Dubai Market

THE END

2011-09-13T16:15:00.001-07:00

This blog is abandoned.

THE END

2011-09-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

This blog is abandoned.

2011-02-02T01:32:00.000-08:00

نویسنده این وب لاگ یک ایرانی‌ می‌باشد

How to be the best

2010-06-03T11:11:00.001-07:00

Is really simple.
All you need is to narrow down your market, make your market smaller and then ask the question: am I best for the market I have selected? If the answer is no, further narrow down.

Remarkable in Dubai, anyone?

2010-06-03T03:56:00.001-07:00

Can you market a remarkable company? Yes absolutely.
Can you market a crappy company? No, absolutely not.
Today, marketing is no longer about one way communication (bye bye ad agencies).
Today marketing is mass to mass conversations.
The business who understands this, knows that he needs to be remarkable in order to create and grow fanbase (followers).
Which are the remarkable companies in Dubai? Hard question to answer, isn’t it?

A Proposal On Value Propositions

2009-08-12T04:38:00.000-07:00

What is Value Proposition?

Value proposition is one sentence that describes the benefit(s) customers will gain if they choose to do business with you. It explains why they have to buy from you.

A Value proposition is about customers not about the seller. It should be simple, understandable and tangible.

The below steps, describe my proposal for developing and using an effective value proposition:

Creating the value proposition:
The value proposition should come from the top. CEO and his corporate team should decide about it’s contents and are also held responsible for its effectiveness. The value proposition should be based on business goals, available resources and values.
It may take several brainstorming sessions, headed by the CEO to define that one sentence.
Needless to mention that the marketing guy should be the most talkative person in these brainstorming sessions.
Circulating value proposition:
Once the value proposition has been developed, it should be circulated throughout the entire organization. Every employee should be “aware” of the new initiative at this stage.
The circulation happens by the means of a memo from CEO. The memo should only contain one sentence: the value proposition.
Departmental value proposition:
Each department (and all the employees of that department) should be asked to develop a proposal. What are they going to do exactly to make sure the value proposition actually happens. i.e an Interior design company decides to promote space saving solutions through his value propositions; each department must come up with a proposal on how exactly they are going to save office space for clients. And by each department, I mean the design department as well as the accounts collectable department!
Living the value proposition
After proposals have been developed, the CEO and his management team should study the proposals carefully and fine tune them. If required, the departments will be asked to revise and resubmit their proposal.
Once finalized, the management team should make sure that everybody is living the value proposition and they reflect it in everything they do. This process should last for few months (at least 3 months) before its communicated to the market to ensure the client actually will receive the promise that has been given to him.
Communicating Value Proposition:
Once the organization is ready, it should communicate the value proposition to the market. This should be reflected in every message the business sends to market including their advertising, website, email signatures, etc.

It’s not about having a value proposition, it’s about living the value proposition.

Scarcity creates value

2009-08-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

The first busy Subway in the world?

(It took 30mins when it was finally my turn)

location: Jebel Ali Freezone

Afraid to use white space?

2009-08-04T23:49:00.001-07:00

Received this direct mailed flyer and threw it in the bin (just before I scanned it).

Might not be its contents' fault. It's the designer's fault.

who's guilty?

2009-08-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Treat every enterprise system as guilty until proven innocent.
(Tom Peters)

Now this post doesn't suck!

I am not dead!

2009-08-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

I just don't want to post stuff that sucks!

Geant vs environment

2008-07-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

If Geant in Ibn Barruta encourages environmental awareness through charging for shopping bags, why then they print receipt at the cashier for all instead of printing receipt on demand?
Saving plastic or paper? Which one is green?

Its been a long time

2008-01-22T00:39:00.000-08:00

Oh, dear, Its been a long time.
Altough I was/am passionate what I do (sales and marketing), and I have been consistency posting on this blog, I never received that much of attention.
I am rethinking about the whole scenario, but the number one question is that: why do I need a blog.

Stop offering discounts, start qualifying customers

2007-06-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I accompanied a sales consultant in a client meeting, a sales pitc. The customer asked for the price of a particular product. I was shocked how the sales consultant handled it. She answered, its AED 650 before discount. She offered discount without even client asking for it! Very unprofessional, I felt.

When I thought about it later, I was able to find the disadvantages of throwing discounts:

* The product doesn’t worth the price.
* We are keeping a high margin.
* Keep bargaining and you’ll get a better deal .
* Am I qualified to sell to you (instead of “are you qualified to buy from me”)?
* Our products are overpriced.

My message to sales people is” stop throwing discounts; At least wait for customer to ask for it. Better yet, don’t get into pricing at all”.

But what if your prospect is a bargain hunter?

In this case employ the strategies by Scottie Claiborne

1- Say “Sorry we don’t offer discounts “

Especially when you don’t like to deal with the customer or if you see customer has no other choice than doing business with you.

