Face to Face Marketing and Door to Door Marketing

Nothing beats the reality that one gets when you can interact with potential clients face to face physically moving from door to door within a community or household to household, face to face field marketing is also called personal selling or door to door marketing, customers are met directly in order to sell their products, using this method of field marketing we rely on our skills and persuasive abilities. During the period where we get to interact with the client face to face we get more chance to pass across edible information which would be useful to all our customers at that time and it’s also an opportunity for us to get feedback and to gauge your opinion about our business.

I did door-to-door sales for nine years, in hundreds of different cities and towns all across the india. Through long, hard, agonizing trial and error, I eventually developed enough skill that I could take any product into any area on any day and make sales.

In the beginning, I struggled. But when I was about to give up on myself and quit (like 99.9% of people that try door-to-door sales do within their first few days), experienced salesperson to give me a chance to get on track.

What I saw that day changed my life forever.

I watched as the experienced salesperson drove to an area where he had previous sales success, and listened as he explained to me why he parked his car in the exact spot he did to start his day and laid out his exact plan of attack.
Within the first 10 minutes, I learned a valuable lesson that not only made my door-to-door sales career much easier, but has also been the key to bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for my own companies, and those of thousands of others I’ve consulted to:

A current customer is the easiest person to make a sale to – many, many times easier (and less expensive) than trying to get new customers.

Most business owners operate a risky, day-to-day, transactional business, believing that the reason for getting a customer is to make a sale. That’s their biggest problem: making nothing more than “a” sale to a customer. After that initial transaction, they simply hope that their product or service or location is good enough that they will get a repeat visit from that customer.

On the other hand, sharp business owners (and door-to-door salespeople!) know that the point to making a sale is to get a customer. We have systems put together to maximize the value of that customer by making future offers to them, so that they buy more of the same product or service, or a different version, or even an entirely different product or service.

In other words, we recognize that a current customer is the easiest person to sell to, and a prospect is the hardest and most-expensive person to sell to. Therefore, we concentrate on maximizing the value of every new customer we get.

If you want to grow your business during these challenging economic times (and even during boom times), your time and effort should be invested in working to turn prospects into customers and retain them to market to in the future.
While your marketing is doing its job to get you prospects, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:

Inviting
Informative
Enjoyable

The biggest fear of most new customers is the dreaded “buyer’s remorse.” You want to minimize this as best you can, and if you’ve provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made, the risk will be lower.

However, returns can still occur. Here are the two most effective ways to deal with this:

Offer to refund money — no questions asked
Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product

These offers alone will also lessen the impact of buyer’s remorse, because the customer will trust you more just because you showed the confidence in your product or service to offer these options in the first place.

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:

Offer a special price as an opportunity for them to test the market.
Offer a lower price with a legitimate reason, such as clearing out inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s braces, or another tangible reason. (Added bonus: Customers love you for doing this, because it makes you so much more human to them.)
Offer a referral incentive.
Offer a smaller, less expensive entry-level product to build trust.
Offer package deals.
Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer.
Offer extra incentives, such as longer warranties or free bonuses, if they order by a certain date.
Offer financing options, if applicable.
Offer a bonus if they pay in full.
Offer special packaging or delivery.
Offer “name-your-own-price” incentives.
Offer comparative data or other comparison tools.
Offer to let them trade up or upgrade to something better if they want.
Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.

The options are really only limited by your imagination and marketing skill. You can use these or other ideas to discover what works the best for your specific business, with your specific products, services and target market.

Even if you ever find yourself doing door-to-door sales.

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Building Customer Satisfaction, Value and Retention

In this world of extreme competition, companies with a total focus on customer are going to be the winner. Companies must understand importance of customer satisfaction and then build process around it. A satisfied customer will be a loyal customer.

There are large offering of products and services available in the market then why the customer should choose a given companys product. According to various research and studies it has been confirmed that consumer will purchase products, which given them maximum perceived value. This value comes from calculating the cost associated with the emotional level decision like the brand image, corporate brand, sales personnel image and functional image. This value converts to total customer cost by including purchase cost, time-energy in evaluation of product and intuitive cost.

