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.

marketing agencies in pune

Mapping The Buyer’s Journey

How far is today’s B2B buyer through the decision-making process before engaging a supplier? It’s a bit like asking, “How high is up?” The actual number probably doesn’t matter. What’s important is that today’s self-educated B2B buyer—or more aptly, buyers—increasingly turn to sources other than salespeople for product information.

But if you insist on numbers, a recent survey by the Consumer Executive Board (CEB) of 1,900 corporate decision makers found that buyers are, at a minimum, 57 percent of the way through the buying process before they contact a potential supplier. Some respondents reported being as much as 70 percent complete with the decision-making process before reaching out to a vendor.

“That doesn’t leave much time for changing customers’ opinions,” says Peter Pickus, Executive Adviser at CEB. Stated another way, as much as two-thirds of the process that B2B sales teams traditionally used to close deals may be obsolete. “The fundamental implications are clear: marketers must figure out how to influence potential customers where and when they are conducting pre-purchase research.”

“The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to,” add CEB executives Brent Adamson, Mathew Dixon and Nicholas Toman in an article published in Harvard Business Review entitled “The End of Solution Sales.”

The trio contends that top performers in today’s B2B selling environment don’t just sell more effectively, they sell differently. “Boosting the performance of average salespeople isn’t a matter of improving how they currently sell; it involves altogether changing how they sell. To accomplish this, organizations need to fundamentally rethink the training and support provided to their reps,” they state.

The digital revolution
Although the CEB survey of B2B buyers was only conducted last year, the fact that buyers are completing a lot more prepurchase research online before reaching out to a supplier is not news to most. What’s startling is that few suppliers have taken direct and focused action on how to change their go-to-market models to address this shift, says Jason Robinson, Senior Vice President for Sales and Marketing of MarketBridge, a technology enabled services firm.

Supply siders’ inaction has not been for lack of a fallout from the shift to more educated buyers, Robinson says. Sales productivity is suffering, with an estimated 67 percent of sales reps not meeting their quotas, Over the past several years, B2B customers have:

• Been increasingly difficult to reach, leading to sales productivity metrics dropping off a cliff
• Complained that sales reps are woefully underprepared and seemingly not attuned to the fact that today’s customer is privy to endless amounts of information and perspective prior to ever engaging with sales
• Stopped inviting sales reps back to take the process forward, which means the money and effort invested in reaching those customers has been wasted

With digital and online channels playing a significant role in the purchasing decisions of today’s B2B buyer, conventional wisdom holds that organizations need to continue to invest in their digital strategies, including search engine performance, digital advertising, social media, websites, communities and blogs. The MarketBridge report, “The Ultimate Guide to the New Buyer’s Journey,” emphasizes that the critical part of addressing the new buyer’s journey is not merely creating digital tactics, but focusing on how your organization engages prospects once they engage digitally.

“Brands are spending too much time and effort on widespread marketing but are not engaging customers on a direct level,” the report states. “Once the buyer is actually ready to engage with a human inside a given brand, they will do so quite often through a digital channel and will expect a real-time response. When the appropriate digital engagement doesn’t take place around a key consumer segment, revenue loss is a very real scenario.”

The paradox of buying teams

Not only has the explosion of communication platforms and interaction channels ratcheted up the expectations of B2B purchasers, there are more influencers and decision makers within each prospect company involved in the purchasing process. “Reaching consensus and closing deals has become an increasingly painful and protracted process for customers and suppliers alike,” CEB reports.

Whereas an IT supplier might have once sold directly to a CIO and his or her team, today that same sale may also need buy-in from the chief marketing officer, the chief operating officer, the chief financial officer, legal counsel, procurement executives and others. CEB found that, on average, 5.4 people now have to formally sign off on every purchase.

While this complicates the sales process, the good news, says Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions, Inc., is that there are a number of people that still need to be sold to. For all of the hype about buyers being 50 percent or more through the buying decision, there is still a lot of selling left to be done, Riesterer says.