Explain to the customer that you simply don't offer discounts. You are selling your time more than anything else, and you have a limited supply. Many clients feel they ought to ask for a discount, just in case. When told no, most will still retain your services.

2- Say "I can't offer a discount but I can offer you something else"

Take a hint from the cosmetic companies -- they don't get into pricing battles amongst themselves. They fight it out with extravagant gifts with purchase. For a $20 purchase, you get a free gift worth $50! Who wouldn't buy?

So what can you offer? Well it really depends of your sort of business. In our case (office interiors and furniture):

- Free delivery

- installation

- an extended warrantee

- better service

3- "but you competitor (company ABC) is AED 300 less!”

First of all do not bad mouth your competition when answering this objection. Some ways to answer this comment is:

- Well, Company ABC will probably do a fine job for you, if your budget is limited.

- Our service has a proven record; feel free to contact our clients for a referral.

- We are confident our products or services are well worth the prices.

Well, if they really wanted to buy from company ABC, they would have already done it! They want to hire YOU, not them.

The Visionary Networker

2007-05-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

Business networking is one of the strongest yet the most inexpensive means of marketing.
How does a normal networker and a visionary networker differ.
Find it in the networking tips section of the Early Birds blog.

Networking Tips on Dubai Early Birds

2007-05-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

I have started the networking tips section on the Early Birds blog. This is the soft version of my weekly 3 minutes educational session.

The Green Cow

2007-05-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

This one is Jamal's creation and this is how he describes it:

It is neither blue nor yellow; it is simply the multiplication of both colors. A Multipational color that suits a vegetarian passionate hardworking four legged creature"

Bob Urichuck on research

2007-04-30T23:55:00.000-07:00

Client research is an absolute must. It’s a fair sentence according to many sales proffesionals and I too have written about it before.

I attended Bob Urichuck sales seminar in Dubai, and I learnt about the revolutionary ABC123 sales system. It is a fantastic system and it has already started to pay for me.

However in the seminar there was no mention of client research. So I asked Bob about research and the ABC123 system. Well, I was wrong; research is in the system. Here is what Bob said:

Bob: Research goes on without saying it.
What is most important though is not to share what you know but to get the prospect talking - the more they talk, the more you listen, the more you learn and the more they will like you - you are building trust.

Research is necessary to identify decision makers, competitors, market positioning, vision, mission, etc. but do not let it take you away from asking those questions of the prospect.

Hope this helps, and don't be shy to A.S.K.!

Change in direction

2007-04-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

In the past I wrote about both sales and marketing. I was looking at the world from a marketer's point of view. I have just been promoted and I am now a sales and marketing manager, so sales is going to be the most important issue and all marketing efforts should result in sales (well here the real marketing starts).
I guess this will impact the nature of my posts as now I think differently.
Stay tuned.....

Dubai Early Birds Blog

2007-04-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

Finally our Dubai Early Birds' blog is up and running.
check it out, its growing really quickly.

Strategies for finding cavaliers

2007-02-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

There are customers which are price sensitive and there are some who will pay a bit more, just to do business with you!

So which group should you target?

In many cases it is possible to sell to both groups. Its just the matter of identifying which customer is willing to pay a bit more and who is more price sensitive. This way you can charge according to their willingness to pay.

There are 3 strategies for identify customers are cavalier about price: 1) Unique Target 2) Group Target 3) Self-Incrimination

1) The Unique Target Strategy:
Evaluate each customer as an individual and charge according to how much he or she is willing to pay.
This is the strategy of the used car salesman or the real estate agent. It usually takes skill and a lot of effort; hardly surprising, then, that it is most often seen for items that have a high value relative to the retailer’s time.

Examples:
- Supermarkets accumulate evidence of what you’re willing to pay by giving you “discount cards,” which are needed to take advantage of sale prices. In return for getting a lower price on certain items, you allow the stores to keep records of what
you buy, and then in turn offer you coupons for discounts on products.

- Internet retailers such as Amazon can identify each customer by putting a tracing device called a “cookie” on her computer. Amazon used to tailor their prices based on their records of individual customers.

Of course, the “unique target” approach is unpopular. In Amazon’s case, customers started to realize that if they deleted the cookies on their computers, they were offered different, often lower prices. And when they found out what the company was
doing, there was an outcry. Amazon has promised not to do it any more.

2) The Group Target Strategy:
Offer different prices to members of distinct groups.
Who could complain about reduced bus fares for children and the elderly? Surely it must be reasonable for coffee shops to offer a discount to
people who work nearby, and for tourist attractions to let locals in for a lower rate?

Examples:
- Disney World in Florida offers admission discounts of over 50 percent to locals, they’re not making a statement about the grinding poverty of the Sunshine tate. They simply know that for a reduced price, locals are more likely to come regularly. But tourists will probably come once, and once only, whether it is heap or expensive.

