First Things First

Let’s clearly get a hold of what implementation entails. In a most technical sense it involves managing change. A strategic marketing plan is nothing more than a set of actions geared at change, augmentation, and modification. These changes fall into two broad areas.

1. Organizational &Procedural: things like products, work routines, how things are done, what is done, what is emphasized, etc.
2. Behavioral & Attitudinal: things like beliefs, orientation, thinking, skills, routines, etc.

The key word is change, and as we all know change in any organization can be an uphill battle. That is why as we start to lay down keys to successful implementation of a strategic marketing plan, we will have to make certain assumptions about the plan itself.

We will assume that your strategic marketing plan was created using best practices. Our assumptions about your plan include:

• Company Communication: a plan conceived without consulting each department or relevant persons is asking for disaster. It is always best practice to get the input off all relevant departments when creating a strategic marketing plan. This is will reduce errors, decrease future resistance to change, and provide insight into the dynamics of how the company operates.
• Strong Foundation: a plan should start first with the company mission and business statements and seek to fulfill those sentiments. If it sticks to these values and positions then all parties in the company should have no problem going along with it. If they did have issue, they would have issue with the very fabric of what the company exists for.
• Top Management Support: a plan should have participation and support of top management and leaders in the company. Without their full support, implementation across the organization is next to impossible. This means the plans in its infancy was in part created with top managers and leaderships input.
• Resources: if the company does not have the resources to carry out the plan then needless to say implementation will be compromised. A good plan is developed with a good understanding of company resources. This means it was created with intimate knowledge of the financial background and future plans already in place.

There are more things that go into best practices when creating a solid strategic marketing plan, but these are among the top pitfalls.

Key 1: Give the Glory to Top Management

Top management ultimately is the most influential part to successful implementation. They control the purse strings, how things are done, attitudes and beliefs, and most importantly the direction the company.

Without their full and complete support the plan will have serious hurdles to overcome. Give the glory and duty to top management to disseminate the plan. Tasks that top management are essential to include:

1. Communicating to entire company
2. Allocating resources to carry out plan
3. Influence beliefs and attitudes as to why the plan is important
4. Mediate power struggles or conflicts
5. Etc.

If we followed best practices and included top management in the design and planning phases, then implementation is the next step of an ongoing process. The more top management is involved and tied to the plan, the more they will contribute to the plans ultimate success. In a nut shell, they have married the plan and will work like hell to make sure it works.

Key 2: Know Everyone’s Role

The second step to a successful implementation is to know everyone’s role in the plan and how they are involved. Top managers are privy to the whole plan as they disseminate the organizational and behavioral change outlined in the plan. Department heads do not need the whole plan. They need to understand their duties and requirements outlined in the plan. Employees and further down the ladder do not need the entire plan. They need a set of guidelines to influence behavioral & procedural shifts.

The main point here is, that if you give people more to handle and process than their pay grade, they will ultimately implode. Give them a vision and tasks to match what they are capable of. This empowers the individual to work with purpose towards realistic and achievable goals. This intimately ties each person and group in the company to the role they play.

This means you should not make 500 copies of the plan and start handing them out in company mailboxes. Keep it hush, secret, and for higher up eyes only. The stated above advantages are also supplemented by the psychological ramifications of keeping things lock and key. People will want what they can’t have. Simple human nature, unfold it slowly, leak some key parts here and there. Besides it is a huge security risk to have your plan in too many hands.

Key 3: Goal Setting

In implementing the plan special care must be given to developing a scheduling and task system to measure intermittent success. By intermittent we mean that if the ultimate goal of the plan was to increase sales by 24% over an 8 month period, we need a way to check our success. Maybe weekly as it relates to our core objective.

Top managers should create step by step tasks and completion dates that department heads can evaluate and disseminate to personnel to keep all parties on track. The method that is done will vary depending on the organization, but creating routine personnel meetings, developing committees, setting up goal and time tracking processes, etc. are all part of making sure everyone is working to meet the plans objectives.

Key 4: Feedback & Training

Hitting goals is a lot easier if everyone is on the same page by developing skill sets, beliefs, and procedures needed to implement the plan. It is up to top management to setup training and informational sessions that will help personnel groups’ meet goals, and stay motivated.

