Face to Face Marketing and Door to Door Marketing 

Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing firm , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing firm in mumbai.

We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing firm ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.

Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing firm and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.

Through Door to Door sales, customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai

Door to Door Sales Agency 

We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.

We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.

We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?

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 company in Erandwana

Corporate Philanthropy and Direct Marketing

What is Corporate Philanthropy?

Corporate philanthropy is the act of donating money to social causes. In these times, when corporate social responsibility is the buzzword what with governments specifying the terms under law, corporate philanthropy is no longer the earlier scenario where employees pool together money with matching contribution from the organization and then they decide to donate it to charitable and social causes. On the other hand, corporate philanthropy in recent years has taken on a dimension that is equal in scale and scope to a separate organization by itself. Further, corporate philanthropy is not limited to interactions between the corporate communications teams and individual NGO’s but instead, it operates on a vastly larger scale.

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct Marketing is the act of reaching out to the people by sending mailers and promotional messages with the intent of persuading them for a specific purpose. Typically, direct marketing is handled by the corporate communications teams since they have the expertise and the bandwidth to send mass mailers and promotional materials directly to the target audience.

However, in recent years, because of the sheer volume of material that is being sent out as well as the large numbers of people in the target market, separate departments have been setup to handle this activity. Further, there is coordination between corporate communications team and the direct marketing team to ensure that the message is lucid, clear, and catchy.

Dedicated Teams or Part of Corporate Communications

We have discussed how more and more business leaders are giving away a large portion of their wealth to philanthropy. Wealthy businesspersons like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, NR Narayana Murthy, and Azim Premji, have been in the news recently because of their humungous contributions to social causes. In this context, the debate over whether corporate philanthropy must be part of the functions of the corporate communications teams or whether it must be separate and a specific department setup for it has arisen. The bottom line for this debate and the conclusive answer is that if the organization is large, then there can be a foundation that caters to the specific purpose of philanthropic activities. The examples of the Infosys Foundation and the Azim Premji Foundation are among the well-known cases where separate foundations have been setup. On the other hand, if corporate philanthropy is done on a smaller and individual scale where the corporates reach out to initiatives rather than causes, then the function can be part of the corporate communications function.

Closing Thoughts

Though corporate philanthropy and direct marketing are as different as chalk and cheese, nonetheless the commonality between the two has to do with corporate communications handling both these activities. This is because essentially both entail reaching out to the external world and since this is the function of corporate communications, it is included in their list of activities. Finally, with increasing complexity as well as large numbers of activities being part of these two functions, many organizations either are outsourcing these activities or are setting up exclusive departments to handle them.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

The New Account Sales Challenge Helping You to Protect the Health of Your Business

In the CSO Insights 2015 Sales Performance Optimization study, “capturing new accounts” made it to the top of sales objectives for 2015. Kim Cameron recently published a post “Overcoming the New Account Sales Challenge” here.

Before addressing the valid challenges, mentioned in Kim’s blog, you should though make sure that your initiative of “capturing new accounts” eventually does not hurt your business by causing these undesired effects:

• Expected growth targets are not met
• Profitability drops
• Customer satisfaction drops

The 5 Ugly Questions

This list of questions can help you to diagnose whether your “capturing new accounts” initiative might negatively affect the health of your business.

1. Have you clearly defined the ideal accounts you want to capture?

The lack of this definition exposes you to all three undesired effects. In absence of such a definition, salespeople will decide on their own, where to go hunting and the chances are high that they miss the attractive accounts.

More information on this phenomenon can be found in Frank V. Cespedes excellent book Aligning-Strategy and Sales

2. Is an adequate value proposition available for these ideal accounts?

In absence of such a definition especially profitability and customer satisfaction are endangered.

3. Do you know how many of the ideal accounts have never before bought the category you want to sell to them?

Not knowing the answer to this question can particularly hamper profitability. Furthermore it might take longer for your initiative to meet the expected growth targets.

Accounts, never having bought the category you want to sell to them, have a different customer journey than accounts that are new only to you but have previously bought the category from competitors. Therefore, you need different strategies matching the respective customer journey.

In the first case you can gain market share if you can penetrate the account by facilitating the “buy learning” journey.

In the second case, you have to displace the incumbent competitor (“buy wallet share”). Displacement of incumbent competitors most often results in price wars.

If your company does not have an operational excellence strategy in place, which provides for a systemic and sustainable lower cost structure, profitability is highly endangered.

Product superiority with according value propositions is another alternative to displace incumbent competitors without risking your profitability level.

4. If you have to attack accounts held by incumbent competitors, do you now their purchasing strategy?

Ignoring this question can lead to overoptimistic growth expectations. Many purchasers follow dual vendor strategies. They know that for remaining a valuable account to the second vendor, they have to leave them a part of the wallet share attractive enough so the vendor does not “fire” the account.

5. The follow on question then is: Does your expectation of the wallet share you must aim for, so the account is attractive to you, match with what you can realistically expect given the competitive situation in the account?

Knowing the answer to this question makes you more selective of the new accounts to pursue and is the basis for setting realistic growth targets.

Conclusion

In absence of a company strategy, where ideal customers, appropriate value propositions, market saturation level, competitive strategies and purchasing strategies of the ideal customers are known and aligned, “capturing new accounts” risks to be detrimental to the health of your business.