- The AMT coffee bar in Waterloo station in London will knock 10 percent off the cost of your coffee if you work locally. This isn’t because the local workers are poor; they include top government officials and the extravagantly remunerated employees of the gigantic oil company Shell. The discount reflects the fact that local workers are price-sensitive despite being rich. Commuters who pass through Waterloo in a hurry see only one or two coffee bars and are willing to pay high prices for convenience.

3) Self-Incrimination:
To get customers to give themselves away, sell products that are at least slightly different from each other. Offer products in different quantities or with different features or even in different locations.

Examples:
- Starbucks offers products in different quantities (a large cappuccino instead of a small one, or an offer of three for the price of two), or with different features (with whipped cream, or white chocolate), or even in different locations, because a cup of cappuchino in a station kiosk is not the same product as a physically identical coffee shop in an out-of-town superstore.

Source: The Undercover Economist

When you cannot fulfill a commitment

2007-01-28T20:55:00.000-08:00

Bad news is bad news. But when there is some bad news, we'd better not sit back, and wait for the problem to be solved on its own. Specially in the business.
If you can’t deliver on time, don’t wait for the customer to call you angrily, and then you decide what you can do. This way, if the customer can afford, he will cancel the order or at least, he will not do business with you anymore, not to mention he will bad mouth you.

Take the initiative
Don’t sit on the problem. The problem is there and the customer will come to know about it. Don’t wait to exceed the deadline and to receive the call from the anxious customer. Pick up the phone and make the call and tell him that you hate giving good people bad news.

Be Honest
Ok, the worst thing has happened, but never lie to your customer. If the shipment has not arrived don’t say that all shipments from Europe have been delayed, because your customer will come to know you are lying and it will push him to the top.

Put the customer in control
People like to be in control of thing belong to them. When you ship a good to a customer, the good really belongs to him, and he has paid for it. So he is the best person to take corrective action. When in the day of trouble, pick up the phone, and immediately inform customer about the problem and work with him to find a solution.

Take responsibility
In every transaction there is one entity who pays money and another entity who gets money. As long as you or your company get the money you are responsible for any problems may arise. Next step is about you: are you a leader or a normal person? If you are a leader you don’t want to blame other departments. Your customer wouldn’t care if you have done something wrong, or your logistics department or your supplier. You need to take responsibility, fix the problem and not the blame.

Ask for repeat business
This one is a very important one yet often neglected. When based on the above steps, you have successfully solved the problem, and have proved to be a leader, ask your customer 2 simple questions: 1) Is there anything else I can do for you? and 2) Do you know anybody else, who might need my sort of products/services.

"Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill” Advertising

2007-01-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

This article is based on an interview with Allan Kay by Guy Kawazaki .
Allan Kay is the founder of Korey, Kay & Partners, a $75-million advertising
agency in New York City.

Kay believes that there are 2 kinds of advertising methods when you are going head-to-head with competitors: "Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill”.

Achilles’ Heel:
In Achilles’ Heel advertising, you find out the competitor's weakness, and you combat it with your strengths.
Kay gives example of Achilles’ Heel advertising method his agency has used to develop a campaign for Wise Potato Chips.
In 1970s, P&G had come out with a new product: Pringles. Allan Kay and his guys studied the packaging of the new P&G chips, and they got all they needed in order to compete with Pringles. The Package read like a chemistry set—with things like mono- and diglycerides and butylated hydroxyanisole—to preserve freshness of all things!
Kay then looked at Wise Potato Chips pack and their ingredients were potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt.
So they created a very simple commercial: two women sitting side by side. In front of one woman was a can of Pringles and in front of the other woman was a bag of Wise potato chips. The woman with the Pringles picks up the can and reads the long list of chemical ingredients. Then the other woman picks up the Wise package and reads, "Wise potato chips contains potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt." Then they cut to Pringles and the announcer says, "The newfangled potato chip." They cut to Wise and he says, "Or Wise, the oldfangled potato chip. You decide."

King of the Hill:
In King of the Hill advertising you find out the competitor's strength and present yourself as being stronger at it.
A sample campaign is the one Kay and his associates did for Virgin against British Airways.
British Airways was the gold standard in San Francisco. Kay's agency wanted to tell people as much as they could about Virgin Atlantic Airways in as short a period of time. Virgin was a relatively unknown quantity in San Francisco.
People knew British Airways had good-quality products; so did Virgin. They knew British Airways had regular flights and big airplanes; so did Virgin. Therefore, if they could quickly put themselves on the same pedestal as British Air, they would get considered.
So the advertising started with a teaser that appeared on billboards and on television with the phrase "Yoooooo-hoooooo, British Aiiiiirrrrwayyys," which signaled, Uh-oh, somebody's coming to compete with British Airways. It was the shortcut to the top of the mountain. The customer knew that there was going to be someone new in town. They had a frame of reference even before they knew the name of the product.

So how to develop strong campaigns?

Kay gives us great advice on developing campaigns against our competition. He says: "You have to know yourself and your competition equally well, and you have to know the customer—we always say start with the customer.
We have five basic guidelines for developing advertising: Start with the customer. Live with the client. Uncover the obvious. Keep it simple. And follow through.
If you do each of these five things, you're going to come pretty damn close to the target. I always believe the problem will dictate the solution if you really understand the problem and set your objective."