Motivation is one the biggest concerns going forward. By staying motivated employee groups are more effective in every capacity. Motivation of company members can be facilitated by

• Getting them involved: make them feel like they are a part of the process.
• Present things in terms that motivate them: if your staff is motivated my profit speak in those terms. If staff is motivated by security, comfort, giving, respect, loyalty, etc. speak to those values and how working the plan will help them meet these values.

The training and information disseminated will also create a great opportunity for feedback which will help with the next key step to successful implementation.

Key 5: Strategic Marketing Plan Calibration

Many times a strategic marketing plan is implemented with initial gusto, but not evaluated and calibrated along the way to meet the changing landscape and newly gathered information. This can lead to a plan becoming obsolete and met with resistance within the company, causing disillusion.

You can offset this process by emphasizing that the plan be a living document. It will grow, change, and calibrate upon feedback from personnel, department heads, and real world results. The feedback from various parts of the company will reinvigorate the plans objectives, because real time feedback is facilitating information flow. Information flow is like blood in the veins; when it flows, the business remains healthy. Developing methods to collect and analyze information is beyond this article but one should always be looking for ways to tweak the current plan. Things change, assumptions prove to be wrong, so adaptability is key to successful implementation.

Implementation is not easy and takes a certain amount of dedication regardless of company size. Conceiving the plan using best practices helps because many hurdles have already been jumped like getting all parties input. Getting top management involved early is a top most priority. Developing key goals, tracking, and feedback systems will help the plan meet its desired results. Last but not least creating processes to continually evaluate and update the plan will ensure its remains relevant. Successfully implement your plan by following the 5 steps listed.

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1. Win Big, Know Your Market Position!

2 Minutes of Sales Seduction

First consider the dynamics of seducing someone.

1. It takes at least 2 to play the game (it’s no fun alone)
2. You must know exactly what the other person wants and likes
3. You must orchestrate or guide the process (hey it’s your game)

1. It Takes At Least 2 to Play the Game

First know that you need a willing party to enter into the 2 Minute Sales Seduction. Remember the rule, “No means No”. This does not mean you need verbal consent, but at the very least the other party must be open to conversation. Time, place, or circumstance is not important as long as you have a willing partner. Whether at a business mixer, the ballpark, your kid’s recital you can engage in sales seduction. Simple signs that you have willingness to play include:

• Smiling, talking, asking you questions, making eye contact, etc. (subtle flirting). The key is you feel comfortable and the other party is reciprocating your advances.

2. You Must Know Exactly What the Other Person Wants & Likes

This is where the seduction is won or lost. You have to know what the other person wants. In business we can always make certain guesses about wants and likes of our prospects. In B2B you can assume your prospects wants to make more money, save money, and do things faster. If your prospects are consumers, you can assume they want entertainment, comfort, staples of living, etc.

These are all good guesses, but not specific enough to be a part of the 2 Minute Sales Seduction. We want to hit the nail on the head and know for sure what our prospects want. So, how do we do this? We Ask! Questions are the toolkit of the seducer; they draw out information that can be used to paint a perfect picture for consumption. Asking always beats the traditional sales dialog based on guessing what a prospects wants and values.

Consider the following traditional introduction.

Sara: What do you do?

Jim: I run a Janitorial service. We help businesses like yours by becoming contractors, eliminating the need for in house staff.

–End

In the above example our sales seducer (Jim) made the assumption that Sara cares about the problems of having an in house janitorial staff. For all he knows, Sara could care less about Janitorial services. Jim needs to find out how janitorial services effects Sara’s work. He should engage her in questions that pull out her values, wants, and needs.

Let’s try it again using the 2 Minute Sales Seduction:

Sara: What do you do?

Jim: I have a very simple service that caters to businesses. For instance Sara I see you are in the Accounting business. Let me ask how many offices does your company have? :

Sara: We have 3 offices. 1 main and two branch offices.

Jim: Three offices spread across the city poses certain issues. One might be janitorial services. Do you have a staff or service you currently use for janitorial?

Sara: No, I think services are offered under our lease agreement. I do not know much about it.

Jim: Really, between me and you has it been up to par? I mean, have you seen any issues?

Sara: No, not really. From time to time at our main office we have temps or interns clean the office when in a crunch. I used to be one of those poor interns. Once we might have lost a major account because our office, conference, and bathroom areas were not super clean.

