This is not really a "news" story and will fit in much better as a conversation starter in the "2.0" new version of ModernSelling.com that is coming later this month. However, since it happened to me last week, I thought I'd share it with readers now...
2 CommentsThe short answer is to send them product related messages, via email, on a Monday or Wednesday morning. Be warned though, this had better be the real deal, ideally a tailored and responsive message, and not another of those intrusive one-size-fits-all spam shots - notes Jeremy Whitaker CEO of b2Group...
0 CommentsNew research by Keboko has revealed that the average UK worker is tied to their desk for more than seven working weeks a year (37 days a year) carrying out basic administrative tasks, such as updating reports, inputting data, filing expenses, bookkeeping, timesheets, and invoicing and billing. The cost of this red tape to British businesses, equates to more than £104 billion a year.
0 CommentsA report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has identified for the first time the value of the Internet economy in the United Kingdom. The report, titled The Connected Kingdom: How the Internet Is Transforming the U.K. Economy, reveals that the U.K. Internet economy contributed £100 billion in 2009, representing 7.2 percent of U.K. GDP - more than construction, transport, or utilities.
0 CommentsA shocking headline indeed, and entirely appropriate to draw attention to the fact that, for the first time in the history of the UK, SELLING is, finally, on the agenda as a career option for our next generation who are planning to enter the workforce.
0 CommentsNews reaches us about a change in selling technique at the very highest levels of the UK profession, which might well start to change the way the rest of us go about our professional lives.
0 CommentsFollowing months of speculation, the sales sector’s worst-kept secret is out of the bag: the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) formally announced its latest venture into the world of selling today (14 September).
0 CommentsEnergy companies face heavy fines and potentially even a direct sales ban if they have been found to be flouting new rules for selling gas and electricity contracts to consumers.
0 CommentsThe Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) action on PPI (payment protection insurance) mis-selling is welcome, but long overdue, according to the boss of a personal finance website.
0 CommentsThe Financial Services Authority (FSA) continues its crackdown on high-pressure selling to consumers with the news that it has today (28 July) banned three more directors from holding senior management positions.
0 CommentsIs your sales team made of the Right Stuff? Legendary lunar astronaut Charlie Duke will be aiming to inspire his audience to even greater heights at ‘Successful Selling 2010’ this coming October with his keynote address ‘The Ultimate Performance’.
0 CommentsA former boss at the Institute of Sales and Marketing management (ISMM) and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has moved to training company Silent Edge in a bid to promote standards in sales. Ren Kapur, who was at one time ISMM deputy CEO (chief executive officer), joined the company as director of special projects on 1 July.
0 CommentsFormer sales director Dhruv Baker, who won this year’s BBC MasterChef title, has been signed up by MasterCard to help promote The Big Lunch community project.
0 CommentsFrom this month staff at upmarket London department store Harrods will be able to study for a degree in sales. The retailer has revealed it is to offer a two-year BA honours course to staff as part of a plan to boost career prospects.
0 CommentsDaily internet usage in the UK is increasing by 22% year on year and there are strong adoption rates among older and more affluent demographics. These are key markets for the financial services community, according to Google, which is aiming to tempt more independent financial advisers (IFAs) into using the internet to promote their businesses.
0 CommentsThe trial of BA sales boss Andrew Crawley for price-fixing has sensationally collapsed after prosecuting counsel Richard Latham told the judge at London’s Southwark Crown Court that he would offer ‘no evidence’.
0 CommentsThe Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Email Marketing Council (EMC) is urging sales and marketing professionals to follow its recommendations in order to maintain the effectiveness of email marketing as a key revenue generator.
0 CommentsCity watchdog the Financial Services Authority has today slammed the way banks handle customer complaints as well as their inherent culture and the attitude of senior management.
0 CommentsThe Times recently carried a major supplement focusing on sales performance, including three articles by ModernSelling.com editor Nick de Cent, alongside important contributions from Beth Rogers of the University of Portsmouth, Brian Tracy, Peter Archer, Iain Martin, Jessica Twentyman and Rod Newing.
0 CommentsHow familiar is this scenario? Your bank arranges an annual review meeting at which the company’s overdraft is to be discussed, but the majority of the meeting – attended not only by your account manager but also a newly introduced financial services salesperson – focuses on what financial products you might feel able to buy. The customer feels pressurised while some bank staff consider that they are being asked to behave unethically.
