If you’d asked me at the beginning of this year – what do you think of Twitter? My answer would have been… “Twitter, Twatter, Schmitter, Schmatter – what a complete waste of time!” I thought it was just for kids or people that wanted to play at business, had too much time on their hands and nothing better to do – I was seriously cynical to put it mildly.

Through all I’ve discovered and experienced in the last few months, I’ve had a complete change of heart and mind. When I ask many business owners if they’re using social media as part of their marketing mix and they’ll reply… “Oh yes, we’re on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but we don’t get much from it”. They’ve recognized that social networking is an area they should be involved in. They know there are lots of people joining in… and so they’ve signed up… at that’s it.

Recently Whilst I was talking with Mark Shaw an internationally recognized Twitter expert he mentioned Costa Coffee as a company that highlights why turning up is simply not enough… Intrigued, I searched for them on Twitter.

Here’s a screen shot I took on 22nd August 2010. At 3.23pm on Oct 11th 2008 – they proudly announce, “We’ve finally arrived on Twitter”. And that’s it – not another word, no effort, no conversation.

You can see from the screen shot, they have over 1300 people that have actively found them and want to follow them.They wanted to hear from them, maybe buy from them.

What an opportunity wasted. Come on Costa Coffee… there are literally millions of people each and every day talking about Coffee, you should be a part of that conversation. They should be listening to their customers, and then looking for ways to add value, answering questions, and generally engaging with them… building relationships.

This is not the lottery; buy a ticket and cross your fingers.

Twitter like so many other social media platforms is content driven. Nothing will happen by just having an account and that’s where many business fail with social networking. You need to “listen” and join in conversations. But who has time to sit and “tweet” all day long? That was always my hang up… I certainly didn’t have time.

However, I’ve learnt to tame the beast. There are so many “tools” most of them free, that can really make this technology work for you. But it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people.

Consider this; People use Google to find information. Nowadays they use social networking to find the people with the knowledge. What specialist knowledge do you have about your product or service that you should be sharing? Remember – this is social networking – not social selling. Get this right and all you need to do is allow people to buy from you.

Over the last few months I’ve been running free courses called “what’s all the fuss about”, to introduce businesses owners to the incredible power of this phenomena that is social networking. I’ve also put together a “hands on” follow up course where we take people from zero to… well… almost hero, in a day. Are you using Social Media effectively for your business? If you know you should be, but don’t know where to start or have just not got your head around it yet – call me.

And… what on earth has that got to do with business? Let me explain.

There’s a fabulous story which I was reminded of recently by Gill Fielding at an EBA event in London, Gill asked the question; “Why can’t men pee straight?” You may or may not have heard the story, it involves the mens toilets in Schiphol airport, Amsterdam… I promise this story is going somewhere and has relevance to a business blog.

Management at the airport had noticed that the cleaning bill associated with the mens toilets versus the ladies toilets at the airport were disproportionate to the number of users, with the cleaning bill for the mens facility being dramatically higher. With an eagle eye on cost savings they decided to look into the problem and commissioned a time and motion study… no, really. They guy with the clipboard, (ok I’m assuming it was a guy), stood back, observed and recorded his findings.

What he discovered was that men seemed to lack focus and direction which led to what he described as “human spillage” and therefore the resulting higher cleaning cost to tidy things up. They determined that they needed to get the men focused on the task in hand, (OK couldn’t resist that one).

The solution? A simple house fly. If you go to the men’s washrooms at the Schiphol airport, you will notice there’s a fly etched into the urinals. So what do you think most men do? That’s right, they aim at the fly when they go. Now, they have focus and purpose. Their minds and their efforts are not spread all over the place.

The result? The tiles around the urinals would pass inspection in an operating theatre. The fly-in-urinal follow up research discovered that the introduction of a target reduced spillage and cleaning bills by 80%. The moral of my story? If you don’t have clear targets and goals for your business you can easily end up in a similar situation.