Jim: Yeah, no one likes to clean, except us that is. You know Sara, we offer last minute janitorial and prep services to help with those kind of issues. We scrub, vacuum, freshen air, go over bathrooms, align and setup spaces with little to no advanced booking. We take the headache out of impressing big clients in a moment’s notice. Its cost effective, you could help those temps out, and not worry about losing any other accounts. Who would I speak to about this?

–End

Sara at this point has been 2 Minute Sales Seduced. We have engaged Sara and drawn out the crux of her issue as it relates to our business offering. We simply did not guess. We structured the conversation in a way that led to real world issues that we could solve. The key is that we led, which takes us to our last major point of the sales seduction.

3. You Must Guide & Orchestrate the Process

In the above example we orchestrated and guided the process. We had purpose and engaged our prospect showing we wanted to serve his/her need, not our own. If you do not guide this process you may lose the prospect, or end up being seduced yourself.

A seducer has purpose and is looking to please by giving the other party what he/she wants most. Find it by guiding the process. It becomes harder to pull off the seduction if you are not in control. Start the conversation first. Find out what the other person does. Find out what their hobbies are. How long they been in business. What kind of widgets they like. For the sales seducer information is power. The more you can draw on facts that relate, the closer you get to a deeper connection. Ultimately that connection is what leads to a sale.

Many of us are disillusioned into believing our products and services are that much better than the competition, when in fact they are relatively the same. At the end of the day the fine line that can separate your business will be how well you seduce your prospects. Get them active and desiring more, by working the 2 Minute Sales Seduction.

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Finding the optimized zone is a matter of trial and error, experience, and common sense. The first two are costly to get, but should balance out in the long run. Common sense on the other hand is free (to most of us) and sure to cut down on the cost of the first two ways to find the optimized marketing zone.

Here is a brief list of some common sense approaches to finding the optimized marketing zone

1. Know your industry: your industry is sure to have some set ways of marketing. They work, that is why everyone does them. If you are departing heavily from the norm, you better have a good reason. Creativity is not a license to do what you want. Use creativity to spruce up  a tried and true way that works.
2. Know your sales cycle: some industries are seasonal; some depend on cycles (what’s in and what’s out). By knowing this you can estimate when you should be throwing all your marketing weight at landing clients. A seasonal or cyclical business will go 100 mph one time a year, because they only have one window of opportunity. A client of ours does 87% of their business from November 27 – January 3^rd.
3. Know your clients: this is probably the biggest common sense thing about marketing. Know your clients. A young audience does not read the newspapers. An older audience does not like flashy websites. By knowing your audience you can dismiss all of the fluff that burns your gas.

The optimized zone for marketing saves money and is just a whole lot smarter.

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For example: Who knew when it came to food, people cared more for speed than taste? Who knew plush couches could make up for average coffee? Who knew people would forgo meals and comfort and then ride for hours to save a few bucks? Well Ray Kroc of Mcdonalds, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Herbert D. Kelleher of Southwest Airlines knew these counter intuitive trends. They leveraged them to become 3 of most successful companies in the world.

The question for us becomes how do we mimic this pattern and begin to effectively use information to find the next big trend. We start with 3 basic mindsets when it comes to making decisions in our business.

1. Customer First Orientation
2. Develop Touch Point Fever
3. Adapt & Change Yesterday

Customer First Orientation

Customers are primary to business success as they pay the bills. It’s only natural to first understand their wants and needs by developing a Customer First Orientation. This orientation makes your customer the starting point for information collection and decision making. You become keen to what they want, desire, and need.

Ray Krok used this principle when he came across a restaurant in San Bernardino, California, called McDonalds. He saw customers line up around the corner to get burgers. This was unheard of during the time because drive-ins were all the rage. Ray saw something special in what customers wanted. He used that information to build a world burger empire. He did not guess, call on a guru, or make wild hunches. He made direct observation of customer wants, and capitalized on them.

You can do the same thing and find the next trend to take your business to the next level. Make it your business to know your customer. Verify through direct observation and response to find out what they want and need. Assumptions and hopes are replaced with exact, reasonable, and real time information.

Touch Point Fever

When you develop a Customer First Orientation you will find Touch Point Fever close behind. It is the preoccupation with making sure every touch point you have with your customer is yielding information. Each sale, inbound / outbound call, marketing literature sent, has tied into it a way to gather information.