Defining your customers

2007-01-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production” said Adam Smith, Father of modern Economics.
Without customer there is no consumption and without consumption, there is no need for production. Without customer there is no business.
Customers are the most valuable assets of every organization and marketing is about customers. No wonder there is so much books and articles written about customer satisfaction and marketers are very interested in social sciences.
As we continue our study on “Marketing 4 Sales”; in this article we concentrate on customers.
The more we understand our customers the better we can feed the sales force with useful information on where customers are and how to deal with them (how to take care of them), and most importantly we can identify the qualified leads and sales ready customers.
Understanding customers is indeed a difficult task but in reality we need to answer 3 rather simple questions:

- Who is using and who is buying your product?
Who is using kids’ toys and who is buying them? Obviously kids use toys but in reality parents buy them. Therefore while packaging it, its important to use the word “educational”.
Think of your business. What products and services do you produce and why? Who buys them and who uses them: especially who buys them? For example if you offer companies with interior design services then your customer is the decision maker(s) and staff are the users. Now should you target staff or decision maker(s)? Obviously decision maker(s) and for that you need to get closer to your target market and learn more about them. What sort organizations are they? What industries? What size? Small, Medium or Large? If a small company then perhaps you have to target CEOs but in case of a large organization, the purchasing manager could be your customer. Why should they buy from you and not from your competition?
Buy understanding your customers and users, you will be more focused and will have better results in terms of ROI.

- How are products in your category used by your customer?
When we learn who our customers are, we then need to learn how they use our products/services. I think an interior design firm who sells to businesses is always a prime example, because 1) It’s a B2B environment which is much more complex than B2C and 2) it involves both products and services. So an interior design company might learn that the freestanding desks are often linked together to shape a meeting desk, due to space limitation (rent is increasing so space is at premium). By marketing multipurpose modular desksing solutions, the company can generate new enquiries.

- Are laws, regulations, or societal pressures changing your marketplace?
What if the interior design firm faces a new rule: demolishing existing walls and building new ones are prohibited. No tenant should change the floorplan of existing office? In this case the firm may use “mobile partitions: as a way to penetrate market and to generate new leads.

You need to answer the above 3 simple questions, if you want to successfully market your business. In most cases, thinking enough and using available sources of information, will give you essential data to answer the questions, But in some cases you’ll need to plan a research to answer the questions. In the next article we will quickly talk about market research.

The “so what?” side of your products

2006-12-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest mistakes common between sales and marketing professionals is that they think customers care about their products and services. The truth is that all customer care about is themselves. Talking about your products and services guarantees to put customers off and make them bored.

What they want to know is that how you can help them with their everyday challenges. How your products can help them grow, achieve their goals and cut costs?

Get away from talking about the features of your products and talk about the benefits. Benefits are what persuade customers to buy from you, they don’t care about the features of your offering. For example if you sell some advanced task lights with fluorescent bulb, then the fluorescent bulb is the feature of the light. The customer may not buy the task light because of the florescent unless he knows or learns the benefit of it. Florescent bulbs consume less energy; therefore, the result can be measured at the end of the month on the electricity bill.

What you need to do is to spend your next 30 minutes writing down the features of your products and services. When you have finished writing the features, read the features one by one, and for each feature, ask the question “so what?”. The answer to the “so what” question is the benefit of the feature.

When you are done, shortlist the 5 best reasons customers should by from you. The benefits are the reasons. But are the benefits you have discovered the core reasons customers buy from you? To answer this question you need to do a reality check.

Send emails to 10 of your best customers; ask them why they buy from you. What specific benefits have they gained from your products and services and how it has impacted their costs, productivity, life style and so forth.

Collect all information you can, write them down and compare the top 5 reasons with your list.

If all 5 are matching, then you have a very good knowledge of your products, but if not you will need to select another 10 customers, asking them the same questions, to finally learn about the benefits of your products.

Only after knowing about yourself, you can start marketing (which requires you to do even more research to learn about your customers and your competition).

Corporate Resume

2006-12-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

How much do you know about your company?

There are much information we as marketers need to know in order to be able to successfully market our firm. Company philosophy, culture, products and services offering, customer information, competition and so forth.
Surprisingly many of us know very little about our organizations. For example since inceptions, what are the major achievements? Can you list your large clients/projects date wise with details of what you have done for them?

An interesting exercise is to create your company resume.

Imagine your company is a person looking for a job and your customer is an employer currently recruiting.

Create a resume and apply for the job.

Successful job hunters update and customize their CV to match the particular requirements of a recruiter. So imagine a particular customer (perhaps the ideal customer) and customize your company’s CV.

What if the CV is short listed? The employer (customer) calls you in for an interview. Do you have enough information to defend your CV and elaborate on details? (In reality you meet customer to interview him/her not vice versa).

