Here’s How to Generate Buzz and Increase your Customer Acquisitions in Five Easy Steps

If you’re like most organizations, the sales team is on your back. Or you are part of the sales team. They—or you—need more customers. You feel like you are being stretched in 10 different directions. On top of everything, your budget just got slashed and your team is dwindling.

Here is a straight forward marketing methodology designed to increase customer acquisition quickly while minimizing the cost. The great thing about this system is that it is a system. It really isn’t voodoo rocket science but sometimes common sense approaches are overlooked in favor of the latest quick fix elixir. Don’t undervalue this system because I know it works.

Here’s the Five Step Process

1. Understanding Your Customer
In this all-important first step your goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone something, you really need to understand that person and their point of view. You need to begin to understand the people you are trying to communicate with by creating a profile that will help you gain a “feeling” for them.

2. Defining the Offer
Now, you must communicate the features and benefits of your product or service to the customers. Most people overdo the feature part instead of emphasizing the benefits. Remember, people do not buy things for what they are; they buy things for what they do for them. How the offer is delivered is part of the system. A dedicated area on your website can be created to describe the offer. The offer can be a quick tour of your product/service, a web event or webinar, white paper, special pricing or information. These components are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be leveraged in a variety of ways.

3. Setting Up the Processes
This is the nuts and bolts phase of the system. When a prospect registers to attend an event or receive one of your offers, they are entered into the sales cycle. It is very important that a system be put in place to capture the prospect’s contact information and to understand their level of qualification and buying interest. The more information you can gather, the better targeted a marketer you can be. The system can be a complex database or a simple word document—most importantly it should be a system that works easily for you.

4. Go to Market Plan
Here is the heart and soul of the program. It is where the rubber meets the road. Once you understand your customer, have a good offer and processes in place, you must develop a plan. The plan includes the strategies and various tactics targeted to the appropriate audience. Among the most effective marketing tools available today are direct mail, email, newsletters, websites, blogs and message boards, collateral, user conferences, partnership marketing, and public relations. Don’t forget social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. While there aren’t statistics yet on their “effectiveness” they are an important component of your marketing efforts. You must plan those tactics to work together as a campaign and then implement, implement, implement.

5. Measuring Marketing Results, Increasing Sales
Tracking your lead generation campaigns and seeing the results for yourself is the real power of this methodology. You’re building a bridge between your marketing campaigns and your sales efforts. You have a system set up with your processes, but the real trick is to analyze and measure the results to see what works and doesn’t work and then only repeat the successes.

Understanding Your Competitive Landscape

If you were a customer, would you choose your product over those offered by your competitors? Not sure how your products stack up against the others? Then you need a competitive landscape. Many companies think they know what their competition is up to, but they only take a close look once per year, or they only do serious research when they get into “feature wars” (what they have vs. what we have).

Understanding your competitors – which means any organization that offers the same, similar, or substitutable products or services in the business area you operate — is a fact of life. Successful companies conduct ongoing competitive research that shows them the big picture – why they win or lose deals, where the strengths and weaknesses are, where the next milestone on the roadmap is.

If you don’t have competitors, it is likely that you are in a radically new market (and competitors are likely to follow) or you are in a market so unattractive that nobody else wants to play.

However, if you are like most companies, you have some generalized awareness of who offers similar products. And that generalized awareness is not enough to leapfrog ahead into sustained growth.

What is a competitive landscape?
A competitive landscape (also known as “competitive intelligence”) provides cohesive, detailed information on what your competitors are doing including

• Who your real competitors are
• What their products are
• How your customers perceive the competition
• What your competitors’ business model is

You and your company need this vital information to plan and market profitable products that beat the competition. According to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Profession, a competitive landscape is a necessary business discipline for effective decision-making. The information enables management to make informed decisions about everything from marketing, R&D, and investing tactics to long-term business strategies. In short, a competitive landscape provides actionable intelligence that will provide a competitive edge.

Why do you need one?
Does a competitive landscape really make a difference? Yes! Studies show that companies that have active competitive intelligence programs generally outperform those that do not in sales, market share, and earnings per share. These studies suggest “there is a positive relationship between emphasis on competitive intelligence and successful financial performance.”

How do you create one?
First, get organized. In gathering competitive intelligence and creating your competitive landscape, you will gather a significant amount of information over time. You’ll need to create a file for each competitor, as being able to stay organized is critical.

Next, you need to know a variety of things about your competitors. At a minimum, you need to know

What makes your competitors the choice of some of your customers?

• Is it their overall perception of value for money?
• Quality?
• Price?
• The way they do business?

What, in the eyes of your customers, differentiates “them” from “you”?

What do their financials look like? How do your competitors make money and profits?

• Do they make their profits from having created better products and services?
• Have they established excellent financial deals with their suppliers?
• How much cash do they have?
• Can they react to impacts that you might make in the marketplace?
• If they are private, how much funding have they raised to date? When was it raised?

What are their future intentions? This is not an easy question to answer, but it should be one of the most important questions that you try to answer.

• In the next three years, which segments will your competitors be targeting?
• Could they be acquired or are they looking to acquire?
• What could they do in order to achieve growth?

Where do you get all this information?
Need information on a private company? Think you can’t get the information? Many think that because a company is privately held there is no information available. That is a myth. The information is out there, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Here are a few ideas for finding information – on both public and private companies – ethically:

1. Analyze competitors’ websites
2. Attend trade shows, exhibits and conferences
3. Talk to receptionists, salespeople and people in human resources in your competitors’ companies.
4. Check out local news outlets
5. Review 10-Ks, 10-Qs, annual reports and credit reports
6. Collect press releases
7. Read general business publications (Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Economist, etc.) and trade magazines
8. Listen and talk to industry analysts
9. Talk to vendors, partners and customers
10. Use on-line information service (e.g. Hoover’s Online, Dialog, and LexisNexis). This includes following blogs, message boards, Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, and other social media.
11. Buy your competitors products
12. Use third party services (e.g. BEK Enterprises)
    

How Much Should You Invest?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is an unsatisfying, “it depends.” The amount of time and money you need to spend in competitive research depends on your purpose.

