Your valuable training dollars go down the drain...

UNLESS, you have your associates, practice, practice, practice that information right away, early and often. Why you say? Clemson University research shows the average fortune 500 sales representative delivers: 15% or less of their intended message after classroom training 25% or less of their intended message after classroom training and role play So how do you deliver acheive superior performance? PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Are you willing to develop a “Culture of Practice”? push through feelings of being “good enough” push through frustration with practice Push through lack of time to practice Well, we have a solution. It is a "flight simulator" for training. IT IS NOT TRAINING OR EDUCATION. You do that. Our program takes your information and with a "cloud based" solution, allows your associates to role play with immediate feedback your training. This gives them and their supervisors/sales managers the ability to listen, and monitor off line the way your associates handle specific situations, helping them to get to the level of competance you desire. Dallas region of Ecolab increased new client acquisition by 51.9% in 90 days and the L. A. region increased new customer sales ranking from 19/21 to 9/21 in 6 months. Allergan improved new product launch training and achieved 170% of launch sales goal during first six weeks. So whether you are a bank and have platform people who need to cross sell or upsell, or a telemarketing and you have to get your associates to help save customers who are cancelling their accounts, this program will work, and we would love to show you how. Just give us a call and we will show you how your sales will increase, customer retention will remain high and you will have happier more productive employees. Thanks for reading.

3% of your audience is ready to buy "NOW"

That is right, only 3% of your "audience" is ready to make a purchase in your space right now, if they are not a client of yours. This research comes from Chet Holmes in his book the Ultimate Sales Machine. In his research he survyed CEOs: Twenty years of research has shown me that there’s always a very small percentage of folks “buying now.” Three percent. I gave a lecture recently in front of 1,200 CEOs and said: “Let me prove this to you. How many people in the audience are in the market for a car right now?” About 30 people raised their hands. “How about tires?” A different 30 raised their hands. “How about furniture?” Thirty hands up. “How about home improvements?” Yet another 30 hands. “Offi ce equipment?” You see my point. About 3 percent of potential buyers at any given time are buying now. Right now. That percentage drives all commerce. My research further concludes that 7 percent of the population is open to the idea of buying. This is the percentage who may be dissatisfi ed with their current item or provider and are not opposed to change, but who may not yet be “buying now.” The remaining 90 percent fall into one of three equal categories. The top third are what I call “not thinking about it.” They are not against it, not for it, but just “not thinking about it.” So if you sell offi ce equipment and you ran an ad, this 30 percent would not respond because they’re just not thinking about offi ce equipment right now.

Why is this relevant to you? Well if you relied on only the 3% your business would not grow very large or very fast. You need to be relentless in marketing to the extra 67% of your population. You need to do it in a fashion so that you go from unknown to I have heard of that company, to finally I do business with that company. Now it is much different in the world of B to C versus B to B. B to C has a much broader target audience and greater flexiblity than does B to B. On the other hand the B to B world has less members to target so it can invest more per contact knowing that one or two good hits can deliver a big difference. This is where we come in, helping YOU develop a program to keep your companies products and services in the forefront of your customers thought process so when that time is ready and they become part of that 3% they will think of you. So just give us a shout for a free consultation. Mention this blog and receive a free order of Omaha Steaks with a consultation, no strings attached. Are you hungry? If so give us a call!

Sales Contests can give you the summer lift

We all know that somtimes companies go into the summer and sales slow down, the weather is nice people go on vacation etc. Plus we all know that by nature people are a competitive bunch, like a challenge, like that carrot danging there for them. Well, we can help. By putting together a sales promotion or a sales contest for your sales team, customer service organization we can help you to create that extra buzz. The best thing about these is they pay for themselves. No prizes are sent or anything unless the person does the thing that you want them to do to get the reward. You want Joe Smith to open more "X" accounts? Well if Joe opens up the right amount of "X" accounts then Joe can pick a cool prize. Joe is excited because it is "found money" and he has to use it. He's not using his paycheck. If it can be measured it can be rewarded. Take a look at your sales organization. Take out the top performers. You have about 80% of your sales team, customer service organization. What if they could increase business to you by just 10-20% each? Wow! That is a nice bump and for pennies on the dollar we can help you do that. Thanks for reading and let us know how we can help. Derek 609 807 8866

Text Promotions, why are you not using them?

Everyone has a cell phone, and companies are migrating everyone to smart phones with unlimited talk and text. People are on the go, tv ratings are down, newspaper subscriptions are down so how do you grab people's attention? Texting! Enclosed you will find an example of a "TEXT TO WIN" promotion that was run by Kawasaki using our "mobi-decoder" platform. How it works is you text a word such as HITS8 to a short code, and then you will receive this game piece on your mobile phone. So what you say. Well the so what is that, your customer that has this game piece on their mobile phone has to bring it into your place of business, whether it is a bank branch, retailer, shopping mall, to get their game piece decoded to see what they have won. Maybe they won a value offer, or a coupon, free merchandise. Whatever that prize is, it creates intrigue to get them into see you. Now you are building that cost effective database of phone numbers where you can text offers. NOW DON'T GO AND TEXT EVERYDAY AND GET THEM MAD!. But you do have some compelling offers, interest rates went up or down. A new model of "X" came in, or you are offering a free "Y" with a purchase today only. At any time your client can opt out then they receive no more text messages. People are relying on their smart phones for information, but unless you have their cell phone number you cannot communicate in a timely manner with them and may lose out. Thank you for reading.

