The Power of Follow Ups
One of the best ways to create synergy and boost your marketing reach via your partnerships is to share content. Cross posting and guest posting on your clients’ or partners’ blogs and social media platforms increases your reach, generates additional trust and loyalty for your business, and opens doors to more interesting and relevant content.
For example, this month we’re sharing an infographic and guest post about Sales Skills from IRC that talks about the power of following up with your prospects. Check out the article, written by Nicholas Rubright, and the infographic:
The importance of following up with sales prospects is undeniable. Research shows that 80% of sales happen after the fifth interaction. Despite the fact that this approach has proven effective time and again for closing deals, only 44% of salespeople actually make more than one attempt to close a sale.
A key takeaway from this data is that consistency and perseverance are the backbones of any sales strategy. Your ROI will always seem low when you give up too soon, or never try at all!
Research indicates that 40% of your prospects will be at the beginning stages of their buying process, which means they won’t have a clear idea of what product will best suit them. That being said, you can make sales by continuing to show up while the competition has given up.
To ensure maximum success in your sales and marketing strategies, follow the tips provided by this infographic. And be sure to remember this: success in sales isn’t creating the perfect circumstances to close, it’s about being confident and prepared enough to make a sale whenever your prospect is ready.
3-Hour Marketing Consultation for 2022 Planning
Has your business ever faced as many challenges as it has the last two years? The pandemic, the supply chain, a growing, inflating economy, and the Great Resignation are some of the paradigm changers we’ve experienced.
Have your business strategies and marketing plans kept up with the changes? Or are you hoping your market, buyers, and competitors have not significantly changed, so you don’t need to either?
Are you willing to bet your business on it?
Sales Renewal is pleased to offer a complimentary three-hour marketing consultation to facilitate your 2022 planning:
- 1-hour initial Zoom discussion to understand your 2022 business and marketing issues, thoughts & concerns
- 1-hour of Sales Renewal’s independent investigation & research
- 1-hour Zoom discussion of research results and our recommendations
The consultation provides an experienced, knowledgeable review of your 2022 business & marketing plans, a sounding board for your ideas and answers to any marketing- or strategy-related questions you may have.
There is no fee, but this no-obligation offer is limited to one company in January and one in February, each with at least $1M in annual revenue. Contact us to secure your spot before it’s gone.
Accessibility: An Experiential Design Perspective
Website accessibility is an important—and too often overlooked—facet of one’s online brand. Fortunately, the costs for making your web site accessible to all have come down dramatically over the years.
Recently, we successfully piloted our solution with a Sales Renewal client expert in accessibility, design and branding: Image 4, a Brand Marketing Agency with offices in NYC and Manchester NH. Read on to learn what got them excited about our accessibility package.
Seminar: Sales vs. Marketing, Making 1+1=3
Though sales and marketing have a long history of being at odds in many companies, they’re actually two very important sides of the same coin. Identifying the differences between sales and marketing, then finding ways to bridge the gap between them, can create a strong, consistent revenue stream that is greater than the sum of its parts – effectively making 1 + 1 = 3.
Sales Renewal CEO Keith Loris recently presented a seminar to a Vistage group outlining the differences between the two departments, including how those distinctions can be fused to augment each other. The long-term revenue generation focus of marketing keeps the short-term revenue generation pipeline of sales full, while successful sales’ rich data steers the marketing department’s targeting, tactics, and approaches. With clear communication and well-defined crossovers, sales and marketing departments join forces to become a powerful revenue generation machine.
Learn more from Mr Loris as he takes you through tactics, strategies, and case studies to renew YOUR company’s sales numbers through stronger sales-marketing collaboration.
Are You On Track to Hit Your Exit Revenue Goals?
How much should you sell your business for? Financial Advisors often advise you to sell it for X because X is what you’ll need to live the life you’d like in retirement … but they have no idea whether X is realistic or attainable – that’s up to you. And since businesses are bought and sold at a multiple of their revenue (1.2 times, 2.3 times, etc.), when an Advisors says sell for X, what they’re really telling you is the annual revenue you need to hit in your final years of business, right before the sale.
Running “sanity checks” on your exit revenue goals and projections and the marketing programs that are supposed to deliver that revenue will reveal whether you are being too optimistic or pessimistic about the value of your business, and can help you craft a more accurate strategy for achieving your Exit Revenue goal.
Keith Loris, President and CEO of Sales Renewal, discusses how to know if you’re likely to hit your exit revenue numbers and learn how agile, integrated marketing can help, in this informative webinar:
We also created a tool to help guide you through your exit planning process. Use our Exit Planning Analysis guide to keep on track or contact us for exit planning consultations!
Crafting Products and Services to Reduce Time-to-First-Dollar
We’ve all seen our share of tire-kickers – those would-be buyers who take their time in making a purchase decision, evaluating every detail because they’re in no rush to pull the trigger. This problem becomes especially prominent when your company’s main service or product is a comprehensive, all-inclusive solution since there’s that much more to evaluate.