Call to Action

Answer the 5 ugly questions. They are ugly because you might come to the conclusion that “capturing new accounts” is actually a less attractive objective than you had hoped for. You might then be motivated to find more suitable alternatives to grow the top line without jeopardizing the health of your business.

Should you need help, you can give me a call.

Another Example of How Best Practices Are Not the Best Practice

If you’re like me, you might’ve recently sat through another conference put on by an analyst firm promising to share “best practices” they’ve codified from their observations of hundreds of other companies. And, I wondered to myself, are these thousands of people cramming the halls and breakout rooms actually learning anything that will move the needle?

I recently wrote that following ‘best practices’ may actually be a bad practice — after reading a provocative article on the topic in Fast Company. Then along comes another excellent take on the issue from investment strategist Michael Mauboussin, with a concept he calls “the paradox of skill.”

In his article, Mauboussin says, essentially, that following best practices of others “misses the mark because they fail to consider what competitors may do.” He goes on to say, “Results are a combination of your actions with those of your rivals. If all companies are getting better in lockstep, no company is gaining an edge.”

Or, as he puts it more succinctly: “Getting better in an absolute sense doesn’t matter if it’s offset by the competition.”

In other words, trying to imitate best practices is not a recipe for beating the market or differentiating yourself from the competition. But, ironically, that’s your ultimate goal, isn’t it?

One of Mauboussin’s key rules in the “paradox of skill” is that absolute improvements matter less to success than improvements relative to your competition. In other words, someone could spend a year getting objectively better at stage-acting, ballroom dancing or shooting three pointers. But if your peers are also improving at the same time and in the same ways, your relative advantage will be minimal or non-existent because you haven’t actually increased the skills gap between you and them.

Because best practices research and recommendations in sales and marketing are based on emulating so-called top performers, there’s a good chance those who subscribe to them are adopting the same skills others have already gotten good at (or worse, already moved on from). As a result, your competitive advantage suffers.

But an overreliance on best practices training may not be the only thing holding your company’s teams back…

The “Spread of Excellence”

Renowned biologist (and baseball enthusiast) Stephen Jay Gould used the term “spread of excellence” to describe how the range of skill between the best and worst hitters in baseball has narrowed significantly since 1941, when Ted Williams finished the season with a batting average of .406 (the last time a player exceeded the .400 mark for the season).

As Mauboussin explains, many cite that the expanding international talent pool, together with better training, as major contributing factors to the shrinking gap or the “clustering” of skills.

The good news for sales professionals? Unlike baseball, sales hasn’t experienced the “spread of excellence.” There’s still a broad gap separating high and low performers. But, like baseball, better, more focused practice and training can play a significant role in closing the skills gap.

A recent Corporate Visions survey found that many companies lack a formal practice, coaching and certification plan for their reps—even though 85 percent of companies agree that their team’s ability to articulate value is the single most critical factor to closing deals. The survey found that:

Only 41 percent of companies ask salespeople to practice their messaging using stand-and-deliver or role-play scenarios.

34 percent of respondents said no one is responsible for coaching and certifying their company’s value messages. The rest indicated they’re trusting their sales managers or trainers to do this in addition to their other responsibilities and regardless of qualifications.

Meanwhile, only 9 percent of companies regularly expect salespeople to record themselves delivering value messages so it can be reviewed, coached and certified by subject matter experts.

Combined, these numbers show that there’s a lot of room for companies to set themselves apart by adding some rigor and structure to their skills practice program. Make no mistake: The skills gap is still wide between high and low performers. Implement a practice program to ensure your reps are on the right side of the divide. Because, as Mauboussin says, “If you compete in a field where the range of skill is wide, the more skillful will succeed at the expense of the less skillful.”

Check out our new eBook to learn how so-called “best practices” could be leading you astray in your marketing and sales activities.

door to door Marketing firm in Pune

door to door Marketing firm in mumbai

Experiential marketing , Advertising, Product demonstration, corporate identity,

1to1 sales, BTL Activities, Appraisal Consultancy

Face to Face Marketing and Door to Door Marketing 

Professional Qualified Sales Experts present products and services, calling on companies using our proven door to door Marketing firm , door-to-door sales technique and door to door Marketing firm in mumbai.

We convert potential customers to sustainable clients in the shortest space of time( door to door sales, door to door Marketing firm ). Our professional teams interact with customers, educating them on our clients’ products/services, as well as generating immediate sales or leads with interested customers.

Marketing and advertising budgets have come under increasing pressure. door to door Marketing firm and Door-to-door sales is a low cost distribution channel, and is an effective way to gain more return on investment. It secures increased value with minimum spend, allowing access to a customer base which is not always reached by existing marketing strategies.

Through Door to Door sales, customers can choose the most suitable deals, especially because they have a chance to ask questions and have the offering clarified by our qualified sales experts in mumbai

Door to Door Sales Agency 

We believe our experience, our sales ability and the detailed processes we have in place ensure we successfully launch new products to the market. Our sector experience and data insights ensure we are calling on the right outlets to maximise return on investment during the critical launch phase.

We have proven experience in launching challenger brands to the market along with well-established range extensions and completely new products.

We believe Fulcrum is the door-to-door-sales agency in pune best suited to owning the responsibility of launching your new product – why not give us a call to find out if we can help you?

