5 Ways to Prepare Your Marketing & Sales Team to Sell Your Brand

Business owners - how do your marketing and sales people describe your products and services?  Are they described in terms that address the customer’s fears, wants, needs and unmet desires?   

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Welcome to “Conversations every business owner has with their marketing and sales team.”  And today’s topic covers how your marketing and sales team communicates with your customers to find solutions.  Can your team describe all the different ways the customer can experience your company’s brand?   

Here are 5 questions to ask your marketing and sales team to discuss your products and services.  Improve performance here and you’ll make more sales...

1.   List the company’s range of products and services offered...this will spark an enlightening conversation

2.   How are the products and services offered and packaged to give customers choices for good, better, best options?  People are more likely to buy when they have options.  Step back look at the display offers.  Do the offers communicate easily the benefits, options, expectations and value to your customer?

3.   How do the sales people engage the customer to determine what problem needs to be overcome?  Do they share a story or follow an outline or script that lets the customer feel understood and appreciated and that you can help?

4.   How do the sales people present solutions to the customer?  How does the marketing and sales material enhance the buying experience?

5.   For your existing customers how do they learn of all your products and services after the first sale.  When do they learn of what else you could offer to delight them?

Review these questions with your Marketing and Sales team and you’ll improve the experience they give your customers and make more sales.  

If you discover the discussion was unsatisfactory, then let's talk.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let's get started...improving your marketing and sales team’s effectiveness to give you back control of your business, so you can earn more and work less...

Hi Stephen Marino, with ActionCOACH - World’s #1 Business Coaching firm, successfully coaching thousands of business owners globally over the past 20 years through the numerous boom/bust economic cycles to overcome the time, team, money and systems obstacles that get in the way of predictable increasing profits and productivity.

5 Numbers Every Business Owner Must Know

Business owners - what are the 5 essential numbers to grow your business?  

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1. What’s the value of your time?  This number gives you perspective on how and where to apply your talents.  It helps prioritize your tasks.  Will this task make you money or avoid losing money - how much?  Without this this number you feel at odds constantly trying to do everything and failing to be productive.
2. When do you break-even?  Knowing when your revenues exceed the fixed and variable costs gives you confidence you make a profit for your efforts.  Without it you don’t know whether you’re winning or losing.  You don’t know the score.  You feel anxious and hesitant on strategy because you don’t know where you stand financially.
3. What’s the acquisition cost of your customers?  What are you spending in marketing, sales and customer experience to attract and retain them.  Are you receiving a return on investment?  Without this number you don’t have a basis to decide how and where to apply your resources.  You feel perplexed and must guess on marketing and sales strategies.
4. What is your customer lifetime value?  When you add up what your customer buys year-over-year plus their referrals, what value does it provide the business?  With this number you’ll appreciate your customers more.  Without this number you’ll miss apply your time with low quality customers vs focusing on retaining your loyal raving fans.
5. Finally, what is the value of your business?  What if you transitioned out of the business today, tomorrow or in 3 years what value do you need it to be?  What are the leveragable variables impacting the value?  How do you best show sustainable increasing discretionary cashflow?  Avoid feeling disappointed when this pinnacle event occurs.    

Knowing these 5 numbers is important.  Knowing the direction and rate of change is equally important over time.

If you’re uncertain about what your numbers are and their trends then let’s talk.  We’ll discuss how to calculate these numbers and how to move them in the right direction.  This is a complementary session and you're guaranteed to leave with at least a half dozen implementable ideas to improve these numbers.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or eMail:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...know these numbers and we'll grow your business!

How to Surround Yourself with a High Quality Team - 5 Steps to a Recruiting Plan

Whether your company is recruiting for rapid growth, high grading or replacing people, knowing how to attract top talent is an essential business function.  

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Welcome to my series, “Conversations every business owner has with their team - and today’s topic is recruiting team members whether your business is expanding and adding more or high grade the ones you have.”  

Here are 5 essential steps to the recruiting process to save you time and money while ensuring a great fit for your company.

1. Define the position - skills, competencies, passion level as well as the cultural fit with your vision, mission and values
2. Attract a large pool of applicants.  In today's job environment there are nearly 90 applicants per job with a well written and placed advertisement
3. Design the recruiting process that mimics the qualities you want completed.  With a large number of applicants, you can manage the process by having applicants demonstrate their competencies and show their desire to go the "extra mile."  Allow your applicants to de-select themselves based on the initial advertisement and instructions given throughout your process
4. Allow the applicants to de-select themselves by not following your instructions.  When they deselect naturally, you’ll be left with a more manageable number.  From this remaining group, high grade again and invite several for a group interview with you and your team.  The group interview is a multi-hour session where in the first half you and your team share information about your company, the position and your expectations.  Inform them that during the second half the applicants will step-up and perform many of the essential job required tasks to your team.  Many will deselect themselves and those remaining are demonstrating their desire to earn their way onto your team.  
5. After the group interview, reassemble your team and critique the new people interviewed against your hiring criteria for skills, competencies, passion level and cultural fit.  Prioritize and select the one or two you will make an offer.