0 CommentsWhile four out of ten people now use comparison websites to learn about financial products, brands need to go way beyond simply offering a good deal to get consumers’ attention, according to research published on 18 March by the Direct Marketing Association.
0 CommentsCold-calling and leaflet drops have been banned in the sale and rent-back (SRB) sector as the official watchdog continues its tough approach to the way the financial services industry brings certain products to market. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) today (29th January) announced new safeguards for consumers.
0 CommentsThe last few months have undoubtedly been difficult ones for salespeople and businesses in general. While 71% of corporate buyers have looked for new suppliers in the last 12 months, the recession has caused them to re-assess their suppliers, to improve their negotiating position and gain year-on year-savings – these are amongst the findings of the 5th edition of TACK’s Buyers Survey.
Buyers’ views of salespeople 2010: earning buyers' trust finds that buyers today are seeking to measure supplier performance and, where appropriate, evaluate their commercial relationships with key suppliers. They wish to deal with salespeople who are well informed, proficient, quick to respond, able to negotiate a bespoke solution and, importantly, people they feel they can trust.
The views of one anonymous buyer cited by TACK emphasise the current mood: ‘No changing of titles will change most buyers’ or procurement officers’ views of sales teams who operate “dubious practices”.
We talk to retail agency JudgeGill about the importance of plugging physical stores into social marketing strategies.
First we had social networking and Web 2.0. Now the retail equivalent of Sales 2.0 is emerging: the latest buzzword on the high streets is ‘Social Retail’.
Retail and experience design agency JudgeGill has produced a blueprint for a ‘next generation’ retail environment that embraces two major online marketing trends being driven by social media – social networking and so-called ‘crowd-sourcing’.
How the sales team at US company Endevco transformed performance through a new management approach.
Endevco Corporation, headquartered in San Juan Capistrano, California, is the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of dynamic instrumentation for vibration, shock and pressure measurements. It has earned a reputation for providing mission-critical performance for the most challenging aerospace, automotive, defence, industrial, and medical applications where accurate and reliable data is absolutely vital. Part of the international aerospace and defence group Meggitt plc, Endevco has been in existence for over 60 years, having grown from a small research and development firm to an international corporation, supporting customers with a global network of manufacturing and research facilities, sales offices and field engineers.
Endevco’s sales operation is largely resourced by external representatives employed by 13 different firms in the US and 15 across Europe. A direct sales team of six regional sales managers in the US and five in Europe reports into the director of sales and marketing.
During the last quarter of 2008, Endevco’s senior management identified the need to increase sales and margins as one of three top-priority improvement projects that, along with those in other divisional companies, were given high visibility at group level.
The world’s most prestigious investment bank... a French maths whizz-kid turned New York and London trader... alleged deception of clients that has attracted the attention of the regulatory authorities and the ire of the public – the Goldman Sachs scandal has got it all. ModernSelling.com rounds up a case that is sure to have dramatic consequences for the financial services sector.
City watchdog the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced today that it too is to investigate top-dog Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs.
At the weekend, prime minister Gordon Brown said he was shocked at the ‘moral bankruptcy’ exposed by the case being brought by US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which announced last Friday that it was prosecuting Goldman Sachs for an alleged $1bn fraud that eventually played a part in bringing down the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
The digital age doesn’t spell the death of ‘offline’ marketing, argues ROBERT KEITCH of the Direct Marketing Association.
Research recently published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has highlighted the fact that consumers continue to rate email as their preferred channel for receiving marketing messages. According to the findings of the 2009 Marketing GAP Report, 51% of consumers state that email is their favoured means of being contacted by companies, pushing direct mail into second place with the support of 38% of consumers.
Evangelists of digital marketing will probably cite this statistic as confirmation that online channels are usurping the more traditional modes of direct marketing. However, dig a little deeper into the GAP report and you’ll find that the rise of email is most certainly not the death knell for direct mail. The overall popularity of email has actually dropped 5% since 2008, but direct mail’s popularity has risen by 6% over the same period of time. Indeed, as the study reports, when it comes to promoting things like supermarkets and shops, direct mail remains the preferred medium by which consumers like to be contacted.
Today’s B2B prospects may have access to overwhelming amounts of information, but now more than ever they are looking for intelligence they can trust to help them make the right choices, says Bob Apollo of Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners.
B2B (business-to-business) vendors can’t expect to succeed in our new world of increasingly well-informed prospects simply by ‘selling harder’. They clearly need to sell and market smarter – and to facilitate their prospect’s decision-making journey.