Competitions: Should you drive them out of business or drive them crazy?

2006-12-12T22:07:00.000-08:00

Imagine a world without competition. Your sales staffs need no making cold calls. You don’t need to pay for advertising. You need no direct marketing. Life is great and you are a billionaire. You don’t need to run after customers. Do not go to the office. Go to the beach instead, or go skiing. Keep your phone on for only an hour a day and customers keep calling you, begging you for your products and services.

Wake up now. That was just a dream! A sweet one? No, not really.

In reality no business lives in vacuum. There is no single business without a competition. Bedsides we want to have competition because :
. A good competitor forces you to improve your company
. Competing with a good competitor excites your employees
. Competing builds credibility for you in the marketplace.

Now hear this: Not only we want to have competition but also we don’t want a small one. We want a mighty competition, an industry leader. Why? Are we out of our minds?

Here are the reasons:

• Trying to defeat a small company is risky. If you are successful, the victory is insignificant and if you fail, the embarrassment is huge.

• Defeating a small company may be more difficult because it may be able to mobilize quickly, change directions on short notice, and fight a war as well as you can.

• You can define "victory" against a large enemy on your own terms. Victory can be as simple as a gain in market share. On the other hand, a true victory against a small company requires total annihilation.

A good enemy is usually an industry leader that is larger, older, and richer than your own company. A bad enemy is usually an upstart—aggressive and hungry and willing to fight viciously.

So now you have good reasons to have competition and (at least) a mighty one. Now what are you going to do with it? You don’t want to drive them out of business. If you drive them out of business you will a) never improve b) your employees will be demotivated and c) you’ll have no credibility in the market.
What you want to do is to drive them crazy. What do we mean by this?
Driving your competition crazy is disrupting your marketplace in order to create new advantages for yourself and to diminish the existing advantages of the competition.

We will talk about this subject more, in the future but here is the lesson we get from this article:
You don't have to destroy your competition or force it out of business—you just have to disrupt things.

Precall Preparation

2006-11-05T04:57:00.000-08:00

I my previous article, I had written about precall planning and the importance of it. Since this part is being ignored by many sales people, I decided to dig deeper into the subject and to provide you with more useful information.

We know that Listening is more important than talking and that successful sales people ask a lot of questions. However we should not ask dumb questions. Our questions should help initiate a conversation and should eventually lead customer to the next stage: establishing need.

Precall planning helps avoid asking dumb questions.

Some of these dumb questions you should not ask are:
- Tell me more about your business.
How annonying this question could be deemed.

- Are you the correct person to talk to?
The answer will be yes in most cases. The correct question, therefore, will be. How the decision will be made. And perhaps your precall research could help answer that anyway.

- Who are you currently buying from?
The precall research should answer you that too. In fact the customer may think that this is none of your business.

Think about questions you may ask and try to avoid asking questions you could have answered if you had done a detailed research.

The whole point of doing a precall preparation is to help initiate a conversation.

This preparation is really a 3 steps process:
1- Precall Research.
2- Precall Objectives.
3- Postcall Analysis.

1- Precall Research:
In this stage you have to collect as much information about the prospect as ossible. Use the below list as a guide:
- Type of business
- Products and/or services
- Head office
- Branches
- Number of employees
- How many years in business
- Customers
- Competition
- Buying process
- Decision maker

Sources of information could be: Internet, Local Library, Newspapers, Magazines, Catalogues and literature, online articles and so forth. You can also ask your business contacts if they have information they can add to you knowledge.

2- Precall Objectives:
Next, you need define your precall objectives. Here you have to use the information you have gathered in the research stage in order to know what you are going to do next. Of course next step is to make the actual call, however you will need to discover

• Who you are going to call
• What you are going to ask
• What you are expecting to achieve

Write down all the questions you are going to ask. Then make the call. Start initiating a conversation and ask the right questions.

3- Postcall Analysis:
Precall research and objectives should be followed by a postcall analysis. In this stage you should write down the outcomes of the cold call you have made.
In this stage you should be able to answer the below questions:
• What did I learn?
• What’s my next follow-up step?
• Do the prospect and I agree on the next steps?
• What’s the objective of my next call in the cycle?

Enter all information in your CRM or sales database. Review the analysis before you make the second call or when you meet prospect. You will be surprised how this information could be helpful.

References:
RMA’s Young Financial Professionals Newsletter, Winter 2005
Brian Tracy, Be a Sales Superstar—21 Great Ways to Sell More, Faster, Easier in Tough Markets
J. K. Bucsko, Turning Sales Calls Into Effective Referrals

Precall Planning

2006-11-01T02:55:00.000-08:00

If you are in sales, you probably have realized that the toughest part of your job is to make cold calls. Cold calls are scary tasks to do but not when you know why you are calling a prospect.

More often than not, sales professionals make a cold call to close a deal. This is a wrong way of looking at it. Selling is “talking with the right person in the right time, with the right solution for the right price, recognizing the right time to close”. So look at it as initiating a conversation.

