Posts By: LyleH
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Sales and conversions
The goal of marketing is to get in front of the customer. The very next thought should be ‘how do I convert those prospects into sales. It is called sales conversion.
The key is to create a sales system. Make sure your sales system is based on why a customer should buy from you. Always keep the ‘why’ in the top of mind awareness.
Sales Conversion System
In sales, people are at different points of the buying spectrum. You want to have a sales system that identifies where they are and brings them to the next step. Leads become prospects. Prospects become customers. Customers bring in more customers.
Leads
These are people who are ‘likely’ to buy from you. If you think everyone needs your product, you cannot market. Identify who is most likely to buy from you.
Prospects
These are people who have seen your brand or company. They are exposed to your marketing and are thinking about buying. You want to get into the heads of this group so you can really connect deeply to them.
Customers
These are the people who decide to buy from your. Your sales system should include follow-up with this group of people. Include strategies like a referral program.
Sales is everything it takes to convert prospects to paying customers. Your entire sales system that must connect with each of the above stages.
The easiest way is to deliver meaningful experience that educates, engages and entertains. The easiest way I could describe a sales system is this:
- Educate your leads.
- Engage your Prospects.
- Entertain your customers.
Sales and conversion is simple once you understand the needs, wants, and problems of your ideal audience. Then, you just build a system around those needs, wants, and desires.
Do you have a sales system? How’s it working for you share with us on Youtube or GooglePlus?
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7 Steps to Marketing Your Business
Marketing and advertising are somewhat interchangeable. Let me define marketing as simple as I can.
Marketing is anything you do to get your business to your potential customers and convert them into customers.
Marketing covers everything from how you answer the phone, how your ads look, how your webpage is designed, how you dress…etc. Another way of looking at marketing is:
Marketing is how your business is seen by an outsider and how it is experienced by a customer.
Marketing should be a preemptive strike to your target audience. If you wait till you ‘need’ to market, it is already too late. Marketing takes time and strategy is a big part of that time.
When talking about marketing, everyone has their own idea of trying to make it memorable. Depending on who you talk to you can have 3 P’s or 6 P’s or 5 M’s or 3 M’s…they all boil down to how you approach marketing. In my notes today, we have the 7 M’s of marketing from the Ziglar Legacy series of seminars. These are meant to be done in this order since they are sequential.
7 Steps to Marketing Success
Mindset
You must start with your own mindset. Your goal in marketing is to attract prospects and deliver to them consistently. Ultimately, your mindset must start with your home base: your passion for your business.
Mindset is the attitude you have about how you engage your customers. Your attitude about marketing should be exciting because it is your opportunity to let customer know how much you have to offer them.
Mission
You must have a unique selling proposition. It should be built on passion. It is the one thing you do better than anyone else. Your customer should have an ‘aha’ moment when they see your mission because it should be engrained in everything you do.
Market
Your market is where you identify your target audience. Here is where you identify your ideal customer. What is it that you offer your ideal customer? Not everyone wants to pay for phenomenal service, so your goal is to build yourself into the market where your customers are living.
Message
Your message should resonate with your ideal customer. They should inherently think,
“That is exactly what I was thinking.” Your message must ‘sound like’ it came right out of their heads. If you properly identify your market, then the message will come out pretty easily.
Your message in marketing is all about connecting to the potential customer so deeply, that they can only think of your company when they want to do business.
Methods
Many people start with methods. You must cover everything before this statement first. Then, the methods will arise. It is a pretty simple strategy: go where they are.
If you can be where your customer is and have the right message, the method will reveal itself. You will find it easy because you will be ‘living’ in the world of your customer.
MAP
If you want to get somewhere, you need to have a MAP: A Marketing Action Plan. Develop a series of contacts with your customer. Don’t just rely on one ad in one place, develop a wholistic campaign that takes your customer from the point of thinking about buying all the way through the buying processs and into referring their friends.
Initiation, Engagement and Follow up are all an important part of what you do. Take care to develop a marketing plan of action that engages your customers through the whole buying process. Then, and only then, will you stand out in market and be the logical choice for a buyer to choose.
I have so much more about marketing on my business page. Feel free to check it out here and if you need help developing a marketing plan, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. I would love to help your business grow.
So, what does your marketing look like? Do you have a marketing plan of action?
How important is marketing to your business? Share with us on Youtube or GooglePlus?
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Creating Meaningful Purpose
Everyone wants to have a deeper purpose to life. When we define that purpose, we begin to live in the reality of what we were created for. Imagine knowing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Imagine knowing exactly why you are here on this earth. You can know these things if you look to the one who created you.
In business, there are many things that distract us. Sometimes we have to redirect our employees or our team. If you have a defined mission, values and purpose, your team will be strengthened. They will know where they need to goal. Howard Partridge says that leaders need to:
Effectively communicate a meaningful purpose that inspires.
Are you inspiring? Are you an effective communicator? Do you have meaningful purpose?
MISSION
Mission is how we get where we are going. It is usually one sentence and defines what you are trying to accomplish each and every day. To define your mission, just ask yourself what do we deliver to our customers?
Your mission can be used to help make decisions. If your mission is to deliver great customer service and someone suggests a remodel of your waiting area, you know what to do.
VISION
Vision is what your business looks like. You define what kind of business you see for the future. It is a goal that you are striving towards. While mission may be ‘deliver valuable customer service’ your vision may expand that into quantifiable numbers. “Our vision is to deliver valuable customer service by having the best waiting area, attentive customer service ambassadors and the most polite workers in the industry.”
