The Fifty Quid Challenge (our name for the Towergate Accumulator Challenge) launched this evening! Participating businesses will be given £50 each by the generous Towergate CEO Paul Whittaker – each business then seeks to get as much ROI as possible in the next 3 1/2 months. All proceeds will go to Bury St Edmund’s St Nicholas Hospice Care. Have a look at the first of our Challenge 2011 videos:

Google Places is that part that pops up on page one for many searches – it currently comprises:

• A map on one side and details of up to seven of those businesses on the other
• The map has pointers on it, showing where those businesses are located
• These details have links to the businesses’ sites and to their Places page

A Places page is like a one page, one stop shop of your business. You can use it to show where you are, the area you serve, your opening hours, payment methods, and much, much more. People can post reviews on your site, and Google may also feature reviews from other sites.

Why do you need to be on Google Places at all?

I’m not sure if you know, but Google made big changes to its search results in October 2010.

• As a result, local results take precedence over true ‘organic’ results
• Eight out of ten consumers search online at least weekly
• Over half of these people are looking for a business within 15 miles of where they live, and a Places page gives them that information very quickly
• In fact, a massive 20 percent of Google searches end up with people viewing a Places page
• …and the percentage is even higher for mobile phone users

From your point of view, the people coming to your site/premises via a Places page are much more likely to be qualified – that is, interested in what you have to offer.

Get in front of your competitors

It’s worth learning how to rank well in Places and to optimise your Places – you want:

• Targeted traffic
• Visitors who want to take action because of what they’ve seen 
• To get seen in the first place – there is only room for a maximum of seven Places spots on page one. Even if fewer are showing, you won’t necessarily be up there with them unless you get your Places page sorted

Not sure how to do it?

Come on a Cinnamon Edge Places Workshop, get us to come into you, or ask your webmaster to (a) claim, and (b) sort your Places page out, making sure he or she knows how to optimise it.

It was on why you need to build a list and how to automate the process.

(If you want to see the notes as well, click on the link. This will take you to SlideShare; look under the presentation for the notes.)

There is a tradition in marketing that says that you need an average of at least seven contacts with a potential customer before you get a sale. It might go something like this:

1.  The potential customer calls or emails you or signs up to your list. (That’s the first contact.)
2. You reply. (That’s the second contact.)
3. You follow up 10 days later with a phone call (etc)
4. They have some more questions so you send more information in the post
5. You email
6. You call again
7. They call you and they’re ready to buy

 Which contact number do you stop at?

 A typical seven step sales process may go:

•  Call, letter, call, letter, call, letter, call, sale, or
• Call, email, letter, call, email, letter, call, sale or
• Email, email, email, email, email, email, sale

 Nowadays, especially with the amount of advertising people are bombarded with, you’re more likely to be successful if you contact people 20 or 30 times, because they ignore three quarters of what they see: don’t take it personally; it’s often they’re just short of time. But even if you only stick to seven steps, choose now to follow up more with enquiries and customers.

 Look at your own buying habits, or pretend you’re one of your customers, and you’ll see that buying is often a process, rather than an instant decision. Say you want a new vacuum cleaner; the chances are, you don’t stroll into a store and buy the first one you see.

 Instead, you probably:

•  Decide it’s time for a new vacuum cleaner.
• Read some reviews on and offline
• Start noticing the car advertising
• Asking others their opinions/knowledge
• Call or email for some brochures and read them and/or visit a few stores
• Think about how much you want to spend and compare prices
• Make your purchase, or decide to hire the appliance

 This process applies if you’re house hunting, or wanting a new car, dinghy, horse, dinner service, plasma TV or computer. It can even apply to buying shampoo, but let’s stick to something like vacuum cleaners or cars for this example.

 So now you know how the buying process goes, can you see that keeping in touch could pay dividends? Even when they buy from you, keep up the customer service and they’ll be more likely to buy from you again in a few years’ time, or at least recommend you to other people.

 You need to start keeping in touch when the buyer puts out feelers and makes the initial contact (by phone, email, or in person). At this point they’ve given you permission to sell to them and communicate with them. Most retailers will send out the information and leave it at that: if you carry your marketing efforts further, you’ll get more rewards.

 It’s OK, you don’t need to go into ‘hard sell’ mode. All you need to do is be very helpful (not annoying or obsequious, just genuinely helpful) and focus on solving the prospects’ problems rather than on a sale per se. Ask questions, find out their needs and wants, and offer solutions. When the time comes to buy, they’ll seriously consider you. If you can’t help directly, then say so… and recommend someone else who can help them, even if it’s a direct competitor with whom you have no reciprocal agreement. The prospects will remember your good deed and tell others.