Without clarity of vision, how do you know your aiming in the right direction? If you don’t stay focused and on task you will end up in all sorts of mess, some of which will take more than a bucket and mop to clean up. It’s very easy to get distracted in business, it’s often difficult to know which direction you should be aiming in for the best results. You must have a plan. I’m not talking about a 50 page essay to appease the bank. I’m talking about a single sheet of paper that’s coffee stained and dog eared. One that you review daily.

I have devised my own “fly for businesses”. It’s a simple, single A4 plan to help business owners get focused and stay on the right road. A plan that will help them clarify their objectives and strategies. With this mapped out, it’s a simple enough task to create an action plan which ensures that every day your business is heading in the right direction and towards its ultimate goal. I’m happy to share this plan with anyone that could do with a little help and focus, just email me and I’ll send you the template.

There was a well known saying, “Half my advertising works and half doesn’t, but I just don’t know which is which”.

And back in 1930 or whenever this quote was first used, it was quite true. However, times have moved on and this just doesn’t have to be true any more.

It’s easy to get a pretty good handle on most, if not all, of your advertising and marketing just through using Tracking Numbers…

Tracking Numbers is simply a service that allows you to track and monitor how many telephone calls you receive from each individual advert or piece of marketing that you do.

How’s does it work?

You acquire a set of new different phone numbers from a broker, there are several in the uk – and you point them all at your existing phone line. Don’t get hung up, (pardon the pun) on the technicalities, it’s really easy to do and you don’t need to change lines or providers and your existing numbers work just the same.

The only difference is that now you know which advert or piece of marketing generated each call as they all have a unique phone number. This means that you can go online and see exactly how many calls you’ve received on which phone number.

Here’s a really simple example;

Let’s say you run a gardening business. You have an ad in Yellow Pages, plus ads in two other local publications, you have a website that you drive traffic to via Pay Per Click, you have a flyer and also cards that you distribute.

That’s 6 separate pieces of marketing:

1. Yellow Pages (OK maybe not, just an example)
2. Parish Mag
3. Local Paper
4. Website
5. Flyer
6. Cards

How do you know which one produces the most inquiries? Which ones to continue and which ones to dump?

You buy 6 separate phone numbers – all local numbers and allocate one phone number to each stream of marketing. Then I’ll know for sure, over time, exactly which bits of marketing are working best for me.

You don’t need 6 new telephones these all ring on the usual phone line, you just get to track results automatically… in the voice of a meerkat… Schimples.

Seriously, it works like a dream – and it’s one of the most under-used tools available to businesses in the UK. It costs just a few pounds to set up and next to nothing to run. Yet it puts you in control and lets you test and measure your marketing effectively.

Oh, and there’s are additional benefits too. this type of system will also tell you how many calls you failed to answer. Just imagine that! You’ve purchased an ad, a potential customer has seen it, called you up…but nobody picks up the phone.

You’ll know exactly how many calls you’re not answering, that could prove invaluable. Stop losing customers and find an answering service that will take your calls 24/7. Mine calls are all answered – and I only pay for that service when they take a call!

If you’d like more information about these types of services just call me on 0845 056 3911 – the call will always be answered by a real person any time of day or night… and I’ll know it was because of this article – go on test it out.

If you want to see a boost in sales – let your happy customers spread the word for you about your products and services.

People today, particularly in the younger generations, trust the opinions and feedback from their peers versus a sales pitch from the company selling the product or service, so let your customers do the talking.

“Advertising” as we’ve known it… is so old hat and becoming far less effective as a means of generating sales. My definition of advertising is; “the means of suspending human intelligence, just long enough to extract money from it”. Nowadays – people want more than that.

It’s not just my opinion. At the recent Direct Marketing Association conference, Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, talked specifically about the impact of social media. One of his key points was that 78% of consumers trust each other more than they trust advertising – which is why they use social media sites to read blogs and go to chat rooms etc.

