With all this madness with the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) it is important to be reminded that this is the time to make sure your business is one of the businesses who have built that all-important top-of-mind awareness that will succeed.
Top-of-mind awareness creates recall so that when the ‘tomorrow’ customer becomes the ‘today’ customer, your business will be among the top three or four choices on your customer’s mental shopping list.
Focusing on branding and top of mind awareness really does work. We know that because that’s what the best marketers in the world do. How do you think Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s, (local advertiser) and (local advertiser) became so successful?
Build your brand
Because they recognised, and continue to recognise the importance branding, that’s why. They know that top-of-mind awareness is what builds successful businesses – not short-term sales and promotions.
Let me tell you about the most famous of them all – Coca-Cola.
John Pemberton created Coca-Cola in 1886 and his total sales for the first year amounted to $50; he sold an average of 9 drinks a day. It wasn’t until 10 years later – after Asa Candler had bought the company for a mere $1,000 and launched a major advertising campaign to brand Coca-Cola – that Coke became America’s favourite drink. John Pemberton made almost nothing from his now famous recipe that today is worth billions. If it had been left to John, who had no interest in advertising, Coca-Cola would never have survived. Let me tell you now that Coke’s success had very little to do with its taste and everything to do with its marketing.
And here’s another interesting thing about Coca-Cola….
Defining moment for Coca-Cola
The defining moment in Coca-Cola’s phenomenal success story was the Great Depression of the 1930s. Instead of reducing its advertising spend, as other soft drink manufacturers did, Coca-Cola increased its advertising budget dramatically and focused on building its brand. It created the famous ‘Pause That Refreshes’ campaign in the 1930s that uplifted a nation at a time of depression and created the famous Santa campaigns that still continue today. Coca-Cola created the image of the Santa we know today – a jolly fat man in a red and white suit. Prior to that, Santa was depicted as a dwarf!
This pro-active marketing strategy saw sales grow substantially during the biggest financial crisis that America has ever seen and provided the foundations for the massive Coca-Cola empire that we know today.
There are always casualties
Has any anyone ever heard of Delahaye?
I thought not. And it’s not surprising because the company no longer exists. But Delahaye was the premiere luxury car manufacturer of its time – the 1930s rival to Rolls-Royce.
During the Great Depression, Delahaye eliminated its total advertising budget, instead relying on its reputation and high profile to attract customers.
Delahaye stopped advertising to save money. But it is wasn’t enough to save the brand! They soon went out of business, never to be heard of again.
Like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Chevrolet and Ford are other companies that increased their advertising budgets during the Great Depression and came out of it unscathed.
Put bluntly, the companies that demonstrated the most growth and which rang up most sales were those that advertised heavily. The Great Depression offers classic examples of the power of brand advertising, even during times of economic crisis.
And guess what. Right now, your competitors are probably reducing their advertising exposure. This presents you with a great opportunity to take a larger share of the market while your competitors sit back and watch.
This blog was written by my business partner – previous owner of More FM and author of The Note Through the Wire – Doug Gold.
In April, via Zoom, I’ll be putting together 5 good folks and showing them exactly how to take their existing services that they sell face-to-face, virtual!
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Here’s my tip for this week and it’s from some reading that I’ve been doing over the weekend.
Sales team can be effective if…
How do you make your sales force more effective?
In the video blog I mention a couple and here they are in more detail.
Systems.
Everyone in sales and in a team must have a systematic approach to running their sales organisation.
Therefore, that involves skill sets, making sure you’re doing a lot of training, understanding the processes and measuring your output.
We are all in this.
The sales manager has a critical role to play in his or her team, and even though it can be complex at times, it’s important that you understand your role in the organisation.
I believe it doesn’t matter what sort of business you are, the business as a whole makes sales more successful, not just the salesperson.
That’s an important one to remember.
Keeping customers is not enough.
Keeping customers is a basic requirement for a sales team.
I think we know that, as a sales organisation, but finding and winning new customers is your lifeblood.
Continually upskilling and training is paramount.
When it comes to you as a salesperson you have to keep looking for where you are strong, naturally, but also where you need some more help and updating new skills, etc.
If you’re a sales manager or business owner and you have a sales operation it’s important to create the right climate in the team, between you and the team everyone has to be comfortable about that.
You want to think about sharing any success your team may have with the group, or other people who are selling, go on visits with the team, and so on.
This is the time to stay ahead of all the challenges facing us as business owners and salespeople.
Have a great week.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
In these days of trying to stand out, here is an idea that might just get your proposal directly onto the decision maker’s desk.
What’s the next best thing to face-to-face?
Here’s my tip for this week and it’s about standing out with your clients.