 And remember to do the same for your existing customers: keep in contact with them and see how you can help them further. This is especially important if they’re likely to be approached by your competitors or see adverts for similar products (and don’t see any of yours). Have a follow up system for your existing customers and offer them new/additional products or services at regular intervals. Mix your methods of communication and test to see which work best with whom and for what product.

If you understand what it is that makes us respond, you can use the knowledge to develop your marketing approach. Here are a few pointers:

Your brain has three main areas. The outer cortex is known as the ‘new brain’ and is where rational thought takes place. The middle part of your brain deals with your emotions. The inner brain or ‘old brain’, shared by all sentient beings, deals with non-conscious decisions, actions and reactions. The trick is to reach your prospects’ old brains and get that to make the buying decision for them.

The old brain deals with tangibles, not intangibles, so you need to use direct language and solid proof. Thus, corporate-speak phrases such as, ‘You really can’t fail with interactive relative matrix approaches’ just won’t work! You can find plenty of examples of corporate gobbledegook and obfuscation at the plain English Campaign website. Happily, they also show you how to write in plain English too. And for a bit of light relief (though it’s scarily like real life pomposity), you can even generate your own gobbledegook at the site.

Be a bit like a dart player: get into position, focus, aim, and throw true. Once you’ve diagnosed the pain, differentiated yourself from the rest, and demonstrated the gain (benefits) to your prospect, aim and deliver the rest of the message to the old brain. Before you send that message flying on its way to their old brain, make sure it fits as many of the following criteria as possible.

Your old brain responds to ‘pattern interrupts’; in fact, it scans for them. If there’s a change in pattern in your environment, it tells your body to respond before your conscious thought kicks in. Think how often you’ve shied away from an attacker that’s leaped out at you from the shadows, only to realise it was a bush waving in the breeze. But if it had been an attacker, you would have been speeding out of there even before your outer cortex started interfering with an, ‘Eh? What? Is it a bush or an attacker? What should I do next?’ So:

This means you can use contrast to get the attention.

Brains also respond to ‘me’, so get your prospects’ attention by using their names and/or saying ‘you’ and ‘your’.

Remember we mentioned the old brain picks up on tangible ideas, not nebulous concepts? This means you need to use phrases such as, ‘We can save you over £13,671 in tax this year’ rather than stuff like, ‘We provide a flexible solution to your tax requirements.’ Note that we used a specific sum as well: it sounds more convincing than a round sum like £13,000.

Therefore, grab people’s attention with a pattern interrupt. How might you do this?

Also be aware of when people listen most to your message – that is, the beginning and the end. So when you start your conversation or pitch, don’t waffle on with uninteresting and uninformative facts like when your business was founded. Get right in with the main message, which is how you can help them; how you can find a solution to their pain. As you wrap up what you’re saying, repeat your main message. By the way, anticipation increases attention. This is because dopamine levels are raised. Try to raise anticipation levels before you start talking, especially if you’re speaking at a seminar or similar. How might you do this?

Remember, the primary purpose of all marketing strategies is to deliver a message to the consumer. The message may be an attempt to sell a specific product, to promote a specific brand, or to introduce the consumer to a company with something to sell.

We spoke in the last article about three ways to market yourself in a low cost or free way. Here are four more.

1. Set up joint ventures

Use joint venturing where you have one asset, and another business has a complementary one. You approach your clients (or theirs) jointly, and split the profits. For example, say you have a great product on how to decrease your golf handicap and you know the owners of a golf course who has a good list they can promote to, you get them to talk glowingly about your product. Each subsequent sale you make is more than you would have done otherwise, so it’s worth splitting the profits.

Say you sell cars: you could promote someone’s insurance and each time you sell the package, you get a ‘reward’ (payment). From the insurance firm’s point of view, they get another sales team that’s costing them nothing until you secure them a sale. Look out for non-competitive businesses that have the sort of customers you want to reach. You win because you’re getting a virtually overnight expansion of the amount of people you meet. They win as they get an immediate additional income stream and their customers are pleased.

What joint ventures could you do and with whom?

2. Email your ‘list’

Emailing your ‘list’ (the customers and prospects you have email addresses for and who have agreed to hear from you) at least twice a month. Split test your offers, content and types of emails. Personalised, simple emails are more read than long, convoluted newsletters. Of course, you could send out hard copy letters, but this is more time consuming, slower, and a lot more costly.

