Happy Mondays (no, not the band, although I do hear that they are reforming for a tour one month this year).

As I got in the car to drive to work on Monday, it was with a sense of relief after surviving the usual chaos of getting everyone out of the house on time and in the correct clothing and the right bags and kit for the day.  My thoughts then turned to the day ahead and what it might bring.  I am lucky enough to be doing a job I really enjoy, that is providing marketing advice and support to small businesses in the area.

Some days of course bring challenges and it can still be hard to summon enough positive energy for the day ahead, particularly on a Monday.  What does make this easier for me though, is that the clients I work with are a really positive group of people.  We work with business owners who are facing these seemingly tough times, but are amazingly positive about how they are going to make their businesses successful.  This positivity really does have a knock-on effect on us, and how we go about giving them the best marketing advice we can.  But we are constantly reminded about how hard life is at the moment, with no apparent easy way out of it, all of which we find far too negative.  The subject of recession and tough economic times is actually banned in our office.

It was interesting then to hear on the radio, during my journey in, that it was ‘Happy Monday’, apparently the happiest day of the year.  According to psychologists, the combination of getting the first pay cheque of the year and booking a summer holiday makes Monday 31^st January the highpoint of the year.

‘We each experience an average of ten major happy days every year but none is happier than January 31, or Happy Monday,’ said Dr David Holmes, senior psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University.

So, I thought are my clients going to be extra happy today?  Perhaps not, but what it did make me appreciate is that although the people I work with do face challenging times, they work hard to be positive.

Building your own business, brand or company takes time, energy, and a lot of work. Why do I think my clients are so positive? One reason I believe is that they all set realistic goals and a schedule to work towards them.  We work with them to create a marketing plan with realistic business growth objectives.  Our services provide the marketing activities which helps work towards those goals. The reward from the time and energy spent on their businesses is realised through those goals being accomplished.  If small steps are taken to maintain or grow your business, you are more likely to continue that cycle of hard work, commitment and achievement.  With achievement and reward comes positivity, whatever the challenges faced along the way.

So let’s all keep positive, and have a few more Happy Mondays this year, or any other day of the week for that matter.

Passive marketing – or how to get clients knocking at your door

During the first week of January this year, we took on two new clients and had two existing clients ask us to do more work for them. I wasn’t at work during the first week of January, and, as one of my members of staff pointed out, I hadn’t been out networking or meeting clients for a few weeks. So where was the work coming from?

I could say it was the Law of Attraction at work, or that it was Zen Marketing, but I like to call it ‘Passive Marketing’. Or ‘sit back/go on holiday and wait for the phone to ring’ marketing.

So how does this great new marketing strategy work? Here’s what you do. You start writing a blog or an email newsletter, or both. You build up a list of contacts, by going to networking events and speaking at seminars. You give away lots of advice and ideas to help the people you meet. You have regular meetings with your clients and listen out for things they’re struggling with, with which you can help them. You build strong relationships with them so that they trust your advice. You might like to write a book and sell it to people you meet; you can even give it to some people, like past clients. You can spend time on sites like LinkedIn, connecting with people you’ve worked with in the past.

Once you’ve done all that, then you get to sit back and wait for the phone to ring! One of the new January clients came to a workshop we ran 3 months ago. We’ve kept in touch with her ever since and come the New Year, she decided she was ready to kick start her marketing. The client who decided to accept our quote for writing her blog is one with whom I meet every two months, to work on her marketing. Back in the autumn she told me she was thinking about setting up a blog and could we do it for her. After a few months of keeping in touch with her – and a few more regular meetings – she too decided it was time to take the next step.

Marketing is a long term process. It’s not a quick, over night fix. You can’t go to one networking event and expect clients to flock to you. One newsletter or a week of tweeting won’t build you a great reputation. So, if you want to practice Passive (sit back and take it easy) Marketing, then you need to put in the effort and the groundwork. Once you do, then the clients will come flocking to your door!

Making a case for case studies

A great way of promoting what you do is by writing case studies about your clients. They are also a great way to get feedback from your clients and to build up stronger relationships with your clients.

But how do you go about doing it? Where do you start? How do you make sure you include all the best information, without boring your readers?

