Business to Business sales for Kiwi businesses

I am currently working with a company that is selling high value marketing solutions to corporates, Government and New Zealand businesses.

The interesting thing we have discovered is the length of the sales cycle from Go to Sale. This is measured in Months when we expected Weeks. The great thing we have done during the process is to capture and build a great database and stay in regular touch with prospects for getting them over the line and future product releases. By doing this we are of course building a valuable relationship based database

The following article written by Gianfagna Strategic Marketing outlines some best practice which I think will benefit those selling B 2 B in New Zealand.

Jeff Smith – Boost Business Coaching

6 Steps for Successful Lead Conversion

Business purchases typically involve multiple decision-makers who can take weeks or even months to select a vendor. Since leads may need to be nurtured over time, you need to build a relationship with these prospects.

Your sales team will make frequent contact with prospects during the sales process, but marketing can play a pivotal role, too. Following these six steps can help you create a successful lead conversion marketing strategy.

1. Capture Contact Data to Facilitate a Dialogue

During lead qualification, capture the contact data needed for an ongoing sales dialogue, especially e-mail addresses and permission to send e-mails. One way to get this data is to require it for fulfillment of your original direct mail offer, such as a product sample, free trial of your product or service, or a premium.

It’s also a good idea to ask prospects to help you identify other team members who will have a role in the purchasing decision, so you can reach out to influencers, authorizers, and end-users.

2. Develop a Data-Driven Contact Management Plan

Use prospect data to build a contact management program, a carefully planned series of regular touches with prospects to keep them interested, keep your product and company top of mind, and create additional opportunities to generate a response.

Use data such as company size, NAICS code, industry, geography, or future revenue potential to group prospects with similar characteristics into segments. Then, develop a marketing communications plan for each segment that regularly delivers information tailored to prospects’ interests.

Most B-to-B marketers try to reach prospects at least quarterly. For others, a bimonthly or monthly contact is appropriate. A mix of tactics and channels, such as direct mail plus e-mail, can help you keep in touch with hard-to-reach business executives.

3. Send Information that Helps Prospects Make the Buying Decision

Your goal is to persuade prospects to make the buying decision. Send information that facilitates that decision, such as:

- Product samples;
- Newsletters about industry trends or product usage, such as new applications, peripherals, upgrades, or enhancements;
- Case studies showing how others are using your product or service;
- Customer testimonials about your company.

4. Tailor the Marketing to the Prospect

Nothing turns off a prospect faster than feeling like you don’t know them. Thus, it’s vital that your lead conversion marketing campaigns reflect your prior contact and the budding relationship.

A data-driven sales/CRM system can help you track contact with prospects and tailor future initiatives to each individual. It’s also smart to customize communications to various individuals within a company according to their level of authority and their role in the buying process.

5. Treat Top Prospects like they’re Already Customers

Even among qualified prospects, all are not equal. Move your very best leads – those with the greatest likelihood of converting to a sale or offering the highest potential revenue – into a preferred contact queue that treats them like they’re already customers.

Send these prospects higher-end, highly personalized direct mail and consider offering them, for a limited time, select advantages only your customers receive, such as special offers, preferred pricing, new product previews, or private invitations to customer-only events.

6. Create Opportunities for a Face-to-Face Dialogue

The Holy Grail for most business-to-business sales reps is an in-person meeting with the prospect. Identify potential opportunities for face-to-face contact and use direct marketing to promote them. Invite prospects to events, seminars, or educational programs, or encourage them to meet with you or attend activities you sponsor at trade shows.

When They Still Haven’t Said “Yes”

Be realistic about the timeframe for B-to-B lead conversion. What seems like a long time to you can seem perfectly appropriate to the prospect. Keep your best prospects on your contact list, be sure to keep the list current, and continue sending marketing messages to prospects that clearly have a need for what you sell. Communicate regularly, stay on the prospect’s radar screen, and your next marketing initiative could be the one that finally results in the sale.

Jean M. Gianfagna is a strategic marketing consultant and the founder and President of Gianfagna Strategic Marketing, Inc., a consulting firm in Cleveland, Ohio that provides marketing strategy, direct marketing, and creative services to leading business-to-business and consumer marketers.

Jean has been creating and implementing successful, integrated marketing communications plans and programs for more than 30 years. She founded Gianfagna Strategic Marketing in 1992. Jean’s blog, Smart Marketing Strategy, provides marketing insights and ideas to help marketers generate a higher return on their marketing investment:http://www.gianfagnamarketing.com/blog.

