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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Analyzing Consumers Buying Behaviour
The core function of the marketing department is to understand and satisfy consumer need, wants and desire. Consumer behaviour captures all the aspect of purchase, utility and disposal of products and services. In groups and organization are considered within the framework of consumer. Failing to understand consumer behaviour is the recipe for disaster as some companies have found it the hard way. For example, Wal-Mart launched operations in Latin-America with store design replicating that of US markets. However, Latin America consumer differs to US consumer in every aspect. Wal-Mart suffered consequences and failed to create impact.
Social, cultural, individual and emotional forces play a big part in defining consumer buying behaviour. Cultural, sub-culture and social class play an important is finalizing consumer behaviour. For example, consumer growing up in US is exposed to individualism, freedom, achievement, choice, etc. On sub-culture level influence of religion, race, geographic location and ethnicity define consumer behaviour. Social class consists of consumer with the same level of income, education, taste, feeling of superiority and inferiority. Over time consumer can move from one social level to another.
Culture alone cannot define consumer behaviour; social forces also play an important role. Social forces consist of family, friends, peer groups, status and role in society. Groups which have direct or indirect influence on consumer are referred to as reference groups. Primary groups consist of friends, family and peers with whom consumer has direct contact for considerable time. Secondary groups are association where interaction is at formal level and time devoted is less.
Consumer buying behaviour is influenced by individuals own personality traits. These personality traits do not remain the same but change with the life cycle. The choice of occupation and corresponding income level also play part in determining consumer behaviour. A doctor and software engineer both would have different buying pattern in apparel, food automobile etc. Consumers from similar background, occupation and income levels may show a different lifestyle pattern.
An individual buying behaviour is influenced by motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitude. These factors affect consumer at a psychological level and determine her overall buying behaviour. Maslows hierarchy, Herzberg Theory and Freud Theory try and explain people different motivational level in undertaking a buying decision. Perception is what consumer understands about a product through their senses. Marketers have to pay attention to consumers perception about a brand rather than true offering of the product. Learning comes from experience; consumer may respond to stimuli and purchase a product. A favorable purchase will generate positive experience resulting in pleasant learning. Belief is the pre-conceived notion a consumer has towards a brand. It is kind of influence a brand exerts on consumer. For example, there is a strong belief product coming through German engineering are quality products. Companies may take advantage of this belief and route their production through Germany.
Companies need to think beyond buying behaviour and analyze the actual buying process. Complex buying behaviour requires high involvement of buyers, as it is infrequent in nature, expensive, and they are significant differences among the available choice e.g. automobile. Grocery buying is referred to as habitual buying, which requires less involvement as few differences among brands, frequent and inexpensive. Buying process involves purchase need, decision makers, information search, alternatives evaluation, purchase decision and post purchase behaviour. Companies try hard to understand consumer experience and expectation at every stage of buying process. Marketers need to figure the right combinations which will initiate purchase need e.g. marketing programs. Companies should ensure consumer have readily available information to take the decision e.g. internet, friends. Consumers evaluate alternatives based on their brand perception and belief. Companies need to work hard to develop products, which match this perception and belief every time. Final purchase decision is taken looking others perception of the brand. Post purchase if expectations meet actual performance consumer is satisfied and more likely to repurchase or recommend the brand to others.
Consumer markets are defined by various geographical, social and cultural factors. Furthermore, consumer behaviour is influenced by psychological, personality, reference groups and demographic reasons. Finally actual buying process involves complex process and cycle. Companies have to keep a tab on all three factors in formulating strategy.
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Articales from http://www.managementstudyguide.com
Types of brand awareness
Marketers typically identify two distinct types of brand awareness; namely brand recall (also known as unaided recall or occasionally spontaneous recall) and brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall).[8] These types of awareness operate in entirely different ways with important implications for marketing strategy and advertising.