Touch Points Can Include:

• Employee interaction (in store, on phone, at register, etc.)
• Inbound / Outbound calls
• Sales Team
• Website / Blog
• Surveys
• Marketing Materials
• Shipping Department
• Customer Service Department
• Accounts Payable
• Email

Anyplace where you have the potential to speak or interact with a customer, develop a process to get information. The type of information you gather should focus on trend keys. Possible trend keys include:

• Benefits & Value: find out the benefit and value of your service
• Pain / Issue: the flip side of benefit. Find out what pain or issue the customer has that you can solve
• Customer Satisfaction: know how satisfied your customers are
• Competition: find out who else your customer may use or consider and why
• Location: is your business conveniently located
• Wish List: always have a wish list your customers can give suggestions
• Opportunities For Growth: find out what opportunities might exist to bring further value to customers
• Buying Behavior: what behavior or habits are involved in buying patterns. Is there more than one person making the decision to buy? Do they compare shop first? Etc.
• Price: are your customer sensitive to price? Do they value the quality of your product over its economics?
• Etc.

The key is that you are always collecting information to find that next unknown trend.

Adapt & Change Yesterday

The expiration date on information collected is yesterday. Things change and other patterns evolve, so you must jump on opportunity to improve today. Having the ability to collect information and use it in real time is a wonderful way to say

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Note: this article was adapted from a worksheet. win-big-know-your-position

Positioning

Positioning is the process of narrowing down a few key benefits that customer’s want and you have competitive advantage in. In other words, it is about playing to your strengths. There are two basic types of questions in formulating your positioning. Who & What. The Who concerns target markets, and competitors. The What concerns target benefit and competitive advantage.

Who: Is Your Target Market

I know you have heard this time and time again, but it is worth restating. Know who you are targeting. It helps in many ways. Including:

• decreasing marketing expenditure
• yielding higher returns on marketing investments
• narrows competition
• creates niche expertise
• provides richer information for decision making

The process of selecting a market segment can be intensive, but well worth the effort. In future Bazooka Biz articles we will get into more detail about selecting target markets. Below is an outline of some steps to begin the process of target market selection.

Target Market Worksheet

Q1: Who is most likely to want or need your products/ services? Describe your typical customer(s).

Q2: Why this particular market? Is it profitable, do you have advantage, niche, etc. WHY?

Q3: Who are the customers in this market (specific)?

Q4: Customer Psychological Make-Up (Lifestyle)

Q5: Where are they located?

Q6: What’s important to your customers

Q7: What are 3-6 Key benefits your customers seek? (e.g. what points-of-pain or problems need to be solved)

Q8: How do you fulfill these key benefits?

Q9: What do you customers consider before they purchase your products or services?

Q10: How are your customers influenced by price?

Q11: What other factors can affect your customers purchase or use decision?

Q12: What attitudes do customers have about the industry you serve (e.g. are they enthusiastic, confused, lacking information, expect high quality, could care less, etc.)?

Q13: Can your product / service be easily replaced? What other products do you compete with?

Q14: What are some key frustrations your customers have with your business?

Who: Is Your Target Competitors

During this phase you want to carve out a list of competitors. Try to get beyond the most visible competitors (e.g. top of mind, leaders in the industry, etc.) to get a more comprehensive list. Types of competitors to consider include:

• top of the market (those you are chasing)
• at your current level
• same geographic area
• startup competitors
• etc.

To get even more competitors on your list, ask current customers and do internet research. Remember, that your list should only include those who are competing directly with you in the target market you have selected. A company may sell similar products, but not target the same markets you have isolated.

Another key thing I like to do when doing a competitive analysis is create an imaginary company. This company does everything well and my target market loves them. In envisioning this company I get a better understanding of my ?company’s weaknesses. This also is useful if you have no direct competitors, as it gives you a way to measure your strengths in regards to perfection.

Target Competitor List

What: Is Your Value / Benefit to Your Target Market?

No other point means as much to business success as providing value to customers. That is why knowing what value / benefit you provide to your target market is like possessing the Holy Grail. You instantly have this magical power to give customers what they want, providing real value.

Providing real value starts with working with accurate information. Accurate information comes from primary sources, directly from the horse’s mouth, namely your customers. Customers are the ones who can give it to you straight and un-filtered, providing useable data on your true value. Other sources of information are to be strictly used for supplemental purposes.

