Tag Archives for " sales advice "

Easy Marketing Tip-Just 2 Words

I don’t know who said it first, I think I heard it from Joe Polish. The saying is, “Marketing is everything and everything is marketing.” In this case, marketing is what happens when the bill has been paid and the transaction is completed. Praise goes out to the retail store, Five Below, for listening to my complaint and responding with speed and sincerity. 

It’s easy to stand out against just about all others in your industry by doing the simplest, easiest, most obvious, common sense things.

Hi, I’m Andrew Mazer from small business university where the philosophy is one good idea can change your business and change your life. I’m going to tell you a quick story today about something that happened last night after I got The High Impact Marketing Newsletter by Mike Capuzzi. I’m a member of his high impact marketing club and Mike is a friend of mine and a very good marketing brain. His stuff is really, really good. And when I get the newsletter I try to set aside some time to go through it right away. It’s several pages and it’s very, very valuable. So I decided to take the kids out for water, ice and bring the newsletter with me, and while they ate their water ice, I’d sit on the bench and go through some of the newsletter. And so the kids decided that, since Five Below, a discount store that has mostly a kid’s stuff in it, they decided to trade their opportunity for water ice to go to Five Below and get a treat there.

So we walked over to Five Below and , my daughter picked out something and, my son changed his mind, decided to go back for water, ice. But anyway, we got to the counter, the guy took our money and , gave me the change in the receipt and that’s it. No, “thank you.” And that is like my biggest pet peeve, I think, whenever I go to a place and they don’t say thank you when they take your money…when they take my money, it really, really pisses me off. I mean, every cashier, every owner, every manager should train their cashiers to say thank you. And it really makes me crazy when the owner doesn’t do it. But it’s crazy. You’re supposed to. I mean, they look at you like you’re supposed to thank them for buying something at their store. Man, that drives me nuts.

Customer service mistakes can cost $1000’s

And the real irony is that Mike Capuzzi was talking about mistakes. Look at the headline, Do You Make This Mistake in Business? And he talks about a bunch of mistakes that people make in their business.

This is like the one that I hate the most-when people don’t say Thank You. So it was really ironic that this newsletter came at the same afternoon I had this experience. And so, when I got home I went onto the Five Below website and I just had to get it out of my system. So I dug in and I found a place where I could contact consumer affairs desk or, or whatever they call it. And I sent an email and I told them that I must have been in their store 50 times, and I don’t think anybody ever said thank you when they took my money.

I woke up early in the morning, but by 8:30 in the morning I got an email back from Five Below and they were sincerely concerned about my experience. And they said, thank you for bringing this to our attention. And if you would please let us know where you shopped last night or if you usually shop at different stores. Let us know more about what happened and we’ll see if we can fix up that situation. And I told them that, I always go to the same place. I’ve been to other stores, but I can’t really put my finger on that, on the locations, but I’ve been to this store before. I told them where it was. The lady got back to me and she says, “There’s a gift certificate in the mail for you for 25 bucks.”

Now I didn’t do it for the gift certificate. I’ll take the gift certificate, but it didn’t do it for the gift certificate. And I’m not telling you to do it so you can go get a gift certificate. But I’m telling you that number one, if you’re in the restaurant business, the retail business, any kind of business, were you dealing with the public…if you don’t take a moment to make some eye contact and say thank you or send a thank you email or a thank you card or something, you’re leaving something on the table. I think a lot of people may be numb to it now. They don’t even expect a thank you. So even if you do give a thank you and they’re not expecting it, you’re a leg up on most other businesses out there, so I highly recommend you do everything you can to thank people for giving you money.

Okay, so please, business owners get with it. The least you could do is say thank you when somebody gives you a piece of business.

I’ll  give another shout out to Mike Capuzzi and The High Impact Marketing Letter. Give it a try. If you’re in business, you’re going to learn some valuable stuff and surround yourself with more smart people and great business ideas. Learn about The High Impact Marketing Club at https://club.mikecapuzzi.com/

I always say one good idea can change your business and change your life. And this newsletter is always full of good ideas and just being in Mike Capuzzi’s world will definitely introduce you with a bunch of good ideas. So that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Sign up for The One Good Idea Newsletter so you never miss a valuable article, video, or idea. www.smallbusinessu.org . Check out the blog and catch you next time. Thanks for watching and reading. Share this with a friend and on your favorite social media spot.

The Best Sales Advice- Do Old-School Methods Still Apply?

Sales expert, author, trainer and consultant, Rich Lucia is presenting at The Small Business University Back-To-School event Monday, September 8th.  His topic: The 180 Rule for Selling.

Get you FREE copy of Rich Lucia’s book when you attend the Back-To-School Event 9/8. Click here to learn more & register.

Here, Rich shares a recent article he posted on his blog, which is deep with content (or shall I say a “rich” resource for sales advice).

Rich has promised to give away a hard copy of his new ebook to everyone in attendance at the event 9/8 called The 180 Rule for Integrated Social Selling.  

Here, Rich shares an article called

In Search of the Sales Holy Grail

I often travel throughout the country to work with sales organizations and a common theme seems to be in play. Everyone appears to be looking for that one thing that is going to lift revenue to new heights. People are looking for the Holy Grail of sales tools that is the answer to prayers.

It appears the world of business development has spilled into two camps. On one side of the great divide, we have the traditionalists who seek age-old sales training and selling techniques. Their thinking is that it has always worked so why reinvent the wheel. They seem to be more content with following past processes over getting results. They forget that buyers have changed and how these buyers get their information has changed, locking many of the doors that once had a welcome mat. These die-hard traditionalists have an answer to cold calls that don’t generate results – make more of them.  Of course, when the strategy does not work, they seek training from 20-year-old sales manuals to polish their cold calling skills.

On the other side of the great divide, we have the early adopters with their answer to business development. They throw out all of the old selling techniques and believe that social media is the only true modern path to business development. They have even engraved, “Social Selling” on their Holy Grail, as they chase the latest social media platform and abandon the one before. Their battle cry is, “it has to be good – it is new.”

So, who is correct? The answer begins with an understanding that there is no Holy Grail, and as difficult as it is to accept, there is no magic pill and no one silver bullet to effective business development strategy. It is going to take a combination of the correct selling tools to get the job done today. Having an understanding of buyers today and selecting selling tools that are effective with those buyers is one half of the mission. The second half of the mission, an even more important one, is realizing the tools you select are supposed to compliment each other. Selling tools and your processes have to be integrated. You can create and deliver the best presentation of your life, but giving it to a person who has no need for it will result in no sale. Don’t use a great tool to drive an interested party to your website, only to find when they get there it has extinguished their interest because it was designed for your company’s bragging rights instead of being customer-centric.

It’s going to take a holistic approach to business development today and therefore the need for Integrated Social Selling.  By social selling I am not talking about the new branding of social media but instead how do we become closer or more social with our prospects and customers. In this age of point and click, are we really working harder to know our prospects and customers and how they buy? Are we working all stages of the sale cycle with the laser focus of purpose and making sure we aren’t unconsciously sabotaging our efforts by ignoring the power of integration? Have we become content in accepting a sales funnel with its 85 percent effort and wasted resources or are we working to widen it into more or a cylinder shape?

Replace your search for the Holy Grail with the knowledge that a holistic, integrated plan is needed. A plan that insures that you have correctly identified your target, selected the correct tools and they are working with each other and not against each other. Do these things and keep a Social Selling Playbook and you will achieve successful business development today using Integrated Social Selling.