Brand recall
Brand recall is also known as unaided recall or spontaneous recall and refers to the ability of the consumers to correctly elicit a brand name from memory when prompted by a product category.[3] Brand recall indicates a relatively strong link between a category and a brand while brand recognition indicates a weaker link. When prompted by a product category, most consumers can only recall a relatively small set of brands, typically around 3-5 brand names. In consumer tests, few consumers can recall more than seven brand names within a given category and for low-interest product categories, most consumers can only recall one or two brand names.[9]
Research suggests that the number of brands that consumers can recall is affected by both individual and product factors including; brand loyalty, awareness set size, situational, usage factors and education level.[10] For instance, consumers who are involved with a category, such as heavy users or product enthusiasts, may be able to recall a slightly larger set of brand names than those who are less involved.
Brand recognition
Brand recognition is also known as aided recall and refers to the ability of the consumers to correctly differentiate the brand when they come into contact with it. This does not necessarily require that the consumers identify the brand name. Instead, it means that consumers can recognise the brand when presented with it at the point-of-sale or after viewing its visual packaging.[11] In contrast to brand recall, where few consumers are able to spontaneously recall brand names within a given category, when prompted with a brand name, a larger number of consumers are typically able to recognise it.
Top-of-Mind Awareness
Consumers will normally purchase one of the top three brands in their consideration set. This is known as top-of-mind awareness.[12] Consequently, one of the goals for most marketing communications is to increase the probability that consumers will include the brand in their consideration sets.
By definition, top-of-mind awareness is “the first brand that comes to mind when a customer is asked an unprompted question about a category.[13] When discussing top-of-mind awareness among larger groups of consumers (as opposed to a single consumer), it is more often defined as the “most remembered” or “most recalled” brand name(s).[14]
A brand that enjoys top-of-mind awareness will generally be considered as a genuine purchase option, provided that the consumer is favourably disposed to the brand name.[15] Top-of-mind awareness is relevant when consumers make a quick choice between competing brands in low-involvement categories or for impulse type purchases.[16]
Marketing implications of brand awareness
Clearly brand awareness is closely related to the concepts of the evoked set (defined as the set of brands that a consumer can elicit from memory when contemplating a purchase) and the consideration set (defined as the “small set of brands which a consumer pays close attention to when making a purchase decision”).[17] One of the advertising’s central roles is to create both brand awareness and brand image, in order to increase the likelihood that a brand is included in the consumer’s evoked set or consideration set and regarded favourably. [18]
Consumers do not learn about products and brands from advertising alone. When making purchase decisions, consumers acquire information sources from a wide variety of information sources in order to inform their decisions. After searching for information about a category, consumers may become aware of a larger number of brands which collectively are known as the awareness set.[19] Thus, the awareness set is likely to change as consumers acquire new information about brands or products. A review of empirical studies in this area suggests that the consideration set is likely to be at least three times larger than the evoked set.[20] Awareness alone is not sufficient to trigger a purchase, consumers also need to be favourably disposed to a brand before it will be considered as a realistic purchase option.
The process of moving consumers from brand awareness and a positive brand attitude through to the actual sale is known as conversion. [21] While advertising is an excellent tool for creating awareness and brand attitude, it usually requires support from other elements in the marketing program to convert attitudes into actual sales.[22] Other promotional activities, such as telemarketing, are vastly superior to advertising in terms of generating sales. Accordingly, the advertising message might attempt to drive consumers to direct sales call centres as part of an integrated communications strategy. [23] Many different techniques can be used to convert interest into sales including special price offers, special promotional offers, attractive trade-in terms or guarantees.