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 consultancy in pune

Go for the Gold with Ride Alongs

Like the rest of the world, watching the Olympic games in RIO captivated me. You can’t help but be amazed by the effort, determination, and lifelong pursuit of the athletes who have worked so hard to perfect their talents, craft, and sport. I especially enjoy watching the segments that highlight an athlete and give you a glimpse into their lives and the stories behind “The Athlete.” It always amazes me that the majority of athletes come from the simplest and humblest of circumstances, and how much work and dedication have gone into their life quest to be the best at their sport.

For most, that quest began at a very young age, from then through to the present, they have had one focus, one purpose, to be the best.
Another aspect of the Olympics that stands out for me and touches a very special place in my heart are the coaches, the men and women you always see standing in the background. These individuals represent, in most cases, a lifelong partnership in the athlete’s pursuit to compete in the Olympics. They are not the ones you will see standing on the podium when a medal is won, nor the ones who receive the accolades and recognition, and they are not the ones who receive the endorsements or acknowledgment from the world for what has been accomplished.

Yet none of the athletes would have made it without the coaches who have been by their side throughout their journey.

Olympics aside, when you take a deeper look into the individuals or team within any sport, or for that matter any career, those who are at the top of their game are most likely there because of the efforts of amazing coaches and mentors they have had along the way. In the world of sales, as a career, this also holds true. While sales can sometimes be categorized as more of an “individual’s game” the reality is even the best have been, at some time in their career, coached and mentored by someone willing to pass on the skills and lessons of the craft. If any of us are to achieve our maximum potential, we will all need to seek out great mentors and coaches. Great mentors and coaches can benefit all aspects of our lives, whether it is a sport, career or even personal endeavors. It’s what can push us further beyond what we ourselves think possible!

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” ~Vince Lombardi

The Value of the Ride Along
Over the years I have seen one of the most valued opportunities for providing mentoring and coaching slowly slipping away from common practice at a lot of companies. Admit it – as sales professionals, when was the last time you had your sales manager take the time to actually go with you on ride alongs? And if they did, was it just to fulfill the obligation or did they really leverage the opportunity to be a great mentor or coach… at the Olympic level or any level for that matter? When was the last time you actually pursued this opportunity to reach out to them and asked them to spend the time with you? Think back to my example of the Olympics, do great coaches search out the athletes or do the athlete’s search out great coaches who can take them to the next level? Regardless of where you are in your sales career, you can always benefit from great coaches and mentors. In most professional sports, it is often when the athlete is at the top of their game that they are receiving the most coaching and mentoring. Why should it be any different for us? Isn’t income reflected in direct proportion to success? Far too often in a sales career, those at the top feel they don’t need any coaching, or someone telling them anything new. Why is that?

The Mechanics of a successful Ride Along
The Ride Along creates the perfect opportunity for observation and learning, coaching and mentoring. The mechanics or steps to a successful Ride Along are simple, yet often left more to chance than followed with a level of discipline or precision. Again, think about practicing for an Olympic event, is anything left to chance? Of course not, it is all practiced with purposeful intent. Here are a few suggestions for getting the most out of your next Ride Along. This list below will benefit both the Sales Manager and Sales Rep. The first two steps are preparatory for the actual Ride Along.

• Due Diligence and Pre-Meeting Prep – Make sure that both you and your manager are prepped and ready for the meeting. Take time to review the client, past history (if applicable), current situation, changes within the business environment that are motivating the visit, problem(s) you are wanting to help solve, the stated purpose of the meeting, individuals you are meeting with (titles, motives, emotional attachment to the problem, risk to them if your solution succeeds or fails), probing questions unique to each meeting participant and their role in the problem(s) you are discussing, who’s going to ask what questions of whom, specific outcomes and takeaways for the meeting both for you and the customer, material and collateral that will be used during the meeting, logical follow up and next steps.

• Role-play and Practice Session – How many athletes just show up without first practicing the routine? Why should it be any different for us? Take the time to role-play and practice through the meeting, asking each other questions and discussing the potential customer’s answers and objections. Doing this will allow both of you to think through how best to “frame” both the question and your answers. If this is going to be a larger meeting attended by others within your team make sure you include them in the role-play so you can help them know the part they are intended to play, and what questions they are intended to answer, and how you will help to direct or orchestrate the meeting. With each additional individual, you add to the meeting, the importance of role-playing exponentially increases. The role-play and practice session creates the perfect coaching and mentoring platform.

• Day of Meeting, Actual Ride Along – Assuming that all of the prep above has been done, the actual Ride Along provides a perfect opportunity to observe the “Live Performance” first hand. If you do not already have one I suggest creating (and carrying with you) a Ride Along observation sheet consisting of all the areas that you would like to see demonstrated during the actual meeting. Prep, as noted above, would most certainly be included as the first steps on the Ride Along Feedback Sheet. I have seen these forms be extremely basic or very detailed. Greater detail affords the ability to provide more specific feedback and sometimes initiates a deeper discussion, leading to a coaching and mentoring opportunity within a specific area. As tenure and skill set to increase, so does the depth of specificity in demonstrated skill level. Again, think back to how an Olympic athlete would break down each individual step in their routine and work to perfect that specific step. Refinement of the key steps in a meeting allows the meeting to flow more efficiently/effectively driving toward the desired outcomes.

