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Category: Marketing

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Marketing Personal Development Sales

How to gain Pricing Power

Taste the word “pricing power.” Does it not taste really good? Believe it or not, your pricing gives you power. But what is pricing power? Well, Warren Buffet summarized pricing power very well. He said:

“Pricing power is the most important criterion for investing in a business. Pricing power is the ability to increase prices and not lose sales volume.”

Pretty powerful stuff, don’t you think? When one of the world’s most famous investor and self-made multi-billionaire, says that pricing and, in particular, pricing power is essential, then these are words we need to take on board for our businesses. If Warren Buffet made his money (current net worth $82 billion) from zero, by finding and investing in companies who did not realize their pricing power, we should take notice, and executives should carefully examine whether in their company, in fact, does have pricing power for its products or services. As the consequence of having unrealized pricing power is the same as leaving money on the table, and in some cases, a lot of money is left on the table unnecessarily. 

Almost all companies, especially if they have been in business for some time, have products or services that have some kind of uniqueness, have some products or services that are entirely commodities, and some products that are in-between unique and a commodity. Many companies, for most of the time, have a pricing strategy that deals with these three categories of products or services in the same way. It can be that they use the same markup from cost, or that they try to find comparable products or services from the competition (hard to do when a product or service is unique!) and set the same price as them. This often leads to a situation where the unique products are underpriced, and the commodity products are overpriced, and the company ends up leaving money on the table for the unique products or services and do not have enough sales volume of the commodity products. This is not a good situation to find yourself in!

But the solution to this problem is often quite simple. The first steps are just to identify what products or services are unique, what products or services are commodities, and what products or services are somewhere in-between. Meaning they may have some aspects that are unique but may also have elements that are more of a commodity. 

Once this categorization is done, the time has come to implement a different pricing strategy for the various categories of products or services that you offer to your customers. 

Products or services that are unique have, by definition, tangible pricing power. Customers have no or few alternatives to the unique products or services in the marketplace. Therefore, discounting on those unique products and services should stop, or at least be reduced to the bare minimum. Discounting to close sales is merely unnecessary – albeit some salespeople want to give discounts because they feel good doing so and because the customer feels good receiving it. But it may not be necessary at all to close a deal for a unique product or service. 

Secondly, prices on those unique products or services should increase. The amount of the increase should preferably come from a measurement and model how price affects sales volume so that the price that yields the higher sales volume and the price that generates the highest revenue can be identified and then set for each unique product or service. It is also very important to determine at what price there are price walls (psychological price points where small changes in price cause substantial changes in sales volume). Armed with this information, companies can set the right price for these unique products or services. The “right” price may differ based on the company’s strategic goals – it may be set for maximum revenue, maximum profits, or for maximum sales volume. Or for a combination of all of these. 

A completely different strategy needs to be used when it comes to commodity products or services. Commodities are sold by price alone, (i.e., there is nothing that differentiates those products or services compared with the competition). Commodities are lacking any kind of pricing power, except for price and brand. 

The first thing that needs to happen when commodity products or services have been identified is for the company to ask itself a few measured questions. Such questions that need to be asked for each individual product or service, like the following:

Is this a product or service that generates any kind of contribution margin? If not, is this a product or service that we really need to sell? Does it add value to unique products or services? Do we have to sell this in order to deliver a complete product or service to our clients? Do our clients expect to buy this from us? 

If the answers to any of these questions are “no,” discontinue the product or service. It is a distraction for your company. If the answers to any of these questions are “yes,” there are two possible actions to take. First, work relentlessly taking cost out of the product or service – but be incredibly careful not to reduce the quality or the benefit it provides your customers. Secondly, strengthening the brand as a stronger brand will lead to a higher sales volume of commodity products or services. A strong brand leads to some level of pricing power, even for commodity products and services. Thus, a strong brand allows companies to increase the price even for those, even if it is just by a little. 

