brain Audit—Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t.  To read more articles by Sean, and get a very useful free report on “Why Do Most Headlines Fail?”  go to http://www.psychotactics.com/

Filed Under: Referral Marketing, Sales, Selling Tagged With: ,
Mar 18 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

Why You Need a People Bucket List

In all likelihood you’re familiar with the term “bucket list” made extremely popular from the 2007 Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson film by the same name.

people bucket list

photo credit: peasap via photopin cc

I hear this concept, making a list of all the things you want to do before you die, tossed around in entrepreneurial circles frequently and it occurred to me that there’s another kind of bucket list that actually might be more important in business.

To me, every entrepreneur should first and foremost get to work on their “people bucket list.” This is simply a list of all the people they want to meet before they retire. (Whatever retirement looks like.)

I think there are some incredibly powerful and practical reasons for creating and keeping such a list. Sure, you can have famous people on the list that you would love to meet in person, but perhaps more importantly this list could consist of mentors, influencers and people with skills and experience that you need to acquire in order to succeed.

Targeting and building relationships with people that have accomplished some or all of your vision for business is a smart strategy for growth. Not simply so you can check names off your list, but so you can gain from knowing what they know, following their path and ultimately tapping them as a resource in some manner at some time.

Obviously I’m not talking about stalking, I’m talking about giving to build bridges.

Early in my business I read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and determined I would meet him and learn from him. I licensed his E-Myth Program and worked with him on numerous occasions. He greatly influenced the direction of my work and even contributed a lovely foreword to my first book Duct Tape Marketing.

If I could go back in time I would add Peter Drucker to my list, but in the last few years I’ve met and worked with Tom Peters, Kevin Kelly, Scott Cook, Anne Lamott, Martha Beck, Doc Searls, Andrew Mason, Phil Libin, Jason Fried, John Mackey, Harvey Mackay, Dan Sullivan, Arianna Huffington, Ray Kurzwell and Seth Godin – all people high on my list for various reasons.

Currently, I would love an introduction to Herb Kelleher if anyone can make that happen!

My people bucket list is always evolving and there will always be names both famous and obscure, but I believe that stretching to build relationships with members of this list is a key to my own business and personal growth.

Want to know a powerful way to connect with people on your list? Start and build a podcast. That’s right, my podcast, or more specifically, my offer to interview and promote people on my list has opened doors and launched relationships like no other approach.

Business leaders and authors have a very hard time turning down interview requests, particularly in and around the launch of a new book or project. Now, keep in mind that no matter whom you put on your list you should start first by trying to determine how you might add value to their world and then move on to why you want to meet them.

So, who’s on your people bucket list?

Filed Under: Referral Marketing, Vision Tagged With:
Mar 14 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

How to Get Better Lead Generation Results

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Gregg Schwartz. – Enjoy!

Lead PipelineAnd old saying in investing is “diversify, diversify, diversify” – you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket by investing all of your money in one company’s stock. Instead, smart investors spread their investments around to a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, cash and other assets. In the same way, a smart lead generation strategy requires a balanced approach.

Your sales organization needs to think about how you can “diversify” your lead generation efforts between inbound and outbound sales leads. Sales leads often perform differently and cost more (or less) depending on how you acquire them. Sales leads from some sources are higher quality or better qualified than others. The cheapest sales leads to acquire are not always the best, and sometimes the main cost of acquiring a sales lead is the effort it takes to create that initial relationship and attract interest from the prospect.

Here are a few points of difference to consider between inbound and outbound sales lead generation as you build your diversified “portfolio” of sales leads:

Inbound lead generation: The sales leads come to you.

With inbound lead generation, your company creates a platform of marketing activity that helps draw people in. Basically, sales leads come to you – this requires your company to invest in building the online infrastructure and human capital that make people able to find you (and make them interested to talk with you).

A few types of inbound lead generation include content marketing (blogs, articles, social media), SEO (search engine optimization – designing and writing your website in a way that is optimally suited to attract people who are already looking for what you offer), and PPC (pay-per-click ads such as Google ads, where you can put a brief message in front of people who are searching for your solution, and invite them to click through to your company website).

Inbound lead generation is great for drawing people in. Instead of attending conferences and networking events, cold calling, or buying e-mail lists, the sales leads come to you. But with inbound lead generation, you need to put in a lot of upfront work and time investment in optimizing your website, writing content regularly and staying active on social media. It’s a lot of work, but you can get a lot of sales leads.

The only drawback of sales leads from inbound lead generation is that you don’t always know what level of sales lead quality you are going to get. Most sales leads from inbound marketing are going to be unqualified – the prospects might have some basic level of understanding about your business, but beyond that, there is no guarantee they are qualified.  They can be the wrong size business, wrong geography, and in many cases, just not the right fit. The quality of inbound sales leads can vary from one week to another. Some inbound sales leads are your ideal target market, and others are not. But you might end up with a lot of great sales leads that you would not have found from traditional outbound approaches.

Another advantage is that over time, with inbound lead generation your organization is creating a lasting footprint of published content and online outreach that can potentially continue generating sales leads into the future. You never know when a valuable sales lead might find your website based on a blog article or forum comment that you published a year ago.

Outbound lead generation: Go find your ideal target market.

While inbound lead generation can help drum up a larger pool of sales leads, most B2B sales organizations are still finding big opportunities from “traditional” outbound lead generation tactics like cold calling, appointment setting and e-mail.

