Improving Your Existing Sales Efforts

At Next Level, we refer to strategies to improve sales of existing products/services to new customers as Market Share Strategies. While this is the primary focus of most businesses, it is the wrong one.

There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of published books, seminars, websites and blogs dedicated to Market Share Strategies, tactics and techniques. We won’t waste your time discussing Marketing 101. We will, however, share some of the strategies we use at Next Level.

The first strategy we employ at Next Level is that of Awareness Positioning.

They can’t buy from you if they don’t know who you are.

No, we are not saying that advertising is the answer to all of your growth problems. What we are saying is that your prospective customer must know who you are and have a positive impression of you and/or your products/services. We call this Awareness Positioning.

In Awareness Positioning, your objective is to effectively place your business’ name or product/service into the mind of your targeted prospective customer so that when they decide to buy, it’s your company or product/service they think of first (with a positive perception of your company or product/service). In essence, you are positioning your company for opportunities.

Related to Awareness Positioning is the concept of the Rule of Seven.

The Rule of Seven

The Rule of Seven is an old and proven advertising rule. It states that if you want a prospective customer to buy from you, you must connect with him or her a minimum of seven times within an 18 month period (we think the time line is outdated in today’s information age and now is seven times in 42 weeks).

Then and only then can you reasonably expect the prospective customer to know what you can do for them and get him or her to take action on his or her behalf. To overcome the prospective customer’s indifference disinterest, and distrust, you must repeat your message over and over again until it sinks in.

We have found that the Rule of Seven works best when the form of these seven connections come in different manners and from different sources. For example, the prospective customer gets your message from:

• Sees your advertising in radio, television, newspaper or magazine
• Receives a newsletter in the mail from your company (or e-mail)
• Reads an article or listens to a radio or television program (free press)
• Receives a direct mail letter or postcard from your company
• Receives a direct sales phone call or a telemarketing call
• Hears good things about your company from an independent source they trust such as their CPA, banker, attorney, industry leader or a customer of yours that they know
• Sees your company name as a sponsor of an event they are participating
• Talks with your people at an industry trade show

No matter what the mix of connections is, the idea is to connect to your prospective customer as many times as possible and through multiple sources. Our experience also has shown that “On again – Off again” marketing and sales efforts simply don’t work very well wasting lots of money and resources.

The second strategy we employ at Next Level is timing. Timing is the concept of saying the right thing at the right time. Over time, every prospective customer makes numerous buying decisions for your products/services. Just prior to these purchase points are periods of opportunity or pain. During this period the prospective customer recognizes that the current situation is unacceptable and that they need to buy your product/services.

This may be because they are running out of the product. It may be because they have become unsatisfied with the current/product/service and want to change. Whatever the reason, they are now “shopping.” This period is a period of opportunity.

If your message, delivered during this period, successfully relates to their pain or addresses their needs, wants, desires or fears and they perceive that you can provide the solution they need, you just created a sales opportunity.

How do you identify which prospective customer at any given point in time is in this period of opportunity/pain? This depends a great deal on your industry. For example, in retail it may be as simple as someone walking in your store.

For a manufacturer, it may be news from a social network that a particular prospective customer is unhappy with his current supplier and may be open to a change. The challenge is finding these “shopping” prospective customers.

If you sold only in a small town where everyone knows everything about each other, this task may not be so difficult. For the rest of us who sell to large markets, the population of potential prospective customers is too large to monitor all of them that closely. So are we suggesting that you shotgun your message to the world and see what falls your way? No. With the exception of the world’s richest companies, we doubt you have the budget to reach everyone.

Focus, that is the key. Know your targets well. Know what they need and what their pains are. Make sure your target database includes only those targets for which you posses such information. Then, use positioning awareness and direct solicitation to deliver your message.

A certain percentage of your targets will be in the period of opportunity and your message will hit home. You can improve the success rate of generating sales opportunities by delivering that message using multiple marketing tactics. Remember the Rule of Seven.

These two concepts are by no means all that you should be doing to increase sales of existing products/services to new customers but they do work.

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Reaching beyond the expected with persuasive marketing solutions that target the right audience at the right time. Integrated marketing solutions that explain in a compelling way what a product or service does, the value it brings, and why a reader should be interested in learning more.

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