Good marketers know all this time sitting in the sales pipeline hurts revenue growth, and that’s why it is important to get prospects to buy something as quickly as possible. Sales Renewal has worked with clients in different industries to minimize this so called “Time to First Dollar” by various means ( such as “unbundling” a comprehensive service to create smaller, easier-to-buy services). Learn more about reevaluating your offerings through Sales Renewal’s “Crafting Products and Services to Reduce Time-to-First-Dollar” webinar. You can also read more about specific case studies and our proven track record for putting this and other revenue accelerating marketing strategies into effective action.
5 Tips for Effective Marketing Communication
When building your business, having a great product or service is just the beginning. Communicating your company’s offerings, solutions, and advantages is crucial for turning a good product into a wildly successful one. But in the age of digital communication, traditional advertising is no longer the only way to tell people about what you offer. Connecting with your target audience through digital media can be an incredibly powerful asset to your brand and business – as long as you can optimize your message and create effective, ongoing communications with your customers.
Here are our top five tips to more effective marketing communication.
1. Articulate your marketing goal(s) and message
It’s difficult to be effective if you’re unsure what your goals are. Without defining a clear message and a way to measure the success of your communications, you’ll end up with a less cohesive and less engaging strategy that uses up time and resources without generating returns. Instead, practice making SMART goals that center around a clear, direct message.
2. Define and understand your audience
Knowing what you want to say is one thing, but knowing what your ideal customer wants to hear is another! Research your audience and identify what types of conversations or solutions are important to them. Learn where they go to find information that helps them make decisions. Craft your messages around your researched data to ensure you’re investing your marketing time and budget into communications that will get attention, rather than falling flat amid the rest of the market noise.
3. Tell a story
If the movie and television industry gives any indication, people love a great story – especially when they can identify with the characters and conflicts. Craft your messaging into relatable narratives that put your ideal customer at the center of the story. Creating recognizable situations and offering the best-fit solution to a known problem will help your brand establish a more intimate connection with your audience than traditional advertising.
4. Focus your message
Keep your eyes – and your communications – on the prize. Once you’ve identified a key concept and message, stick to it. Creating too many individual messages can become overwhelming to the consumer. If you have multiple messages that you’d like to work with, consider separating them into independent campaigns that build consistency around each message, rather than trying to work multiple discussions or points into the same campaign strategy.
5. Create a dialogue
One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing over older methods of advertising is the ability to have a conversation with your audience. A billboard or TV commercial is a one-way communication, but social media platforms, email marketing, and other digital media forms allow the customers to engage with the material and messaging. Open your campaign to dialogue by asking your audience questions, encouraging them to share their experiences with your brand, or by creating an approachable persona on your accounts. When your customers feel connected to your brand on a personal level, they are more likely to not only listen to what you have to say, but to act on your offerings as long-term clients.
Don’t Just Hire Freelancers – Outsource Your Management
Navigating the gig economy as a small business owner can feel overwhelming. Freelance and contract workers are more available than ever before, and can prove highly effective in maximizing both your budget and your company’s output – but hiring contracted help introduces a difficult maze of understanding, communication, and management that may be more draining for you than it’s worth. Fortunately, at Sales Renewal, we’ve become the experts in building and managing outsourced marketing teams designed to meet your business’ specific needs and goals!
When you attempt to hire freelancers yourself, you’ll likely encounter a very common barrier almost immediately: understanding the scope of their work to a level that allows you to make informed decisions. You may not have an extensive knowledge of marketing strategy, tasks, and tools to know if you are hiring the right people for your needs. Working with an outsourced management company puts years of experience and expertise at your fingertips, ensuring you’ll have the right team with the right skills to advance your goals effectively and cost-efficiently.
A single point of contact simplifies development and coordination of your marketing strategy, and increases accountability through organization. Having an expert manager at your disposal also means your needs and asks can be clearly communicated to the right personnel at the right time, streamlining strategy processes and producing higher quality results more quickly. When your strategy needs to pivot to a new tactic, your marketing manager can shift your outsourced team around the new goals without forcing you to start over with new hires and new relationships.
So when is the right time to reach out to an outsourced marketing manager? Generally, when you are facing a short term project or a very limited number of tactics to handle, traditional freelance roles may be sufficient. Once you’re looking for a longer term strategy incorporating numerous complementary tactics, though, juggling numerous freelancers becomes more difficult. This is the perfect time to bring in an experienced outsourced marketing agencythat can take your goals and run with them. Start-up businesses, for example, often hit a point in their development where adding an official marketing department is a stretch, but a freelancer or two can no longer keep up with the business needs. Building a relationship with a marketing management team can grow with the company and remain consistent throughout the lifetime of the business.
Outsourced management is also ideal at the end of a company’s lifetime, when you’re beginning your exit planning. As you prepare to sell your business, running marketing investment analyses can help you determine whether you’ll achieve the financial balance you’ll need to retire comfortably. You can ramp up your marketing to hit those numbers without adding or maintaining a marketing staff, which makes your business more appealing to potential buyers that won’t have to consider layoffs or employee integrations after acquiring your company. You’ll also offer your buyer the benefit of consistency and knowledge transfers, as your management team bridges the gap as you transition out of the company.
