Yesterday afternoon, at my PSA London Chapter meeting, I heard one of the best “common- sense” business talks for some time.
Barry Graham outlined how he has successfully built up his training business, Speaker’s Corner. He based his speech around his “10 Lessons”. These included, “don’t throw away good ideas”, “find your niche” and “go international”. His firm handles a wide portfolio of training topics such as conference speaking and progressive training.
On one of his slides was a comment made by an associate of his, Alan Dunachie. Alan is Director of Operations at the Economist magazine. It’s all about telephone selling:
“If you don’t make the calls, you don’t get the business”. Blindingly obvious, but do you set aside time each day to market yourself or your business?
From left to right, Jonathan J.Gabay, Jeremy Jacobs and Geoff Burch.
Jonathan spoke on advertising and branding and explained how marketeers and advertisers get their message across. He pointed out that the sales acronym, AIDA (Attention Interest Desire Action) is now old hat. AIDS is more appropriate! (Attention Interest Desire Substantiate). Or putting it another way, “desire” for a product or service isn’t enough. Sellers have to substantiate the benefit(s) of their product or service.
Geoff Burch had us in stitches during the afternoon session. His anecdotes and stories about selling, customer service and how the “Americans do business” would have touched many nerves in the audience. His main theme - finding and keeping customers. Then build value and trust with those customers.
Steve Farber makes interesting points about leadership on his blog. He says that “real leaders take us to places we’ve never been before”. This concept is very similar to a number of anecdotes that Geoff Burch highlighted in his extremely funny and inspirational speech at the PERA Innovation Centre earlier today. The gist of Geoff’s talk was about getting customers to say yes and to continue to say yes. If you haven’t heard Geoff speak, then get along and see him. He’s brilliant as are his best-selling books. Check them out at his site.
Another aspect of leadership and inspiration is the ability to come up with new ideas of getting your message across. Jonathan Gabay gave the audience a wonderful insight into the current trends of marketing and advertising. His tips for marketing and advertising:
1. Keep your message clear concise and short
2. Ensure that it triggers the emotions*
* Many years ago when I was in direct sales, we were told that 84% of sales made in the business-to-business arena were “emotional” rather than based on logical reasoning.
Earlier this evening, I received a phone call from abroad. The voice at the other end explained to me briefly about the charity he was trying to raise funds for. I didn’t object to that but what did rile me was the blatant use of a script. He rambled on for about 10-15 secs before I said “Thanks but no thanks”.
If you want to make it in telephone sales or sell yourself on the phone - DON’T SOUND AS THOUGH YOU ARE USING A SCRIPT, EVER.
Sales trainers; psychologists, advertsing agencies; politicians and marketeers would agree that certain words have an emotional or rational impact on your customers.
Some words automatically have a strong appeal irrespective of their use. If you them in your sales pitch or customer service call, you’ll reap the rewards.
1. Use a Title with a Number: “5 Best Stock Tips for 2007″, “3 Ways to Improve your Exercise Routine” - these titles pull traffic better than something like “Stock Advice”. Maybe it is because users like to scan short bites of material rather than long essays. Perhaps they think that they can improve their odds of getting something out of the article if there are more tips. Regardless, add a title with a number to your site or newsletter and you should see a lift in clickthrus.
2. Be Direct: For example, “How to Present Effectively” pulls better than the ambiguous “How to Get More Done”. When people are scanning your site or newsletter, certain titles will jump out at them based on their interests or what is currently going on in their lives. Overall, a specific and direct title is more successful than a general and ambiguous one.
3. Be Current: If you are talking about a catchy subject that is popular (eg. Celebrity Big Brother) use it in the title so that your site or newsletter looks up to date.
4. Be Useful: Titles that look helpful with phrases such as “How to”, “Make Better” “Tips on” pull well. People click on them because they think they can immediately benefit from reading the article.
5. Be Predictable: Include product and service names of what your company is typically associated with. You may have a different strategy coming, or you may want to make a drab product seem more exciting by sprucing up the title, but this is not effective. The web is a big place so if people are on your little piece of it, they want to see specific information on what you offer.
Earlier this evening, I received a phone call from abroad. The voice at the other end explained to me briefly about the charity he was trying to raise funds for. I didn’t object to that but what did rile me was the blatant use of a script. He rambled on for about 10-15 secs before I said “Thanks but no thanks”.
