Six Tips to Survive the World of Sales and Get Paid More

It has been said that a good sales person could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo. This is essentially true, in that outstanding selling skills can apply to any sales transaction, even the most challenging ones. 

Sales is a competitive profession, but it can be highly rewarding, too, when helping customers get their needs met and getting paid well for it. Here are some tips to help move to the top of the sales ladder and get that raise in base pay or commission rate: 

Know Your Product

Most companies now offer specialised training for their sales staff. Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions about what you’ll be selling and get as much background material as possible. 

The more complicated the product, the more information there will be to learn. Try to commit as much to memory as possible, so you can talk easily with your customers about it in a conversational way. 



Carry a binder or briefcase with brochures or fact sheets, usually provided by the employer, and be sure to have a few to leave behind with key clients. Become the expert in your area, beyond your own product. Know the competition, market trends and new developments. 

Talk With Your Clients, Not At Them

To create a winning sales pitch watch a truly good salesperson in action, and you’ll find him or her asking a lot of questions. Beware of being too quick to just offer information or debate when a customer raises a concern. 

Ask the customer what current needs are not being satisfied or what could be done better. Inquire about spending time with your customers outside of the sales pitch to find out what they do on a day-to-day basis. 

This can be extremely informative and help build rapport with your clients. Know how to craft an effective sales pitch so you can sell your product while telling the customers what they want to hear.

Offer Value

Value is the ratio of customer satisfaction to the price of goods or services. Think about what you can offer your customers that goes beyond just selling them something. Maybe it’s helping a busy bookstore owner pull in more business by setting up a reading group or bringing surgeon medical journal articles that are not even related to your product but help the practice nonetheless. 

Try to provide value in every sales encounter. Remember, good salesmanship is a marathon, not a sprint, and maintaining a helpful relationship with your customers will pay off in the end. 

Be Proactive

Check in on your clients from time to time, even if it’s not time for them to buy something. Make sure everything is going well, not just with your products, but with their lives in general. 

Stay on top of weddings, graduations, new baby arrivals, and life’s unfortunate incidents, too, such as illnesses, loss of family members, or downsizing in the workplace. Your clients will remember you as someone who cared more than just about selling, and if you ever get made redundant, you will have a network of people who can offer references and potential future business.

Work for a Good Company

This may sound like an odd sales tip, but people who are happy in their work tend to do a better job, and doing a better job is rewarding personally and financially. Strong salespeople are always in demand, so take some time to find an employer that is the right match for you. 

A smart employer will offer fair remuneration, benefits, training, and mentors to help hone your skills.

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Competitive

Sales is a business where you are almost always competing against someone else. This is not the time to be a shrinking violet. If you work for a good company and believe in your product, you can stand toe-to-toe with the competition with pride. 

Don’t forget to ask for the business. You don’t have to be pushy or forceful, simply ask the customer in a way that feels genuine for you if he or she will be making a purchase or would like a follow up in the near future.

If you maintain a standard of excellence about your work and find an employer to do the same, you will do more than survive in sales. You can thrive and become the model all other salespeople emulate.

What is PR and How Can it Help a New Business

Every business is crucially dependent on its reputation. It is not only customers that have an impact; so too do suppliers, investors, employees, and the media. Each of these will have an opinion regarding the business and it is this opinion that will determine how they interact with it, for instance whether they purchase from it, invest in it or work for it. 

The aim of PR is to manage that reputation in a positive way so that these stakeholders gain and maintain a viewpoint that is beneficial to all parties and that achieves the corporate aims of the business.
A PR campaign

There are many aspects to a PR campaign. The traditional approach is the press release, which is a succinct news item describing interesting information on a business or product and which is circulated to journalists for publication in the media. In our digital age this is now known as a news release, and it is likely to be published online.

