Small widgets - big returns

Naturally, there are plenty of sales and business gurus out there that will tell you that the advice that they can give you will be the true turning point in the lifespan of your business. Of course, if you want the real juicy advice, you’re going to have to pay for it – anything from a simple book costing you around £15 to a seminar costing you several hundred.

Ultimately, these things all have one thing in common – if you want to do more business, then you have to pay for it. This is an accepted rule in commerce, and yet there are still people out there that believe that they can do all of their marketing for free!

Now it goes without saying (and yet oddly enough, I will say it) that there are some elements to any marketing strategy which don’t cost money – word of mouth, referrals, etc. But let’s be real for a moment – you’re only going to get referrals once you’re up and running, and those initial customers are going to cost money.

So, assuming that we can all agree that we need to invest in our customers, how can we go about keeping our costs down? Well, for this blog I’m going to talk about trade shows – mainly because it’s something I know quite a lot about.

In the past, I’ve spoken about not giving out gifts to everyone who comes by. There is real value in giving higher priced items to a smaller selection of genuine potential customers. To learn more about the metrics here, go through the archives and look for the posting entitled “Your money is no good here”.

But some people have a very small budget indeed – perhaps just a few hundred pounds, and this could mean that the higher priced gifts are not the best strategy for them. Is it all bad news? Of course not – we can still help.

There are plenty of simple exhibition widgets out there that cost under 50p each. We don’t need to go into specifics here, but you’re welcome to search through our on line catalogue by clicking HERE.

So let’s buy ourselves 1000 units and we’ll keep our total budget to £500 on merchandise. Now how much is an average customer worth to you? Is it £500? £1000? £5000? It’s important to take a look at your customers’ average spend because it’s a great way to gaze into your business’ crystal ball and forecast the future.

OK, let’s say that the average customer is worth £1000 to you. You’re going to give out 1000 gifts at a show and have a result only slightly better than absolute zero. That’s right, you get one new customer. Think about that for a moment – that’s a 0.1% success rate. If that’s what you think you’re capable of, may I interest you in a career in a non sales environment? Perhaps something with animals or mops?

So we get our rubbish return but, hey presto, we’ve actually made a 100% profit on our marketing investment! Not bad really – and that’s the worse case scenario.

So now that you can see, in a nutshell, just how powerful a small expense can be, isn’t it time you started thinking about what merchandise you’d like, rather than whether or not you think it will work for you?

Sometimes you just have to STOP!!!

On more than one occasion, I have written about the power of keeping a positive mental attitude and a smile. A belief that your customers will say ‘yes’ to you affects your body language and your tone. Your confidence grows and the day just seems to flow perfectly.

Isn’t it wonderful that every day can be just like that?

OH NO IT CAN’T!

Of course it can’t. Some days, no matter how much of a smile you wear and a friendly approach you take with every call, some people just want to grind you down. It’s easy to dust off a simple objection – after all, we’re all grown ups and as professional sales people, we’ve learned not to take it personally.

Trouble is, we don’t spend every single call simply selling. We have to speak with suppliers who tell us that our orders are going to be late. We have to speak with customers who are pulling their hair out because they ordered 2000 units and only 1999 have shown up. We, all of us, will have days where the word frazzled just doesn’t even begin to cut it, and try as we might to hold on to cheerful grin and a pleasant outlook, it really can be a bit of a struggle.

It’s in times like these that picking up the phone and ploughing through a few more cold calls is, quite possibly, the worst decision you can make. Well no, to be fair the worst decision you can make is to storm into your bosses’ office and tell him just where he can shove his job. Poor bloke. It’s not his fault you’re having a bad day. Unless it is of course, but that’s a whole other story.

Calling potential customers from under a cloud is a waste of time. Your tone will be negative, and your objective will merely be to make calls so that you can say that you tried. Except that you won’t try. You won’t ask powerful questions, you won’t really listen to their responses and you’ll only give them about 10% of your attention at best. What a waste of time.

The best thing you can do when the world appears to be turning its spears on you is just stop. Go for a walk, go and have a cup of tea, go and ask a colleague if you can take a few minutes of their time to talk through some problems that you’re having. Whatever it is, for goodness’ sake don’t bottle it in and then take it out on the next potential customer.

You may not be obviously rude or dismissive to them, but you can bet that they will not feel any warmth from you. They won’t feel as if you’re delighted to be given the chance to work with them, and of course, they’ll take their business to someone who will.