Consumer will take decisions after considering the total cost associated with purchase, perceived and otherwise. If after the purchase product performs as expected than customer is considered satisfied. A completely satisfied customer is likely to repurchase the product and even promote the product through a word of mouth. Companies are aiming for total customer satisfaction, which can be achieved after understanding customer expectation and then delivering as per the expectation.

Companies are able to achieve this state of total customer satisfaction by incorporating good business practices. These practices are constructed around stakeholders, business process, resource and organization. Companys stakeholders consist of employees, suppliers, distributors and customers. Earlier focus has always solely been on shareholders, but now stakeholders need to be satisfied for shareholders profit. Companies need to define boundaries of relation with stakeholders as to get maximum value for every participant. To ensure maximum value, companies need to develop business processes, which understand and fulfill customer expectations. This can be achieved by aligning cross functional teams across critical processes, to create one smooth flow. Companies need to understand its core competencies and develop them, thereby successfully managing its resources. Organizational structure, design and policies have to be suitable to facilitate the introduction of total customer satisfaction culture.

Companies through creating and delivering value can develop total customer satisfaction. Company itself can be considered as a value chain consisting of primary and secondary activities. Primary activities consist of inbound materials, operation, delivering finished products, sales/marketing and servicing clients. Secondary activities consist of functional departments like technology department, procurement department, human resource and finance department. This value created is delivered to customer through the distribution channel under the principle of supply chain management.

Customers in the digital age are much more conscious and aware of their need and wants, making them a difficult lot to please. Companies run marketing campaign highlighting points of similarity and difference with competitors products. The art is not at attracting the customer, but it is at retaining the customer and creating long term relation with them. Companies usually suffer from churning effect where customers do not make the repurchase. Companies need to work hard in identifying reasons behind this churning. Once reasons are identified separate them on the basis of manageable and non-manageable issues and then work hard at eliminating manageable issues.

Companies need to develop policies and measure at retaining customers along with attracting new customers. This art of retention can be achieved through customer relationship management (CRM). In CRM the task is to develop strong consumer based brand equity, which is done by converting first time buyer to repeat buyer to a client to a member to advocates and finally to partners. During these course companies can look forward to offering financial benefits in terms of discount for frequent buyers or also by association with a social cause.

Companies are in business to make the profit. Therefore, it has to identify profitable customers. Profitable customers provide a revenue stream more than the expense stream on retaining them. And this revenue stream should be higher for a company to have a competitive advantage. More and more companies are deploying total quality management approach across the organization to build and deliver customer satisfaction.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

3 Benefits of Face-to-Face Relationship Selling

In today’s virtual age, many salespeople rely heavily on Internet-based sales and marketing strategies to sell products and increase market share. E-selling tactics such as direct email, interactive websites, online advertising, and social media programs are used to supplement traditional marketing, such as TV, radio, print advertising and public relations. All of these can certainly be effective in raising brand awareness. However, face-to-face selling is often the most effective way to build customer loyalty and boost sales.

Face-to-face meetings with prospective clients can set the stage for increased results in terms of products sold and customer acquisition and retention.

Our teams sell supplemental insurance, which, as the name implies, supplements existing coverage. Benefits are paid directly to policyholders and can be used to help pay for the extra non-medical expenses often associated with serious illness or injury, such as routine household expenses, transportation to and from medical appointments, and child care, as well as co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance costs.

Because some insurance companies often provide customer leads to sales agents, initial prospect contact tends to be more personal – usually a phone call or a visit to the home — than an email blast. This offers a good foundation to engage in face-to-face relationship selling. Although one-to-one meetings can be more time-consuming, here are three key reasons why they pay off over the long run.