Here’s a great example of how times have changed. This year, for the first time in 23 years the Super Bowl did not have an ad promoting Pepsi. Last year, Pepsi spent $33 million on advertising during the game. Instead they got their clients and prospects engaged in conversation. They switched their traditional advertising to Social media platforms.

Instead of pushing their brand and their products they created a two-way dialogue with consumers by asking them to go to a Web site and suggest ways that Pepsi can be involved in social causes. A subtle way of creating and building brand loyalty – how could you do this in your business?

Here’s a simple and highly effective way to start – use client testimonials.

There are lots of ways to get testimonials from your customers – by far the simplest method it just to ask. There’s no trickery or incentives needed. However, there’s a world of a difference between a testimonial and a great testimonial. Here are two basic pointers to make sure they are effective;

1. Great ones include personal details, not just “Mr Smith”. Use their full name, their business and home town, maybe age and occupation if that’s relevant.

Be sure they highlight key benefits of your product of service too, not just thanks that was good…

Which of these do you think would generate greater interest if you were looking to engage with me as your sales mentor to help with your business;

“Thanks for a really great day, I enjoyed the course.” S Bentley.

or

“Implementing your techniques has had an astronomical result on my sales figures. In no time at all I have been able to generate “hot” leads that have already netted me a contract this week with a value just short of £100k!… and I didn’t think it was possible in this climate. Thanks as always Steve.”
Skott Bentley, Managing Director – A&S Executive, Chelmsford, Essex.

To view more examples of testimonials just click here

For help and advice with your sales and marketing you can contact Steve on 0845 053 4937 email him steve@eurekasales.co.uk

The budget this week made it very clear what we’re facing. Lets leave aside politics and not get bogged down with that can of worms. The cuts in spending and increases in taxes were necessary because the country is in deep economic trouble, that’s not in question. We have debt spiraling out of control in a nation continually being battered by the effects of the worst recession since we’ve seen since the Great Depression.



Forget about what they call ‘green shoots’ of recovery and the various definitions of whether or not we are not still in recession. The fact is, we’re in an economy where your customers are about to have a significant increase in the cost of living through the VAT increase combined with significant increases in taxes.



Many analysts predict that the year ahead for “most” business owners will be worse than the last one, (the operative word here is ‘most.’) For many it’s going to be a case of grim survival. Sorry – it’s not like me to talk of doom and gloom.

Not wishing to appear flippant, but I couldn’t care less about the budget; It is what it is. My hope is that across the board these fairly drastic measures will help stabilize and in turn boost our economy, but that’s a very big picture and to be honest, it’s way out of my league to really comprehend.

However, irrespective of the state of the economy – I continue to help business Thrive – not just survive. I help small business owners and entrepreneurs create highly effective and powerful marketing strategies at next to no cost at all so they get to decide how many customers they have, and despite the economy… they continue to grow.



You may well have a passion for your products or services, I would hope and expect you do. But like so many business owners do you struggle with sales and marketing? Do you know how to attract new clients to your business at will? Do you know exactly how to “ring fence” the ones that you have?

At a breakfast network meeting I attended this week, I listened to a bank manager talk about how businesses he works with are surviving through these tough times. He described how they’re cutting costs on postage, saving electricity and even ditching the water cooler in order to reduce costs and save every penny.

I mean no disrespect to the man, but listening to this made my toes curl!

Now is not the time to batten down the hatches and hope you weather the storm. Adopt that strategy and you’ll very likely sink. Of course you must watch every penny and have an eagle eye on cash flow, that’s a given, and maybe you need help ion that area.

Now is the time to step up to the mark and discover exactly how implementing numerous simple yet effective marketing strategies will have clients asking if they can buy your products or services – how refreshing would that be?

You need to adopt a “can do” attitude and an open mind. What can you learn from other people that are being successful irrespective of the economy, the competition or even if some people are buying less these days.

Who are your business Mentors to help you through tough times? What are you doing to boost sales?