It’s important to remember that everyone has bad days, but the keyword there is DAYS. How often have you had a good day and then immediately thought that it was so much better than yesterday? Exactly. Problems will rise and fall, but if you deal with them, ask for help and keep your emotions in check, things will balance out and you can look forward to your next really good day.

I hope that reading this blog will be the start of yours.

My Job Description

Every once in a while, it’s a really good idea to take a look at your own job description. I don’t mean the thing that’s printed on your business cards – some title that’s designed to give you a sense of purpose whilst simultaneously reminding you that it’s totally meaningless.

No, I’m talking about what you are actually paid to do. Those tasks which make up the bulk of your day, along with those ‘lesser’ tasks which are clearly less important, but must be done none the less.

When you look at it, it’s really quite a long list isn’t it? Mine certainly took up more than one side of a packet of Swan Vestas, so I’m rather pleased. However, that was not the real task, nor the purpose of this blog.

Now, grab a second box of matches and start writing down all those things which you’re asked to do which are NOT your job. Now I’m not talking about making cups of tea or occasionally helping out in other departments – we all have to chip in when we can. No, I’m talking about those things that customers ask you to do that you really should not have to.

I’ll tell you what prompted this blog. A few days ago I answered the phone to someone who told me that they were ‘just carrying out a costing exercise’. A costing exercise? What exactly is that? Yup – just what I thought, you essentially want me to tell you my prices so that you can phone around three or four more people, check my prices against theirs and then check all of our prices against your current supplier.

My role is to sell merchandise, and not to help my competitors to do the same. The person calling has openly admitted to me that they – a) base their decisions primarily on price and b) show no loyalty to their suppliers once they have them in place. Just how interested would you be in taking on a customer like that?

We are all of us told to be as helpful as we can to every new enquiry, because we never know where it might lead, but we all know that this enquiry was not going anywhere, and you can call me a cynic if you want to, but then if you’re a regular reader of this blog you will have formed that opinion a long time ago!

But how to turn this otherwise negative blog into a positive one? Well, once we know what our job isn’t, what do we do with the information? Do we start by telling people what we don’t do? Absolutely not. What we do is start to form relationships with companies and people who do perform the jobs that we don’t.

How powerful would this conversation be:

“Hello, I’m looking to get 6 T Shirts made up for my mate’s stag night on the weekend”.
“Sorry, our minimum order is 50”

Not very powerful at all, and certainly not very memorable. How about –

“Well I’m afraid that our minimum order is 50 Shirts but don’t worry because I can still help you. It just so happens that we’re partnered with Logo Shirts in the high street and I know that they can turn around an order like that on the same day if you’d like – let me just get you their telephone number and please do tell them that we sent you”.

Everybody wins, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll feel better knowing that your time went from being wasted to making someone’s day – not bad.

We all of us have a very long list of the things that we don’t do, but there are people out there who do do those things. They’d be grateful for the referrals and they’ll almost certainly find a way to return the favour, so try it out and see.

Episode Two from Merchandise Mania TV

Merchandise Mania TV is on the air. Well, I say "air", obviously it's on the web. This week, your presenter is the very cuddly Jurgens Brune - a man who can comfortably ingest 700 calories before the rest of us have even had coffee. Enjoy.

The 100th Blog

Well here we are - 100 posts old today. I wonder if Blogger will send me a prize as soon as I click on the Publish Post button. I suspect not. Let's face it, 100 is not the biggest number is some people's worlds, but I'm rather proud of it, so I shall take a moment to look up at the ceiling and smile.

Mmmm. That's better.

I had so many different topics on my mind this morning, which makes a refreshing change from the uninspired writer's block that had been plaguing me for the last couple of weeks. Clearly, this blog has become and opportunity for me to rant and moan about all that's wrong in the world of sales - not as a soapbox, but as a means to train and educate.

I've learned things along the way myself, and I'm still hopeful that I can take all of these musings and get some publisher to turn them into a book for me. Still hopeful.....still....

But I looked back at post number 1. In it, I said that I would bring what's new and exciting in the world of promotional merchandise. After all, the blog had a second purpose beyond my exorcising my demons - it was meant to drive traffic to the Merchandise Mania website and by using appropriate keywords like branded merchandise, corporate gifts and so on, all of those lovely search engines (yes, there is more than one out there) would send new customers my way.

So this week, I thought I would talk about product, and as we're coming into September, now really is the time to start looking at your diaries and calendars for 2011.