Successful B2B sales people – and the marketers who support them – have to become trusted advisers who are able to help their prospects to solve problems, simplify complex choices, and manage change.
Can you imagine what is like to be overwhelmed by floods of cold calls every single day? Welcome to the world of the ‘decision-maker’....
We all believe in the product or service we sell. Or we should do if we deserve to be selling it!
But that belief clouds our vision: we assume that everybody will be just as enthusiastic about our offering as we are. All we need is ‘two minutes of the prospect’s time’ to make our case and then they’ll be grateful...
Peter Brook discusses whether outsourcing is a viable alternative to costly in-house sales teams.
What does the Echinacea plant and the outsourcing of sales teams have in common? The answer is really quite simple, they are both known for their properties of relieving stress.
As Diageo Plc chief executive officer (CEO) Paul Walsh commented in the foreword to my book, ‘For me marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin – co-dependent – and if you get the strategies and execution for both to be brilliant then your business will undoubtedly grow’.
As we face economic uncertainties with sporadic consumer confidence, having a business model that provides flexibility while delivering outstanding activity at the point of purchase is critical.
World-class sales organisations don’t just do one or two things well; they do everything better. The most successful organisations maintain a high level of performance across all of the selling and sales management activities required to support the sales process.
That’s one of the major conclusions of Miller Heiman’s latest benchmark survey which saw almost 4,000 sales professionals contribute to its sixth annual study of the trends, issues and opportunities in a complex selling environment. The 2009 Sales Best Practices Study focuses on the selling and sales management activities that have the greatest impact on producing results.
Colin Coulson-Thomas reveals how some companies manage to charge higher prices for their products and services than others.
As recession starts to bite, many suppliers feel under pressure to slash their prices. Some may have scope for sharing the benefits of falling raw material costs with customers. Yet panic reactions and excessive reductions may prevent investments in securing longer-term competitive advantage.
Pricing decisions impact directly upon sales revenues and profitability. At any point in the economic cycle charge too much and orders are lost, while charging too little erodes margins and may give the impression that offerings are of low quality.
Obtaining and sustaining higher prices – particularly relative to competitors – ought to be a top priority of entrepreneurs. Yet often they agonise over perfecting what is sold and then take quick pricing decisions based largely on guesswork.
So how should businesses set prices? In the past pricing was largely shrouded in mystery. Firms have either been reluctant to reveal their approaches or sensitive to the lack of rigour involved.
A research team led by the author has persuaded 73 companies to reveal their pricing strategies, tactics and practices. The firms surveyed provided data on 127 factors that could affect pricing decisions. Set out in the report Pricing for Profit*, the findings reveal that more effective pricing could boost the profitability of many companies.
Commission schemes are on of the most emotive aspects of a salesperson’s business life: how they’re structured determines take-home pay and bonuses and can be a powerful motivational force in driving the team forward.
Steve Young of Winning Pitch exposes seven wasteful marketing practices and explains how lean thinking can bring you more profit with less budget.
While companies have ‘streamlined’ their factory floors and operations as the credit crunch continues to hit hard, few have dared to put sales and marketing under the same scrutiny – usually for fear of what they might find. However, in the vast majority of sectors, there is a huge amount of waste in marketing, which few companies have even noticed, let alone tried to address.
In today’s economic climate, your only real competitive advantage is to learn faster than your rivals. This is a quality you need to see at every level – and especially in sales and marketing, from where your new business should be driven.
Marketing more efficiently would, clearly, save costs and the impact of these savings on net profit could be far greater than you ever imagined. If a company making 3% profit margin managed to save 3% on costs in that year and retain the same level of sales, it would have the same effect on the bottom line as a doubling of turnover.
The so-called Dragons from BBC’s Dragons’ Den like to strike terror into the hearts of the business start-ups pitching for their hard-earned cash. But they’re pussycats at heart... and very free with advice for budding entrepreneurs. Here are some of the Dragons’ best tips: all are equally applicable to the sales arena as they are to the fledgling business.
General Manager of SCI Sales Group, Andy Hollands offers an essential guide to selecting a sales outsourcing company.
Spend time researching and interviewing prospective sales outsourcing companies – their people will be at the coalface of your business and will be representing it to potential customers – so make sure you meet the sales team they are proposing. Ideally, the company should have at least 3 years’ experience, so ask for references from previous clients.