Here’s how we do it. We ask our clients 4 questions and then we write up the answers. Here are the questions:

1. What was the problem that you were looking to solve?

This puts the work into context and it also gives your readers a good idea about the sort of issues you can solve for your clients. Say a bit about your client too, to give them some promotion.

2. Why did you come to us rather than someone else?

This question gives you the chance to get some feedback on your business and your marketing. What makes you better than your competitors? What did you do differently that attracted this client?

3. What did we actually do?

This is where you get to explain the actions you carried out to solve your client’s problem. It’s a great way of showing off your expertise and talking about how you actually do what you do. Don’t go into too much detail because it might get too technical for some people. Just give them a taste of what you can do.

4. What were the results of what we did?

So what did you actually achieve for your client? How did your actions and expertise solve their problem? No matter how you solved it, what’s really important is what happened as a result. This is what other clients will be interested in buying from you.

Using these questions will help keep you really focused on writing clear, concise case studies that will be very powerful tools you can use to promote your business.

Want to know how to use the case studies you write? Ask me nicely and I’ll answer that question in another blog for you!

Marketing planning and why now is a great time to do it

Planning, that old exercise of writing a list of things you are going to do, only never to look at the list again!  Sound familiar?  The start of a new year is generally filled with repeated resolutions that are quickly forgotten once day to day life starts. We all do it in various aspects of life, but planning for your business and your marketing is crucial.  Your business has the people, resources and desire to make the year a great one, why not augment that with an effective Marketing Plan.

Marketing planning should be something you look forward to as it is this plan of activities that will lead to business over the year.  There are however a few golden rules that must be applied to your plan.

The plan must be something that works with you at all times, it must not be completed then ‘filed’, never to be seen again.

The plan must be visible, either as a chart on your office wall which you can tick each time you’ve completed an activity; or a spreadsheet that you populate with activity, costs, and results.  It really doesn’t matter how you choose to see your plan, the important bit is that you do see it, daily.

It also needs to reflect activity that can be carried out by you, on a regular basis.  It may include the number of prospect calls you’ll make each week; the client visits you’ll book to focus on repeat business and upselling; the target number of tweets you’ll send out daily; the networking events you’ll attend each week.

Whatever the action, make it SMART, that old marketing adage which still applies to business today: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.  Some of the activity can be outsourced to expert providers, but again this can, and should be, ticked off your list and measured in terms of performance on an ongoing basis.

Creating a plan now will also make future planning far easier.  Reflect on which activity has worked: created the most leads and most importantly, provided the best return on investment.  Without a plan you can’t accurately reflect which marketing activity works best for your business, so which to do again, and which not to.

When you know where you want your business to be in 12 months time, you’ll have a much greater chance of getting there.  With a strategy in place and a plan of action to follow, any marketing for your business will produce much better results than ad hoc initiatives.

For practical help in writing an effective Marketing Plan for your business, why not come to a workshop we’re running on the 24^th January at the Harwell Innovation Centre, Harwell Campus, near Didcot from 9am to 1pm.  At the end of the workshop you’ll have an effective and achievable Marketing Plan to take away and put into practice.  For more information on the SOS Marketing Workshop click here.

The 2011 Appletree Christmas Card Awards

Here’s what you’ve been waiting for! The 2011 Appletree Christmas Card Awards! I made a number of awards last year, for the best, worst, cleverest and most pointless Christmas card – click here to read that blog.

Now I’m delighted to announce the winners of the competition for Christmas 2011.

The winner of Best and Most Time Spent On It Christmas card goes to Hannah, a student at Reading University, who worked with us for a number of months last summer. She was a temporary Account Manager at Appletree, while we looked for a permanent member of staff. In her spare time, Hannah is a budding artist and she created a wonderful card especially for us. It was hand painted in oils, and shows a blue apple (from our Appletree logo) wearing a Santa hat. It’s beautiful and totally unique. I don’t know how long it took Hannah to paint (and I’m not suggesting that you should paint an individual card for every person or business to whom you want to send a card) but we were really touched by the thought and effort that Hannah put into the card. This card is so special that I’ll be keeping it and definitely offering
Hannah a summer job next year!

