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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Different Types of Sales Professionals

A sales professional in a workplace is responsible for meeting the sales targets of the organization and maintaining relationship with the existing and potential clients.

He plays a central role in generating revenues for the organization.

Following are the types of sales people in organizations:

The Diplomat
- As the name suggests, a diplomat is one who always tries to play a safe game. He hates taking risks in life and accepts things as they come.
- These people tend to have a casual approach towards work.
- A diplomat never believes in putting pressure on the customers. If he fails to convince the client in the first attempt, he would never try to do it again. He would simply ignore and try with the next client.
- Such sale professionals are calm, have an easy going attitude and are never under pressure.
The Rejection Dreader
- Such sales professionals fear rejections and failures at work. They find it very difficult to accept failures at the workplace.
- They depend more on cribbing and complaining rather than working and getting results.
- Such kinds of people fail to motivate themselves and tend to develop a laidback and negative attitude after a single failure.
The Militant Closer
- As the name suggests such sales professionals are extremely aggressive and can go to any extent to get results.
- They are only concerned about their targets and results and hardly think about the needs and expectations of the clients. For them the only thing which matters is closing the deal. They hardly bother whether a customer requires a particular product or not
- In most cases they make the client’s life hell just to sell their products and earn revenues.
The Sales Scholar
- Such sales professionals believe in lots of research and planning before going for a sales call.
- They spend their maximum time browsing internet, reading books and newspapers, checking various articles on sales rather than going out in the field and meeting people.
- Sales scholars put more emphasis on theoretical knowledge as compared to practical exposure.
- They have an eye on even the minutest details.
The Phony
- There are certain sales representatives who simply pretend to be client’s best friend. Such people fall in this category.
- They always speak good and appear to be sugar coated.
The Overcooked Casualty
- This category involves people who do sales just to earn their bread and butter, not as a passion.
- Such people chose sales as a profession because they feel it is an easy way to earn money as there are huge incentives involved.
- Their main motive is to close deals and earn incentives. They do not care much for the customers.
The Professional
- As the name suggests the professionals are the ones who look forward towards providing the right solution to the clients.
- They enjoy interacting with people and suggest only what is right and best for them.
- Professionals ensure clients are satisfied with their service. For them client relationship is of utmost importance.
- They never get impatient or hyper while attending customers instead suggest them the best available options.

Services Marketing – Definition and its Importance

Stated simply, Services Marketing refers to the marketing of services as against tangible products.

As already discussed, services are inherently intangible, are consumed simultaneously at the time of their production, cannot be stored, saved or resold once they have been used and service offerings are unique and cannot be exactly repeated even by the same service provider.

Marketing of services is a relatively new phenomenon in the domain of marketing, having gained in importance as a discipline only towards the end of the 20th century.

Services marketing first came to the fore in the 1980s when the debate started on whether marketing of services was significantly different from that of products so as to be classified as a separate discipline. Prior to this, services were considered just an aid to the production and marketing of goods and hence were not deemed as having separate relevance of their own.

The 1980s however saw a shift in this thinking. As the service sector started to grow in importance and emerged as a significant employer and contributor to the GDP, academics and marketing practitioners began to look at the marketing of services in a new light. Empirical research was conducted which brought to light the specific distinguishing characteristics of services.

By the mid 1990s, Services Marketing was firmly entrenched as a significant sub discipline of marketing with its own empirical research and data and growing significance in the increasingly service sector dominated economies of the new millennium. New areas of study opened up in the field and were the subject of extensive empirical research giving rise to concepts such as – the product-service spectrum, relationship marketing, franchising of services, customer retention etc.

Importance of Marketing of Services

Given the intangibility of services, marketing them becomes a particularly challenging and yet extremely important task.

A key differentiator: Due to the increasing homogeneity in product offerings, the attendant services provided are emerging as a key differentiator in the mind of the consumers. Eg: In case of two fast food chains serving a similar product (Pizza Hut and Dominos), more than the product it is the service quality that distinguishes the two brands from each other. Hence, marketers can leverage on the service offering to differentiate themselves from the competition and attract consumers.

Importance of relationships: Relationships are a key factor when it comes to the marketing of services. Since the product is intangible, a large part of the customers buying decision will depend on the degree to which he trusts the seller. Hence, the need to listen to the needs of the customer and fulfill them through the appropriate service offering and build a long lasting relationship which would lead to repeat sales and positive word of mouth.

Customer Retention: Given todays highly competitive scenario where multiple providers are vying for a limited pool of customers, retaining customers is even more important than attracting new ones. Since services are usually generated and consumed at the same time, they actually involve the customer in service delivery process by taking into consideration his requirements and feedback. Thus they offer greater scope for customization according to customer requirements thus offering increased satisfaction leading to higher customer retention.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

7 More Sales Core Competencies

In 2008, I posted two blogs covering 14 of the 21 core competencies identified by the Objective Management Group Sales Person Assessment. Between then and now, much has taken place that I’ve written about, and as I fly from Atlanta to Portland, Oregon, I have some time to write about the remaining 7 core competencies. I know that you’ve been waiting with baited breath.

1. Establishes early bonding and rapport: The ability to quickly establish confidence and trust in the first meeting, rather than taking several meetings to develop a strong relationship.

2. Uncovers actual budgets: The skill and the consistency in knowing what the investment parameters are going to be so that you eliminate money, time or resource objections at time of presentation.

3. Discovers why prospects will buy: As elementary as this sounds, most sales people do not find out exactly “why” a prospect will buy. They know what is important, they have an idea of what a prospect will consider or look at, but that is entirely different than knowing exactly why someone will buy. You know that you have this competency when you get decisions instead of “think it overs”.

4. Qualifies proposals and quotes. Those that have this competency and execute it consistently will make sure that they will get a decision or, at a minimum, a very clear future once they present. Those with this competency only make proposals and quotes when they know that the prospect is committed to buying.

5. Gets commitments and decisions: This competency manifests itself prior to making presentations. It needs to happen once you have uncovered the compelling reasons someone will buy, you have their commitment to buy, you know the budget issues and you know that you are talking to the decision maker(s). Once these items have been covered, a great sales person simply asks the prospect to make a decision, yes or no, when the presentation is completed. More importantly, they make the commitment to decide stick.

6. Possesses a strong desire for success in selling: this is defined as being passionate about your success. It is someone that enjoys selling. Someone with the appropriate desire is someone that looks forward to generating new relationships and is passionate about pursuing and achieving their goals and the goals of the company. They don’t just set goals; they achieve them.

7. Commits to succeed in selling: I have identified three types of commitment: 1) WIT: Whatever it Takes. 2) WITALAIITU: Whatever it Takes as Long as it Isn’t Too Uncomfortable. 3) Coast to Coast: When they are just going through the motions and coast from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. However, there is only one level of commitment that contributes to extraordinary success: WIT.

Think about these 7 core competencies and how they relate to your ability to execute an effective sales process. These 7, along with the other 14, should be considered the “root causes” of your sales issues. If you are to continue your improvement in sales, then you might consider working at the correct end of your problems: Theses 21 core competencies of selling