If you want to be able to initiate a conversation with someone, specially if that person is a decision maker, it is important to have enough information to be able to speak your prospect’s language and accent. You need to do a research. Advanced planning allows you to differentiate yourself.

So what pieces of information do you need to gather?

Type of business
Products and/or services
Head office
Branches
Number of employees
How many years in business
Customers
Competition
Buying process
Decision maker

Please note that the above will be an ongoing process and the more you deal with customer the more accurate your knowledge will be and that’s why it is easier to do business with existing customers as opposed to new customers.

Use the above as your precall checklist. Customers no longer have the time nor the patience to educate sales people so you need to take your own time, and educate yourself.

The above pieces of information, will not secure a deal. It will only help to initiate a conversation.

Lead Generation and b2b Sales Podcasts

2006-10-03T01:56:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are involved in marketing or selling to big companies, there are 3 very interesting podcasts available at 800-CEO-READ.

In the first podcast, Todd interviews Brian Carroll, who is the author of “Lead Generation For The Complex Sale”. I recently purchased and read the book and it is just great. Brian is an expert in generating leads for B2B organizations.

The second podcast is an interview with Jill Konrath who is the author of “Selling To Big Companies”.

In the third podcast, Todd interviews both Brian and Jill. Here's what he says:
"Here is the final installment to our podcast series on marketing and selling to big companies. We again have Jill Konrath and Brian Carroll talking about the topic. What we try to spend time on in this call is "space" shared between marketing and sales. Brian leads the call with the stat - "80% of leads sent from marketing to the sales organization are lost, ignored, or discarded." You can see why this is a good topic to explore.”

Listening Is More Important Than Talking

2006-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

Consider for a moment that you are presenting to a potential prospect. You have thought long enough about their business, have asked your marketing to develop a very sophisticated animated power point, and you are sure that your prospect is going to love what he sees.

You present for more than half an hour, after you are done, the prospect tells you “Thanks for the presentation, we are really impressed, we will get back to you next week”.
Everything is fine. However you don’t hear from the prospect. After a couple of week, you finally get hold of him, and he tells you “sorry, we have purchased it from the x company”.

So what went wrong?

It was your presentation which screwed your reputation. During the presentation, you never tried to stop to ask “any question here?”, “are we clear on this?”, “This is what we think, but what is YOUR opinion” and so forth.

Asking questions is the key in sales, not only in the presentation stage, but in all sales stages.

Larry Hendrick in his recent article How To Increase Sales, emphasizes on asking questions.

His article is a must read for those who don’t understand that listening is more important than talking.

Al RUWAAD- A tasteless campaign

2006-09-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

If you live in the UAE, there are chances you have seen the “RUWAAD” logo on a billboard. If you haven’t seen it on a billboard, then perhaps you have seen a Taxi carrying it. Moreover, the print media is filled with the “RUWAAD” logo.

If you don’t live in the UAE, you have missed nothing. You now know as much as a Dubai resident knows. RUWAAD, to us is an ad campaign: white background, red logo and black text.

It has been more than a month that our city is beem bombarded with this bad looking logo and meaningless text, quite disturbing to our eyes.

I tried to search the web to get some info on RUWAAD, I found nothing. I contacted the telephone directory: RUWAAD is not listed.So what on earth RUWAAD is? Is it a new property complex being built? Is it a new restaurant? Is it a new product we will be buying in the supermarkets soon? I don’t know. But who cares? You may think, I care, because I’m writing about it. The truth is that I care, because I want to learn from others’ mistakes.Billions of Dirhams (our currency) have been spent on this campaign, such a waste. It is delivering no message. An ad with no message is wrong marketing.
Perhaps they want to trigger our curiosity? Triggering curiosity? It’s a wrong thing to do. I remember a year ago the city was filled with the message “a new buzz coming to town soon”. We waited a month, and then the ad was associated with the new Burjaman “a luxury shopping mall here, in Dubai”. Everybody forgot the campaign after a while. And new shopping malls such as Ibn Battuta and Mall Of The Emirates have grabbed attentions (and shoppers). So, I’d say, triggering curiosity is not good on its own!

Timing is important according to Ana Elisa . She says :

” One month has passed... the city has talked about "what the hell is Al RUWAAD" but nothing/no one came up with an answer - with a nice replacement of billboards with the "truth", full page ads on major newspapers, or something similar. And, suddenly, the timing has passed. People dont talk about it anymore, they just moved on. The bad news for RUWAAD is that they also moved on from the "hype" around the brand and that, most probably, the level of indifference to the brand once it gets revealed will be similar to the moment of time before they went and spend all those millions spreading RUWAAD on my way to work."