• The After Meeting Review, “The time for Feedback and Learning” – The after meeting review provides the perfect opportunity for learning and improvement. It’s when both the coach (mentor) and sale rep (student) can spend some valued time reviewing the Ride Along form and breakdown/evaluate each progressive step of the meeting. It’s a great opportunity to evaluate the prep work and role-play. Did we effectively do our due diligence? How did the meeting flow in relation to our role-play? Did we have the right information, assumptions, questions, answers, materials, players identified (ours and theirs)? Was the alignment of SME’s to their technical experts properly aligned – our proper team members to theirs? Did we effectively cover the proposed agenda, the purpose of the meeting, discussion topics, takeaways, and outcomes? How did we perform? How did our team players perform? What did we do right? What could we improve upon?

Sale managers, just think how quickly skill sets would improve if you followed this type of process. Sales reps just think how much you could learn and improve if your sales manager spent this type of quality time helping you perfect your craft! How would it benefit you financially?

Sale Managers, if you want to improve your team and their performance, get out and establish a routine with quality Ride Alongs. Sales Reps, if you want to continue improving and perfecting your craft, get your sale managers to come Ride Along with you. How can you be an effective coach if you don’t spend your time with the athlete in the gym? Ride Alongs are the single most effective way to transfer knowledge and improve performance.

Brand Management – Meaning and Important Concepts

Brand management begins with having a thorough knowledge of the term “brand”. It includes developing a promise, making that promise and maintaining it. It means defining the brand, positioning the brand, and delivering the brand. Brand management is nothing but an art of creating and sustaining the brand. Branding makes customers committed to your business. A strong brand differentiates your products from the competitors. It gives a quality image to your business.

Download Demo Powerpoint Presentation on Brand Management

Brand management includes managing the tangible and intangible characteristics of brand. In case of product brands, the tangibles include the product itself, price, packaging, etc. While in case of service brands, the tangibles include the customers’ experience. The intangibles include emotional connections with the product / service.

Branding is assembling of various marketing mix medium into a whole so as to give you an identity. It is nothing but capturing your customers mind with your brand name. It gives an image of an experienced, huge and reliable business.

It is all about capturing the niche market for your product / service and about creating a confidence in the current and prospective customers’ minds that you are the unique solution to their problem.

The aim of branding is to convey brand message vividly, create customer loyalty, persuade the buyer for the product, and establish an emotional connectivity with the customers. Branding forms customer perceptions about the product. It should raise customer expectations about the product. The primary aim of branding is to create differentiation.

Strong brands reduce customers’ perceived monetary, social and safety risks in buying goods/services. The customers can better imagine the intangible goods with the help of brand name. Strong brand organizations have a high market share. The brand should be given good support so that it can sustain itself in long run. It is essential to manage all brands and build brand equity over a period of time. Here comes importance and usefulness of brand management. Brand management helps in building a corporate image. A brand manager has to oversee overall brand performance. A successful brand can only be created if the brand management system is competent.

Following are the important concepts of brand management:

Definition of Brand

Brand Name

Brand Attributes

Brand Positioning

Brand Identity

Sources of Brand Identity

Brand Image

Brand Identity vs Brand Image

Brand Personality

Brand Awareness

Brand Loyalty

Brand Association

Building a Brand

Brand Equity

Brand Equity & Customer Equity

Brand Extension

Co-branding

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

Compare Apples to Apples…

when using sport’s teams analogies to coach sales teams.

A Sales Team is a Sales Team or not?

There are at least two definitions that come to mind:

• A group of sales people reporting to a sales manager
• A group of specialists (an account team) all facing a particular customer orchestrated usually by an account manager.

How are they different? An account team is a work group, whereas a team of sales people reporting to a sales manager is not.

What is a Work Group?

I came across the term reading “The Skilled Facilitator” by Roger Schwarz. Schwarz defines a work group as follows: ” A work group has a collective responsibility for performing one or more tasks and the outcome of the task can be assessed” He goes on explaining that a work group is a social system with boundaries distinguishing members from nonmembers. To qualify as a work group, its members are interdependent in producing their work.

While both two types of sales teams fit to a large extent to this definition, there is though a key difference; the interdependence of the members to produce their work. In an account team, the interdependence is a prerequisite to success.

The team of sales people reporting to a sales manager however is a set of individuals each pursuing his/her own goal. They are primarily paid on making their quota. There is though a team goal. But there is no collective responsibility for that goal; it is primarily the sales manager’s. It is reached if all sales people make their individual contribution. So only the sales manager is dependant on the performance of the individual team members and can achieve his/her goal if he coaches the individuals to maximum performance. For some it might help to define a workgroup by describing what it is not. In the words of Schwarz “A set of people working on similar but essentially individual tasks is not a work group”.

Why is this relevant?

Examples how sport coaches lead their teams are of little help unless we the equivalent types of sport’s teams. To the above defines types of sales teams.

A set of sales people, reporting to a sales manager, resembles more a team of individual athletes such as swimmers or skiers. The result of the individual matters most and the performance of the team (e.g. the numbers of medals won at the Olympics) is merely the addition of the performance of the individual members.

An account team however resembles more to a soccer or baseball team. Here the sum of the individual contribution does not necessarily make up the performance of the team. There are many examples of well coached and motivated teams having been more successful than a team of uncoordinated stars.

What are the consequences?

While work groups can be coached similar to team sport’s teams, a set of independent specialist has to be coached on a one to one basis. Using the wrong approach is a waste of time and causes frustration as the hoped for success cannot be had.