Outbound lead generation is pretty straightforward – you choose your ideal target customers, and go after them. You have to spend time researching prospects and investing time in building relationships, but the advantage is that these tactics enable you to target specific companies that are in your organization’s sweet spot – companies that are the right size, the right revenues and that are more likely to be in the market for what you offer.

Instead of investing in online activities and hoping that good sales leads show up at your front door, outbound lead generation enables your sales team to proactively go after the types of B2B sales leads that are the best fit for what you sell.

So which type of lead generation is “best,” inbound or outbound? The truth is, if your organization wants to build a robust sales pipeline, you need both.

Inbound and outbound lead generation tactics help support each other. For example, your outbound prospecting calls will be more effective if your company has a well-designed website and up-to-date blog that shares your company’s expertise with customers. Your sales team can use the content marketing materials as part of its conversations with prospects.

Having a diverse portfolio of sales leads from both inbound and outbound lead generation efforts is the best way to keep your sales team busy closing deals.

GreggProfilePicGregg Schwartz is the Director of Sales at Strategic Sales & Marketing, one of the industry founding lead generation companies.  Gregg has developed and implemented winning lead generation strategies for hundreds of businesses.

Filed Under: Referral Marketing, Selling Tagged With:
Mar 14 2013
posted by
Leave a Comment

The 7 Pearls of Selling Wisdom

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Jeff Kline – Enjoy!

HonestyThe concept of “selling” is different these days.  And that’s because customers are different.

Today’s customers are more educated and informed than ever. Much of this is a result of the Internet, which expedites word of mouth and provides consumers with easy access to thousands of product reviews. For this reason, old school “Slippery Sam” sales techniques are no longer effective. Customers today see right through gimmicky sales tactics, preferring instead to buy from individuals and companies they trust.

Emerging ideas about selling – what I like to call “Selling Wisdom” – focus on building trusting customer relationships. Selling Wisdom abandons coercion and embraces integrity. It’s about understanding your customers’ needs, tailoring high-quality solutions, and providing honest, educational information about your product.

Most importantly, Selling Wisdom dictates that you always treat your customers with the highest level of respect.

THE 7 PEARLS OF “SELLING WISDOM”

1) Infuse sales into your company’s DNA.
Don’t think of Sales as a single department or tactic. Instead, establish a totally sales-driven organization in which everyone sells. Every individual in your company should be expected to participate in selling – whether it’s the way the receptionist answers the phone or the message the marketing team communicates in a brochure.

Oprah2) Get to know your customers, Oprah style.
Conduct your initial meetings with customers with the same level of interest Oprah uses when she interviews her guests. Listen twice as much as you speak, and wait two seconds before responding to a comment – this will allow your customers to finish their thoughts.
Use a predefined qualification form to determine your customers’ needs.  And make sure you understand your customer’s decision-making process. Don’t be reluctant to ask the hard questions:
• Could you explain how your decision making process will unfold?
• When do you plan to make your final decision?
• Do you have an established budget?

3) Educate your customers.
Customers are most likely to trust the company that provides them with educational content about their products and services. Your company’s blog, ebooks, whitepapers, product demonstration videos and free trials are all effective tools for informing your customers and drawing them closer to a sale.

If you’re interested in learning more, I write frequently about content and its role in sales on my blog.

4) Apply the “De Niro effect” to presentations.
When Robert De Niro is playing a role in a film, the way he delivers his lines is so authentic and natural that it’s impossible to detect that he is following a script.
At Accrinet, we always use the same scripted presentation, but we apply what we call the “De Niro effect.” This means we encourage our sales people to inject their own passion and personality into to their delivery. The presentation never feels scripted, allowing us to use the same presentation over and over again.

5) Create a sense of urgency.
Today’s customers are experts in comparison-shopping and might spend weeks looking for a better deal. For that reason, it’s important to instill a legitimate sense of urgency on a proposed transaction. For example, you might say:
• “We have limited availability of the product that you are interested in and I want to make sure that it is available when you are ready.”
• “In order to complete your project by your proposed date, we would need to receive the proposal within the next five business days.”
Remember to be truthful.

6) Give to Get
Never make a concession without asking for a fair trade in return. If a customer asks for an early delivery, let them know it can be done only if they have the approved paperwork to you by the end of the week.

7) Don’t force the close.
Closing the sale should be as natural as the setting of the sun. There is no need for clever closing tactics or manipulative antics. If you’ve won your customer’s trust, you’ve earned the sale.

Selling Wisdom = Success
What makes these pearls of Selling Wisdom effective is that, no matter what, you are always treating your customers with the highest level of respect. Gain a full understanding of their needs, be honest about your products, and make fair negotiations. Treat your customers like kings.

And remember this: You are not doing your customers a favor; they are doing you a favor by allowing you to serve them.

Jeff KlineJeff Kline started his sales career with the Fortune 100 Company Burroughs Corporation, where he was quickly promoted to branch and regional sales manager. A serial entrepreneur, Jeff founded his first company Adcom Corporation in 1986, overseeing the sales of office technology for ten years. Jeff has since owned three other companies, all in the technology field. His most recent endeavors are Accrisoft and Accrinet Corporations. Jeff writes weekly about internet marketing at blog.accrinet.com.  @Jeff_A_Kline

Filed Under: Referral Marketing, Selling, Small Business Tagged With: