You’ve got a great
product or service that you know would greatly benefit people ‘out there’ if
they just try it out. However, instead of people swamping you for your
business, it’s a mere trickle, if any. Don’t despair; you are not alone! Fact
is, many businesses are established having a fantastic product or mind-blowing
service with the owner then waiting for business to come rolling through the
front door, but it doesn’t happen. In the earlier years, it was fairly easy,
but as you know, competition in the marketplace is fierce, and customers have a
myriad of choices where to take their business. And if you do not ‘go with the
flow’, your business is dead in the water! So what do you do?
Let’s just sit down and have a little discussion. The future of your
business is in your hands, and I am going to show you six strategies for
turning it around and get the right kind of customers to start approaching you,
instead of you running all over the place to solicit more business.
Traditional business strategy is a thing of the past
Before we proceed, you
have to realise that traditional strategies for getting more business are
yielding less and less. There was a time that you could pick up the phone and
just cold call on prospective customers. And there was a time that you could put
out a large billboard or put an ad in a newspaper or the radio and television
shouting out what you have on offer. But the market has changed; cold calling
would-be customers is increasingly becoming a waste of precious time, and
advertising costs have gone through the roof, with the return not always being
that great.
In today’s business world
we need a mindset shift to make us relevant to today’s consumers!
Strategy 1: Your business Unique Selling Point, Value Proposition and Slogan
The starting point of
developing an effective business development strategy is your business’s Unique Selling Point(s) (USP) and its Value Proposition (VP). You need to
start by thinking creatively: What is it
that makes your business unique to any other of your competition? If you are a dentist, you might be the only
one making house calls. Or if you are in construction, you might be the only
company giving a five-year guarantee on its craftsmanship. Or your service
might be more personalised, building long-lasting friendships with your
customers instead of the next-door business where people are just a
number. Don’t wing it, but do some
homework on what your competition does and improve on that, putting these into
a number of unique selling points.
Once you have those in place,
ponder over them, and start developing a Value
Proposition for the business, which states the value you add to your
customers or the benefit they will derive from doing business with you. Once you have a sensible Value Proposition in
place, you could go one step further by developing a slogan for your business,
which in seven or less words, state what your business is about and the value
it adds to your customers.
I need to warn, however,
not for you to do this exercise by yourself. Involve people you can trust and
get their input. It’s amazing how you might think you have the perfect Value
Proposition and slogan, only to have someone telling you they don’t understand
it.
Strategy 2: Having a great website
A number of years ago,
having a website was considered a luxury. However, living in the Information
Age, a state-of-the-art website is an absolute necessity. It has become the
custom for prospective buyers of whatever product or service to shop around.
This they do on the Internet researching the product or service they are
contemplating in buying. You need to realise: Before a would-be customer picks up the phone to give you a call, they
have already done their homework by comparing those businesses that specialise
in what it is they need. And guess what? They look at your website and
those of your competition and compare apples with apples.
So the question is: What is the appearance of your website and
how user-friendly is it? Take a long look at your website. If you were a
customer, would its appearance ‘wow’ you, or is it old-fashioned and
tired-looking? Is the content you have on it recent? I stand amazed at how many
websites I see where the most current article is well over a year old. Guess
what that tells you about that business! Does your website really convey the
message on the value you add to your clients, or the uniqueness of your
business and that which makes it different to your competition?
And another very point of
consideration: You might have the most
up-to-date website with all the bells and the whistles, and still have it not
working to the advantage of driving more business through the front door.
Having a great-looking website drifting around in the eons of the worldwide web
is not enough. When people do a Google search on the product or service you
provide, your aim should be for your business to appear on the first or second
page of that search. People are not interested in scrolling through one Google
page after another.
This is where Search Engine Optimisation comes into
the picture, which in a nutshell involves fitting the keywords describing your
business to fit your potential customers’ keyword searching habits.
Strategy 3: Your inbound business development strategy
Inbound business
development strategy has as its purpose getting your customers to contact you
first, and not you having to cold call them or spend a massive amount on
advertising. Over the past decade, the shopping habits of your customers have
changed dramatically. The advent of the Internet, especially for business
purposes has led to a major move towards self-education. It is disturbing but
true that even before a customer contacts you, they already have done all the
research they could on the product or service you sell, and they have a good
idea of the costs involved, because they have already spoken to colleagues,
friends and your competition.
A winning inbound
business development strategy is focused on having the necessary Internet
presence, not only by having a website, but also promoting your products or
service through publishing great content and making it easy for your
prospective customers to find you on the Web. You need to have a presence on
number of Social Business Media websites, e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook Business
Page, Twitter, Blogger, etc. And you need to be active on those in publishing
information your customers would be interested in.
Strategy 4: Your outbound business development strategy
Outbound business
development strategy is focused on actively marketing what it is you do. This
can take the form of online campaigns
(e.g. virtual events, webinars and emails), offline
campaigns (e.g. direct mail, printed advertising, the local newspaper,
television and radio advertising), field
marketing (e.g. cold calling, buying customer lists, telemarketing or
targeted events like addressing your local Rotary Club), and corporate
marketing (e.g. bill boards and poster campaigns).
With the exception of
online campaigns, most outbound strategies come at a considerable cost, and
with many, the returns are not that great. However, if you have a heap of money
to spend, be my guest. As for myself, I have found the use of webinars and
emails quite effective. Should you want to use advertising strategies as those
mentioned above, ensure that you are targeting your ideal customers, i.e.
advertise where your prospective customers are. It is of little use to run an
advertisement in a general magazine if you want to target other businesses. If
you want to advertise, better to do so in a magazine targeted for your ideal
customers, e.g. a business magazine.
Strategy 5: Behaviour-driven Sales Mastery
You might have a great
product or service, have a super website and inbound and outbound business
development strategy. And you even might have people contacting you as a result
thereof. However, how do you turn an enquiry into actual business, and ultimately,
a long-term business relationship? This is where a significant amount of
business gets lost, due to a number of factors: (1) a lack in confidence; (2) a
lack in facilitation skills to steer the meeting towards a desirable outcome
for the customer; (3) an inability to effectively qualify the customer and
their requirements and wants; (4) an inability to make a winning presentation
that ‘wows’ the customer; and (5) having the immediate sale as the sole focus
of the sales meeting, instead of viewing
it as a way for building a long-term
business relationship and even a long-lasting friendship.
Let’s summarise
Having a solid and
effective business development strategy requires you to be at all places
at all times twenty-four-seven. You have to be in the mind of your
potential and existing customers all the time. You have to be where your
customers spend a considerable amount of their time, making it easy for them to
find you. Take a serious look at your website and its contents. Does your
business appear within the first two Google Search pages if you key in the
product or service you provide? More than 90% of adults visit a social media
website at least once a month. As much as 78% of all adults gather information
on the Internet prior to making a decision to buy. Does your business have a
presence on the most prominent social business media websites?
Do you tend to “lose many
fish on the hook close to the shore”? Maybe it is time for you to consider
honing your sales presentation skills? Just maybe …
Until next time!
Hein
No comments:
Post a Comment