If RUWAAD’s marketers have followed Ann’s advice, it would have maid more sense to me. However I still think that billions of dollars have been largely wasted on this campaign. Companies often decide the set marketing budget before calculating the ROI. If the RUWAAD campaign generates more than what the advertiser has spent, then there is a hope. But the campaign doesn’t project any brain behind it: I still believe that RUWAAD’s marketing team has done a bad job, and the ad agency has done an even worse job.

Thought-To-Action Attitude

2006-09-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

I’m sure you have heard of this famous Zig Ziglar saying: “It is your attitude, not your aptitude that determines your altitude.”

It is true: Our attitude determines what we are and what we are is what we get. Attitude not only determines our destiny but also it determines what kind of journey it will be. We are where we are because of the choices we have maid.

The marketers, have chosen to be marketers, no one has forced them, I suppose. Once a multimedia programmer, I found my way into the wonderful world of advertising, and after few years, I chose to move to client side. I am now the marketing manager for a medium size company in Dubai. That was my decision.

Most of the B2B marketers, are charged with training their sales team. As if we are perfect sales pros! We show them how to make cold calls. We tell them to build relationship. And we tell them that they have to adopt new attitudes.

But who tells us what the right attitude for a marketer is? Do we have the positive attitude?

“Thought to action”, is an attitude that I constantly ask my sales reps to develop. I tell them: Successful sales people take their thoughts and ideas to the next dimension: action. People tend to procrastinate. In fact, it is how many of us start our day. Procrastination becomes our worst enemy, a kind of virus. Never procrastinate, think, make a decision and act.

Previously I blogged on Adult daycare centers. We know that our sales, admin, HR, Procurment and so forth, live in the adult daycare centers. How do we know it? Because, we, the marketers, are there too.

We procrastinate, like our sales do. That is not only our worst enemy, but our organization’s worst enemy. We are charged with generating and nurturing qualified leads. The life and death of our organizations is in our hands. Without those qualified leads, our company will not survive. Yet, we tend to procrastinate.

I have seen many marketers (including marketing directors of a Fortune 500!) spending hours of their valuable time, surfing the web “researching” their target market, reading marketing articles, studying marketing books and so forth. These are good things to do, but not during working hours. 8 hours a day, you are being paid to market your company.

Now why we procrastinate? I read on Dave J’s blog , quoting Big Picture Guy as saying “Procrastination is seldom about not wanting to do something; it is most often about not knowing what to do."

So don’t we know what we should do? Or how we have to market? Probably not. We as marketing pros know “ a little bit of everything” but not everything. We and no one else knows exactly how we can generate and nurture leads. It’s a multimodal approach, we think. We have to keep experimenting. We have to keep on learning. Reading marketing books is good, as I said, but not during working hours. The best thing you could do is to listen to audio books, or you could create your very own audio book. Print out your favorite article, you want to study. Take it home, read it lout; record your own voice and listen to it several times. Do the same with the latest book you have ordered from amazon.com.

But during working hours, market your company. What was the excellent marketing idea you had last evening, while driving towards home? Realize that idea, now! Was it the idea of dropping an email to your old and none-active customers to convert those lapsed customers to born-again customers? Or was it to call that big company to expand your distribution channels?Whatever it was, do it now, you organization needs you to do it. Your sales reps needs you to do it. You are the most important guy in your company. How could the company live, if you procrastinate?

Adult Daycare Centers

2006-09-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

Tim Breithaupt in his book “10 steps to sales success” advices us to avoid the Adult Daycare Centers.

And what he means of Adult Daycare Center? Yes you guessed it right: Offices.

He warns us: “Don't get trapped in the adult daycare center. Your job is to get out there and sell. You can't hunt from a cave.”

He gives us an example: the client followup actions.

“It's much easier just to fax over information and perhaps place a follow-up call—it will save a trip. In fact upon receiving a request for information, some salespeople will actually send a fax without so much as a follow-up phone call. My preference is to make a face-to-face appointment. “

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore in his article “stop wasting time” provides 5 easy tips to stop wasting time and to increase productivity:

1- Plan your day. Set aside time each night for Daily Planning, a time for you to take control of your most important asset, the next twenty-four hours. Create a To Do list with all the things you "have to" do and, more importantly, all the things you "want to" do.

2- Control procrastination. The easiest way to avoid procrastination in your day is to do the Daily Planning each day.

3- Avoid interruptions. Run an Interruptions Log. On a pad of paper, log in interruptions as they occur over a few days. Put down who brings them to you, how long each interruption lasts, and whether or not they were valuable or of no value. Once you accumulate your data, get the most frequent interrupters who bring the interruptions with no value to change their actions and agree to not bring as many low value interruptions to you in the future.

4- Delegate it. Review every item on your To Do list each night in Daily Planning and ask, "Is this the best use of my time?" If it is, plan to do it yourself and if it's not, try to find a way to delegate it.

5-Manage meetings. Before you commit to attend a meeting with another or with a group, ask yourself two questions. First, "Is it necessary?". Second, ask yourself, "Am I necessary?"

So, the most valuable asset you have, as a sales person, is time: use it to sell!