Although news releases are still an important aspect of PR campaigns, over recent years social networks have become increasing important. This is a very different approach than the traditional one of just presenting people with information and hoping that this will elicit a response. It involves two way communications and can be very effective. Today many PR professionals spend much of their time getting involved in conversations within social media and news releases written for the social media are designed to encourage customer engagement, sharing and conversation. 

A PR campaign is often the best way to launch a new business

New businesses need to manage cashflow with care. Sales need to be generated quickly and there may not be sufficient funds for extensive advertising campaigns. In such circumstances PR is a highly cost effective way of getting the business message across; not only is it considerably less expensive than advertising, when it is done correctly it can have a greater impact. Just a simple placement in the media can have a significant positive impact on sales.

PR owes its effectiveness to a number of factors:

• People tend to respond more positively to a third party endorsement of a product or business than they do to a paid-for advertisement
• PR increases the general awareness of businesses and brands and increases their credibility
• Articles and news releases written as part of a PR campaign are found by search engines. Inbound links in these will drive visitors to the business website as well as increasing the rank of the website in search engine results. 
• People like to share interesting and engaging information with the result that audiences can grow at an exponential rate.

Going about it

There are two approaches to PR: do it yourself (DIY) or hire a professional PR agency. One problem with the DIY approach is that there are so many things to be done in a new business that few entrepreneurs are able to devote sufficient time to developing and pursuing an effective PR campaign, so budgeting for some help from a PR professional should form part of the business plan, you should always check out what an agency has done before too.

Whatever approach is adopted it is important to concentrate initially on the strategy. For instance you need to establish what messages you want to get across, the reasons why you do, and how they will deliver your business goals. Ideally PR will form part of your overall marketing plan, so you need to consider ways in which you can integrate it.

As already indicated social media can be very useful to PR, but it needs time to engage your audience; you (or your PR professional) will need to get involved in conversations and building relationships.
Finally

PR is so important to new businesses that it should be included in the overall business strategy. Although it is cost effective, there is a cost, so ensure that you budget for it; you might have only one chance to get it right.

3 Secrets to Creating an Unforgettable Customer Experience

In this contemporary era, many business owners are realizing that offering great customer service can help boost the growth and expansion of their companies. If you are a business owner in search of strategies that can help create an unforgettable customer experience that keeps your customers buying your goods and/or services throughout their lives, consider implementing the following three strategies.

1. Make Eye Contact.

As many sales experts know, one of the primary ways to build a relationship with a customer is to develop good rapport. Although broadly defined, rapport is basically a harmonious relationship between two individuals or a group. It is marked by people being able to understand one another's feelings and communicate with ease. While there are a wide variety of ways that an employee can build good rapport with a customer, making eye contact can be one of the most effective.

This is the case for several reasons, including the fact that doing so often generates belief in the notion that you are an honest individual who has no ulterior motives for starting the communication process. When a customer senses this type of genuineness, they are much more likely to open up and have a conversation that can translate into the building of a relationship. Once this happens, conversion is almost always imminent. 

2. Give Away Promotional Items.

Another great way to create an unforgettable customer experience is to offer your customers a great promotional product that is imprinted with your company’s logo and contact details. In addition to looking very professional and serving some kind of use to them, promotional products cause the name and company concept they represent to stick in the mind of the consumer. This doesn't have to be something that is expensive. However, it needs to be thoughtful, useful and attractive in some way.

Distributing these promotional items creates an unforgettable experience for the customer as a result of the fact that they will keep the gift with them and thus be reminded of your business long after they have been with you. There are a variety of wonderful promotional items you could give a customer, including custom plastic key tags. Promotional products like these act as walking billboards, ensuring that you gain repeated marketing exposure every time they are used by recipients.

Tradeshow plastic keytags are also an excellent option. Other promotional items you should consider include custom pencils, logo pens, t-shirts and coffee mugs. 

3. Develop Amazing Product Knowledge.

One often overlooked strategy that is very effective in creating an unforgettable customer experience is developing amazing product knowledge. When customers enter a restaurant or supermarket, they oftentimes need help identifying which product would be appropriate for them to purchase. If you train your staff to become experts in the goods and services you offer, you will wow your customers and help them find what they're looking for much faster.