I talk to a lot of my clients and a lot of their salespeople see a client, draft a proposal, and then they send it out by email.
And guess what?
They don’t have the opportunity to present face-to-face.
However, the more important thing is they don’t have the opportunity to stand out in front of the client.
Now I accept that sometimes a client will need some sort of proposal sent to them after you’ve made all the agreements, which tends to be the way that I operate.
To make that proposal stand out a little, here is an idea.
Envelopes that sell
Why don’t you use one of these?
Envelopes that are specially printed to look just like a priority courier pack.
Here’s a couple of examples.
Imagine taking your finished proposal and placing it in the envelope, then addressing it directly to your client.
What do you think’s going to happen?
Do you think if that landed on your desk, you would open it?
You bet you would, and that’s the secret!
That’s the way to get in front of people more effectively.
Standing out with an envelope that sells, is a much better option than a plain, boring, old white envelope.
Even worse an email.
And, that’s my tip for this week.
Have a great week and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Over the last few days I’ve just been working on my sales mindset blueprint program, which I’m releasing shortly.
I was writing about what motivates people when you’re negotiating.
What are some of the things that you need to take into account?
I’ve come up with around eight of them, but what I thought I’d do in this week’s tip is talk about one of them, which is attractiveness.
Why should you attract?
How do you attract clients to you in a world of push and pull?
Build an attraction strategy.
In my past life, which was most of my life at NRS Media, we used to do a lot of trade shows.
Literally attended hundreds and hundreds of them.
One year, we asked ourselves what could we do differently at a trade show?
We came up with the idea that we would attach a small sachet of paracetamol (sometimes called Panadol) pain relief for headaches to a brochure.
The headline read!
‘Look everybody has their share of headaches when it comes to selling a XXX (Our product) if you wanted to hook up with us in suite 645 give us a call and we’ll make an appointment.’
Pain Relief delivered in the dead of night.
The trick was how we delivered it.
We actually walked around the hotel floors after midnight and we put the actual item, which included the paracetamol, underneath the door of the attendees who were staying at the conference venue.
So naturally when you get up in the morning, you’ve been to a trade show, you might’ve been out and about, you open up your door and here’s something lying on the floor that’s actually an paracetamol and a nice little brochure that says, ‘Hey look come and join us and learn about our product’
It worked a treat, and it goes to show that you can attract clients if you think it through and add some creative to it.
It is a really important element when you’re trying to motivate and attract clients.
So, that’s my tip for this week. Have a good one and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Control the presentation and the client, not the other way round.
The message in my video this week is simple.
You have to create the right selling environment to be even more successful in sales.
Creating the right space will give you control.
There’s nothing worse than when you go and see a client, present your product or service, and then all of a sudden you’re in their environment, and its chaos.
They are distracted, they’re looking at things, they’re looking at their phone if it vibrates, and then the phone rings and then someone comes in and says,
“Oh, excuse me for a moment.”
You’ve lost the client right there.
Why?
Because you do not have any control over the sales process.
How do you change that?
If you’re presenting a product or service that you want to have control of, you’ve got to create your own environment.
No distractions, just us, and the clients.
I’ll give you an example. My old company, NRS Media, sold millions and millions of advertising revenue using a seminar-based process.
Our clients would be invited to a seminar at a hotel.
At that hotel, everything was set up for the event where we presented our advertising product using our unique “One too many sales system”
It was in three parts:
Education
Offer
Close
Our numbers were an amazing 30-60 % closing rate.
All because we were in control of the process.
All decided by us, when and what was said, and paced to bring the client along to a natural “Yes” or “No” option.
So, as you think about your own products, how can you control the environment?
I’d love to hear some of your comments or some things that you do.
That’s my tip for this week, and I look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Have a great week.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
As the year unfolds it might be useful to think about creating some new habits and rituals for your salespeople.
I find that most of us like rules, that being, rules that support us to get the job done.
I know from experience that sales meetings can be some of the most time consuming, and boring aspects to sales.
Rant And Rave
Every week all over the world salespeople are subjected to a rant and rave from a sales manager who runs a meeting with no direction, a meeting with no agenda, no concept of time and usually run by members of the “we know it all brigade.
I think one of the weaknesses of a lot of sales meeting besides agenda and strict time limits are agreements
Agreements Work
Everywhere I go and present I like to set up some agreement, some guidelines on how I run my event, team talk or presentation.
If it is with a bunch of salespeople I usually use this process and do it at the beginning of every meeting.
Some groups Agreements
Participate 100%
Be on time
No such thing as a stupid question
Have fun!
No missiles / no mobile phones!
Try them out for your next meeting.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
