22. May 2010 by Frank Goad.

Despite all the talk about social media, “the long tail,” web advertising and other new frontiers in marketing, most local businesses still deal with customers one-on-one. All of those things are the acts that get customers in the door. What about once they’re in your store or on the phone? Training ensures that your company takes advantage of every opportunity that comes to you.

Training staff is still critical and it seems to not be getting enough attention anymore. I think that’s largely because of thinner budgets. Want a budget problem? Start losing sales because of untrained personnel. Maybe you already are.

Yes, it costs money, but it’s an investment. How many sales are lost because a customer didn’t get the answers they wanted, or because they saw your team member as unqualified or uncaring? I’m betting it’s way more than you realize. What if you have multiple locations? If there is a lack of consistency between your stores, customers don’t react well to that.

Think of the times that you’ve gone into a store and the person at the counter couldn’t answer your questions. Even worse, let’s say they only said, “I dunno,” and didn’t offer to find out. Are they lazy or stupid? Well, that’s a possibility, but it’s more likely they were not told what to do. Despite being something so simple, the basics are often overlooked when a company is overworked and understaffed. Because some other team members know what to do it’s easy to assume everyone does.

Training doesn’t have to be expensive or mind boggling. Start by taking notice of all the processes in your store or company. How do people answer the phone? How do they answer questions? What do they do when they don’t have an answer? Do they use suggestion to build sales? What steps are there for follow-up? What reference materials do they have? How do they record calls?

Take that information and start at the beginning. Create a flow chart or series of steps so that the major things they do can be guided and repeated. This might seem like digging into minutiae, but it doesn’t have to be. Just hit those things that are done most frequently and address those. Polishing the little things builds customer trust, loyalty and lowers (or eliminates) the barriers to repeat sales, price objections and add-on sales.

Outside sales reps are even more important, so make sure they, too, are adequately trained on your product, your company and approach customers in a style you are comfortable with.  When did you last go with a rep on a call? If you do, shut up! Make sure that the customer/prospect focuses on the rep, not you. Deflect any questions they have to the salesman as soon as possible. Your deference to them builds their credibility in the customer’s eyes as the real authority so that, when they return and you’re not with them, they already have a firm foundation.

You can say something like, “Brad here is one of our top people, not only in sales, but also in customer satisfaction. I’m here to see how he does it with so much success.” Okay, Brad’s a schmuck and you want to fire him, but this could be a golden opportunity for all. Lemons into lemonade and maybe ol’ Brad gets a boost and turns into your top producer after all. It’s happened and I’ve seen it.

If need be, get outside help with training. Steve Ickes runs the Lexington branch of Sandler Institute, and they have a sales training program that works for many people. Chief Learning Officer magazine has a great site with hundreds of ideas about training and leadership development. Bersin and Associates’ website has a wealth of info, too.

To prove my point, a recent report was generated by McKinsey Quarterly based on a survey of 1,200 purchasing decisions in the U.S. and Western Europe. It stated that customers said sales reps need to be well versed in their products and know how theirs is different from the competition. More importantly, they want to know how that product or service will make a difference in their business, their life, etc. As you would expect, price was almost always second to a great experience with the vendor.

Sales training can be considered a value-add but, in reality, it should be a foundational piece of the product or services you offer. Everyone in the company needs to start from a common base of information. If you need help assessing these things, organizing a plan for your company or help creating training, please drop me a line at frank@frankcomlex.com, or by using the comment form on bottom of the page at the Frank Communications website.

Posted in training, Frank Communications, Frank Goad, FrankyGee3, The Long Tail, Frank, Marketing, Advertising, advertisers, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

8. May 2010 by Frank Goad.

Before I started my business, I wrote Frank’s Business Manifesto (a.k.a. the Frankifesto). Written before my business plan, it is a statement of my thinking on the business and how I would run it. Without this, the business plan could have belonged to anyone. The manifesto informed the human side of my need to work for myself and created a behavioral and ethical standard that guides my dealings with friends and clients. It helped ensure that my heart, head and will were all in line together.

I’m sharing this in the hope that others will take the time to create one for themselves and refer to it often. This is a personal statement of what’s important in your work and life. If mine suits you, please, help yourself. Short or long, having one is akin to giving yourself a compass to navigate your career.