Conclusion

If you are attempting to further your business by implementing strategies that help create an unforgettable customer experience, you should know that doing so is entirely possible. By implementing the techniques listed above, you will likely find your business growing at a more rapid rate than ever. Good luck!

5 Innovative Tips That Will Drive Your Tourism Business to Success

Tourism as an industry has changed greatly over the years. Once upon a time, individuals interested in travel consulted agencies that would guide them in the best direction for their desires and budgets. The internet has turned many of these would-be customers into amateur travel agents. Now that the novelty of budget travel sites has declined, vacationers are once again looking for tourism businesses to guide their way. However, getting these customers to find you is a struggle faced by every tourism business.

1. Targeted Tourism

One of the best ways to stand out in the tourism industry is to become an expert in a specific field. Focus on a narrow region of the United States, an individual city, or even a specific theme park. Dozens of agencies have found massive success by centering their businesses on DisneyWorld. Another route to choose is helping U.S. citizens travel abroad. Whichever sector of the industry you choose, make sure you have the best tips and the most knowledge, and get as specific as possible within the of your specialization.

2. Promotional Products

Customers will not contact you if they don't know your name. Use local San Antonio bulk promotional products to advertise your tourism business. These promotional products can be imprinted with your company’s logo and contact details so every time they are used by current and potential customers, you gain marketing exposure. Something as simple as a logo pen will literally keep your name at your customers' fingertips. Promotional products like these act as walking billboards, ensuring that you gain repeated marketing exposure every time they are used by recipients. Other great promotional choices for tourism agencies include custom travel bags, personalized coffee mugs, and toiletry kits imprinted with your company logo. Giving your customers small items that they can carry with them could take your name around the world.

3. Court New Clientele

A new tourism business may have high-flying dreams of helping average families attain the vacation they have always wanted. If this is your goal, focus directly on it. However, there are many other groups that are willing and able to spend tourism dollars with you. Think about focusing on seniors, for example. Some have been saving for years in order to travel, but they need someone to help them find the locations that are comfortable, exciting, and safe all at the same time. Other groups to consider are spring-breakers, honeymooners, or business travelers, who arguably have the most disposable money for travel expenses. In fact, even trying to network with business leaders through your might open up a profitable relationship where you can plan business trips and outings.

4. Data Development

Regardless of your focus, offering a travel app to all customers is an excellent service that will keep them returning for all of their future needs. You can develop an app in-house or hire an expert to create it for you. All you need is an idea of what you would like to offer. Will you offer maps, local restaurant guides, packing lists, or all of the above? Look at some of the best travel apps for some ideas of what you should include.

5. Easy Access

Who would have thought that one of the most innovative ideas is also one of the easiest? Allow customers to reach out to you throughout their planning and their vacation. They will feel at ease knowing they can contact you with questions even when they are far from home. This will give you an edge on the competition, many of whom forget about their customers before their plane has left the ground.

A tourism business takes a great deal of care. However, with time, effort, and imagination, your tourism business may be the country's next success story.

5 Essential Marketing Metrics You Need to be Watching

Creating and executing a good online marketing plan is only the beginning of the process. Once you have the plan in place, you need to monitor essential metrics to determine what kinds of changes will need to be made to improve the plan. This will allow you to improve your current marketing plan's effectiveness and create better marketing programs in the future.

Engagement

For websites such as Entrepreneur.com , which offer a great deal of information, engagement is a very important metric. For a website, engagement is measured in how long users stay on your site and how many pages they look at. If you have users looking at several pages for long periods of time, then your material is effective. If users are bouncing around various pages and leaving after a few seconds, then you need to improve your content.

Repeat Traffic

This is a marketing metric that can be applied to online and offline plans. It is simply the measure of how often people come back to your site, or your business, and engage the features you have to offer. For a website owner, this would be measured in visitors that come back often and spend time on the site. For a retail business owner, this would be how often people return to the store to purchase products.