The productivity of the respective team meetings is a good indicator if the approach is matched to the characteristics of the team. For example if a sales manager has to declare attendance to sales meetings mandatory is an almost sure indicator for unproductive meetings. Sales managers confusing their own goal with the team’s goal as described above are more likely to have mandatory meetings.

There is more advice available how to run meetings for workgroups.

Understanding the different characteristics of teams is also essential for promoting the right people. Sales managers and account managers are distinguished roles requiring their own set of skills. Star account managers do not necessarily make good sales managers.

The most demanding sales manager’s position is probably leading teams of account managers. The dimension of work group leadership must be added when coaching account managers. In this role sales managers must though be well aware that “do as I do” is not a recipe for success.

door to door Marketing firm in Pune

door to door Marketing firm in mumbai

Experiential marketing , Advertising, Product demonstration, corporate identity,

1to1 sales, BTL Activities, Appraisal Consultancy

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 company in Erandwana

Corporate Philanthropy and Direct Marketing

What is Corporate Philanthropy?

Corporate philanthropy is the act of donating money to social causes. In these times, when corporate social responsibility is the buzzword what with governments specifying the terms under law, corporate philanthropy is no longer the earlier scenario where employees pool together money with matching contribution from the organization and then they decide to donate it to charitable and social causes. On the other hand, corporate philanthropy in recent years has taken on a dimension that is equal in scale and scope to a separate organization by itself. Further, corporate philanthropy is not limited to interactions between the corporate communications teams and individual NGO’s but instead, it operates on a vastly larger scale.

What is Direct Marketing?

Direct Marketing is the act of reaching out to the people by sending mailers and promotional messages with the intent of persuading them for a specific purpose. Typically, direct marketing is handled by the corporate communications teams since they have the expertise and the bandwidth to send mass mailers and promotional materials directly to the target audience.

However, in recent years, because of the sheer volume of material that is being sent out as well as the large numbers of people in the target market, separate departments have been setup to handle this activity. Further, there is coordination between corporate communications team and the direct marketing team to ensure that the message is lucid, clear, and catchy.

Dedicated Teams or Part of Corporate Communications

We have discussed how more and more business leaders are giving away a large portion of their wealth to philanthropy. Wealthy businesspersons like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, NR Narayana Murthy, and Azim Premji, have been in the news recently because of their humungous contributions to social causes. In this context, the debate over whether corporate philanthropy must be part of the functions of the corporate communications teams or whether it must be separate and a specific department setup for it has arisen. The bottom line for this debate and the conclusive answer is that if the organization is large, then there can be a foundation that caters to the specific purpose of philanthropic activities. The examples of the Infosys Foundation and the Azim Premji Foundation are among the well-known cases where separate foundations have been setup. On the other hand, if corporate philanthropy is done on a smaller and individual scale where the corporates reach out to initiatives rather than causes, then the function can be part of the corporate communications function.

Closing Thoughts

Though corporate philanthropy and direct marketing are as different as chalk and cheese, nonetheless the commonality between the two has to do with corporate communications handling both these activities. This is because essentially both entail reaching out to the external world and since this is the function of corporate communications, it is included in their list of activities. Finally, with increasing complexity as well as large numbers of activities being part of these two functions, many organizations either are outsourcing these activities or are setting up exclusive departments to handle them.

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

The New Account Sales Challenge Helping You to Protect the Health of Your Business

In the CSO Insights 2015 Sales Performance Optimization study, “capturing new accounts” made it to the top of sales objectives for 2015. Kim Cameron recently published a post “Overcoming the New Account Sales Challenge” here.

Before addressing the valid challenges, mentioned in Kim’s blog, you should though make sure that your initiative of “capturing new accounts” eventually does not hurt your business by causing these undesired effects:

• Expected growth targets are not met
• Profitability drops
• Customer satisfaction drops

The 5 Ugly Questions

This list of questions can help you to diagnose whether your “capturing new accounts” initiative might negatively affect the health of your business.

1. Have you clearly defined the ideal accounts you want to capture?

The lack of this definition exposes you to all three undesired effects. In absence of such a definition, salespeople will decide on their own, where to go hunting and the chances are high that they miss the attractive accounts.

More information on this phenomenon can be found in Frank V. Cespedes excellent book Aligning-Strategy and Sales

2. Is an adequate value proposition available for these ideal accounts?

In absence of such a definition especially profitability and customer satisfaction are endangered.

3. Do you know how many of the ideal accounts have never before bought the category you want to sell to them?

Not knowing the answer to this question can particularly hamper profitability. Furthermore it might take longer for your initiative to meet the expected growth targets.

Accounts, never having bought the category you want to sell to them, have a different customer journey than accounts that are new only to you but have previously bought the category from competitors. Therefore, you need different strategies matching the respective customer journey.

In the first case you can gain market share if you can penetrate the account by facilitating the “buy learning” journey.

In the second case, you have to displace the incumbent competitor (“buy wallet share”). Displacement of incumbent competitors most often results in price wars.

If your company does not have an operational excellence strategy in place, which provides for a systemic and sustainable lower cost structure, profitability is highly endangered.

Product superiority with according value propositions is another alternative to displace incumbent competitors without risking your profitability level.

4. If you have to attack accounts held by incumbent competitors, do you now their purchasing strategy?

Ignoring this question can lead to overoptimistic growth expectations. Many purchasers follow dual vendor strategies. They know that for remaining a valuable account to the second vendor, they have to leave them a part of the wallet share attractive enough so the vendor does not “fire” the account.