It’s your attitude… that will determine your altitude

Here are two things you can do to send your sales soaring.

1. Remove the risk for your customer.

Every transaction involves risk. And since you’re the one asking people to trust you and part with their money, you should be bold and confident enough to take this risk on board. How do you remove the risk? You do this by offering a big bold guarantee.

Offer a guarantee of satisfaction or performance… or your money back.

I’m not talking statutory rights here. I’m talking about a generous guarantee over and above people’s expectations. This is one of the best ways I know to overcome any price resistance. Remove the risk.

All of my Marketing Master Classes come with an absolute cast iron, 100% no quibble guarantee. If you don’t think you’ll earn at least ten times the cost of the course then there’s simply no charge… how many refunds do you think I’ve been asked for? Correct – not one.

Now, your accountant or financial controller might be thinking that by giving such a great guarantee you’re opening yourself up for a big kick where it hurts. Well, technically you are, but in practice it never happens, providing you have a good product or service that delivers. Most people are fundamentally honest and won’t cheat you or take advantage of you.

And if a few do, so what? If you get a hundred extra orders a month because of your guarantee and get kicked a couple of times, the extra profit you make from having the confidence to offer the guarantee and shoulder the risk yourself more than makes up for these small losses. Have confidence in your products or services and test big bold guarantees. It’s one of the simplest and best ways to grow your business – with the minimum of fuss and it’s fast.

2. Ask for customer testimonials

Good testimonials are amongst your most powerful marketing tools you’ll have, yet many businesses don’t get close to achieving the maximum impact with them… if they even bother to collect them at all.

It’s reported that 78% of us would react favorably to a third party testimonial or recommendation over being influenced by a paid advertisement. With those odds you can see why it makes absolute sense to collect as many as possible.

First of all, be sure you have permission to use any testimonials that you do get. Wherever you use them, include a full name, city and possibly company name and position – if that’s relevant for business use.

Ask for a head and shoulders photograph too, 90% will oblige if you just ask.

Seek out testimonials that relate specifically to an element of your service and the benefit they have derived from using whatever it is you offer. Avoid bland quotes of, “we like john he’s good”.

Incorporate video testimonials on your website, these are incredibly powerful and don’t need to be costly high production episodes. Just quick easy sound bite.

My website features lots of testimonials, feel free to go and take a look. I think you’ll agree, it’s good to hear what other people have to say and it definitely reassures a buyer that they’re about to do the right thing in buying from you.

Take a look at www.eurekasales.co.uk/events and see how I use guarantees and testimonials.

Most people will go into business because they are passionate about their product or service, not because they are passionate about being in sales. However, if you’re not selling – you don’t have a business… you have a hobby. If you’re in business we all need clients and that involves sales and marketing. More over – it involves following up on leads. But very few business owners actually follow up; why is that?

For many the idea of being in sales fills them with images associated with the kind of “in your face, pushy, fast-talking salesman nobody in their right mind wants to be. So they would rather wait for the client to come back when they’re ready and not appear pushy.

Only 2% of customers will buy on first contact. Therefore if you don’t follow up – you could be leaving 98% of your potential orders on the table for a competitor to pick up.

Following up is crucial and it’s one thing most businesses are really bad at.

Here’s a solution for you and one that I use all the time to take the stress out of selling and insure that I follow up with everybody that demonstrates an interest in how I could help them in their business.

An Autoresponder.

What is an autoresponder? An autoresponder is probably one of the most important marketing tools you can have on-line. It’s how you build an opt-in list of prospects that identify themselves as being interested in whatever product or service you have on offer. It’s the way you can create an email database that will allow you to build a relationship with interested parties.

People need to build trust in you and your knowledge before they are ready to purchase from you. They need several contacts with you before they are ready to buy and autoresponder takes all the pressure off the sales process by letting you share useful and valuable information for free via email on auto pilot until the prospect is ready to trust you and buy from you.
 