We have so many designs to choose from. Desk diaries, A5 and pocket, with a range of cover styles and different colours, we're bound to have the perfect diary to match your corporate image. What's more, our diaries can include up to 16 full colour 'tip in' pages, allowing you to advertise your products and inform your customers and staff.

Here's the thing. Have you ever noticed how there always seem to be one style of diary that's so much more popular than the others? Yup - this one-

There's a reason for that. It's the cheapest model and as such, the diary factories make substantially more of them than any of the others. What happens next is that a whole bunch of forward thinking companies buy the more interesting designs early and so by October and November, everyone else is left to buy what's left on the shelves.

It's not that they want this design - it's just that they have to buy diaries because their customers expect them, and they're too late to have any real choice.

The moral of the story? Oh come on, surely you've figured it out. Order your diaries now, whilst the choices are plentiful and the prices are decent.

Hope that helps. Here's to the next 100 blogs.

One more until we hit the magic century

You know, usually I write my blogs on Thursdays, but as I came into work yesterday I realised that there was nothing that I found truly irksome about which I could write. Oh sure, I could have told you all about some brand new product or a really cool pen, but for some reason I just didn’t feel like it. However, with only one more blog to go before I can boast my 100th post, I figured I would go off on a small tangent - all I needed was something to get me properly annoyed.

In the back of my mind, I knew it would only be a matter of time before something really bothered me and, as luck would have it, only 24 hours later, I find myself truly perturbed.

I am in the midst of putting together some designs for some pin badges, and the hope is that the company in question will give them out to something in excess of 10,000 people.

In an attempt to convey a sense of British pride, they asked that an image of the Union Jack be incorporated somewhere in the design. Now even though they loved the designs, certain people in management were concerned that the use of a Union Jack might have connotations of a connection with the British National Party. For those of you outside of the UK – The BNP is an extremely right wing organisation whose views are wildly unpopular with a good number of people living in the UK – myself included.

But my issue here is not with the BNP. I’d rather not show up on their radar thank you very much, and given what a public forum this is, the less I say the better. No. My issue is with the fact that my country’s flag is no longer consider a symbol of patriotism or of something in which we should be proud – it’s become a symbol of hatred.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not a strong supporter of all things British. I don’t proudly hang a flag in my window whenever there’s a major sporting event and I don’t really care less about the Royal Family. But what is happening to that flag is wrong.

I used to look at the relationships that Americans have with their flag and think that it was all just a little too much. Now I’m not so sure. I mean, what’s wrong with a little patriotism? What’s wrong with a little pride?

I’m not screaming from the rooftops about how proud I am to be British, but my country is not made up of racist hate mongers, and I’ll be damned if my flag is going to be thought of in that way.

Can I Have Some Business Please

Good morning. Let me start by saying that young Felix must have had a bad dream or something because he woke up crying at 4.30am and then simply didn't want to go back to sleep. The result is that I'm going to need prescription levels of caffeine to keep awake but if I did take the necessary amount of Red Bull, my chest would actually explode. The best thing I can do is type fast and think little.

This week, I want to return to the subject of social networking. Some time ago on this blog I pointed out what a waste of time Facebook appeared to be to me. More than a year on, my opinion has been ever so slightly modified.

You see, social networking truly is the opiate of the modern masses, and whilst there are still tens of thousands of people who choose to update their status with mindless drivel, there are countless more professional people who put these tools to good use.

Promoting special offers in tweets, changing Facebook status to talk about their latest projects and, of course, blogging, all do wonders at increasing one's ranking in the search engines. It's a darn site cheaper than paying for clicks and there are now even people who tout themselves as Social Media Consultants - a role that would have been laughed out of the office a mere two years ago.

Trouble is, all this blogging seems to invite a very long term view. I write this blog once a week, and I actually post excerpts from this, along with other posts, in a business networking site called eCademy. The immediate result is that people in the business world get a little more insight into how I think and what I might be able to do for them. That's great, and because I enjoy writing too, I keep doing it.

However, I've come to realise that all of these offers, opinions, video feeds, jokes and everything else have come at the expense of my making a very simple request of my readers, and it is this - can I have some business please?

Yep, it's that simple. A lot of sales people come up against this hurdle time and time again. They lay down all of the groundwork, building rapport, presenting excellent products and yet, when it comes to the crunch, they simply don't ask for the business.

Well it strikes me that my blog has gone much the same way. So here's the thing - if you like what I write and you feel that the services that I can offer are relevant to your company, please get in touch so that we can talk about your promotional merchandising needs.

Pretty straightforward, but as I get close to the 100 posts mark, I thought it needed saying.

Have a good week.