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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Demographic Segmentation

Definition: Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation is dividing the total people in the market based on the customer demographics. Demographic segmentation slices the market on parameters like age of the customer, gender, income, family life cycle, educational qualification, socio-economic status, religion etc. This helps in creating groups exhibiting a similar need and want, and can be targeted in a much more better way by companies.

Importance of demographics segmentation

This type of segmentation helps classify a group of people who have similar needs based on various parameters related to demographics. Demographic segmentation is usually the basic level of segmentation done as it is done on very basic parameters like age, income, religion, education etc. Since products and services are always made for a specific utility and for customers of a specific age group, people having similar purchasing power etc, it becomes simpler for companies to target these set of customers.

Demographic segmentation, is one of the four types of market segmentation, along with geographic segmentation, psychographic segmentation and behavioral segmentation.

Demographic segmentation variables

The various factors or parameters used for demographic segmentation are given below:

1. Age- Age of a person is one of most important, simple and quantifiable parameter for segmentation. Based on age segmentation, products can be targeted for different age groups for babies, children, adolescents, adults, middle-age group or senior citizens

2. Gender- Products can be made specifically for women or for men as well. This is where gender segmentation helps to differentiate between the two groups and helps companies to target customers better. This is known as gender segmentation

3. Income- People who buy a product have to pay a certain price. This depends upon the purchasing power of the customer and whether he / she can afford it. This classification is done by income segmentation, where groups are created by understanding the monthly or annual income of the population

4. Education- Certain products or services are meant for a specific set of customers with a certain educational qualification. This helps companies to target an exact set of customers having similar education backgrounds.

5. Religion- Religion segmentation is used to classify and identify people having similar religious beliefs, spiritual needs etc

6. Family life cycle– Depending on the stage in which a family is, its needs changes. This segmentation identifies bachelors, married couples, double income no kids (DINKs) etc

Other parameters like socio-economic background, occupation, ethnicity etc can also be considered for a more comprehensive demographic segmentation.

The above image shows the various variables and parameters used for demographic segmentation

Advantages of demographic segmentation

There are many benefits of dividing the market based on customer demographics. Some of the advantages are:

1. All the data regarding demographics is easily available from census data maintained by governments of a company

2. Demographic segmentation data like age, income, gender are quantifiable and can be adjusted as per the requirement of a company

3. For a company manufacturing convenience goods, the demographics of customers will more or less remain consistent and hence the company can be consistent with its offering, marketing communication and branding.

4. Demographic segmentation gives a huge population which can be targeted as it does not talk about extremely niche groups

5. Information on income, socio-economic status etc helps companies to target customers who have the correct purchasing power to buy their product.

Disadvantages of demographic segmentation

Despite the numerous advantages, there are certain drawbacks of using demographic segmentation which are discussed below:

1. Competitors can easily understand the parameters and the demographics which the company os targeting

2. Simple demographic segmentation doesn’t give clarity whether the customer actually would buy the product as the needs and wants of a customer are not studied at al

3. Many times targeting the wrong set of customers leads to wastage of time, money and resources for the company

Example of demographic segmentation

There are many ways in which examples of segmentation based on demographics can be understood.

1. Age- Nappies are for infants (0 to 12 months), puzzles for kids (3 to 8 years), calculators (15 years and above), walking sticks (60 years and above) etc

2. Income- In airlines, economy class passengers are mostly from the middle income and business class passengers are high income passengers. People from lower income class do not travel by flight and prefer trains or buses which are cheaper

3. Gender- Beauty products, cosmetics, skirts etc are for women and razors, shaving creams, wallets etc are for men. Certain products like bags, pens etc can be targeted to both genders.

4. Education- Injections, stethoscopes etc are for doctors

The above examples give an overview how demographics can be used to segment the market.

Many parameters can be collectively used to have a more specific group. Some examples are as below:

1. Premium cars are for people who are above 18 years old, have a high income and command a high socio-economic status

2. Lipsticks are for women, from middle and upper income class and above 15 years of age

Steps in Building a Brand Name Product or Service

At times, organizations are often inspired by a variety of ideas to create products and services which can be offered locally or globally. Generally, such products or services require the establishment of a brand or company name. Often these brands include both logo and lettering and can do a long way in advertising such products or services. Therefore, one of the most important steps in building a Brand is decide upon a brand name for the product or service one wishes to sell.