Below is a list of ways of getting information about your company market value. Note they have been arranged from best to worst.

1. Customer Base (Primary)
   • • current customers – full of useful information about how you stack up.
     • new customers – may be able to tell you why they patronize your business
     • lost customers – where did you go wrong
     • heavy users – know all the wonderful things of your products
     • potential customers – concerns, questions, apprehensions
2. Industry Research (studies) / Books / Publications
3. Internet Research (e.g. epinions, review page, view points, etc.)
4. Employees
5. Management
6. Senior Management
7. Business Owners

Notice that the higher you go up the chain of command in a company the worse the source of information becomes. This is due to the fact that generally the higher up you are in the company the further removed you are from the customers. Also the higher up you are the more vested you are in the success of the company, which biases you to objective critique.

Knowing who and where to get the information on perceived value from is only 20% of the battle. The lion’s share of work is in creating vehicles for information collection, analysis, and implementation. A full in-depth look at any of these 3 areas could fill many books. We will briefly summarize a few steps in each area of Information Collection, Information Analysis, and Information Implementation.

Value / Benefit Information collection

Collecting information from customer base should be a part of the organizational workflow. Each touch point should maximize the process of collecting information. This means that things like employee interactions, email correspondence, web sites, flyers, promotions, etc. all should somehow tie back into information collection. Examples of a company’s touch points might include:

Direct survey and industry survey groups are other ways of getting rich data from customers on the value of your services. Conducting random surveys of customer base (see above) will give your company much needed real-time information to plan from. Recent research indicates that using mixed mode surveys is key to deployment. This means a company should use several vehicles for survey deployment. This may include a combination of:

Value / Benefit Information Analysis

Analyzing information does not need to be super complex. Depending on your type of deployment, data entry into a centralized database should be simple and straight forward. Services like Zoomerang allow you to export online and email survey data to be used with offline data.

For example, we recommend a simple value based table be created ranking the relative importance of each value and how you think you stack up. (Note full in-depth study of organizational capabilities is in the next section)

The above relative value to capability table is a simple example of how a doctor’s office might organize information collected from patients. In this example the patients place high value on reputation and convenient location. This is good news for our doctor’s office because its capabilities match up well with these values.

The key here is not to get stuck in the paralysis of analysis. Find the trends and act on them.

Implimentation

All the information in the world means nothing unless it is acted upon. Once you find a trend in value perception, seek to fix it or use it. That is, if you see a trend of value being customer support then beef up your customer support yesterday. If you find a trend of mobile phone use, then develop a mobile website yesterday.

Values shift, wants and needs change, so information collected has a short shelf life. To be effective you must use information quickly and develop a get it implemented yesterday mindset. This type of company emphasis can only work with full support and dedication from top management. (See Information is King & 5 Keys to Successfully Implementing Your Marketing Plan for more information about implementation)

Brief summary of plans of implementation: (note this is only a summary. The implementation should be comprehensive and backed by serious planning)

What: Is Your Competitive Advantage (edge)?

Business growth and sustainability is based on competitive advantage. That is, your company’s future is bound to your capabilities as they relate to your competitors. If you have capabilities that are unique to your company, and customers that value that capability, you have an edge.

The advantage whether it is a skill set, resource, geographic location, inside information, or other, is what separates competitors. Further distance is created by the uniqueness of the capability advantage. For example, a gas station that installed an automatic car washing system that customer’s value has a distinct edge over competition. That is, until the competitors have a similar system installed. In this example the advantage was not unique, so the advantage could only be held in the short term.

The first step to finding your edge is to examine your capabilities to find areas of competitive advantage. These advantages become an edge when you can link them directly to customer value. An advantage that customers do not value means little.

We recommend 3 types of analysis:

A combination of the above 3 competitor analysis works best depending on budget and availability. Using your touch point questionnaires and survey model as discussed earlier you could easily deploy a customer based competitive analysis. Industry study may not be available for small industries or local types of businesses. An in house team analysis is an inclusive effort, not a one person thing. Getting comprehensive feedback from all team members will yield much better information than isolated analysis.

Competition table information

The type of information you collect is the same regardless of analysis method chosen above. In each case you want to find out how your company and competitors rank in relationship to values / benefits of your target market. You will then arrange this data into a competition table for review.

The Competition table displays 3 types of data.

