Category: Sales

M.J. Rose has a great post
talking about how publishers
should let authors know
they’re slashing marketing budgets.

My response?

Publisher marketing should be gravy.
The core marketing should be author led
(led – that doesn’t mean the authors do it themselves).
The authors should always have a direct link
to bookstores and readers.

THAT is Apple’s success secret.
There are more innovative products out there.
There are better leaders than Steve Jobs.
But what Apple does right
is stay in direct contact
with a core group of users.

Contact lists are gold.
Customer contact lists are priceless.

Tickets for
country singer Kenny Chesney’s
August 2009 concert
went on sale in December,
a dreaded discretionary expense
selling
in the midst of an economic melt down.

The 60,000 seats sold out
in 10 minutes!

There’s no blaming poor sales on the economy.
Consumers have money to spend
and are spending it.

A decrease in sales
is a product/marketing/sales problem,
not an economic problem.

A loved one is a manager
of a department store
in a mid sized town.

The town is dying,
with all the main employers shutting their doors
this year
resulting record unemployment,
yet her store saw its highest profit
this past holiday season.

How?

The manager monitored everything,
adjusting orders daily
based on the sales the day before.

If they were out of stock,
they sold the product anyway
and then delivered it.
They delivered it
via employees
living close to the customer,
allowing employees to play Santa,
and
reinforcing the store’s place
in the community.

They even pulled a Miracle on 34th Street.
After gently explaining
that Apple gave their best deals
to the large multi-nationals
and not to local stores,
iPod seeking customers were directed to Wal-Mart.

The sales are there
but they aren’t going to come to you.
You have to go out
and grab them.

I went holiday shopping on Saturday.

At one department store,
I was told by an employee
she couldn’t help me
buy a watch
as she was ‘with a customer’
(that ‘customer’ had a store name tag on).

In a Wal-Mart,
the cashier checked me out
without looking at me once
(she was busy complaining to a coworker).

You may think
that the bad economy,
poor sales,
possible lay offs,
is enough to incent employees
to hustle.

It isn’t.

Managers still have to do their jobs,
motivating employees
and ensuring that sales actually get done.

Are your employees selling?

A loved one works in a bookstore.
He knows that
a patron coming into the store
looking for a copy of
Kimber Chin’s Breach Of Trust
is more likely to buy
(if that book is in stock)
than a patron
asking simply about a book.

Why?

Because she has done her research,
she has thought about it already
and
she is ready to buy.

The more specific the request,
the closer the prospect is to buying.

Jeff Johnson provides a great presentation
explaining this.

Remember the gloom and doom
about Black Friday
for retailers?
Didn’t happen.
Sales were up 7.2%

But, but, but
the NRF protests,
don’t expect it to last.
The sales increase for 2008
is expected to be
only 2.2%.
Only.

Since when is an INCREASE
in sales
a sky is falling scenario?

If your own sales aren’t where they should be,
don’t blame the consumer.
Look internally.

A great way to motivate salespeople
is with incentives or contests.

Many companies offer a single ‘Grand Prize’
and wonder why the incentive
doesn’t work.

Why doesn’t it work?

Because the top salesperson
has enough motivation
maintaining his number one ranking.
The number two
is already gunning for number one.
And the rest feel
they’ll never win
so they don’t bother trying.

In
Selling Is Everyone’s Business
written by
Steve Johnson and Adam Shaivitz,
Mark Benjamin at ADP advises
“the benchmark is set right
for a contest or incentive trip
if about 30 to 50 percent make it.
The top 3 to 5 percent will be there anyway.
These rewards are in place
to get the next larger group
to the next level.
You can still do something nice
for the top 5 percent,
like a special cocktail hour with the CEO
or upgraded hotel rooms,
and that does what you need
in giving them
the extra bit of recognition.”

In The Sales Success Handbook,
Linda Richardson points out
how many salespeople blunder
by using the word tell.

“When a salesperson called his product specialist
to help him compose an e-mail to a hot prospect
and asked for help in describing
the purpose of the meeting
they would be requesting,
the specialist said,
‘To meet with you to tell you
about our fully integrated…
and how we can… ‘
A customer-first mindset would have changed
the nuance of the e-mail.
A specialist tuned into his or her sales talk
might have said,
‘To learn about your…
initiative and discusss how our fully integrated…
might support you in…'”

Notice the subtle yet significant change.
Using tell says the pitch is all about you
and what you can gain from the sale.
By switching the wording,
the pitch becomes customer focused.

I went into a store to buy
a set of hose.
The hose section was beautifully organized.
The packages were lined up in custom sized bins.
Opened packages were discarded.
The store price tags were all neatly affixed 
to the top right hand corner
of each package…

… right over the size information.

So customers had to peel off the price tags
with their fingernails
in order to find out
that critical piece of information.
I couldn’t be bothered.
I bought my hose at another store.

I’ve seen price tags over back cover copy on books.
I’ve seen price tags over UPC codes
(so the product wouldn’t scan).
I’ve seen price tags over warning labels for children’s toys.

Train your employees
on the proper placement of price tags.
Poor placement will lose you sales.