5. The follow on question then is: Does your expectation of the wallet share you must aim for, so the account is attractive to you, match with what you can realistically expect given the competitive situation in the account?

Knowing the answer to this question makes you more selective of the new accounts to pursue and is the basis for setting realistic growth targets.

Conclusion

In absence of a company strategy, where ideal customers, appropriate value propositions, market saturation level, competitive strategies and purchasing strategies of the ideal customers are known and aligned, “capturing new accounts” risks to be detrimental to the health of your business.

Call to Action

Answer the 5 ugly questions. They are ugly because you might come to the conclusion that “capturing new accounts” is actually a less attractive objective than you had hoped for. You might then be motivated to find more suitable alternatives to grow the top line without jeopardizing the health of your business.

Should you need help, you can give me a call.

Another Example of How Best Practices Are Not the Best Practice

If you’re like me, you might’ve recently sat through another conference put on by an analyst firm promising to share “best practices” they’ve codified from their observations of hundreds of other companies. And, I wondered to myself, are these thousands of people cramming the halls and breakout rooms actually learning anything that will move the needle?

I recently wrote that following ‘best practices’ may actually be a bad practice — after reading a provocative article on the topic in Fast Company. Then along comes another excellent take on the issue from investment strategist Michael Mauboussin, with a concept he calls “the paradox of skill.”

In his article, Mauboussin says, essentially, that following best practices of others “misses the mark because they fail to consider what competitors may do.” He goes on to say, “Results are a combination of your actions with those of your rivals. If all companies are getting better in lockstep, no company is gaining an edge.”

Or, as he puts it more succinctly: “Getting better in an absolute sense doesn’t matter if it’s offset by the competition.”

In other words, trying to imitate best practices is not a recipe for beating the market or differentiating yourself from the competition. But, ironically, that’s your ultimate goal, isn’t it?

One of Mauboussin’s key rules in the “paradox of skill” is that absolute improvements matter less to success than improvements relative to your competition. In other words, someone could spend a year getting objectively better at stage-acting, ballroom dancing or shooting three pointers. But if your peers are also improving at the same time and in the same ways, your relative advantage will be minimal or non-existent because you haven’t actually increased the skills gap between you and them.

Because best practices research and recommendations in sales and marketing are based on emulating so-called top performers, there’s a good chance those who subscribe to them are adopting the same skills others have already gotten good at (or worse, already moved on from). As a result, your competitive advantage suffers.

But an overreliance on best practices training may not be the only thing holding your company’s teams back…

The “Spread of Excellence”

Renowned biologist (and baseball enthusiast) Stephen Jay Gould used the term “spread of excellence” to describe how the range of skill between the best and worst hitters in baseball has narrowed significantly since 1941, when Ted Williams finished the season with a batting average of .406 (the last time a player exceeded the .400 mark for the season).

As Mauboussin explains, many cite that the expanding international talent pool, together with better training, as major contributing factors to the shrinking gap or the “clustering” of skills.

The good news for sales professionals? Unlike baseball, sales hasn’t experienced the “spread of excellence.” There’s still a broad gap separating high and low performers. But, like baseball, better, more focused practice and training can play a significant role in closing the skills gap.

A recent Corporate Visions survey found that many companies lack a formal practice, coaching and certification plan for their reps—even though 85 percent of companies agree that their team’s ability to articulate value is the single most critical factor to closing deals. The survey found that:

Only 41 percent of companies ask salespeople to practice their messaging using stand-and-deliver or role-play scenarios.

34 percent of respondents said no one is responsible for coaching and certifying their company’s value messages. The rest indicated they’re trusting their sales managers or trainers to do this in addition to their other responsibilities and regardless of qualifications.

Meanwhile, only 9 percent of companies regularly expect salespeople to record themselves delivering value messages so it can be reviewed, coached and certified by subject matter experts.

Combined, these numbers show that there’s a lot of room for companies to set themselves apart by adding some rigor and structure to their skills practice program. Make no mistake: The skills gap is still wide between high and low performers. Implement a practice program to ensure your reps are on the right side of the divide. Because, as Mauboussin says, “If you compete in a field where the range of skill is wide, the more skillful will succeed at the expense of the less skillful.”

Check out our new eBook to learn how so-called “best practices” could be leading you astray in your marketing and sales activities.

door to door Marketing firm in Pune

door to door Marketing firm in mumbai

Experiential marketing , Advertising, Product demonstration, corporate identity,

1to1 sales, BTL Activities, Appraisal Consultancy

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 consultancy in pune

Go for the Gold with Ride Alongs

Like the rest of the world, watching the Olympic games in RIO captivated me. You can’t help but be amazed by the effort, determination, and lifelong pursuit of the athletes who have worked so hard to perfect their talents, craft, and sport. I especially enjoy watching the segments that highlight an athlete and give you a glimpse into their lives and the stories behind “The Athlete.” It always amazes me that the majority of athletes come from the simplest and humblest of circumstances, and how much work and dedication have gone into their life quest to be the best at their sport.

For most, that quest began at a very young age, from then through to the present, they have had one focus, one purpose, to be the best.
Another aspect of the Olympics that stands out for me and touches a very special place in my heart are the coaches, the men and women you always see standing in the background. These individuals represent, in most cases, a lifelong partnership in the athlete’s pursuit to compete in the Olympics. They are not the ones you will see standing on the podium when a medal is won, nor the ones who receive the accolades and recognition, and they are not the ones who receive the endorsements or acknowledgment from the world for what has been accomplished.