1. Values of Customers: you have already listed values in above steps
2. Organizational Capabilities: how does your company meet each of these above value
3. Competitor Capabilities: how your competition meets each of the above values

Each type of data will have a specific type of ranking.

1. Values of Customers: 10 – 1, with 10 being highly relevant to target market.
2. Organizational Capabilities: Below Average, On Par, & Superior (in relationship to your competitors) & is your superiority future proof (sustainable)

For example you have identified reputation as being one of the key values of your target market. Does your company have a superior reputation than your competition? Is your superior reputation future proof and sustainable? The below table outlines an example Doctor’s office and how it might display a competition table.

Competitive advantage table

Competitive Advantage: a capability that allows an organization to provide a benefit to its customer base at a superior level than the competition.

Cell Key:

• Par / Average: means you are meeting with sufficient capability in regards to this value. You are running with the pack, thusly on par / average
• Superior: you are leading the pack and out pacing your competition
• Future Proof: you can hold this advantage in the foreseeable future (sustainable)
• Empty: means below average (competitors are better than you)

From the above table, our doctor’s office core strength is reputation and convenient location. The office should promptly add capability in the areas of available hours and facility upgrades. Parking may be one of those things they can’t change without moving, which may alter their advantage in terms of location.

Sample Positioning Summary?

Our doctor office studied his market and narrowed down his efforts to focus on the young professional crowd 26-41 years of age. This target market reside near where they work in the downtown area, which makes his location very valuable. He knows from his target market study that they also value convenience (do not like to travel far). This market likes

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If we could eliminate or control the unknown factor in our marketing, we could alleviate this big headache. This is easier said than done, because marketing is complex, and is as much art as it is a science. Despite these complexities, there is one thing that always works and proves instrumental in decreasing the unknown factor. It’s called systematic planning.

Yes, the secret of secrets is planning. It’s not fancy or even glamorous, but useful, and worth its weight in gold. By systematically planning your marketing efforts, you can effectively track, monitor, and most importantly CHANGE based on solid information. As you change, based on solid information the picture of what works and where success lies, becomes clearer. It is clearer, because you have past information, present understanding, and a plan to drive future efforts.

The old saying is, “We never plan to fail, just fail to plan”. This is especially true in Marketing and Sales as many of us float in the wind; throwing darts in the dark, guessing at what to do next. A direct mail campaign this week, a flashy website that week, and a full blown news paper ad for good measure; never once asking the pertinent question,

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You see, the glasses they use at the restaurant were not big enough to hold a lot of water. They also were more than half full of ice. This made the job of keeping them filled with water harder than it had to be. Why not use bigger glasses, I thought? Why not use less ice? That would save the poor waiters from having to fill up water glasses every 2 minutes.

Then I thought about it. By keeping your customers in need you have provided an opportunity to fulfill. Meaning, when my waiter comes to fill my glass for the 20^th time, he/she has had 20 opportunities to serve me. They had the opportunity to ask if I needed anything else. They had the opportunity to see if I was satisfied with my experience. Each small service was an opportunity to deepen our relationship, enrich my experience, and sale me something else…. How about some desert sir?

As a marketer and salesman this is the crux of customer support and continued satisfaction. You find something that you can offer that needs constant attention and service. It should be easily obtainable by your clients and even easier to fulfill by you (e.g. filling a empty glass of water). In the end your customer will be ecstatic that you have added value to your existing service. Then you have the opportunity to cross sale, keep current clients happy, and most importantly create a sales advocate for your business. I have no choice but to refer Phuket to friends; the food is great and my glass is never empty.

So ask yourself, how can I make the glass small, full of ice, and easy to fill? Figure that out and like me you will find your customers will HAVE TO LEAVE A BIG TIP.

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1. Information Means More than Anything in Business

Trump University Marketing 101 (Recommended Resource)

As introduction to marketing goes Trump University Marketing 101 is hard to beat. It gets to the brass of what you need to know and do to market your company. A pure read for anyone who wants to get into marketing theory, with just enough practical examples to keep the reader intrigued.

Pros:

• Easy to read
• Provides links to resources with worksheets and exercises
• Covers most of the basics of marketing theory

Cons:

• More theory than practical real world examples
• Does not outline a 1,2,3 step procedure for following advice
• User will have to pick and choose when and how to implement advice, because there is no set curriculum or procedures to follow.