Face-to-face selling builds relationships and ultimately builds trust.
Let’s face it, we all prefer to work with vendors and business partners we trust and with whom we share something in common. A sales agent greeting prospects at their home, small business office or local coffee shop with a friendly smile and handshake sets a positive tone. Engaging in light conversation before getting down to business allows each person to “take each other’s measure” and may reveal something they have in common, be it a shared neighborhood or community, a civic or church organization, or rooting for a particular sports team.

The sales agent has the opportunity to ask relevant questions about the person’s situation and listen attentively to the responses, before explaining how the product or service can offer benefits. These kinds of interactions are much more difficult when contact is limited solely to the phone or virtual realm. After the first meeting, whether or not a sale was closed, your follow-up with customers can then include email and/or phone calls because a relationship has been established. Successful agents continue to build on that relationship, eventually establishing trust.

A high level of personal service leads to additional referrals, which can result in increased sales.
Once a prospect becomes a satisfied client, a good business practice is to ask him or her for referrals ‒ other individuals or small business owners they believe could also benefit from supplemental insurance. If customers feel you listen to their concerns, answer their questions honestly, provide high-quality products, and serve them with a high level of integrity and support, they are typically happy to share referrals from within their families, communities and other networks. This can be invaluable in growing a thriving client base and increasing the volume of business to ensure your success.

Face-to-face selling simplifies complexity, getting to “yes” faster.
Supplemental insurance covers a range of product options that can be tailored specifically to an individual’s or family’s needs. This makes the sales process more complex than, say, automobile insurance, which can be easily selected over the phone or through a website simply by providing brief information and a list of desired coverage limits.

Most leading supplemental insurance firms offer an array of policies, which may include different levels of protection in the event of disability, accident or illness, critical care, or specific conditions, such as cancer, heart attack or stroke. Because these choices can be confusing, a consultative, highly personalized selling approach is important. Coverage needs to be tailored to an individual’s specific circumstances, so a person’s age, family situation, and chronic conditions must be taken into consideration, along with the practical factor of budget.

No matter what is being sold, a dedicated and skilled sales agent can help each individual client better navigate through the available choices to arrive at an optimal solution that balances the needs with the budget. In short, they can apply their expertise, experience and powers of persuasion to get to “yes” sooner rather than later or not at all.

The need for more face-to-face interaction with prospects and clients in this virtual age has never been more important. Unless you first have established a relationship, e-communications and social media postings can be too easily deleted and forgotten. Bringing a face, voice and empathetic personality to the interaction makes it more human and real, and can lead to a mutually beneficial relationship over the long term.

Sales Surprises

In life, as in selling, there are surprises. Some of them good and some of them not so good. In life, there are many surprises that are really surprises. Stuff that you can’t control, don’t control and just kind of show up.

Winning the lottery – good surprise

Tax audit – bad surprise

Finding that you and your spouse are expecting – good surprise

Finding out that you can expect triplets – well maybe not such a great surprise

Getting promoted – good surprise

Getting promoted to Fargo North Dakota – bad surprise

In selling, surprises shouldn’t happen. Surprises are not good in selling. Surprises in selling mean that somewhere along the way the sales person failed to execute a critical part of their sales process.

According to Dave Kurlan in his book, Baseline Selling, there is a process that minimizes surprises, and when that process is executed, you improve, you eliminate surprises and you maximize your ability to succeed.

Eliminate sales surprises by doing the following:

Make sure you meet with the decision maker early.
Execute your steps for qualifying to a “T”. Ask the required tough questions to get to the real motivation of the prospect.
Uncover any and all issues regarding money. They are the investment of time, money and resources required to make problems go away.
Discuss and agree on the decision making process and make it stick.
Follow up your initial meetings with ‘as we agreed to letters’ so that you and the prospect are on the same page prior to presenting a solution.
Get an agreement for a decision prior to presenting your solution.
Review your entire process prior to presenting, then present and get a decision.

The process is simple but not easy to execute because executing each and every one of these steps requires ‘sales courage’. And that is another blog posting.

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