As soon as you arrive on my website there’s an opportunity to download my free marketing strategies – that’s my autoresponder. The way to gather email addresses is to give things away for free: free reports, free e-books, free access to private websites. Don’t be tempted to offer a conditional give a way such as a discount voucher… only redeemable when they purchase one of your products. FREE, means no charge. Don’t create barriers to getting people to opt-in. What you offer must be of value.

Your goal is to get people to sign up to receive your info, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! This way, you create a win-win situation. The person that’s subscribing gets a valuable freebie and you get his or her name and email address, and most importantly, permission to email them in the future.
 
Don’t waste opportunities, but put them all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder on your website.

They both grab your attention, that’s what… I’ll come back to this point.

In this post, I’d like to talk about how effective the use of PR in your business can be.

PR is a particularly hot topic this week. This is due to the fact that we find our political world in a state of flux with a hung parliament as a result of the recent general election. Rather unusually the topic of PR in this case relates to a matter of Proportional Representation. However, that’s not the kind of PR I’d like to address here.

I’d like to highlight the incredible benefits to your business of DIY PR. That’s – “Do It Yourself Public Relations”. I believe that most small businesses have the ability to run much of their Public Relations themselves and don’t need to incur the cost of an outside agency.

So what do I mean by PR? I’d summarize PR as being the communication process between an organization and it’s target market using topics of public interest or news items that are placed without requiring payment, (now, in the voice of a meerkat) Shimples…

The real beauty of using PR to gain exposure, quite apart from there being no real cost, is that the resulting exposure will not only raise the profile of your service or product, but written or presented correctly, it is far more credible as it offers third party legitimacy to you and your company.

A recent survey concluded that fewer that 15% of consumers trust adverts, whereas 78% trust consumer or third party recommendations. Now you start to see how important it is to create a strong and consistent PR campaign as part of your marketing strategy.

As with all of your marketing efforts, you must have a clear strategy, you must know what you are looking to achieve and don’t just go for media coverage for the sake of it. For example, you might be aiming to;

• Generate new enquiries
• Reach potential employees
• Reinforce loyalty of existing clients
• Steer potential clients to your website
• Promote an event

Your next job is to draw up a list of targeted media, online and offline, that your customers, new business prospects or future employees read, watch or listen to.

Now look at your company through the eyes of a journalist working on the top publication on your list.  Note anything that sets your business apart from your competitors, or is unusual, newsworthy, or that will be instructive or helpful to readers.

Note! This is not an advert. No publication will run a blatant advert without rightly wanting to charge you for the space or air time.

Write a short compelling headline that grabs attention. (OK, so this is where the sexy underwear come in). Create desire and interest in the first couple of paragraphs. Make sure that you include a clear call to action that will let readers reach you to find out more.

This is a big topic, there’s only so much I can include here, so if you would like to know more about how I managed to generate over $2.5m of editorial coverage in a year for free for a company in the states and more importantly, how I could help you generate free publicity for you and your business you can contact me on 0845 053 4937 or email me steve@eurekasales.co.uk

Understanding The Sales Funnel

The sales funnel, sometimes referred to as the sales pipeline, is a term often used in sales, many of us have heard the expression, but what does it actually mean?

I’d like to explain why the sales funnel is an very important element of sales management and how it can help you eliminate peaks and uncomfortable troughs in your sales cycle.

Imagine a funnel used to pour a fluid into a bottle. It has a wide top narrowing down to a tapered ending which fits into a bottle. You pour the fluid into the funnels top and then the fluid flows down through the funnel and into the bottle, (if you’re not careful or pour too quickly, some will spill, the same is true in sales…read on).

Just as funnels vary in size and therefore will allow the liquids to flow through at different rates, every business will have a typical time it takes for a sales lead to flow through it’s funnel, i.e. convert into a sale. This could be minutes, days, weeks, months, or even years in some cases.