A frequent speaker on developing marketing strategies and campaigns, Jean has taught advertising, branding, direct marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing communications at several universities and professional conferences and authored articles on effective direct marketing techniques in national marketing publications.

Gianfagna Strategic Marketing has won more than 50 awards for marketing excellence and is a nationally certified Women’s Business Enterprise by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Jean also has garnered many awards for marketing achievement and entrepreneurial success.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jean_Gianfagna

Contact Boost Coaching or sign up for our BOOST Business Coaching Lite programme $299

Why most small businesses in New Zealand really suck at marketing themselves and what to do about it

Jeff Smith - Wellington Master Franchisee BOOST Business Coaching

Jeff – The Business Coaching Guy

In this scenario, franchise businesses are the solution to their problems. Today there are franchises in all industries. To purchase a franchise, you have to go through three basic steps. These three steps are interview, purchasing the franchise and training. The confusing process of gearing your business up for franchising can be simplified if you take each of these three purchaser steps individually

The Interview

There is an interview process for almost all franchises. You should interview to determine if the potential franchise holder is capable of being a franchisee. Usually franchises will prefer a person who has some business background. But others are not much concerned about the relevant background. The secret is to ensure that your business provides good training mechanisms and excellent business systems to turn even the most novice person into an effective team member.

The Purchase

After this, the next step is that of the actual purchase. You may consider financing a portion of purchase price with a deposit for your purchaser. This purchase price should include the franchise fee, the equipment costs and other ongoing royalties. The franchise fee is usually used to provide the purchaser with training in the use of brand name. Almost all franchises charge ongoing royalty fees. This can be a fixed priced or a percentage of revenue. This is also charged to use the brand name and the business practices of the franchise business.

Training

As a last step, after the purchase is complete, a training date is set. Many franchises have a 1-2 weeks training program. During this period you should aim to train the franchisee in your business operations including systems and processes. Marketing training can also be given to the franchisees in the training period. The marketing techniques vary from industry to industry. Lets face it you already have the knowledge of what techniques work the best in that particular industry.

From the above information, you can see that franchising is not that complex at all. Franchising your business operations, marketing and keeping score systems is a great way to get returns on your capital without giving away your business. Get advice and seriously consider this as an alternative way of growing your return on your capital today

3 Action Steps

Draft a list of pros and cons versus straight out business sale

Consider your franchising options – talk to your accountant, lawyer or Business coach

Contact BOOST and order a $899 BOOST Business Franchise lite programme and let us guide you through the decision making process

Jeff Smith

The Business Coaching Guy

1. A Fully Structured In-depth Capability Assessment interview on the Business.

2. Comprehensive business report outlining recommendations based on the Capability Assessment and your franchising opportunity

3. A Benchmarking report which outlines your competitor’s turnover, Gross Profit, Staffing etc. This is very handy for businesses to compare where they are positioned in their industry

4. An extra BOOST Business Coaching session identifying some immediate actions, tactics and strategies to achieve some early BOOST results.

5. Access to your BOOST coach for up to two weeks.

6. 12 Month access to your own online project space with a record of all documentation, notes, action check lists, templates, your business report, benchmarking report and ‘How to’ manual on any of the strategies or tactics discussed.

7. A FREE USB Stick with Financial Templates such as Break Even analysis, Cashflow Forecasting, Profit & Loss Forecasting etc.

Business should take advantage now by contacting and registering for the $899 BOOST lite programme  - Below

Click here to order and pay for your Franchising Lite Programme

Boost Business Coaching Wellington is proud to introduce the $299 Business Coaching program.

The Program is for Wellington Business to have a taste of the BOOST experience. ‘We are proven with a great business track record in other parts of New Zealand’ says Jeff Smith the Master Franchisee for BOOST Business Wellington. We are keen to roll out our program to Wellington Business therefore what better way than to offer a small taste of our services.

For $299 Wellington Business get;

1. A Fully Structured In-depth Capability Assessment interview on the Business.

2. Comprehensive business report outlining recommendations based on the Capability Assessment

3. A Benchmarking report which outlines your competitor’s turnover, Gross Profit, Staffing etc. This is very handy for businesses to compare where they are positioned in their industry

4. An extra BOOST Business Coaching session identifying some immediate actions, tactics and strategies to achieve some early BOOST results.

5. Access to your BOOST coach for up to two weeks.

6. 12 Month access to your own online project space with a record of all documentation, notes, action check lists, templates, your business report, benchmarking report and ‘How to’ manual on any of the strategies or tactics discussed.

7. A FREE USB Stick with Financial Templates such as Break Even analysis, Cashflow Forecasting, Profit & Loss Forecasting etc.