At the risk of upsetting a lot of people, I’d also like to award a mass prize to everyone who sent us an impersonal email ‘card’. We received a lot that had no personalisation on them. No ‘Dear Name’ and no mention of who it was from, apart from in the subject line. It’s very easy to find free email cards on the internet these days. One of the problems with this is that some other people might send the same card and it gets a bit boring to see the same card again and again. So the Sorry But I Deleted Your Email award goes to all those people who thought they’d save some money while missing out on a good relationship building opportunity.

The I’m Not Sure Why You Even Bothered award goes to the people who sent out a plain text email telling me that instead of sending cards, they were donating money to charity. When you don’t tell me how much you’re donating or where the money is going – and you don’t even bother to make the email interesting to read or look at – why bother? Am I supposed to be impressed by your charitable or environmental attitude? Next time, why not do something useful to your business like picking up the phone to say Hello and Merry Christmas to a few people?

On a much more positive note, I’d like to give the Creatively Branded Card award to Madeleine To at Blueberry Financial Services, for the card she had designed by her sister and printed by www.Moo.com. Madeleine uses a cute blueberry character as part of her marketing and branding and he appeared on her card too. It’s very unique and Moo.com provides a cost effective and reliable service.

Did you send Christmas cards? Do you think it’s worth it? Let me know if you an alternative marketing tactic that you use in December – you never know, you might win an award for it!

Be a pest – Everest

A little while ago I wrote on this blog how impressed I was with the customer service we received last autumn when we bought new windows from Everest. The company has gone to great lengths to prove that their windows are in fact the best. Click here to read the original blog.

Sadly their after sales ‘sales’ leave a lot to be desired. It wasn’t long after our new windows had been fitted that I received a phone call one evening from Everest, asking if I was interested in buying a kitchen from them. Their reps would be in the area very soon and wondered if they could drop off a brochure. Since I’m very happy with my kitchen, I said no thank you.

A month later and I noticed a cold draft coming through the frame of one of our windows. I arranged for someone to come and look at it and two days before that visit, I received another call – just as I was sitting down to eat my supper – from the sales team. “Are all your windows double glazed?” the young man asked, before stopping to ask if it was a convenient time to talk. “You should know – you installed them” I replied. He simply continued with “Would you like new fascias?” At this point I managed to suppress the urge to be rude and politely told him that since I was waiting for an engineer to come and fix the problem window, his phoning to try to sell me something else was really not a good idea. I suggested that he either remove me from his sales ‘hit’ list, or run the risk of some very bad publicity. At that point he got the message and said goodbye.

I don’t really want to give Everest bad publicity (it will be interesting to see if anyone from Everest reads this and gets in touch!) but I do want you to learn from this tale. Don’t ruin a great customer services experience by then treating your customer like just another number. Don’t waste all the hard work it takes to win a new client by not telling your sales department or others in your business, about the work you’ve done for a customer. Don’t let them rush in and try to sell more, before the dust has settled. Instead, spend time really getting to know your customers and they will come to you and tell you when they’re ready to buy.

Great marketing won’t get you anywhere … Part 2

A while ago I started writing about a clever sales process that I’ve been taught and wanted to share with you. Click here to read the first part and then read on to find out how to use the next steps in the process.

The next thing to do is to help your prospects to identify their need. Until they really recognise their need, they won’t pay you to fix it!

Benchmark versus actual. Where is your client now? If you’ve established in the first stage of the questioning that your prospect is looking for new clients, you need to know how many clients they have now. If they are looking to cut their costs, you need to know what they are spending now – the actual. Then you can ask them where they want to be – how many clients they want, or what they want to be spending – the benchmark. The difference between the benchmark and the actual is the gap. Helping your prospect to identify the gap – the number of new clients they need or the amount of money they want to be saving – will help you sell your solution to them.

Insights. This is where you tell your prospect how you’ve helped one of your clients to solve the exact same problem. Give them a few details on how you fixed the problem and the great results you got.

The Opportunity. Now it’s time for you to ask another commitment question. Asking “How important is this to you right now?” will help you make sure that your prospect is still really interested in solving their problem and filling the gap that you’ve helped them identify. If they answer “No” then you might just need to walk away, rather than trying to force the sale.

In part 3 of this blog I’ll share with you some tips on how best to present your solution, based on all that you’ve discovered by working through parts 1 and 2.

Have you tried the art of Zen Marketing?