Tired of giveaways with ROI?

Are you TIRED of giving away things at community events, such as pens, pencils, frisbees, and not being able to track your ROI? How do you know if somebody who got that frisbee came in later to your place of business because of that frisbee? Well you can't really. Well we have the solution,as you can see above. Our "decoder" program is JUST ONE of our great ideas that will drive traffice to: 1. Your website. 2. Your place of business 3. Your trade show, or other events It will do it in a manner that will provide you the matrix to MEASURE it, by creating a call to action to drive your customers there. How does it work you may ask? Simple. These tickets are printed with a coded message that can ONLY be decoded when they are brought to a designated location, such as a golf retailer, a trade show booth, or in this case Cape Bank's banking locations, where they are decoded, by a friendly staff member. This creates an opporunity for engagement with your new potential customer. In addition you know have a way to track the ROI on your handouts. So the next time you want to look for a "give away" at a show or an event give us a call and we can discuss this idea and how it can deliver results for your company. Derek 609 807 8856

B to C promotion ideas, you asked for them you got them.

B to C companies are always looking for new ideas to inspire demand. Here is a promotion that one of our team members ran, for ACTII Popcorn in the vending channel that was a huge success. Sales grew from 12MM to 16MM units in 9 months. The budget a penny a package!

Here is an example of a consumer pull promotion where the client was looking for customers to purchase Castrol branded oil, and had a mail in rebate incentive program. The customer makes a purchase of Castol and gets $5.00 toward a purchase of a pizza.


Prilosec is another example of this promotion in action. So whether you sell washing machines, windows, or a consumable product, we have some great ideas to help you create a pull promotion from your consumer base, who currently does not purchase product from you but should.

If you have any questions, please give us a call at 609 844 0088

March Madness Are You Prepared To Take Advantage?

You may not know what "March Madness" is, or you may know but you don't watch and that is okay.

What is not okay is that your clients love March Madness. How many companies including your own have a March Madness Office Pool etc. Knowing this how can you and your company take advantage of this to grow your business?

Well we can help:

1. You can create an online "bracket buster" promotion for potential customers to go online and enter their March Madness picks, pick all the games and you win.
2. You can do with every purchase you get a scratch off ticket with the name of a team in the pool and if your team wins, you win.

The important thing is that March Madness attracts people just like the Super Bowl, and you can capture their attention, and their wallets/pocketbooks just by being a little creative.

Just give us a shout and we can discuss some ideas that work best for your business.

Derek
609 844 0088

Texting and QR Codes to drive traffic

Our public service announcement is DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE! Stay focused on the road.

When your customers are not driving, perhaps riding the train, reading the newspaper, see your banner ad on the web or even hear or see your ad on television or radio, they can react much faster by texting.

Text "LEARN" to 5309 for example to win a free "IPAD" You can do many things with the text campaign:

1. Text to win- every "nth" person that texts in wins a prize from you.
2. Text to poll
3. Text to give a person a hidden message on their mobile phone and they need to come into your place of business to descramble the message on their mobile phone. This application was done by Kawasaki and increased dealer traffic by 14%.

From there you can use the outbound text database that is built to send specials, appointment reminders, service reminders.

QR Codes:

People are asking what can you do with QR Codes to make the useful?

Well here are some applications:

1. QR to website-they click on QR code and it takes them to your website
2. QR to PDF- it sends them a pdf, maybe your catalog or flyer from a trade show right to their smart device.
3. QR to contest to win some great prizes.
4.


These are just some of the applications that you can do with QR Codes, to help streamline data flow from your customers to you, and grow your business.

Very simple to implement so why not put them on all of your print literature, website etc.

Give us a call and we will give you a free demonstration.

Considering discounting product to gain product trial, and increase sales? Looking to create more loyal customers? Well we can help.

The above chart highlights how much discounting your product will hurt your sales in the long run. Find your products margin and the amount you wish to discount in the SHORT RUN, and you will see how much of an increase in product you need to offset the discount.

There are options to help accomplish this goal.

Promotions, to increase brand awareness with your customers.
Loyalty program, whether they are points based programs, or some other version, these programs can create loyalty.
Contests, or sweepstakes, purchase "x" product and if "Y" condition occurs your product is free. Purchase our new snowblower and if we get 12" of snow on ground hogs day the purchase is free.

All of these programs can be run less expensively than discount and have better results.




The above is a guideline that we suggest our clients look at and consider for use in promotions. It is not a hard fast rule but just something we use a general rule of thumb. We hope this helps.

So the next time you are looking for some fresh ideas give us a call and we will help.