Yet none of the athletes would have made it without the coaches who have been by their side throughout their journey.

Olympics aside, when you take a deeper look into the individuals or team within any sport, or for that matter any career, those who are at the top of their game are most likely there because of the efforts of amazing coaches and mentors they have had along the way. In the world of sales, as a career, this also holds true. While sales can sometimes be categorized as more of an “individual’s game” the reality is even the best have been, at some time in their career, coached and mentored by someone willing to pass on the skills and lessons of the craft. If any of us are to achieve our maximum potential, we will all need to seek out great mentors and coaches. Great mentors and coaches can benefit all aspects of our lives, whether it is a sport, career or even personal endeavors. It’s what can push us further beyond what we ourselves think possible!

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” ~Vince Lombardi

The Value of the Ride Along
Over the years I have seen one of the most valued opportunities for providing mentoring and coaching slowly slipping away from common practice at a lot of companies. Admit it – as sales professionals, when was the last time you had your sales manager take the time to actually go with you on ride alongs? And if they did, was it just to fulfill the obligation or did they really leverage the opportunity to be a great mentor or coach… at the Olympic level or any level for that matter? When was the last time you actually pursued this opportunity to reach out to them and asked them to spend the time with you? Think back to my example of the Olympics, do great coaches search out the athletes or do the athlete’s search out great coaches who can take them to the next level? Regardless of where you are in your sales career, you can always benefit from great coaches and mentors. In most professional sports, it is often when the athlete is at the top of their game that they are receiving the most coaching and mentoring. Why should it be any different for us? Isn’t income reflected in direct proportion to success? Far too often in a sales career, those at the top feel they don’t need any coaching, or someone telling them anything new. Why is that?

The Mechanics of a successful Ride Along
The Ride Along creates the perfect opportunity for observation and learning, coaching and mentoring. The mechanics or steps to a successful Ride Along are simple, yet often left more to chance than followed with a level of discipline or precision. Again, think about practicing for an Olympic event, is anything left to chance? Of course not, it is all practiced with purposeful intent. Here are a few suggestions for getting the most out of your next Ride Along. This list below will benefit both the Sales Manager and Sales Rep. The first two steps are preparatory for the actual Ride Along.

• Due Diligence and Pre-Meeting Prep – Make sure that both you and your manager are prepped and ready for the meeting. Take time to review the client, past history (if applicable), current situation, changes within the business environment that are motivating the visit, problem(s) you are wanting to help solve, the stated purpose of the meeting, individuals you are meeting with (titles, motives, emotional attachment to the problem, risk to them if your solution succeeds or fails), probing questions unique to each meeting participant and their role in the problem(s) you are discussing, who’s going to ask what questions of whom, specific outcomes and takeaways for the meeting both for you and the customer, material and collateral that will be used during the meeting, logical follow up and next steps.

• Role-play and Practice Session – How many athletes just show up without first practicing the routine? Why should it be any different for us? Take the time to role-play and practice through the meeting, asking each other questions and discussing the potential customer’s answers and objections. Doing this will allow both of you to think through how best to “frame” both the question and your answers. If this is going to be a larger meeting attended by others within your team make sure you include them in the role-play so you can help them know the part they are intended to play, and what questions they are intended to answer, and how you will help to direct or orchestrate the meeting. With each additional individual, you add to the meeting, the importance of role-playing exponentially increases. The role-play and practice session creates the perfect coaching and mentoring platform.

• Day of Meeting, Actual Ride Along – Assuming that all of the prep above has been done, the actual Ride Along provides a perfect opportunity to observe the “Live Performance” first hand. If you do not already have one I suggest creating (and carrying with you) a Ride Along observation sheet consisting of all the areas that you would like to see demonstrated during the actual meeting. Prep, as noted above, would most certainly be included as the first steps on the Ride Along Feedback Sheet. I have seen these forms be extremely basic or very detailed. Greater detail affords the ability to provide more specific feedback and sometimes initiates a deeper discussion, leading to a coaching and mentoring opportunity within a specific area. As tenure and skill set to increase, so does the depth of specificity in demonstrated skill level. Again, think back to how an Olympic athlete would break down each individual step in their routine and work to perfect that specific step. Refinement of the key steps in a meeting allows the meeting to flow more efficiently/effectively driving toward the desired outcomes.

• The After Meeting Review, “The time for Feedback and Learning” – The after meeting review provides the perfect opportunity for learning and improvement. It’s when both the coach (mentor) and sale rep (student) can spend some valued time reviewing the Ride Along form and breakdown/evaluate each progressive step of the meeting. It’s a great opportunity to evaluate the prep work and role-play. Did we effectively do our due diligence? How did the meeting flow in relation to our role-play? Did we have the right information, assumptions, questions, answers, materials, players identified (ours and theirs)? Was the alignment of SME’s to their technical experts properly aligned – our proper team members to theirs? Did we effectively cover the proposed agenda, the purpose of the meeting, discussion topics, takeaways, and outcomes? How did we perform? How did our team players perform? What did we do right? What could we improve upon?

Sale managers, just think how quickly skill sets would improve if you followed this type of process. Sales reps just think how much you could learn and improve if your sales manager spent this type of quality time helping you perfect your craft! How would it benefit you financially?

