Use Hands-on Marketing to Sell Like CrazyWritten by Alvin Apple
I have a neighbor who, last year, started her own house-cleaning service. Paula had been living on a shoe-string for years, and now that her children had all reached school age, she decided she needed to enter workforce. She was looking for something that would pay well, but would still leave her free to make her own schedule and to be there for her kids as needed. Her friends, me included, had always commented on what an immaculate house she kept, and her idea for a house-cleaning service sprang from these compliments.Getting her first clients was easy. There were a few busy families in our neighborhood who were eager, even desperate to use her services and expertise. The woman who shares a back fence with me who just started a high-paying, but really demanding job with an accounting firm, and husband and wife sales team around corner, among others, retained Paula's services almost immediately. Once Paula had settled into a routine with her new clients, she found she wanted more. Her clients were really happy with her work, but due to nature of business, most only wanted her to come in once a week, or even once every two weeks. Considering she spent about two hours per job, she found she was working about 10 hours per week. This was a good start, but not nearly enough. Paula came to me one afternoon seeming a little frustrated. "I know you give business advice to people with small businesses," she said, "but how about people with tiny businesses? If this business is going to fly, I really need to get word out, but I don't have more than a few dollars to spare." We sat and talked about it for a few minutes. I asked her if she was willing to give up a few hours of leisure time, say a few Saturday afternoons, and if she could possibly get her kids to help out. She said yes, and I told her that that was all she needed, that and a few dollars to print up flyers and maybe make a sign or two, oh, and to buy ingredients for a few batches of cookies. She asked what I was getting at, and I gave her these hands-on, almost-free marketing tips.
| | Ready, Aim, Fire...Oops...Where's The Target?Written by Patty Baldwin
Everywhere you go on Internet you find words, "target market." What do they mean? What does it have to do with you? Well it has everything to do with your success in sales. Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago an online entrepreneur asked me to review a direct sales presentation for him. Let's call him "Joe". His product and service is excellent. Top quality and performance, excellent customer service and support. The product will produce desired results for any business advertising online. In this particular case, Joe's potential customer is in furniture manufacturing business. The company owns a small chain of outlet stores and advertises on Internet. Basically, an excellent candidate for Joe's offer. Well, Joe sent me his package. In offline world, it would have required UPS to deliver it with a hand truck! Now, that is an overstatement, but it consisted of a three-page cover letter, with four separate attachments and a CD presentation that he was going to mail as a follow-up. Here's my response to Joe: "What a tremendous amount of work you have put into this presentation. Having been on receiving end of proposals such as this, I must tell you that it would be recipient of "delete" key. Why? Too much to wade through. Too much for me to absorb. Too much for me to do. Nothing to compel me to read on. Having said that, let's pretend for a moment that I am Mr. Jones. 1. Where are needs development questions? 2. What tells me that you have done your homework and know about my industry? 3. What are my problems and how will you solve them? 4. How much does average household spend on furnishings annually? (In US it's about $1,000) 5. How are you going to help me capture a share of those dollars? 6. How has economy affected my business? 7. What qualities separate my business from my competition? 8. How extensive and how important are brand names to my customers? 9. What are my specialty areas? 10. What market do I target and why? 11. Why do my customers keep coming back to my stores? 12. What are some of hot buttons or copy points that you might use to target Mr. Jones? 13. What is his business terminology?
|