Branding is a process that allows an individual or a group of individuals the ability to provide a brand image and lettering to an idea. Upon doing so, one has a better chance of selling such items to a broader audience whether that be on a local or global level. Therefore, while the old adage nothing happens until somebody sells something, still stands true to some extent, at times almost seems as if the process of advertising and branding has overtaken the desire to sell.

Although branding generally identifies the company and philosophies behind same, it can also be representative of those working for such a company. This is a good thing as it generates the right type of audience to the product or service being sold based on personal relationships with those running the company. Therefore, benefiting both the organizations selling the branded product or service and the dealers buying same.

One of the most important steps in selling any product or service is the belief one holds in relation to the item. Therefore, only those who strongly believe in the products and services offered by the company are going to be good at selling same. Otherwise, one may want to work from an advertising or graphic artist perspective in relation to advertising rather than sales when it comes to time to market same.

Another step is to build a brand that maintains loyalty with its customer base and has a strong customer service department. For, having such a department in today’s world where one is both experienced and knowledgeable when it comes to helping others can be a rare find. So, companies who represent oneself has having a strong customer base and even stronger customer service department are often more successful than those who do not.

A very important step in marketing a brand is to identify the target audience before creating the logo and lettering in relation to marketing. This is because different age groups react differently to a variety of logo and lettering especially as so much is misrepresented by a variety of gangs and others using such material inappropriately. Therefore, if one can define the brand name, logo and lettering and present same to a marketing research review panel or the like, one may be able to gain a better understanding of which audience one needs to direct their product or service to in order to create the most sales.

Still, if one can communicate the use of their product or service clearly, establish trust within the community, be that locally or globally, aim marketing at the right audience, build a base of buyers and customer loyalty and offer great customer service, then one is on their way to not only creating and advertising an excellent brand but selling one as well.

Therefore, when looking for steps in building a brand, there are many steps which one can complete to help make the creation of such brand an easier task. These include, knowing your audience, building your brand, finding a great logo and lettering to represent same, targeting the appropriate audience and placing a number of ads in as many online and offline advertising venues one can find. For, after doing so, one may just find that they are selling even more products and services than one had ever dreamed possible.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

Are You Set Up for sales Success?

First Quarter 2017

Are You Set Up for Success?

Ken, are you crazy? I have not finished the fourth quarter yet! But as budget planning begins and business strategies begin to be set, it is your responsibility to be ready for 2017. What do you need to have on your to-do list for the next 60 days? I have listed the top 10; let me know what I have missed or what is on your list?

What are your revenue objectives by each quarter for 2017?
Review your existing teams carefully, analyze each person’s strengths, weakness, rank the following on a scale of 1-5, (5=great), are they good enough to stay on your team for 2017?
1. Sales skills
2. Product/industry knowledge
3. Operational knowledge
4. Sales planning
How many new people do you need to recruit? When do you need them fully up and trained? Hint: hire them NOW. Check out our book on how to Hire Top Performers.
Review your marketing/sales operational teams. Do they really understand your market, your customers, and the benefits you bring to them? What do you need to do to improve their business knowledge?
Is your compensation plan effective? Did it achieve the results you wanted? Have your business objectives changed and therefore your 2017 compensation plans may need to be altered. (Take our free sales compensation assessment on our web site: www.AcumenMmgt.com)
Re-assess your CRM/Sales Metric Dashboards for the entire year, what trends can you find or what activities need to be enhanced? Hold an individual salesperson review meeting to assess performance.
What will be your “theme” for 2017? Define what the top 3 objectives that you need to focus on during each of the 1^st and 2^nd quarters?
Schedule a “personal self-assessment” meeting, either with your manager or your peer team or even perform a confidential 360 analysis by using your sales team to comment on what you are doing well and what needs to be improved.
What new elements within your sales training plans for 2017 do you need to plan for? Outside training? A book club? More role playing? What do you need to do to improve the professionalism of your team?
When is your 2017 Sales Kick-Off Meeting? Where will be held? What will you announce and how will you energize your team with vision, fun, and direction?

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.

He was recently ranked for the fourth year in a row by Top Sales World magazine as one of the Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers for 2015. His blog has been rated in the sales blogs in the world!