Definition of Selling

2006-09-03T03:17:00.000-07:00

Selling is talking with:

. The right person at
. The right time with
. The right solution for
. The right price, recognizing
. The right time to confirm (close).

All five must work in harmony to advance the sale.

Back to basics: Types of customers and how to handle them

2006-09-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

Currently studing the Tim Breithaupt book on sales :" 10 steps to sales success" I have been forced to get back to basics.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081447165X?v=glance

I would like to highlight some of the points that I find useful as I read:

Tim thinks that there are 6 types of customers: 1)External Customers 2)Allies 3)Internal Customers 4)Repeat Customers 5)Born Again Customers and 6)Bag Of Wind customers.

This is how Tim defines each type of customers and gives tips on how to handle them:

1. External Customer:
These are the people and organizations who have a need for your
product or service. They purchase your stuff in exchange for money. They have the financial autonomy to decide where and how they will spend their budget.
The question is who gets the bag of money, you or your competitor? Who has earned the confidence and trust of the customer? You and your competitor are vying for a piece of their budget—the best solution wins.

2. Allies:
These are the users of your product or service, not the ultimate decision maker.
These customers usually don't have a bag of money but they play a vital role in your success. They do not make the final decision but they may have tremendous impact on the outcome.
You must earn their trust and confidence if you expect them to support you at the bag of money level. They have veto power, the authority to say no.
Allies can be a tremendous wealth of information. Pick their brains and learn how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. Ask them who else may be involved with decisions.

3. Internal Customer:
These are fellow employees and managers within your place of business. They support you and make you look good to your external customers.
Appreciate them and treat them with respect.
Poor internal relationships can have fatal consequences for your external customers.
When you work in harmony with your internal customers, external customers become the beneficiary of your internal relationships. Long-term success means having your entire company and all its resources focus on its customers.

4. Repeat Customer:
They are the jewels of your business. Do the job well the first time and you often get rewarded with another opportunity to serve them.
So serve them well!

5. Born-Again Customer:
These are previous customers who no longer do business with you. Dig up their file, give them a call, and settle any outstanding grievance. Do what it takes to resolve the situation. Make amends. Very frequently they will once again be receptive to doing business with you. They often become loyal customers provided you resolve the problem to their satisfaction.

6. Bag of Wind:
These people have little or no impact on the decision.
They are often an easy point of entry into an account but they seldom contribute to the
sales process. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable selling hours on people who cannot help advance the sale. Do not ignore these people but rather exploit their knowledge to deepen your understanding and confidence about the account. They may also provide clarity as to who the allies are and who the bag of money is.

So a good excersise for you (specially if you are a newbie sales executive) is to start categorizing your customers. Next time you make a sales call, or you present to a team of potential prospects, try to categorize them and then treat them in the way Tim has suggested.

It hurts to understand what sales reps face!

2006-09-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

While we (the marketers) sit at our computer, developing the launch campaign for our new and interesting product, the sales people are facing difficulties with regards to getting into customers.

Spend a day with a sales reps and see for your self what they are facing every day. And then you might feel you need to change your marketing strategies.
Read this ebook here:

http://sellingtobigcompanies.blogs.com/selling/files/what_sales_really_needs_from_marketing.pdf

It might teach you something new.

I was directed to the ebook through Brian Caroll's blog: http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2006/09/ebook_what_sale.html#comments

The End Of Force Marketing

2006-08-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

A sales guy from Dubai Municipality called me to sell me advertising space in their upcoming book.I didn’t want to say “no” as I am a sales entrepreneur myself, so I decided to politely say “no” (and how many polite “no”s do I get a day?).So I asked him to send me a fax with details of his proposal.

Before I get the fax, he called me twice, asking me if I had got the fax. I told him not yet. He also had called our new secretary, asking if the marketing manager (me) has got the fax.When he called me for the 3rd time, I told him that I have got the fax, and I will need to discuss it with our Managing Director (which I will never do so). He promised to call me again.

This was yet one more sales person had given me call. I am receiving at least 10 sales calls aday, 90% of which I show them the door.

I think cold calling doesn’t work anymore. In fact, I myself am seeking new ways of getting new business, without cold calling and I think I have hit on something that I may share with you in future.

What I hate (as a decision maker with regards to buying marketing services) is that I hate “Force Marketing”. The sales guy from municipality called me 4 times, and had called the receptionist 3 times until I confirmed that I had received the fax. If he was a good and intelligent sale reps, he would have understood by now, that I am not going to buy a space in his book. He could therefore spend his time on contacting other prospects. I think his marketers have also not done proper market segmentation and they don’t have clear or correct strategy.If they had a clear strategy, they would not have called me in the first place. And then they would have taken their time to meet me and to try to build relationship.

What we learn from this? Lets not force the prospect to buy. It doesn’t work anymore.

It is the end of cold calling…it’s the end of force marketing.

day 1

2006-08-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

the same desk, the same place, the same market.....United Arab Emirates