Percy and Rossiter argue that very few shoppers use lists and this has important implications for the purchase decision and advertising strategy
Percy and Rossiter (1992) argue that the two types of awareness, namely brand recall and brand recognition, operate in fundamentally different ways in the purchase decision. For routine purchases such as fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), few shoppers carry shopping lists. For them, the presentation of brands at the point-of-sale acts as a visual reminder and triggers category need. In this case, brand recognition is the dominant mode of awareness. For other purchases, where the brand is not present, the consumer first experiences category need then searches memory for brands within that category. Many services, such as home help, gardening services, pizza delivery fall into this category. In this case, the category need precedes brand awareness. Such purchases are recall dominant, and the consumer is more likely to select one of the brands elicited from memory.[24] When brand recall is dominant, it is not necessary for consumers to like the advertisement, but they must like the brand. In contrast, consumers should like the ad when brand recognition is the communications objective. [25]
The distinction between brand recall and brand recognition has important implications for advertising strategy. When the communications objectives depend on brand recognition, the creative execution must show the brand packaging or a recognisable brand name. However, when the communications objectives rely on brand recall, the creative execution should encourage strong associations between the category and the brand.[26] Advertisers also use jingles, mnemonics and other devices to encourage brand recall.
Brand dominance occurs when, during brand recall tests, most consumers can name only one brand from a given category.[27] Brand dominance is defined as an individual’s selection of only certain brand names in a related category during a brand recall procedure.[27] While brand dominance might appear to be a desirable goal, overall dominance can be a double-edged sword.
When a brand name becomes so well-known that the brand becomes synonymous with the category, the brand is said to have ‘gone generic’
A brand name that is well known to the majority of people or households is also called a household name [28] and may be an indicator of brand success. Occasionally a brand can become so successful that the brand becomes synonymous with the category. For example, British people often talk about “Hoovering the house” when they actually mean “vacuuming the house.” (Hoover is a brand name). When this happens, the brand name is said to have “gone generic.” [29] Examples of brands becoming generic abound; Kleenex, Cellotape, Nescafe, Aspirin and Panadol. When a brand goes generic, it can present a marketing problem because when the consumer requests a named brand at the retail outlet, they may be supplied with a competing brand. For example, if a person enters a bar and requests “a rum and Coke,” the bartender may interpret that to mean a “rum and cola-flavoured beverage,” paving the way for the outlet to supply a cheaper alternative mixer. In such a scenario, Coca-Cola Ltd, who after investing in brand building for more than a century, is the ultimate loser because it does not get the sale.
Sales BOOM
‘I have to think it over’ – BOOM
‘I need to take it to the board’ – BOOM
‘I need to crunch the numbers’ – BOOM
‘I’m meeting with another provider’ – BOOM
‘I’ll get back to you next week’ – BOOM
I was at State Dock, Lake Cumberland over the 4th of July. They have a wonderful 30 minute firework’s display starting at 9 pm CT. Thirty minutes of Boom, Boom and more Boom. As my wife Linda says, ‘you’ve seen one fireworks display, you’ve seen them all.” I’m about a quarter of a mile from where they are shooting off the fireworks. When I close my eyes and then open them at the boom of the explosion, the flash was already gone! (Speed of sound 343 m/s. Speed of light = 983,571,056.4 ft/s)
BOOM – I’m thinking, the same thing happens in sales. By the time you hear a ‘sales boom’ i.e. ‘I want to think it over’- it’s too late. You’ve missed it. The flash, the color, the opportunity to seize the sale, is over. Well not over, but you do have to light a new firecracker (revisit the basic motivation of the buyer) all over again. And that sometimes turns into a dud.
To avoid the BOOMS you must hear these critical cues while the sales firecracker is lit:
- I have a problem and I will fix it
- I have the money and will spend it
- I will replace my current relationship
- I will make a decision at time of presentation
To get these responses in a sales call you must ask critical questions to light your sales firecracker. You must ask questions that help you:
- Find out why the prospect is taking valuable time to visit with you other than ‘I have an open mind and like to stay abreast of what is happening’
- Discover the extent of the problems and actual realized cost of not fixing the problems
- Make sure that there is adequate financial and time resources available to invest to fix the problem
- Get a clear understanding of who the decision maker is and the decision making process prior to making a presentation
- Get an agreement for a decision prior to presenting any solutions
Ask these questions to light the opportunity, listen for the critical cues and you will avoid sales BOOMS.
Tags: Prospecting, Selling, sales skills, Sales, Skills
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B to C selling, Visual merchandising, Employee Engagement Survey