Some people rush around doing masses of marketing – lots of networking, writing articles and blog posts, speaking in public – and hope that the phone rings. They go to loads of meetings and send out dozens of proposals, hoping that all the activities will bring in more clients.

Other people get up late, take the dog for a walk, wander into their office and answer the phone, to talk to a prospect client who is calling and ask if they can pay them for their help.

The latter group of people are practicing the art of Zen Marketing! It’s much cheaper, less time consuming and more effective than the marketing that the first group of people do.

So how does it work? First you need to get really clear on who your ideal clients are, so that other people can recommend you to them. This also means that you can stop wasting time running after not so ideal clients, who will take months to sign the deal and then don’t want to pay you for the great job you’ve done for them.

Secondly you need to build a great reputation. When people are talking about you without you being there – and saying nice things, or course – then your phone will ring without you having to do all the chasing.

So the next time you’re thinking about spending a lot of time and money on your marketing, stop, take the dog for a walk (or go to the gym, or take a nap) and think about getting the basics right. When you get the basics right, the rest of your marketing will be much more effective.

Great marketing won’t get you anywhere ……unless you know how to sell and close the deal!

You can spend a lot of time, effort and money generating enquiries, getting your phone to ring and having meetings with prospective clients. But if you don’t have a great way of asking for the sale and getting it, you’ll be wasting all that time and expense.

Here is a simple sales process that I was taught by a very experienced Sales Consultant. I use it a lot, to great effect and have shared it with many other consultants and coaches. It works very well in face to face meetings; you can also use it for sales phone calls.

Situation questions – start by asking your prospect about their business. What do they do? Who are their clients? What are their dreams and plans for their business? These questions will help you build up rapport with them and allow you to get to know them better. They will also start to highlight any issues they have.

Problem questions – then ask what issues they’re struggling with at the moment, related to what you do. For me, these will be questions about what marketing they are doing, or the number of new clients they want to attract and what’s stopping them.

Implication questions – what will happen if they don’t address the problems and do anything about them? You need to ask this question, because it starts your prospect really thinking about what might or might not happen to their business, if the problem persists.

Urgency and importance questions – how urgently do they want to deal with the issue? Are they looking for help right now, or within the next six months? This will help you plan your solution and any follow up. Is it important to them right now, or are there more pressing issues they need to deal with? If the latter, no matter how great your solution, they won’t be ready to buy from you just yet.

There are two things to point out at this stage – firstly you’ve still not told your prospect anything about your business – other than what they already know about you. Don’t be tempted to jump in at any stage with your ‘presentation’ because if you do, you won’t win the sale. Secondly, you’ve also asked a number of ‘commitment’ questions, which help you establish whether or not you need to carry on talking to this prospect.

And the third thing to point out … is that I’ll tell you the next steps of this sales process in a future blog – so come back soon!

How not to run an event

So you’re planning to run an event. A workshop or perhaps a seminar, where you can share your expertise with an audience. Or maybe you’re aiming high with a conference? Here are some tips for you to follow, if you want to make a complete mess of the event and ruin your reputation!

• Use a sound and lighting company that doesn’t know what it’s doing
• Put a screen behind your speakers and keep changing what’s on it to distract your audience
• Enlist the help of a compere who has never done this role and ask them to wear something outrageous
• Use live music to keep your delegates entertained. Make sure it’s badly played
• Don’t bother booking any reserve speakers, in case any of your headliners drop out at the last minute
• If you’re using a stage to stand on, make sure it’s really small and that your audience can see what’s underneath it
• By all means have some people helping you during your workshop, but have them sitting at the front of the room where everyone can see what they’re up to
• Introduce your speakers by simply reading what’s written in the programme
• Allow your compere to be judgemental and opinionated – after all, people have come to listen to him/her
• During breaks, make sure you don’t clear the tables; let the empty cups and saucers build up and don’t worry about putting out more bottles of water
• Sit down while you’re presenting your material – don’t waste energy by standing up.

I could go on and on, because I’ve been to many events where I’ve spent as much time watching how the event was run, as I’ve done listening to the material.

If you want to create a really great impression and leave your audience wanting more of what you have to offer, then think very carefully about how you run events. Avoid the glaring mistakes made by some people and you can use events to promote and grow your business.