If you are entering new markets, targeting new customers, looking to acquire or merge with another company, the time and effort is significantly greater than if you are creating a feature/benefit matrix. I often hear the cry, “it’s costs too much.” But the real question is: “Compared to what?”

If your competitors are consistently beating you, how much revenue have you lost? How expensive is it to send a sales rep to the client, and then lose the deal? How much have easily-avoided strategic and tactical mistakes cost your company over the past 12-24 months? If you could step around those mistakes and shut out your competition, what would that be worth?

Quality information is the basic component to making solid decisions, but it isn’t free. The public library is good, but it doesn’t cover all the bases, and even the best of business libraries have a limited amount of information. You need to plan to invest money and time to flesh out all the details in your landscape.

How long will it take?
Competitive analysis is an ongoing process – a discipline, if you will – rather than a once-a-year or ad hoc occurrence. Some companies have entire teams dedicated to the gathering of competitive intelligence.

However, if you don’t have the resources to dedicate to tracking your competition on a daily basis, don’t worry. Depending on your market, it is possible to successfully monitor your competition and use the information in decision making if you update your competitive information on a less frequent basis. Many companies do thorough updates on a monthly or quarterly basis.

The Bottom line
Acquiring competitive information is not easy, and turning raw data into a meaningful picture of your competition is an ongoing process. However, you can take solace in the fact that your competitors have the same challenges as you. If you have a better view of the competitive landscape, you can beat them at the game and see the difference that it makes on your bottom line!

Vision Statements vs. Mission Statements

A couple of weeks ago I was with a group of executive coaches and facilitators who are part of The Alternative Board (TAB) from the U.S., CN, the UK and Venezuela. We were talking about Company Vision Statements and it became clear to us that there was a lot of confusion amongst business owners regarding Company Vision Statements and Mission Statements. So, here is a definition of a Vision Statement, a Mission Statement and what should go into a Vision Statement.

A Company Vision Statement provides the destination on the roadmap that tracks where you want your company to go. The Company Vision Statement is shared with all employees. A Vision is defined as 'An Image of the future we seek to create'.

A Mission is defined as 'Purpose, reason for being'. Defined simply "Who we are and what we do". So the Mission statement does not cover where you are going or where you want to take your company.

Vision Statements are difficult to write - they should short (100 words or less), clear, vivid, inspiring and concise without using jargon, complicated words or concepts. Successful Statements are memorable and engaging. Some companies will combine their Mission and Vision Statements into one. That becomes very confusing.

What should go into your Company Vision Statement? Here are a few ideas on what you can include in a Vision Statement. Remember, it needs to be short – 100 words or less.

• What market position do you want to achieve? Biggest in your market, the best in the market
  

• What does the company do or what do you want your company business to be? IT Consulting, Menswear, Transportation
  

• What markets do you want to do business in? Global, North America, Region, City
  

• Do you focus on any particular market segment? Business owners, Retail companies, Females, Elderly
  

• How do you want to treat your stakeholders, (customers, employees, vendors, etc.)? Open book management, Treat as a partner, Customer is always right, etc.
  

• Corporate culture. Welcomes and initiates change, Creativity-Innovation, Strong Teamwork
  

• You can add a mission if you have one (but as I mentioned that can get confusing). We do it right the first time at a great price

Writing your Company Vision Statement is important! I encourage you to work on it with your management team or other key stakeholders. Without a clear Vision Statement that everybody understands how do you know where you are going? Typically you don’t and you end up coming in with a different idea every week that you are sure will help you succeed. Planning is critical and without a written Vision Statement it is hard to put effective plans in place.

Share your Company Vision Statement by commenting on this post.

Why Do Most People Buy? Hint: It's One Word

TRUST

According to Charles Green's "Trust-based Selling," in order to build loyal customers for life, you must value the relationship over the transaction. And, I agree. Especially if you are selling complex products or intangible services.

As Green points out, and my own experience shows, most sales and marketing people either ignore the trust factor altogether, or simply believe the act of building trust is telling their prospective customer all about their expertise, experience, reputation, etc. While this does build credibility, it does not build trust. And with all things seeming equal, the buyer will always choose trust.

So, what's the acid test for "selling from trust?" It's simple. Would you ever be willing to recommend a key competitor to a significant client? Be honest. This is not the time to live in denial. If you answer no, you are not selling from trust. In "Trust-Based Selling," Green identifies four values that a trust-based seller must hold and act from consistently:

1. True customer focus, which means treating customers as ends, not as means, and cultivating a habit of noticing and paying attention.
   
   
2. A collaborative style and willingness to involve the buyer in the sales process, going way beyond customer satisfaction surveys or client dinners.
   
   
3. A medium-to-long term perspective, which involves focusing on multiple transactions and interactions over time, as opposed to the particular sale at hand.
   
   
4. A habit of transparency, the best guarantor that motive will be understood. Secrets break down trust, while being transparent means being willing to let the client into the seller's business by sharing information that sellers might normally consider proprietary.
   

There are a lot of great nuggets in "Trust-Based Selling," but the biggest take-away is self awareness. Ask yourself, "do I really have my customer's best interests at heart?" Did you pass the acid test? But be honest with yourself!