VALUES
Values are standards we live by. Values help you live out your mission. These are principles that ring true in every department. You may think of things like integrity and outstanding customer service. Simple ask yourself, what do we really value?
You can find out what you value by the attitude of your workers. Look at what gets rewarded. Do your employees get a pat on the back for completing a task quicker than expected? You value speed. Do your employees get acknowledged for making customers happy? You value customer service. Do you encourage employees to have fun while they work? You value fun.
PURPOSE
Purpose is the why behind what we do. Everything in business comes down to a single point: passion. Why do you do what you do? What drove you to create or become part of the business that you are in? There are motivating principles, but usually there is a story.
For instance, when I was younger, I wanted to be in business. I could not find anyone to mentor me, so I went at it alone. I found the struggles much harder and it took me longer to reach success. I decided that I wanted to give back and help other entrepreneurs. I wanted to help them with the help that I did not have. “Helping entrepreneurs’ is my why.
CREATING SYSTEMS
Creating a system is the goal. If you can define what we talked about on this blog, you can begin to lay the foundations to your system. Employees won’t have to call you for every decision if they know the values your company has.
When you create a system, you free yourself from your business and allow the business to grow. There is two ways of doing it. You can work ‘on’ your business. Or you can work ‘in’ your business. If you work on it, it runs when you are not there and you have a system in place.
Share your mission with us on Youtube or GooglePlus.
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The Power of Leadership
First thought: Everything rises of falls on leadership. Whether your business is a success or failure is all due to the leader. The old saying, “the buck stops here” is exactly what we are talking about. You are the leader and if things are not working right you need to adjust, grow or make changes.
As leaders, it is hard to see from our perspective. We need someone from the outside giving us the reality of what is going on. It is wise for any leader to have someone who holds them accountable to the tasks of leadership. This person can be a spouse, partner, or hired agent. It is crucial to understand your leadership and where you need to grow. Here are some quotes we shared followed by a simple leadership evaluation
Definitions of Leadership:
Leadership is the ability to enlist the willing cooperation of others, while tapping into their highest skills and abilities, to achieve desired results. – Dale Carnegie
Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. – John Maxwell
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar
*Note: I said in the video that if you help enough other people get what they want you are a leader. The truth is exactly that. Leaders help other people. When you help someone on your team be better, your business grows. When you help a customer be better, your business grows. When you help one of your distributors be better, your business grows.
I hope you can see the power of being a leader. When you truly define leadership for yourself and allow yourself to grow, your business grows with you. Being an entrepreneur is the business of constant growth and development. Embrace it!
Evaluating Your Leadership
Ask your accountability partner to answer these. You answer them separately and see how the two match up. If you want to really get the insight, allow your employees to do an anonymous poll, but make sure they understand there will be no repercussions . . . and there should not be!
Business owner Evaluation
Give me a grade on the following statement: A=Excellent; B=Mostly; C=Sort of; F=Nope
_____ I am a good example of the company’s mission and values.
_____ My employees feel like they are part of my team and not just workers.
_____ I am easily approachable if something in the business seems off.
_____ I listen well and encourage others to share their opinions.
_____I resolve conflict by taking appropriate action quickly.
_____ I am a good communicator and make sure everyone knows what is going on in the company.
_____ I provide adequate training, coaching and participation for employees.
_____ When I delegate a task, I trust my team to accomplish their goals.
_____ I motivate my team to do the best work they can and encourage them to grow.
_____ I have the best interests of my people in mind.
Use a spreadsheet or have another teammate put together the overall grades. If you see a low pattern in one, work on that area. If you scored high, get a new team. . . just kidding. There should be something you need to work on and if you do not get good results ask your accountability person to be honest with you.
You may be the best boss ever, but we all have room to grow. Take time to grow yourself and grow others so you can grow your business.
What is your personal definition of leadership? Share it on our Youtube or GooglePlus.
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Using Power Talk with Customers
Power Talk is a way to communicate with your customers in a way that connects to them. When dealing with a customer, you don’t want to come across like a used car salesman. You want to be genuine and authentic. You want to show that you are passionate about what you do and really care about them as customer and as a person.
Be specific
Tell the customer exactly what they need to know. Tell them in a way that shows you understand them and can relate to them. When you talk to them, build rapport. Rapport basically means that they feel like they can trust you.
Have Passion
People love to hear people with passion. People may not like Gordan Ramsey or Simon Cowell, but they are passionate about what they do. You can’t help but listen to them when you see how much energy they put into everything they do. You need to elevate your attitude to a level that people can hear your passion and they will listen.
Be a customer Advocate
When you are trying to sell something, show that you care. If they want the cheapest, but you can honestly say why they should buy the next level, then tell them. And the same goes the other way. If they can get a cheaper unit and still get good quality, let them know. They will probably still buy the better unit, but it shows that you truly care about them.
Entice the customer
Fill the words you use with customers full of emotion. Use power words that makes the customer want to buy from you and only you. Do some research about the psychology of selling and you will see how little nuances to your voice help your communication with your customer.
Wrap up
Using power talk with customers is just about knowing your customer. The more you know them, the better you can talk to them. The more you understand them, the better you can get into their heads and close the deal with ease.
What tips do you have about selling with passion? Share it on our Youtube or GooglePlus.