These 5 recruiting steps yield a higher probability of hiring the right person the first time, concentrates your team’s time efficiently and accelerates the new team member’s “on boarding” time to productivity.  

If you're adding team members this quarter then give me a call and let's discuss how to make this process work for you.  

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  

And let’s surround you with the high quality team you deserve…

Identify Why Your Marketing Leads Declined

Welcome to "Conversations Every Business Owner Must Have with Their Marketing and Sales team.  

When Marketing leads decline impacting sales, how do you to determine the cause and what to change?

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Whether you are a team of one or with several people dedicated to Marketing and Sales going through this evaluation will identify what to change.

Let's start by evaluating these 4 key areas...

1. Audience:  Start with your target audience...do you have your ideal customer, client, patient or member identified by demographic, psychographic and geographic characteristics?  These are the people that benefit the most by experiencing your products and services.  Can you describe them and determine where they are in the greatest number at the time they are most receptive to your offer?  The more you can segment this audience the more effective your marketing will be.  
2. Offer:  What is your company offering customers that fulfills a want, need, must have or unmet desire to engage them?  The offer must create an eager want to initiate their response so a conversation can start.   
3. Copy:  Does the marketing message resonate with your customer?  Is it in their language that lets them know, you know them, understand them, and demonstrate you're likable, trustworthy and credible?  Is your message delivered suitably for their communication style - visually, auditory and/or kinetically?  Is there sufficient evidence you're relating to them in their personally preference for social proof and logically? 
4. Distribution:  How and when are you reaching and connecting with your target audience?  For most businesses with less than 50 employees direct response, online, print, social media, networking and speaking are the likely cost effective choices vs. advertising.  

This evaluation identified where the likely shortcoming is.  Now you and your team can concentrate specifically on solutions and avoid the destabilizing blame, excuse and denial behavior that's detrimental to your business.  

Still stumped and want an outside perspective?  I'll offer you a free marketing and sales consultation?  Then contact me at  ph:  972 709 6776 or eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let's get your marketing and sales re-ignited so you can be more profitable and productive...

How to Humanize B2B Marketing and Sales Conversations

Conversations Every Business Owner has with Their Marketing and Sales Team Series

Today’s question is, “What guidance do you give your marketing and sales team on how to humanize what you sell, especially in a B2B environment?”

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What you sell is stuff – it’s tangible and intangible products and services providing functionality, knowhow, speed, convenience, labor, compliance, feel good and confidence.  What they buy is you and your company’s promise to deliver on-time, to spec, on budget and wow – every time. 

The overarching premise is that you are having a conversation with a person in a company.  Yes, prioritize the person in the B2B environment.  The key to humanizing the discussion is to go beyond logic that gets them thinking and rationalizing and to personal emotion that gets them acting. 

Here are 7 tips get your marketing and sales team focused on humanizing your offering…

1.  Be Human:  Engage authentically, be genuine, show competence, as well as, vulnerability and character

2.  Tell a Story:  People listen to stories especially ones where they can see themselves participating.  Give them a beginning, middle and end with the point on how they benefit

3.  Site Relevant Statistics/Facts:  Research the evidence that describes their problems, the implications and how it doesn’t need to be that way.  You have a solution

4.  Ask your audience what’s important via conversations, interviews and surveys.  Ask what’s their #1 obstacle interfering with their productivity and profitability is it Time, Team, Money and/or Systems?  Why that one?  What would they do to overcome this obstacle?  Dig deep and don’t assume the answer.  They must acknowledge and express the discomfort and only then, can they decide to change 

5.  Show Social Proof:   Capture and document your customer Advocates and Raving Fans doing your selling for you.  “If I got these benefits so can you.”  If you say it, it may be true or not.  If they hear if from other’s it more credible

6.  Be news worthy:  Create events where the media wants to publicize it    

7.  Assure them they are not alone and you’re not going to judge them.  Demonstrate you hear, understand and appreciate their situation

To accelerate implementing how to humanize what you sell in a B2B environment, let’s talk.  I offer a complementary marketing and sales assessment.  And you’ll learn how to sell more by humanizing your marketing and sales conversations vs. competing on price and features.    Let’s get started…

Call 972 709 6776 or Email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com