“A buyer may feel it is 60 percent of the way done, but if there are 5.4 decision makers, one person may be 60 percent done, but the salesperson may have to bring the other 4.4 people from 0 percent to 100 percent. In actuality, the math to get them all to 100-percent ready [to buy] means the purchase decision is really only 10 percent of the way done when the salesperson is called in,” Riesterer says.

He argues that if companies continue to focus so intently on the notion that buyers are so far down the line in terms of a purchase decision, they may shift too much of their overall budget to front-end tactics such as social selling and automated marketing, and neglect to invest enough in sales training.

“When you think of marketing automation and what it’s focused on, and you think of content marketing and what it’s focused on, I would argue that most of that spend is to get one person to 57 percent completed with the buying decision. How much is spent on sales enablement? Are you confident that your spend and your time are allocated proportionally?” he asks.

Death of the salesman — not
Riesterer argues that a steadily declining lead-to-conversion rate (pick your number on that statistic, too) and studies that show six out of 10 prospects end up making no decision at all is further evidence that the so-called educated buyer either isn’t educated enough or the sales reps aren’t trained well enough to close the deal.

“Are people really looking at the entire picture of what your sales team still needs to accomplish once they’ve been given the name of one person who is 57 percent of the way done?” he asks. “Has anybody really thought about what still has to happen? It isn’t just finishing the last 43 percent. It involves these other 4.4 people—potentially some of them from zero— and getting them as far along as the person who raised his hand. It’s taking them all over the line together.”

It’s wrong to assume that a sales development team can just book an appointment and the buyer (or buyers) who come to a meeting will be fully educated about how they’re going to get value and what problems they’re going to solve.

“There is still a little black art in there,” says Ray Smith, CEO of Datahug, a predictive sales acceleration technology provider. “Yes, they are coming to you with higher expectations. But what they really want from you is not someone who is going to sell to them in a hardnosed, shipping boxes way. They’re looking for advice and they’re looking for references and case studies on how similar companies—maybe even competitors within their industry—have solved their problem.”

“The misconception around saying the customer is better educated is trying to derive the corollary that if they’re better educated, then the rest is easy. That’s not the case,” Smith says emphatically. “When you look at the data analysis on the back end, you see that good sales reps are good because they’re so good at the follow-ups and the engagement. They do all of the right things to prove that the art of selling is alive and well.”

Relevance of Mass Media to Society

The Fourth Estate

Mass media perform a vital and a crucial role in society. They are called the Fourth Estate, as they are one of the pillars of democracy along with the executive, legislature, and the other socioeconomic forces that bind a society together. In this context, it is important to note that they are both the watchdogs of public behavior of elected officials and custodians of popular goodwill as they seek to report on the goings-on in society.

Hence, mass media are especially relevant to society because without the media, we would never know what is happening in the world around us and be without the moral compass and ethical conscience needed to hold society together. The point here is that like all opinion makers, the mass media has both a duty and a responsibility towards society and this is the reason it is considered a vital part of modern democracies.

Recent Trends

Given the important role that mass media plays in society, recent trends that indicate that the mass media is reneging on its social responsibility and instead becoming hostage to special interests and vested agendas. The phenomenon of paid news, manipulated content, and bargaining with corporates in order to portray them in favorable light or outright demands for bribes in order to not air content are all pointers to the degeneration that has taken place within the context of the contemporary times. Further, the mass media themselves have become susceptible to corrupt practices and given the fact that they are the gatekeepers for democracy, these tendencies must be avoided. As the scandals over many prominent media houses in the UK and the US reveal, the mass media are no longer independent purveyors of truth but instead have become the tools of special interests.

Transition from Newspapers to Digital Media

According to many observers, the transition from print media to digital media (TV, Internet and Social Media) have made mass media more powerful as it gives them access to Billions of viewers and lack of geographical constraints as is the case with newspapers. Hence, they are now bestowed with superior powers over society. This raises the prospect of falling prey to manipulation and pushing agendas easier. However, it needs to be mentioned that this is precisely the reason they should not succumb to the temptations of taking the easy way out, as they now are responsible for events on a global scale as opposed to happenings on a local or regional level.