1. I believe I have creative talents and business skills sufficient to make a good living.
2. I will carefully choose trusted advisers because there are many who are well-meaning but blessed with far more opinions than knowledge or wisdom.
3. Despite the admonitions and warnings of others, even those who mean well, I will rely on my trusted advisers for feedback and honest criticism. This helps insulate me from those whose intentions are not favorable or honorable.
4. I will seek advice knowing that everyone needs help sometimes, and not asking is a larger sign of weakness.
5. I will also seek help because going it alone can be frustrating and unfruitful, and a little encouragement is priceless.
6. I have the requisite intelligence to understand the advice I seek and to apply it accordingly.
7. To be truly successful, I must help others succeed as well. This is my prime directive.
8. I have the requisite personal skills to network effectively and develop mutually beneficial relationships.
9. To be truly happy in my career, and in reflection on previous negative career choices, I will be true to those vocations that bring me joy.
10. By being joyful in my work, I will serve others well by finding ways to share that joy with them.
11. I am fortunate in that I have talent in several areas (as do most people), and will utilize them all to be useful to others and myself.
12. In keeping with today’s markets and the rapid pace of change, I will do two things: A. Combine my skills to take advantage of a wider range of opportunities (in keeping with my self description of being “A generalist in an age of specialists,”), and; B. Always consider ways to help others by utilizing whatever skills I can bring to bear (see no. 7).
13. I will be honest with myself and all those I deal with, else I will become irrelevant and perhaps shunned –  dishonesty is not an option.
14. In the face of lean times, adversity and downright bad luck, I will remain steadfast knowing that up and down cycles are inevitable.
15. During a down cycle I will display courage – if only to myself – because strength comes from within and self-employment is fraught with challenges.
16. I will give this endeavor my very best effort. Should my successes be insufficient to allow me to continue my self-employment, I will accept this with grace and dignity because I hereby acknowledge from the beginning that many can not survive on their own despite their best efforts; sometimes, things happen.
17. Whether successful or not, I will have succeeded in pursuing a worthy goal and will have displayed significant courage if only because I dared to strike out on my own, something far more people have neither the courage, desire or vision to do.
18. I will always remember that not having tried would be the biggest failure of all.

This became a bit of a litmus test: Was I really ready to work for myself, or did I need the safety and security of an employer, a regular check and benefits? The answer became obvious and now, Frank Communications is beginning to hum. The first three months were tough – doubts nagged me and seeing my bank account drift down made me quite uneasy at times. Now, the months of hard work are showing returns and I arise each morning excited about the day to come. It’s a lot of work, but the satisfaction of building my enterprise, creating new business relationships and having the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives is a huge return on my investment of time and energy.

Posted in self-employment, business plan, Frank Communications, Frank Goad, FrankyGee3, "The Frankifesto", manifesto, Advertising, general, responsibilities, blessings, Frank, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

6. May 2010 by Frank Goad.

Public relations has changed - no revelation there - but it’s still important. The truly effective PR agent these days still courts the press and other “large” media, but they also court new media even more. PR has moved closer to marketing because of these changes, too. Chris Anderson wrote a great book called, “The Long Tail” that talks about the changes in marketing. Its premise is:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

What this means (as if you can’t figure it out) is that marketing and PR are no longer totally dependent on a narrow group of outlets, those being TV, radio and newspapers. (Make no mistake though: Consistent appearances in traditional media needs to be a part of any marketing plan. You still need to cover all the bases.) PR agents used to send press releases to reporters whom they hoped and prayed liked what they sent so that they would make a story out of it. The experts developed relationships with reporters and writers at the “bigs” and got a book of newspaper clippings with their work.

For the rest of us, unless it’s a truly revolutionary or far-reaching story, reporters often ignore these releases. Who can blame them? They get hundreds of press releases, most of which are not suitable for what they write about, and are sent by folks who try to cover the earth believing the odds are in their favor if they send it to anyone they can. So, what to do?

With the proliferation of platforms (i.e., new media, podcasts, etc.), you can now talk directly to the folks who care about what you have to say. Let’s pretend you’ve invented a revolutionary left-handed cow milking speeder-upper. The folks at the LHSCMA (Left-Handed Speed Cow Milkers of Albania) will get all atwitter about it, so that’s whom you talk to. If there’s a left-handed cow milker’s trade organization and they have a magazine or website, they’ll like your press release, too. It’s not just a press release, though, it’s talking to people and organizations using their mediums. Your goal is to have a marketing conversation with these groups.

What you have to do is find LHSCMA members and others who care about this and will put it in their blogs - Albanian blogs, of course - and who have websites and e-newsletters and so on. THEY are the ones who’ll care and spread the word. Find secondary organizations who read their items (the RHSCMA of course - you know who they are) and let them know. Putting an ad in Newsweek or on TV’s “Meet the Press” would be horribly expensive and useless. There was a time when that was the only way to do it - sell it to the whole world. Now you can work the long tail.

You can now be your own press agent IF you learn to cultivate the tiny grottoes of the Web, meaning, get in contact with the blogs and websites of organizations, clubs, forums, etc., who have an interest in your message. Cultivate followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other new media. Get a website up that has real content (and, yes, a blog) and continually update it in order to continually build value. Get their feedback and post it. Get them to link their blogs and websites to yours. Whatever you do, put up information, and not constant blather, or you’ll get tuned out. It doesn’t have to be about your specialty - just make sure it’s interesting and useful.

Most of all, don’t expect a broad-based relationship to happen overnight, or over-month for that matter (over-month: a new word, and you saw it here first, you trendsetter you). It takes time, constant effort and the cultivation of a two-way, long-distance relationship with lots of different folks. Put up new information whenever you can and then let folks know it’s there. Marketing is now a conversation directly with your audience. If you don’t have time to carry on the conversation, hire someone (and, yes, I’m available), but make sure you are talking with them or you’ll be tuned out.

Posted in Left-handed cow milkers, Chris Anderson, Frank Communications, Frank Goad, FrankyGee3, The Long Tail, Public relations, Advertising, Marketing, advertisers, Frank, PR, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »