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 team in pune

Selling Orientation

Definition: Selling Orientation

It is an organization operating model in which the organization focuses on the needs required for selling in the market that is, an organization whose operating structure is based on the selling efficiency rather than customer needs and product orientation.

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Sales oriented companies primarily use two types of promotion to communicate their message. They use advertising to make customer aware of their product and along with it they use personal selling to make customer take action and buy their product.

A sales orientation strategy focuses on selling and promotions of the product with the viewpoint of selling as much as possible of existing. This type of orientation works when customers are not expecting anything different in the product from the company, when demand of a particular product is very high or when company has large stock of inventory that they want to sell immediately.

Companies that use sales orientation approach put a higher premium on short term selling than on long term relations with their consumer base. They are so involved in selling that they miss the opportunity to improve their product or serve their customer in a better manner.

E.g. Pepsi & Coca Cola

These companies have been offering same products for a long period of time. Their strategy is to promote heavily using celebrity and be in the eyes of the customers to sell as much as possible. This strategy is sales oriented rather than customer oriented.

Brand Loyalty

Brand Loyalty is a scenario where the consumer fears purchasing and consuming product from another brand which he does not trust. It is measured through methods like word of mouth publicity, repetitive buying, price sensitivity, commitment, brand trust, customer satisfaction, etc. Brand loyalty is the extent to which a consumer constantly buys the same brand within a product category. The consumers remain loyal to a specific brand as long as it is available. They do not buy from other suppliers within the product category. Brand loyalty exists when the consumer feels that the brand consists of right product characteristics and quality at right price. Even if the other brands are available at cheaper price or superior quality, the brand loyal consumer will stick to his brand.

Brand loyal consumers are the foundation of an organization. Greater loyalty levels lead to less marketing expenditure because the brand loyal customers promote the brand positively. Also, it acts as a means of launching and introducing more products that are targeted at same customers at less expenditure. It also restrains new competitors in the market. Brand loyalty is a key component of brand equity.

Brand loyalty can be developed through various measures such as quick service, ensuring quality products, continuous improvement, wide distribution network, etc. When consumers are brand loyal they love you for being you, and they will minutely consider any other alternative brand as a replacement. Examples of brand loyalty can be seen in US where true Apple customers have the brand’s logo tattooed onto their bodies. Similarly in Finland, Nokia customers remained loyal to Nokia because they admired the design of the handsets or because of user- friendly menu system used by Nokia phones.

Brand loyalty can be defined as relative possibility of customer shifting to another brand in case there is a change in products features, price or quality. As brand loyalty increases, customers will respond less to competitive moves and actions. Brand loyal customers remain committed to the brand, are willing to pay higher price for that brand, and will promote their brand always. A company having brand loyal customers will have greater sales, less marketing and advertising costs, and best pricing. This is because the brand loyal customers are less reluctant to shift to other brands, respond less to price changes and self- promote the brand as they perceive that their brand have unique value which is not provided by other competitive brands.

Brand loyalty is always developed post purchase. To develop brand loyalty, an organization should know their niche market, target them, support their product, ensure easy access of their product, provide customer satisfaction, bring constant innovation in their product and offer schemes on their product so as to ensure that customers repeatedly purchase the product.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

Sales EQ-a book review

Sales EQ-a book review

Twenty six page corners turned over! Without checking that might be an all-time high, for my frequent readers you know that is how I judge the quality of the book I am reading—(how many page corners I turn over while reading any new book). Keeping it simple: if you want to “up your sales game”, buy this book today.

Jeb Blount’s latest book Sales EQ is a MUST READ book if you are in sales, especially if you have a desire to succeed at higher levels. The author explores how the UHP or Ultra High Performers live, execute the sales process and what makes them tick differently than the average salesperson. In reading this book I found Jeb’s maturity as a writer shows off as he brilliantly blending in stories, research and insights to make his points.

Right way in Chapter One: The Mysterious Brown Bag he captures the reader by telling a story that every salesperson can relate to and how the UHP can use the concept of “disruption” to improve the sales process and more importantly increase the buyer’s emotional connection to the sellers offering. This focus on EQ is the basis for altering a salesperson from being an average performer to one of high achievement. The author moves quickly from chapter to chapter adding to his case but taking the reader on a fascinating journey towards both understanding his concepts and providing a pathway to practicing his recommendations.

In Chapter Five he begins to set the basis to ensure the reader understands the power of EQ by explaining the Four Levels of Sales Intelligence:

Innate Intelligence
Acquired Intelligence
Technological Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence

Understanding each of these topics and how they relate to the UHP salesperson’s activity will absolutely help the average salesperson that is focused on becoming the best they can be improve their capacity to win.

With 29 chapters it is impossible to cover all the golden nuggets Jeb has put into this powerful book, just a few winners: Shaping Win Probability, Empathy, Self-Awareness, and Sales Drive.

The balance of the book covers specific concepts used by Ultra High Performers:

A nine-frame qualification matrix
How to measure prospects against the ideal qualified prospect profile
Testing an engagement by tuning into emotions and micro-commitments
3-actions to move a stalled deal
Knowing the 5-stakeholders in every deal and how to deal with them

Ultra-High Performers also understand the power of knowing these three questions that Jeb explores in Sales EQ:

Do you like me?
Do you listen to me?
Do you make me feel important

I could go on and on but his Chapter on Discovery, (one of my most favorite sales topics) is outstanding and should be a topic of a major sales training program for any firm. In the book Jeb explores the questions to ask, not to ask and the power of beginning with easy, broad-open-ended, moving to probing, clarifying and moving the sales to the next step. As Jeb states:” UHP’s seem to know exactly what to ask at exactly the right moment while remaining engaged with the stakeholder. They never appear to be working very hard to come up with the next question or to keep the conversation moving and the stakeholder engaged.

In his final Chapter 29, AMACHE, Jeb closes this book with a powerful story that any salesperson that is or wants to be more successful can take away to improve their performance by learning to “listen”. And then he lays it on you, the real secret sauce of UHP’s; I will let you in on it: Gratitude! “Gratitude is the cornerstone of a winning mind-set and the spark that ignites self-motivation.

This absolutely must be a book that every salesperson should read, if you are a Sales Manager buy this book for everyone on your team and discuss two-three chapters a week in your weekly sales meeting, creating your own book club. You will see the acceleration and motivation build in your organization.

For more training check out Jeb Blount’s Online Sales Gravy University https://www.salesgravy.com/online-sales-training/

Ken Thoreson “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 19 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for organizations throughout the world.

Ken was recently ranked for the fourth year in a row by Top Sales World magazine as one of the Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers. His blog has been rated in the sales blogs in the world!

Ken has written 5 books, his latest book is: SLAMMED! for First Time Sales Managers, Ken provides Keynotes, consulting services, boot camps and products designed to improve business performance. Need more sales management resources? Check out his Sales Management Tool Kit or the Acumen Project and his new Ignite Your Sales Team online video training program for sales leaders.