Sale Managers, if you want to improve your team and their performance, get out and establish a routine with quality Ride Alongs. Sales Reps, if you want to continue improving and perfecting your craft, get your sale managers to come Ride Along with you. How can you be an effective coach if you don’t spend your time with the athlete in the gym? Ride Alongs are the single most effective way to transfer knowledge and improve performance.

Brand Management – Meaning and Important Concepts

Brand management begins with having a thorough knowledge of the term “brand”. It includes developing a promise, making that promise and maintaining it. It means defining the brand, positioning the brand, and delivering the brand. Brand management is nothing but an art of creating and sustaining the brand. Branding makes customers committed to your business. A strong brand differentiates your products from the competitors. It gives a quality image to your business.

Download Demo Powerpoint Presentation on Brand Management

Brand management includes managing the tangible and intangible characteristics of brand. In case of product brands, the tangibles include the product itself, price, packaging, etc. While in case of service brands, the tangibles include the customers’ experience. The intangibles include emotional connections with the product / service.

Branding is assembling of various marketing mix medium into a whole so as to give you an identity. It is nothing but capturing your customers mind with your brand name. It gives an image of an experienced, huge and reliable business.

It is all about capturing the niche market for your product / service and about creating a confidence in the current and prospective customers’ minds that you are the unique solution to their problem.

The aim of branding is to convey brand message vividly, create customer loyalty, persuade the buyer for the product, and establish an emotional connectivity with the customers. Branding forms customer perceptions about the product. It should raise customer expectations about the product. The primary aim of branding is to create differentiation.

Strong brands reduce customers’ perceived monetary, social and safety risks in buying goods/services. The customers can better imagine the intangible goods with the help of brand name. Strong brand organizations have a high market share. The brand should be given good support so that it can sustain itself in long run. It is essential to manage all brands and build brand equity over a period of time. Here comes importance and usefulness of brand management. Brand management helps in building a corporate image. A brand manager has to oversee overall brand performance. A successful brand can only be created if the brand management system is competent.

Following are the important concepts of brand management:

Definition of Brand

Brand Name

Brand Attributes

Brand Positioning

Brand Identity

Sources of Brand Identity

Brand Image

Brand Identity vs Brand Image

Brand Personality

Brand Awareness

Brand Loyalty

Brand Association

Building a Brand

Brand Equity

Brand Equity & Customer Equity

Brand Extension

Co-branding

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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com

Compare Apples to Apples…

when using sport’s teams analogies to coach sales teams.

A Sales Team is a Sales Team or not?

There are at least two definitions that come to mind:

• A group of sales people reporting to a sales manager
• A group of specialists (an account team) all facing a particular customer orchestrated usually by an account manager.

How are they different? An account team is a work group, whereas a team of sales people reporting to a sales manager is not.

What is a Work Group?

I came across the term reading “The Skilled Facilitator” by Roger Schwarz. Schwarz defines a work group as follows: ” A work group has a collective responsibility for performing one or more tasks and the outcome of the task can be assessed” He goes on explaining that a work group is a social system with boundaries distinguishing members from nonmembers. To qualify as a work group, its members are interdependent in producing their work.

While both two types of sales teams fit to a large extent to this definition, there is though a key difference; the interdependence of the members to produce their work. In an account team, the interdependence is a prerequisite to success.

The team of sales people reporting to a sales manager however is a set of individuals each pursuing his/her own goal. They are primarily paid on making their quota. There is though a team goal. But there is no collective responsibility for that goal; it is primarily the sales manager’s. It is reached if all sales people make their individual contribution. So only the sales manager is dependant on the performance of the individual team members and can achieve his/her goal if he coaches the individuals to maximum performance. For some it might help to define a workgroup by describing what it is not. In the words of Schwarz “A set of people working on similar but essentially individual tasks is not a work group”.

Why is this relevant?

Examples how sport coaches lead their teams are of little help unless we the equivalent types of sport’s teams. To the above defines types of sales teams.

A set of sales people, reporting to a sales manager, resembles more a team of individual athletes such as swimmers or skiers. The result of the individual matters most and the performance of the team (e.g. the numbers of medals won at the Olympics) is merely the addition of the performance of the individual members.

An account team however resembles more to a soccer or baseball team. Here the sum of the individual contribution does not necessarily make up the performance of the team. There are many examples of well coached and motivated teams having been more successful than a team of uncoordinated stars.

What are the consequences?

While work groups can be coached similar to team sport’s teams, a set of independent specialist has to be coached on a one to one basis. Using the wrong approach is a waste of time and causes frustration as the hoped for success cannot be had.

The productivity of the respective team meetings is a good indicator if the approach is matched to the characteristics of the team. For example if a sales manager has to declare attendance to sales meetings mandatory is an almost sure indicator for unproductive meetings. Sales managers confusing their own goal with the team’s goal as described above are more likely to have mandatory meetings.

There is more advice available how to run meetings for workgroups.

Understanding the different characteristics of teams is also essential for promoting the right people. Sales managers and account managers are distinguished roles requiring their own set of skills. Star account managers do not necessarily make good sales managers.

The most demanding sales manager’s position is probably leading teams of account managers. The dimension of work group leadership must be added when coaching account managers. In this role sales managers must though be well aware that “do as I do” is not a recipe for success.

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