Category: Sales

Chris Lytle on Money

If your marketing works, you will ultimately find yourself in front of prospects — people interested in buying something from you, or hiring your firm. And they’ll ask you how much your solution is going to cost.

Most sales courses recommend ducking the question until the customer is pretty far along in the process — you don’t want to scare him off early.

Chris Lytle, author of The Accidental Salesperson, takes another approach — he recommends addressing the question early:

In fact, if the customer doesn’t bring up the money question in the first meeting, I do.

Find out why, and how to approach the topic, here.

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The Evolving Apology

“When you lay an egg, stand back and admire it!” ~ Dale Carnegie

When things go wrong in business, it’s tempting to pretend it’s not happening, and hope folks don’t notice. According to Church of the Customer, J. Crew has taken the opposite approach, admitting their problems fron-and-center on their web site.

More interesting, perhaps, than the initial apology is the fact — pointed out by a commenter on the Church blog post — that the apology has since been shortened, with executives’ names removed. See the original apology here… and the condensed version (as of 8-4-08, anyway) here:

Which version is more effective?

Discuss.

Phil Bernstein Live! at the Portland Business Alliance

Once a month, the Portland Business Alliance puts on an educational forum for small and medium-sized businesses called Cornerstones for Success. The topics change each month, but each one is chosen for its relevance to the challenges faced by local merchants.

On Thursday, August 7, the subject is “Advertising Avenues”. I’ll be on the panel along with Craig Brown of KGW-TV and Brian Johnson of The Oregonian. We’ll be talking about how a business with a finite budget — like yours — can effectively deliver a persuasive message to the people who could become your customers.

It takes place from 4-6pm at the Portland Business Alliance, 200 SW Market Street. You can find out more, and register online, here.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

How to Convert Contest Entrants into Customers

As reported in an earlier post, my company will soon be launching the “Green Home” contest — an online lead-generation promotion for Portland-area environmentally-conscious home improvement companies.

We’re going to be delivering thousands of leads to the contest sponsors, and I was looking for “out of the box” ideas on how to turn those entrants into customers. So I posted the question on LinkedIn (see it here if you are a LinkedIn member).

Among the answers was this insight from Mike Seidle, who runs the internet marketing firm Indy Associates. Here’s what he has to say about follow-up techniques:

Doesn’t matter what the method of contacting the consumer is, the conversion rate is always a function of the offer you make after you generate the lead. We just did a contest that generated 78,000 leads. Soft offers worked (get a free catalog, try ___ for 30 days at no cost, free fertilizer application, etc…) , hard offers didn’t (SAVE 10%, $100 OFF, GET A FREE TRIP!). Funny thing is sellers don’t like soft offers because they see a risk of higher cost. Reality is that you get lower ROI on hard offers because they don’t convert as well.

It seems counter-intuitive at first — once you’ve got a whole bunch of qualified leads, why can’t you just sell ’em something. But I’m guessing that although these people, by definition, are interested, they’re not yet ready to buy. The contest is a promising first date, but it’s not time to get married yet.

Check out Mike’s blog here.

 

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Interesting Way to Get Your Call Returned

There are sales gurus who tell you to have a scripted 30-second sales pitch ready to leave on a voice mail. There are consultants who recommend leaving vague and, sometimes, deceptive messages to pique a prospect’s curiosity. And there are those who say you should never leave a message.

This afternoon, someone left a phone number on my voice mail. No name or other identifying information. Just “Please call 559-297-4640.”

I didn’t recognize the voice or the phone number. There was absolutely no reason for me to call back. But I had to.

I got voice mail. “Hello. Please leave your name and number after the tone.”

So, what was it? Cold call? Long lost relative? Wrong number?

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.