Wellington Business should take advantage now by contacting and registering for the $299 BOOST lite programme  - Below

If you put it off last year, its time to re think your decision because there is a really good reason to enter…

Apart from being an excellent marketing tactic or a promotional exercise the biggest benefit of entering these awards by far is the discipline of standing back and objectively ‘taking stock’ of exactly where you are at.

Let me explain…
You have probably heard dozens of times the phrase “working on your business instead of in your business”, and like a lot of people wondered ‘what exactly is that?’ And also like dozens of other businesses, you say to yourself, ‘how does that apply to me as a business owner or manager? What is the point?’

Well the point is this!  If you want your business to grow, you must stop being the guy that does everything… and instead learn how to direct and manage your systems, processes and people to run and grow your business.

The great thing about entering the awards is that you have a deadline, you receive assistance to enter and you’ll get two sets of experts to provide robust feedback on your organisation. From there you can use this information and data to make other decisions about ‘where to from here’. (This is working on your business).

Two things are required now – decide to improve your business outlook, then hop online and start the registration process. Do it now!   Go to www.electra.co.nz/businessawards for more information and to register.

Why NZ Businesses suck at marketing and what to do about it

Jeff Smith

jeff@boostbusiness.co.nz

BOOST are responsible for Motivating and assisting Kapiti and Horowhenua businesses get their business awards to an entry level standard.

Jeff Smith

021-566535

PS – Why most Kapiti Businesses suck at marketing and what to do about it

Systemise your business spend more time at home doing the real business

In the last article we looked at some tips for fathers in business.

One of the tips was about systemising your business so that you as a business owner can get away and spend more time with your family without the business relying on you at all times. As a Father this is a natural desire. Systemising your business is often seen as a panacea and easy fix. Then reality is though that there are a series of stages that a small business goes through to actually reach this level.

This includes fixing and working on various parts of your business before investing in creating business systems

The problem with most small businesses is that they cannot afford to hire salaried business development experts. Small businesses realise that to get some expertise on board means that they could then grow their businesses effectively which means that they could then afford the expertise to grow their businesses… yes it’s a classic catch 22 situation.

Systemising your small business

The secret is to outsource this type of work to people who can show you the templates and then coach you through the process. Outsourcing someone to assist you implement processes and systems means that in effect you are adding three ‘departments’ onto your business.

1. Your marketing department – Making sure that every obstacle that stands in the way of getting your services / products sold are overcome

2. Your operations department – The sole purpose of this department is to investigate and implement ways of doing your work quicker, cheaper and better.

3. Keeping score department – What you cant measure you cant manage – keeping track of everything from finances, compliances, strategic planning implementation, systems implementation, staff etc etc.

On top of this you have someone holding you to account for accomplishing milestones moving your business towards one that is more profitable and less hands on for you the business owner.

Fathers, we owe it to our families and children to spend as much quality time as possible. If you are not in the luxurious position of working from 9 to 5 and then being able to walk away from work every day then you owe it to yourself and family to put in small business systems and processes so you can start doing this.

Contact BOOST today

BOOSTS Wellington Business Coaching Lite $299   – Try before you buy

It seem like only yesterday we were eagerly awaiting the results from the 2009 Electra Business Awards. And now you are being prompted to enter again!

If you put it off last year its time to re think the process because there is a really good reason to start the process right now

… Apart from being an excellent marketing tactic or a promotional exercise the biggest benefit of entering these awards by far is the discipline of standing back and objectively ‘taking stock’ of exactly where you are at….

Let me explain…

…you have probably heard dozens of time the phrase “working on your business… Instead of in your business”…and like a lot of people wondered… What exactly is that? And also like dozens of other businesses, you say to yourself… how does this apply to me as a business owner or manager? What is the point?

Well the point is this!  If you want your business to grow, you must stop being the guy that does everything… and instead learn how to direct / manage systems, processes and people to run and grow your business

The great thing about entering these awards is that you are getting a deadline, the assistance to enter and two sets of experts to provide robust feedback on your organisation. From here you can use this information and data to make other decisions about where to from here. (This is working on your business)

Two things are required now – Decide to improve your business outlook, then hop online and start the registration process. Do it now!

Jeff Smith from BOOST Business has been involved in business awards all over the North Island since 2004. Jeff is your official awards consultant. BOOST Business is available to take you though the awards process and to give you feedback and pointers on your entry before submitting to the assessors. After you have registered your interest in the awards you can contact Jeff by emailing jeff@boostbusiness.co.nz or by phoning 04-2982667 or 021 – 566535. A link to the awards website can be found by going to www.boostbusiness.co.nz/awards