May 14, 2014 | Branding, Management, Sales
expertflyfishingand camping.com
Creating a lead is a whole world of work and pain for many business people, followed by another, converting the lead into a transaction.
Too often I see the process followed as an aggressive “close at all costs” mentality. That approach rarely ever worked well for anything beyond one off transactions, and is even less effective now that digital communication has revolutionised the way we create, conduct and nurture relationships.
People like to buy from those they like and trust, basic human nature.
It follows therefore, that to make sales, you need to demonstrate that you are both likable and trustworthy, as well as being in a position to address the customers need and deliver value at least as well as alternatives.
Following is a three stage process:
- Humanise you marketing, you are selling to people, not “organisations”, people!
- Track relationships. Have a metric, and visual device that articulates the existing relationships with people, such as the one following.
3. Explicitly set out to build relationships, recognising that sales will follow, rather than the other way around. Having a visual representation of the state of a relationship, and an objective of moving up the pyramid, by understanding and acting on the drivers of a relationship will deliver mutual benefit, and a return on effort.
Each relationship, whatever its status, is an individual thing. It will have a range of parameters that will direct its development. How we met, what we look like, how we conduct ourselves, the mutual stories we have, how authentic we are, how consistent as are in the engagement and interaction, and the degree to which we are proactive, and generous in that engagement, and so on.
Managing the inputs to those parameters is a foundation of marketing success that was not possible just 20 years ago because we did not have the tools, but now we have, so there is no excuse.
May 12, 2014 | Change, Management, Social Media
Courtesy Geoff Roberts. http://timelessimagelab.com.au/
When my kids were young, stuff always headed towards the floor. If it happened to be a piece of bread, it always landed buttered side down, so we had the “3 second test”
Story to the kids was that it took the bugs 3 seconds to move from the floor onto their piece of bread, so if we picked it up within the 3 seconds, the bread was OK.
Seemed to work.
These days, the 3 second test applies elsewhere, to websites.
I have watched many people log onto a site, either directly, or via a search list, and it seems that if their attention is not grabbed within 3 seconds, they have not been engaged, they are gone.
This is really no different to skimming a newspaper, remember those?.
A headline, a great photo, and layout made our eye stop, and we spent an extra bit of time absorbing the “gist” and perhaps engaging more deeply in the story, reading the detail, feeling something, and perhaps taking an action.
As a relevant aside, Fairfax chopped 30 photographers last week.
A great photo is an eye stopper, one of the ways that they can be differentiated from the drab piccies done with by amateurs with phones that inhabit websites and social media particularly. Just when it is becoming increasingly obvious that visual is taking over, a medium struggling to stay relevant cuts a key source of relevance.
Use good photos in your communication, particularly on your website. The modest investment will pay you back in spades.
May 11, 2014 | Branding, Change, Marketing, Social Media
Scott Galloway. L2 Thinktank.
Mitch Joel may have flogged his Twist Image agency to WPP, but hopefully he keeps on writing his blog and alerting us to terrific stuff like this presentation Winners and Losers in the Digital age, by Scott Galloway.
Read the post, watch the presentation, have a squizz at Galloways L2 site, and apply it to your business and situation.
May 10, 2014 | Governance, Leadership, Personal Rant
Courtesy http://mockingwords.blogspot.com.au
As great an advocate of analytics as I am, it remains a truth that data without a context is useless.
It is in the articulation of the context that data is given meaning, and it is at this point that the context can be articulated to change the meaning of the data.
“Spin” is so common we almost do not mind any more, it is so woven into our daily media consumption, that it is normal, and each person applies their own cogitative filtering system to what they are bombarded with every day.
Spin is no more than selecting a combination of data and context to deliver an argument that suits a predetermined outcome. Question is when does the modest spin with perhaps the best of intentions become a lie based on manipulation of data and context.
I cannot wait for Tuesday nights budget, if nothing else it should be a lesson in context management.
PS. A week post budget.
Well it seems they really blew this one!
We thought the previous residents of the Lodge were too smart by half, trying to manage both the data and the context, and failing at both, but the current Prime Minister and his Treasurer have set new standards.
Irrespective of your political inclinations, and view of the logic of the budget, it is hard to argue that the sell job has been just crap, the only thing worse has been the packaging of the product.
Mr Shorten cannot believe his luck, and how quickly we forget. Perhaps our limited memory is what the PM is relying on, I wish him luck, but where is the bookie when you need him.