Cost Per Lead

The marketing experts at a website such as DentalMarketing.net place a premium on maximizing the cost per lead for their clients. If a company is spending $10,000 per month and getting 100 leads, then the cost per lead is $100 each. The goal is to lower that cost per lead while still getting quality prospects.

Focus

In marketing, focus means that the plan is getting consumers to react in a way that is consistent with the plan's intentions. If a shoe company puts together a marketing plan to sell its latest basketball shoe, but tennis shoe sales go up instead, then the plan needs to be re-examined and re-worked.

Conversion

What is your marketing plan trying to do? Are you trying to get people to sign up for a newsletter? If so, then you need to compare the traffic you get to the number of people who register. The higher your conversion rate, the more successful your campaign will be.

Make no mistake about it. The days of the CMO who is not fluent in metrics, analytics and spreadsheets are long gone by. The internet has made it relatively simple to measure metrics and if you aren’t measuring your marketing metrics, the competition will pass you by, leaving you in the dust. Remember, it’s vital that these marketing metrics are measured every day. In order to get the most out of your metrics, you need to have projections in place that can be compared to actual results. That will let you know how well your marketing plan is actually working.

What Sets Business To Business Marketing Apart

Marketing to business customers can shorten the time it takes for a company to reach its sales goals. One business to business (B2B) sale could yield a company $100,000. Those revenues generally come if a company sells products in volume or if a company sells its products at a top dollar price. Yet, just as it is with business to customer (B2C) sales, companies won't generate enough sales to get or keep their bottom line in the black until enough customers become aware of them.

In addition to being aware of a company, customers need to "trust" a company before they purchase a product or service. Door to door sales and other direct sales steps like cold calling are options open to companies that are looking to land more business customers. However, these B2B marketing solutions take time, not exactly what some businesses, particularly small businesses that are led by solopreneurs have lots of. Advanced digital solutions may be these entrepreneurs best choice.

Advantages companies gain with digital B2B marketing solutions include email marketing, event management, website visitor tracking, campaign management, social marketing, including social publishing and social profiles. The challenge comes in when companies have to actually sit down and choose one or more B2B marketing solutions.

Points to consider when reviewing the marketing programs are whether or not companies that sell the programs offer training to companies that buy the software from them. The complexity level of the programs is another factor to consider, as is the potential for businesses to customize the programs. Additionally, some marketing solutions have built-in web forms, forcing businesses to use their forms.

This could turn business prospects off, creating the impression that a company's marketing forms are owned by the firm the software is leased or purchased from. To keep their personal message and logos in front of prospects, companies should look for B2B marketing solutions that let them customize web forms they use. For example, B2B marketing solutions from salesfusion are compatible with a range of web forms.

Other features to measure are lead capture, including Internet lead capture, video hosting and lead routing. Entrepreneurs shouldn't assume that these tools will meet their marketing needs. Instead, they should watch live demos of the marketing solutions. They should also have their in-house marketing managers meet with sales leads at firms that sell B2B marketing solutions so they can ask the firms' sales leads questions about the products.

These steps save companies money and time. They also reduce the risks companies take as they market to other businesses. And reducing these risks is paramount to a company's success. As Wikipedia shares, "One of the characteristics of a B2B product is that in many cases it is bought by a committee of buyers. It is important to understand what a brand means to these buyers."

Furthermore, "Buyers are usually well-versed with costing levels and specifications. Also, due to constant monitoring of the market, these buyers would have excellent knowledge of the products too. In many cases the purchases are specification driven. As a result of this, it is vital that brands are clearly defined and target the appropriate segment." It takes targeted marketing for companies to set themselves apart from the competition.

4 Online Marketing Services that Drive Success

To do well with a business, one must have a multifaceted approach that involves trying to find customers with a variety of different methods. However, this is not always easy, as many new business owners do not know what actually helps to build a strong a customer base. Here are four online marketing services that drive success. 