Freelancers can enhance your business in many ways, but to truly make the most of contracted marketing help, consider working with an experienced, outsourced marketing agency; especially one that shares the risk & reward! Learn more about the unique JointSourcing Solution to see how our team can build your business in a smooth, effective, and results-driven way!
5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Hire Non-Vetted Freelancers
Recruiting freelancers for your business can be a headache, especially when you’re trying to fill and manage positions you’re not always familiar with yourself. For Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing Solution, we routinely need to find and manage subcontractors (freelancers and other marketing agencies) as we assemble our client’s virtual marketing departments staff, and over the years we’ve gotten pretty good at vetting, verifying, and managing them. Here are some tips on how to carefully vet freelancers to prevent missed deadlines, communication issues, security breaches, and more.
Of course, we’d still be happy to help you not only build, but also manage, an outsourced marketing department that’s perfect for your business!
Read the full article at: www.smallbizdaily.com
Six Ways Going “Green” Can Boost Your Bottom Line
We’ve heard it over and over again: it’s important for the environment to work “green” or eco-friendly initiatives into our lives whenever we can. For individuals, the path to a greener lifestyle is simpler, but for businesses, an eco-conscious approach may seem difficult to integrate at first. We think there are plenty of green initiatives your small business can adopt – and they’ll also be great for your bottom, and sometimes top, lines.
1. Grow your business by marketing your eco-friendly products, services and expertise
In every industry, there’s a largely untapped segment of buyers that values and is willing to pay for green products, services and expertise. Metro Sign & Awning (a Sales Renewal JointSourcing client), for example, wanted to cultivate new Partners who’d recommend their signage products and services in the Partners’ new construction projects. With our help, Metro created a series of white papers that helped Architects and Property Developers become more knowledgeable about green signage. The idea was that by making these prospective partners more knowledgeable about something Metro was expert at (eco-friendly signage), the partners would come off as more knowledgeable in front of their customers. This brought more business back to Metro as well, creating a clever – and successful – marketing campaign that not only built their own business, but also enhanced their partnerships while doing double duty for sustainability.
2. Share the knowledge.
Do your products and services have a long-term environmental impact? Let your customers know how working with you can impact THEIR green initiatives and bottom line! Outline both the financial and ecological ROI on a sustainable product. Generate content that discusses how your eco-friendly products can reduce your customers’ carbon footprint or eliminate their waste over time. By leveraging your own environmental consciousness into a marketing campaign, you’ll encourage your customers to invest in your products and services, while also doing double duty for sustainability! You can also grow your partners’ businesses by sharing your own green expertise, helping your partners win more customers through the wisdom you’ve passed to them.
3. Think outside the (recycling) box.
Green initiatives at your company aren’t limited to benefitting ONLY your company. Get creative with your business’ approach to environmental friendly decision making. Understand your carbon footprint and consider participating in carbon offset programs to supplement and enhance any company policies you have already implemented. Use your business voice to align with policy initiatives that align with your company’s values. Customers in the modern era are heavily attracted to purpose-driven businesses that publicly share – and take action on – their values. You’ll not only be doing the earth a favor, but you’ll be gaining favor with and growing your customer base!
4. Assess your energy needs.
Are you leaving equipment or lighting on overnight? Are you heating a conference room you only use once per week? Minimizing wasted energy sources will not only help the environment, but will also put a nice dent into your energy bills. Switch to LED lighting in place of incandescent bulbs, and put your lights on motion sensors to ensure lights are turned off when not in use. Set computers and other office equipment to hibernate or switch into sleep mode during periods of inactivity. Consider switching to laptops, which are more energy-efficient than desktops, whenever possible. You may also be eligible for rebates on your energy costs if you’re upgrading to eco-friendly equipment, so contact your energy supplier to see what incentives they may offer!
5. Assess your physical office needs.
Your business’ office footprint is your own piece of the environment, and needs as much care and consideration as the great outdoors. Find an office that is the right size for your needs to prevent wasted energy from heating and lighting spaces that are unused. When upgrading equipment or furnishing your office or workspaces, shop secondhand when possible (something Covid has made a lot easier with all the office downsizing going on now). Look for energy efficient machinery, or for sustainably built furniture that will outlast other construction. Or, consider eliminating your rent bill completely by allowing your employees to work remotely! Remote offices reduce pollution from commuting to and from the office, and reduce your employees’ gas and wear & tear expenses, so it’s a win all around!
6. Assess your paper needs.
Printing and paper use is a prime target for small businesses to make an impact with a few simple changes. Printing on both sides of each sheet will cut both your paper waste and your paper cost in half instantly. Or, use the back side of printed papers as scratch paper for note taking instead of purchasing sticky notes or other notepads. Or, consider going paperless completely! With the proliferation of cloud computing, records storage and document sharing can be done without a single sheet of paper; marketing can be managed online through email campaigns, social media, and websites; even sales and accounting can be migrated to online payment programs and bookkeeping software. Never buy another ream, nor another clunky printer or copier, again!