All in all, we recommend this book as a supplement to developing your marketing strategy. It has useful information, exercises, and resources to build upon.

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As effective as this promotion was, I thought why stop there. Twirling signs have popped up all over the country. I have seen sign twirlers in Hawaii, Philadelphia, California and countless other places. This means the marketing ploy has reached national proportions. This presents the clever marketer an opportunity.

For instance the sign maker in a certain locale can call 50 of its past clients and say they are arranging a sign twirling contest at the next upcoming festival, parade, or community event. Complete with first place cash prize, and donations to charity. The sign maker gets great advertisement and PR about the quality and effectiveness of their signs. The clients of the sign maker will have their best signs and ads twirling for an audience. If it works in one locale, create a national contest. Become the sign twirling hub; create a website featuring videos of sign twirlers. The event then becomes viral and brings the sign business and those of the twirlers tons of attention.

This is what cross promotions is all about, building win:win situations for all parties involved. What would it mean to your business to create a cross promotional event or campaign like the one above? It could be huge. What are you waiting for, start planning your next cross promotion yesterday!

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1. Know How You Add Value

The number one thing to getting that sale has nothing to do with what you do as oppose to how you do it. If you approach your prospect keeping firmly in mind the value you add to his/her life, you have won 75% of the sales battle. We are not talking about features and bullet points, but true value you add to the prospects life.

This is easier said than done, because many of us guess or make generalizations about what our prospects value. Yes, we all want to save money, make more money, and enjoy ourselves, but you have to dig deeper. Understanding the value position comes from 3 things.

• Listening
• Experience
• & More Listening

The more you listen with a keen ear as to what the prospect values, the better you are able to convey your solution and product in those terms. Doing this on the fly takes practice and a degree of experience

Through actively listening you develop the experience to know when you have found added value. Also with experience comes the knowledge of when and how to launch into your sales 101 book of closing the deal. If you jump the gun and go straight to closing before you have found the value play, you will be halted before you even begin.

So ALWAYS ask yourself before and after a sales experience.

1. What did the other party value?
2. What clues did they give about what they value?
3. Was I attentive in finding the value or was I more interested in the sale?
4. How did I tie my pitch into the prospect values?
5. Did my time with the prospect add value to his/her life?

2. Do Your Homework, Be Prepared

This one goes with number 1 of Adding Value. It is a prerequisite and will help you because it is about preparation, doing your homework. You want to find out about your prospects wants, needs, values, age, demographics, habits, and any other pattern you can think. The more you find the more you can start to truly understand your prospect. Target market research via direct survey of current, past, and lost clients is the best way to gather information. You also might want to review some of your sales along with industry data to gather useful statistical trends. If you are attending an event get a roaster of attendees and look them up. Know who you are in front of and know what they are likely to value.

If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like target market research, you are correct with one added point. More than facts we are trying to narrow down the values of our market. Facts help in getting you in front of the right person, but value sells products.

Now that you have an arsenal of information does that mean you do not listen? NO, you still have to listen, even more in fact. Think of the information you have like studying for a pop quiz. You do not know going in what will be on the test (the exact values of the prospect). So you wait and listen patiently and when you find the value you attach your service to it. Because, you have done your homework you are prepared and will be ten times more effective.

3. Continue To Add Value without Direct Pay

Orientating your sales process to finding added value should be a priority. In fact, become obsessive about finding and delivering value. I guarantee you will blow your competition out the water as they are only thinking about the sale and pushing products.

The one thing about this powerful orientation is that it must come from a genuine place. That is, you must really want to provide value to your prospects and not just play lip service to it. That means you go the extra mile, many time without ANY directly pay. Like sending a kids birthday card, referring someone to take handle a issue you are aware of, and the most selfless of acts, referring a competitor who is better suited to meet the client’s needs.

I know you are saying yeah right, but in my experience you have worked on adding value when you do these things. You are no longer thinking about it, reading about it, but living it. Something lived is bound to catch eyes, influence others, and make people react. And like all laws of nature things come full circle, what goes up comes down, what you put out comes back. Add value even when you see no direct payoff.

You will reap what you sew and you will be flexing your added value muscles, which will lift your sales beyond most sells schemes and tactics.

Related posts:

1. 2 Minutes of Sales Seduction
2. Information Means More than Anything in Business