Final Thoughts

It is indeed the case that mass media are critically relevant to society because of the various reasons discussed above. Further, it is also the fact that the mass media are now in a position wherein they can make or mar the chances of celebrities, politicians, businesspersons, and sportspersons. Hence, the responsibility, which has been vested with them by society, has to be exercised judiciously and not carelessly or with a hidden agenda. In conclusion, the mass media have surely come a long way since the time they used to report on city and council events. Now, they have a global platform and global responsibilities, which means that they should have a conscience as well.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

It is counterintuitive but it works

As a person who believed that the velocity with which a lead converts to a deal is not considered enough, I was skeptical whether the book Slow Down, Sell Faster! by Kevin Davis would work for me. This skepticism did not last long. Once I understood that the title of the book recommends that the rhythm of selling should fit to how customers want to buy, I felt comfortable. I am of the belief that sales velocity should be measured by how fast milestones in the buyer’s journey are reached, not how fast sales activities are carried out. My comfort with the contents of the book continued to increase the further I read it.

In the first part of the book, Davis suggest an eight step circular buying process model providing guidance for sellers, what to do and whom to access within the customer organization to help the customer navigate through his/her journey of buying. I appreciate that he does not promote this model as a one-size-fits-all approach to success. To the contrary, he makes it perfectly clear that his model is focused on “buy-learning” where potential customers do not yet have all the necessary information to make a buying decision, compared to “buy-knowing” where buyers can make a decision quickly because they already know as much as they need to make a decision.

To make the model actionable for sellers, Davis assigns a metaphor of real professionals to each of the eight phases. These metaphors describe the ideal behavior of a sales person to help the buyer move through the respective phase. Here is an illustration of the concept: The first phase in the buying process is labeled “Change.” The sales role best suited to facilitate the buying process at this stage is “Student,” someone who is learning about changes affecting a potential customer. In the following “Discontent” phase, the appropriate sales role is that of a “Doctor,” a person who diagnoses the cause of the discontent, and so on.

-Davis’s model includes two phases after the customer’s buying decision, reflecting his belief that the purpose of selling is not closing a deal but opening a relationship

These sales roles metaphors illustrate well what a successful seller needs to do in the different phases of the buying process. However there is a danger of confusion if your company’s job description uses some of these same labels in different ways.

The remaining chapters of the first part of the book deal with the major aspect that make a deal complex: the fact that there are several people involved in the buying decision, each having different roles. As Davis’s book is based on seminars he teaches, it is understandable that specific jargon is used to describe the various roles in the buying team. I particularly liked the concept of the power broker. I am less sure about the role of the ROI authority, the person who can make funds available and is the ultimate decider. I am sure the role exists and is crucial, I am just not so sure about the label.

The buying team roles are then mapped to where and how they are most likely involved in the eight step buying process model, thus giving the sales person guidance when best to speak to whom. Combining the roles of the buying team and the buying process makes it very clear why “calling high” is not as sure a recipe for success as many sales experts want to make us believe.

The second part of the book then describes the sales roles of “Student,” “Doctor,” etc., in detail. With real-life examples the model is brought to life. In those examples, there are some details where old salesmanship shines through. But this does not in any way diminish the value of the concepts which are leading edge thinking of how to approach selling in the 21^st century.

With the third part of the book, Davis demonstrates his expertise on how a sales team can be introduced to the new thinking he is suggesting. Sales managers play a crucial role in such initiatives. The book also covers the aspect how managers can use the eight sales roles as a very effective basis for coaching their people and thus make sure that the concepts are applied to greater sales success.

Davis is obviously someone who carried a bag in the field. However, unlike many others, he is able to conceptualize his experiences to make them comprehensible to others. The book is definitely not of the category “this is what I did and I see no reason why you should not be successful doing the same.” Instead it provides a very good framework for sales organizations wanting to remain successful in this new era, where customers have much more power than salespeople have been used to.