What offers could you email your list with?

And, if you don’t have a list, what steps will you take to build one?

3. Speak in public

This is a great marketing skill, so go and get training if needs be, or pick on a colleague who likes doing it and ask them to step in for you. Wherever you work, the chances are there are plenty of places crying out for speakers. So, go and give a 40 minute presentation to a group on your area of expertise: you’ll have a whole group focused on you – a marketer’s dream!

Give them a talk that will help them: for example, ‘The Ten Best Ways to Market Yourself’, or ‘Seven Things You Can Do to Ease a Stiff Back’. You can show the audience how your knowledge/product/service will help them, but keep the sales pitch to a minimum and put it at the end.

Do include a call to action, and make sure they take away your details. Say you’ll send them the seminar notes and a bonus report (or gift) if they sign up to your newsletter. DON’T go on about how long you’ve been in business, etc. The audience won’t care; they’ll want to know what you can say that will help them with their problems.

Research online, and at your local Chamber of Commerce, networking groups, library and tourist information office. Look further afield too. Somewhere out there your prospects will be meeting in groups: overweight teenagers, smokers, vintage car buffs, metal work enthusiasts, people with no clue how to fill in a tax return, rock climbers, whatever. It’s a numbers game – try 10 and get two, and keep at it. Your reputation will spread, you’ll be seen more and more as the expert to turn to (and buy from) and your diary will be full.

Which groups could you approach that would like to hear a presentation from you, and what would you speak on?

4. Improve your sales skills

(Or improve your sales team’s skills.) Yes, this is marketing: it’s marketing through talking, either face to face, over the phone, or through the written word. Read How To Master The Art Of Selling by Tom Hopkins and books by Richard Denny and Brad Sugars. Also read books by copywriting masters such as Dan Kennedy (and also apply what you learn about selling through the written word to what you say to your prospects).

Rather than leaping into trying all techniques at once, practice one skill at a time until it becomes second nature. Then work on the next skill. Most people aren’t prepared to put in the time to improve their sales skills, preferring to ‘wing it’, so if you’re willing to spend the time learning, you’ll have a great competitive advantage. There’s an initial investment, but thereafter your sales skills improvements can make a rapid improvement in your profits for no extra cost.

What step could you take this week improve your sales skills, and what will you start to sell?

Active Listening

 A marketing friend said to people he mentors, “Can you ask a lot of questions?”

 I think a good part to add to that must be, “Are you a good listener?”

 It’s very easy, when someone has just started giving an answer, to assume you know what they’re going to say (and fill in the rest for yourself) and/or start planning your own answer.

True, active listening is quite difficult to do, and needs practice.

I need to remind myself to do it from time to time, but I do get very favourable comments back as a result.

 It’s worth thinking about the concept and practice of active listening. Whether you’re conducting an informal or formal business session or even speaking a seminar, make sure you listen ‘actively’.

 Hearing is not the same thing as listening. Hearing is when you pick up sound waves and messages are sent to your brain for translation. Listening is a more complex process and means that you have to be actively involved in the communication process: you need to hear, understand, evaluate and respond.

 The biggest potential problem is that you think quicker than you hear, so while someone’s talking to you your brain can go off at a tangent or start plotting an answer, and the following usually happens:

• You start anticipating the speaker’s comments
• You anticipate a question they might ask… and your answer to it
• You mishear and misunderstand the message the speaker is sending
• You make an inappropriate response or action

 In fact, one of the most common forms of ‘listening’ is ‘combative’ or ‘competitive’ listening. That’s where the listener is more interested in getting their own view or story across. They’re anticipating when there’s going to be a break in the other person’s speech and are just waiting to get their word in. Sometimes they interrupt. It can appear unempathetic, unsympathetic and rude, and can also result in misunderstandings.

 Watch how often you do this without thinking – it can be quite scary. Remember, as a colleague, friend or coach, your stories can wait. If a thought does pop into your head that you want to bring up later, just jot it down (surreptitiously if necessary), and then let that thought go.

 The best type of listening is when you’re really interested in what the other person is saying – when you genuinely want to know what they’re thinking, feeling and wanting. Be careful here not to be merely ‘attentive’ in your listening (ie, ‘passive’), as the person who is speaking wants appropriate feedback too. Aim instead to be ‘reflective’ or ‘active’ in your listening. Nod, say ‘Mmmm’, ask appropriate questions, consider what they’re saying, and feed back what you think they said.