Just like pouring liquid into a funnel and watching it flow through to the bottle, so your marketing efforts will deliver a steady stream of sales opportunities into the top of the sales funnel. This is where the sales process starts. As you build trust and explain the clear benefits of your products or service so the sales begin to flow into the business. The harsh reality is that not all sales opportunities will convert into sales.

It’s very rare to see a sales person win every sales opportunity. Some will drop away for a variety of genuine reasons as they work their way through the sales process; wrong size, doesn’t meet their want or need etc. Just as I explained, if you pour too quickly some fluid will spill out of the funnel and not into the bottle. If you try to rush the sales process to meet your needs rather than those of your prospect and attempt to bulldoze them into a purchase decision they really aren’t comfortable with you can generate what I call “buyers remorse”. This can result in returns, cancellations and bad feelings. It’s not where you want to be. It’s not good for your business or your reputation.

If you are effective with your marketing, it will work out that there are a lot more sales leads compared with completed sales at any moment in time. In fact if you were to draw a diagram of the value of all outstanding sales opportunities at each stage of the sales process you should see the shape of a funnel – Wide at one end and narrow at the other.

In sales we often talk about ‘filling the sales funnel’. As sales opportunities flow through the sales funnel resulting in a sale or fall out along the way they need to be replaced. It is a continual process. Its the best way to develop a healthy and predictable stream of revenue and the most effective way to avoid uncomfortable peaks and troughs in your sales.

From a sales perspective, a well run business will measure and track the value of opportunities in their sales funnel and manage the flow of opportunities within the funnel too. Managing the flow is all about “follow up” – and the focus of another of my blogs to come.

Steve Clarke 0845 053 4937

Ok, so to the uninitiated, blogging may sound like yet another piece of geeky technical mumbo jumbo, but let me explain briefly why every business should have a blog.

It’s important that your website is regularly updated with relevant content in order to help with search engine rankings, regular blog posts provide fresh content.

Blogs (derived from Web Log), can help keep your customers updated about new products, services or events. Blogs are inexpensive to make and maintain. Most beginners and professional bloggers use either “Blogger” or “WordPress” to host their blogs. Both services are as easy to use as any word processing package.

Customers can subscribe to your blog posts via your web site to keep updated about what is new. They can also find your blog post on the internet and then be linked to your web site from there.

Customers can write comments on your posts. Instead of writing e-mails to you, they can write comments to interact with you and other customers. That way, everyone can read about feedback of the product or concerns. Comments should be opened to all customers because you should not have anything to hide. If someone makes an honest, but negative comment, you should answer it without criticizing anyone. Keep things balanced.

Here are several things to consider for your business blog:

Set aside time

Blogs often fail because businesses can not keep up with them. Start simple and blog once a month, then twice a month until you are at least blogging once a week. Believe me it gets easier the more you do it. It’s actually and incredibly efficient way of communicating with your database. I find it handy to make notes during the week and keep them in a word document until I am ready to start writing the blog. If I’m on a role I can write more than one blog, giving me articles I can post at a later date. This way I do not run out of blog material.

Keep it relevant and useful.

Make sure you continue to deliver valuable useful commentary. Also invite feedback. This will bring the blog to life and let you gauge the value and relevancy of your information.

Build a network

The larger your network of followers the better, (including of course clients and prospects). You will have people who will already be interested in following your blog and may link to it. This simply means you expand your potential network to their website visitors too.

Keyword research

Creating great content will bring more traffic to your site. Do some research on relevant keywords for your product/service and use them in your blog.

Create calls-to-action

If you want to derive business value from your blog in the form of leads and sales you need good, relevant offers to go along with your content. Think about what calls to action should go into your blog.

Ways to promote it

How are you going to promote your blog? Will you use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? How often should you promote your blog? Spend some time putting together a plan on how and where you plan to promote your blog.

If you need more help or advice or have a question about how to integrate blogging into your business email me steve@eurekasales.co.uk or call me on 0845 053 4937