The Importance of Sticking to Your Area of Expertise

Quite a few years ago I worked in the Retail Division of Mobil Oil in Brisbane. I travelled around the state; stayed in luxury hotels; quizzed site owners about their operations; wielded power in allocating funds and appointing franchisees.

The Retail Division was seen as the flashy cousin to the dull and boring refinery operations. Everyone in Retail worked hard (more like we were driven hard!) and occasionally also got some play time as a group.

It was the '90's and the idea of combining petrol sales with convenience stores was still a novel idea in Australia. I was also heavily involved in the fast food sites located on major highways - another new concept.

Time moves on...

Over a few years the Retail Division was wound down, and slowly but surely became inactive.

Why?

Because it wasn't a good fit with the overall operation of Mobil. Essentially Mobil couldn't compete in the retail market place against the faster moving compettors of BP and Shell. It is a high investment, high risk industry.

And today it is reported that 7-Eleven buys Mobil petrol stations.

Behind the scenes it can be assumed that Mobil has struggled for many years to 'keep up with the Jones'. It is obvious that BP and Shell secured lucrative retail sites on major roads, and invested heavily in upgrading their sites.

Mobil stood still because they weren't committed to retail operations. They couldn't see a return.

The lesson here is that you need to define your market place, and your area of expertise, and make sure you stick to it. Mobil wandered into retail operations for decades without making a success of it.

Don't make the same mistake.

Does lateness of your sales people cost you money?

This interesting article about options for handling staff who continually arrive ate for work on Sydney Morning Herald small business pages made me think about how do you monitor and manage your sales team when they are late.

I'm not just talking about being late on arrival at work in the morning. For many people in a sales role they don't have to check in at their desk at the same time every day like other people in the office might.

Latness can easily go unnoticed.

Lateness for sales people can be:

* Late for meetings
* Late with submitting reports
* Late for returning phone calls
* Late for responding to client requests
* Late with submitting expenses
* Late with providing input or ideas when requested
* As well as being late to start in the morning (but this may go unnoticed if they are in the field)

The SMH article talked about lateness as a sign of lack of commitment and possible attitudinal or behavoural problems. Or maybe even problems in their personal life.

This raises the importance of staying tuned-in to your sales team and understanding their individual motivations. When signs of lateness (or lack of commitment) appear you can start to ask... Why?

Twitter Success: Presentation + Adapting to the market

Watch this video by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and pay attention to what he describes over a few minutes starting at the 10:55 mark. He explains how the common features of Twitter actually came from users - not the company.



Message: Pay attention to what your customers are doing with your product/service.

Also, his presentation style shows how you can be quite reserved, yet still engaging as long as your audience is connecting with you. (Know your audience). Only a handful of PowerPoint slides used, mainly to show things he cannot put into words.

However his reserved presentation style may seem slow (possibly painful) to some people, as witnessed by comments on the video page.

He starts off a bit nervous (note a slight hesitation and few umms) but then settles in for a relaxed 'conversation' with the audience.

Download Biz Development ebook for Professional Services

Nearly a year ago I released my e-book for technical sales people called The Assassin Analogy. Since then I have received many positive comments and more importantly... continue to see people make immediate improvements to their sales results from using the practical concepts explained in the e-book.

Now I have updated and written a version especially for professional services, consultants, advisors, and coaches - in fact it is suitable for anyone who is an independent adviser.

Download The Assassin Analogy for Professional Services

Of course the e-book is free. Why? It's my gift to those of you who are serious about making long-lasting improvements and who want to build your confidence in managing sales conversations.

Let me know what you think of it!

Remember:
You can enjoy selling when you have the skills for success.

Creating Effective Local Promotions (part 1 of 2)

This is Part 1 of an article I wrote for 'The Science of Beauty', a national magazine for the salon industry. However the message applies to all businesses that promote locally.
= = = =

Creating Effective Local Promotions

The first thing you need to consider when planning a promotion in your local area is… Who is in your local area?

You need to have a clear image of whom you will be speaking to through your promotion. What type of person do you expect to attract?

Most salons service a distinct local area – usually within about a 5km to 7km radius from the salon. Have you actually mapped where your market is? The best way to do this is to review your client data and create a list of all clients by postcode. Then you can sort the postcodes (using a spreadsheet) and determine the actual geographic spread of clients.

Understand Who You Are Talking To

You might be surprised at the results. I have seen salons that have 80% of clients within a 5km radius. This has a huge impact on which marketing communication tactics you should use. There is no point promoting to people who live 10 or 15km away if they aren’t going to travel to your salon.

Once you know the geographic coverage of your local market area consider the demographic and socio-economic profile of the people living there.

Demographics means the age, lifestyle, family size etc of the local residents.

Socio-economic means the financial status of residents including what type of jobs they do and average household income.

If you’re new to your market area, or simply not sure about the different areas, why not hop in the car and take a drive around and see for yourself. You can also access census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics if you want even more detail (visit www.abs.gov.au).

Part of your assessment of the local area should also include a competitor analysis. Who are your competitors? How do they compare to you for presentation of the business, services offered, pricing etc? Know your enemy!

One of the main reasons you need to have an understanding of the demographics and socio-economic factors is that it can help you decide what you should be promoting - which services and products, and at which price-point.

What to Offer?

I’ve written before about not offering a discount. Why is it bad? Because discounts undermine the perceived value in your services and products. It also makes it harder to get new clients to re-book at full price.

The best thing to do is to think about the purpose of the promotion. Then you can decide what to offer.

* Is it to attract more first-time clients?
* Is it to promote a specific service/product?
* Is it to fill a gap in your booking schedule?

For example if your aim is to attract more clients for any/all of your services, then you would want to promote the most popular services. Give people something they want.

Create a Package – Promote Value

Then think about how you can create a package combining a number of these services and/or products. Don’t simply reduce the price on your popular services. That’s business suicide!

The idea of offering a package is two-fold. Firstly, it creates a high perceived value. In reality you may have more margin to play with on services than on products. So by making smart decisions about your package you can still make your offer profitable for you.

Secondly, offering a package makes it difficult, if not impossible, for your prospects to easily compare you to competitors. This way you don’t need to offer the lowest prices to get attention.

Keep the focus of your offer on ‘value’, not on ‘price’.
And be sure to include a reason to respond NOW. Consider using a limited time offer, or a limited quality offer. Be specific about the time frame or number.

Stay tuned for Part 2...