Marketing

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5 Marketing Moves for Business Success

Marketing has traditionally been broken down to a formula known as “the 5P’s” – the five factors that make up an organization’s marketing strategy. If these are done consistently, well, and for a long enough period of time, these 5 factors also become part of their brand.

So far, so good. But the problem is that no one can seem to agree on exactly which 5 P’s are important, so the list typically includes: people, product, place, process, price, promotion, paradigm, perspective, persuasion, passion, positioning, packaging, and performance.

Wow. Sounds complicated, huh? Let’s try and simplify effective marketing into five moves – five concrete actions – that you can implement immediately. Your challenge: try one or more of these NOW.

Move 1: Move Up

DOUBLE your normal price and see what happens.

This could sound crazy, but maybe it is,may be it’s not.

Indeed Businesses that compete on price lose. Period.

The easiest thing your competition can do is undercut your price. In fact, the first thing they will copy is your price. It takes no imagination, no creativity, no innovation, no market leadership, and no vision to lower the cost of something. And it hurts all parties involved. Lower prices always mean lower profits. Studies have shown that a 1% drop in price leads to an 8% drop in profit.

What happens when you double your usual price?

Several things. Prospects perceive:

* An increase in the value of your product/service

* An increased level of prestige in owning/using your product/service

* An increased level of trust in you – and all your other offerings (the halo effect)

* An increased level of confidence that your product/service really works

A marketing consultant once said: “Be expensive or… be free.”

Price doesn’t find clients. VALUE finds clients. And those clients that value your work should – and will – pay according to that value.

Free is also a powerful price point. And, of course, free is remarkable. Which is another facet to moving up – you move up when you give VALUE first. For free. Got a great idea for a prospect? Great! SEND IT TO THEM. Even better, got a business lead for them? Hand it over! Did you come across an article, a profile, or a piece of research that directly impacts their business? Clip it and mail it to the top person with a brief note. That prospect’s door is now open.

Move 2: Move In

Moving in means moving closer to the customer. Live in their world, think about their problems, and think about their clients and prospects. What’s the first step? Research. Preparation. Homework. Industry, regional, business, and company news is now at every salesperson’s fingertips on the Internet. If you’re not intelligently researching your prospect’s issues, challenges, and pressures, how can you possibly come in with a credible solution?

Don’t like sitting at the computer all day? An even better idea is to hit the street. Visit businesses, talk to your contacts in the fields you serve, get some firsthand information about what’s going on in their world – what are their challenges, perspectives, obstacles, priorities; what are their dreams, their “only-ifs,” and their biggest aspirations?

Is this a lot of work? You bet. Do the majority of salespeople put in this kind of effort? No way. Which is exactly why YOU should.
That brings us to Move 3.

Move 3: Move Ahead

Moving ahead means going above and beyond what most salespeople are doing. It means putting in the work – yes, the real, hard work – that makes the difference between being a peddler and being a partner.

Want to move ahead? Start by avoiding doing things your prospects dislike.

Here are the top 10 things salespeople do that buyers dislike according to a Purchasing magazine survey. See if you (or your sales team) might be guilty of any of the following professional no-no’s:

10.Failure to keep promises

9. Lack of creativity

8. Failure to make and keep appointments

7. Lack of awareness of the customer’s operation (“What do you guys do here?”)

6. Taking the customer for granted

5. Lack of follow-through

4. Lack of product knowledge

3. Overaggressiveness and failure to listen

2. Lack of interest or purpose (“Just checking in”)

… and the Number 1 dislike: Lack of preparation.

You can also move ahead by charging more (remember Move 1?) and DEMONSTRATING the VALUE of your product service with hard numbers.

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Here’s another way to move ahead: stop the ridiculous game of “closing the sale.” Closing is not a technique; closing is not a trick; closing is not about magic phrases and looks and power games. Closing should be a natural extension of your conversation, and the two most effective questions you should ask your prospect as you near the end of your value-based discussion are:

1. Does what we’ve talked about so far make sense?

2. What would you like me to do next?
And also alow your prospect to say no when he feels to do so. I leaned this in Jim Camp’s great Book “Start whithin No”.

Answer to Question 1: If you’ve prepared for the meeting, discussed the prospect’s key issues, and monetized the value of your solution, of course it makes sense!

Answer to Question 2: “Let’s go ahead” or “Let’s do the paperwork.” Or if your prospect answers this with “Get Out” or “Drop Dead,” you have a pretty good idea that the sale is not ready to close. Seriously, carefully listening to the answer to this question will allow you to address any hidden concerns, hesitations, or issues – right then and there before the prospect would otherwise blurt out an abrupt “No!” to any other traditional “ask for the sale” verbiage that so many sales trainers recommend. Remember, you’re not there to sell – you’re there to HELP THE PROSPECT BUY. In other words, you’re there to make him know that he needs what you are offering to him.

Move 4: Move Aside

Here’s another thing that most sales and marketing people have a hard time with: you can’t be all things to all people. Move Aside is about finding your niche, and claiming your expertise in a narrow area of specialty. In plain English, this means you want to become the “Go-To Guy” for your specific product or service – the exact opposite of a “jack-of-all-trades and master of none.”

The people you speak with will have a very different reaction to these two mental images of your product/service:

* “I think we can make this fit.”

* “This is exactly what we’ve been looking for.”
Another point to highlight is that you can start in a very little territory and then expand in a larger along the dventure.As your budget and reputation grow.
A study done by the University of Standford revealed that every year around one million of new Businesses are built. 800.000 will close the doors or go down during the first five years. And whithin the 20% that survived 80 % will close before end of the tenth year. The worst is that the 85% who have overcome the tenth will keep doing what they were doing the last ten years.

Move 5: Move Alone

Right now, you are lost in a sea of gray. Me-too rules the day. Everywhere you look, there is more and more and MORE of the SAME OLD THING sold by the SAME OLD PEOPLE in the SAME OLD WAY. Boring. And deadly.

The problem is that people don’t buy gray. If you and your company and your offerings blend into the background, you might as well close up shop right now. Let me put it another way: all companies go bankrupt. It’s just a matter of time. Want proof? Out of the 100 largest companies of 50 years ago, 17 survive today. And none of those 17 are the market leaders they used to be.

Why? Shift happens. If you’re not separating yourself from the crowd, you’re blending in – and nobody will even notice you, much less seek you out and tell their friends about you.

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Here’s a good test to see if your marketing and sales strategies are in the category of “moving alone” – they are if you’re doing something that:

* is “simply not done” in your industry

* customers will make a remark about (remarkable!)

* goes against conventional wisdom (I call this “uncommon sense”)

* others (including your competition) think is “crazy”

* others (including your competition) will actually be AFRAID to copy

Get silly. Get crazy. Get an attitude. Get noticed.

Author Seth Godin perhaps put this most succinctly when he said, “Safe is risky. And risky is safe.”
Heck! But Respect the law!

Let’s conclude with a recap of the 5 Marketing Moves:

1. Move Up = Get more valuable

2. Move In = Get closer

3. Move Ahead = Get smarter

4. Move Aside = Get specialized

5. Move Alone = Get noticed

Taken together, these will also help you make the Ultimate Move = Get insanely great.

And remember the immortal words of Jerry Garcia:

“You don’t want to be considered the best of the best.
You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.”