 Just to make it a bit harder for you (this does get much easier and very much more rewarding with practice), also try to understand what level of communication the person is speaking in. Are they in facts, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, or emotions mode? For example, if you tune into what they’re actually saying (the facts of the matter), but they are trying to put across the emotions behind the facts, you can come unstuck.

 So that you hear the speaker’s words, factor in the situation, consider what motivates the speaker and what they want (their desired outcome), follow these tips:

• Stop talking!
• If you will need later on to go back over the meeting record the conversation rather than take notes – but do check they’re all right with that as some people get quite uncomfortable being recorded
• Relax (so you give off relaxed vibes), and make the other person feel comfortable (whether you’re face to face or over the phone); keep note taking to an absolute minimum
• Show, with body language and appropriate ‘Mm-hmm’, ‘And…?’ noises that you really do want to hear them and that you are listening
• Listen and try to understand their words
• Don’t listen for gaps so you can get your point in; listen and live in the moment
• Don’t focus on what you’re going to answer with, even if you’re sure it’s the right answer – you might still miss something
• If you’re on the phone, don’t watch the telly / make a cuppa / look at your emails / carry on typing or ironing while you’re listening (you’ll hear – maybe – but you won’t be able to listen properly)
• Ask plenty of the right questions
• Be patient while they’re trying to express their thoughts, especially if your primary representational system is visual and the speaker’s is kinaesthetic
• Take your emotions out of the equations – if you’re reacting emotionally to what someone says, you won’t listen properly – and neither will you stay neutral, and that is what they need from you
• If you disagree, either stay quiet or say something neutral such as, ‘That’s an interesting view point’ (and mean it, too)
• Don’t judge, and try to step into their shoes while they’re explaining

Another useful technique to use is ‘parroting’. This is where you paraphrase what you’ve heard back to the other person. When you paraphrase, say what you think you heard (the facts, the beliefs and the thoughts), and take the time to show you understand their expectations, needs and wants. Try to convey what you picked up of their feelings, emotions and intent. Once the other person has said yes, that is what was meant, follow up with your answer or another question.

 If you’re not sure what was said, say so – it doesn’t show rudeness, it shows you are trying to understand. Let them clarify before you speak again, and listen carefully. Keep your body language neutral or relaxed even if you don’t like what they’re saying – just because you have different views does not in any way invalidate what you both think and believe. People always work for the best possible outcome and do what’s best for them in the given situation. What they think is not a personal sleight on you. If they appear angry, remember it’s not you – they need neutrality from you, not argument, gushing empathy or an attempt to placate.

 Active listening, like good posture and exercise, needs practice, but it is a valuable skill and can work dividends both in the increased amount of clients you pick up and in bettering your understanding of others’ and your own thoughts.

When you’re working out what marketing you’re going to do when, keep in mind future scenarios, and play a ‘what if’ game.

Ask other business and non-business people to come up with some ‘what if’ situations and ‘yes, but’ objections. Write them all down, no matter how daft sounding and decide on a plan. Obviously these plans needn’t be set in stone, but they do help you to be aware of the possibilities. Here’s an example: 

• At the moment, I am the only cobbler in the town. What if a competitor moves into the area?
• How might I make sure I know before it happens?
• How will I make sure I keep my existing clients?
• How will I step up my marketing? (And why aren’t I doing that now?)
• Will this affect my staffing levels?

In addition, ask yourself, “What ‘yes, buts’ can I think of and how can I answer them from a marketing point of view?” (For example, “Yes, but I’m the best there is in the industry” could be answered with, “So how will I let people know that, and who is it I want to know?”) 

Here are a few more scenarios that could affect you: 

• What if a competitor fails?
• What if there’s a technological breakthrough? Would you use it?
• What if there’s a technological breakthrough and your competitors start using it before you?
• What if you half your advertising spending?
• What if you double your advertising spending?
• What if new laws come in that affect your business?
• What if some laws are relaxed/deregulated in your industry?
• What if you want to buy out a competitor?
• What if you want to take on extra staff?
• What if you want to move much of your business online?
• What if several of your staff leave/go on holiday/go off sick at the same time?
• What if you broke your leg or developed a long-term illness?
• What if you wanted to sell your business?

 Once you have answers to these questions, think about how you would let people know if there were a change. A few very easy ways are to change your web pages, send out offline and online press releases, and alert people through your mailing list and/or email lists and/or Twitter (and other social media). 

 Other ways will be through blogs, articles, You Tube and SlideShare. The main thing is to keep clients, customers and prospects informed, and to keep them on your side. And any changes are always a good opportunity for some marketing.