SEO

With high organic search rankings, a company can see a lot of traffic to their website. To get started, most people opt to do it on their own and experience poor results, since it is difficult for the average person to do it right. Luckily, a professional SEO company can, with ease, help a website reach the first page of the major search engines. They can do this by helping the business create solid content and gain links from a variety of quality sources. Thus, when you are even looking for a dental practice marketing service, you should first consider using an SEO company in order to generate a large amount of natural attention. 

Email marketing

With email, one can market their ideas to a wide audience and find a lot of success. To begin, one should hire a service that can construct a marketing email that will bring in new visitors to the website of the company. These same companies, such as 123 Postcards, will also be able to provide your company with a direct mail service, which will make sure that you reach out to as many people as possible. This is a perfect option for a business that has a hard time getting people excited about their product using other methods. 

Social media marketing

Most people fail to build a sound social media marketing plan, as they do not know what will interest followers. The problem is that many people will simply give up when they don't see results from their efforts with social media. In order to see the best results, you should consider using a professional company that will know how to build and use your social media sites with the maximum amount of efficiency in mind. Remember, social media is here to stay, and a company must embrace this early on if it wants to succeed. 

Surveys

When owning a website, one will, inevitably, have both satisfied and angry customers. To understand the reason for these varying opinions, one should conduct surveys. This will not only help the business to understand the mindset of clients, but with this information, the business owner can improve the situation and avoid causing issues with current and potential customers. However, most people do not know how to conduct a survey tactfully, and it is best for an entrepreneur to pay someone to do this task, since it is necessary to ask the right questions without alienating or bothering visitors that come to the business. 

With these four services, a company can build their customer base and achieve long-term success.

How to Form a Marketing Plan for a Successful Business

To become a successful business, you need to have a feasible marketing plan that will attract potential customers. Without it, you are stuck with whatever it is you are doing, with the hopes that it will continue to work. But if you are looking to take your business by the reigns and get as much attention as your business deserves, you can create a marketing plan that will attract many more customers and potential clients. Here are some tips on how to form a marketing plan for a successful business. 

Set Your Goals

If you have no destination in mind, then you’ll never know where to set your sails. When you begin a marketing plan, it is important to set attainable goals that will give your business an idea of where you want to be, and also keep you motivated during the process. With your marketing plan goals, you should specifically state exactly what it is that you are trying to market, and who you should market it to. Defining these few elements can help form a marketing plan much easier than not having any idea of where it is you want to be. Make sure everyone you work with understands the goals and is as motivated as you are in achieving them.

Budget Your Plan

Marketing should be a valuable part of your business. That said, it deserves money to be spent on it and should be considered just as valuable as other elements that make up your business. However, its important not to throw money into marketing that won’t work. If you put all of your money into marketing that no one will hear or see, your money would be spent better elsewhere. Make sure that you know how much money to spend, and where to spend it when marketing. Come up with a variety of ideas and choose the one best for your company.

Innovative Marketing Techniques

With the advancement of technology, there is always something new and exciting that a business can implement to set themselves apart from other companies. This includes social media integration, SEO services, pay-per-click marketing and more. There are ways to get images for your company and present a marketing plan with resources like infographic world. A well-created image will be able to generate interest and provide detailed information that other marketing techniques cannot comply with. Being aware of technology and the possible elements around you will certainly help with a marketing plan.

Accountable Actions

When you make a marketing plan, be sure that everyone in your business is aware of what their responsibilities are and how they can help. Your team must be accountable for the things that they do, the time line in place, and the results that are expected. Having this accountability for your team will organize everything much more clearly, which will have long-lasting results for your marketing plan.

Marketing is one of the most valuable parts of any business. But in order to maximize your efforts, it has to be done right. Keep in mind the tips on this list on how to form a marketing plan for a successful business and you will stay on the right path to attract your customers.