So, now we come to the strategy for those products or services that are classed as “in-between.” These are the products or services that are not truly unique but may have some unique aspects to them. You have the options to either make the product or service unique, or increase its “uniqueness.” At the same time, the questions mentioned earlier are highly applicable again to be answered. 

In closing – do I say that gaining pricing power is easy? Not at all. But what I’m saying is that executives need to be fully aware that there is something called “pricing power.” The fact that it exists, means that you can, relatively easily, put in place the process I suggest above. If your company has a dozen, or so of products or services, this is a quick process. If it has 10,000 SKUs and dozens of services, this, however, is a process that will take a long time, but the earlier you start, the earlier you will reap the benefits of gaining “pricing power” for your products or services. Since the market is in constant change, this is an ongoing process, not a “set and forget.” It is a process that needs to be regularly evaluated and re-evaluated according to the climate in the marketplace, sales volume targets, the competitions’ products and services, etc. 

So, now it is up to you, the reader, to gain pricing power. Be confident; you can do it!

Per Sjöfors
Founder
Sjöfors & Partners
www.sjofors.com

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Sales

Credibility, Trust and Thought Leadership – Discussing CPOP (Customer Point Of Pain)

Digital stalking isn’t just for dating. It happens in business every day at both the personal and corporate level.

What do you do when introduced to a person or a company, you head over to Google (or a few of you to Bing) in order to research the person/company you might want to do business with. Part of your research mission is to determine credibility and evaluate the potential “fit” between this individual or business. You scan the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), clicking deeper to look at sociial media profiles, articles and reviews.  As a professional or a business, you are on the receiving end of this research activity and need to worry about what Google and Bing have to say about you. What do they convey?

One framework that can be really useful in making sure that when you rank, your messaging is on-point, is CPOP (Customer Point Of Pain), and how that dovetails into credibility.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mitchell Levy an expert on credibility in marketing and sales where we discussed how knowing your CPOP and weaving it into your marketing communications can help with holistic SEO.

If credibility and controlling the Google SERP matters to you, I recommend the following video.

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“This Is How To Control Rage In A Negotiation” – Negotiation Insight

“If you don’t control rage, rage will control you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

Click here to get the book!

“This Is How To Control Rage In A Negotiation”

People don’t realize; they’re always negotiating.

It can be challenging to deal with someone engulfed by rage. Even more daunting is the challenge of dealing with someone spewing denigrating statements due to their fury in a negotiation. Thus, it behooves you to control rage, yours, and that of others, in every environment. To be remiss in this endeavor is to expose yourself to dire consequences.

To better control the ire of others, stemming from their rage, learn to implement the following insights. Doing so will allow you to temper the wrath of people seeking to suppress your success to enhance their own. And never discount the role that hidden rage may have behind someone’s reasoning to verbally or physically attack you.

Click here to continue!

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

For more free tips on how you can become a better negotiator, while reading body language, go to https://TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

(Click to see and Tweet) Greg’s quote!

 

#TheMasterNegotiator #GregWilliams #negotiation #ReadBodyLanguage

 

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Personal Development

Get the Most from Business Podcasts

The nature of communication changed profoundly in 2020. Employees work from home, communicating with co-workers and bosses virtually. Many businesses, to survive, have migrated online or broadened and strengthened their online presence. Podcasts, blogs, newsletters, and other forms of written communication became increasingly important.

As part of your year-end evaluation, give particular attention to the quality of your company’s—and your personal—written communication. This month, my C Suite blogs will focus on key aspects of that communication.

Podcasts Are More Important Than Ever

With libraries and bookstores often closed, during the pandemic, people increasingly relied on getting their information and entertainment through listening. The growing receptivity to the spoken word provides an ever-growing popularity of podcasts.

A Podcast Checklist

Did your company produce podcasts this year? If not, I recommend that you add them to your to-do list for the coming year. If you did produce them, you may evaluate their quality against the items in this checklist.

  1. Have you produced podcasts that are short and to the point? Thirty minutes or less in length is often considered ideal.
  2. Did you present timely and informative information about your industry? If so, you have taken steps to position yourself as a leader.
  3. Did you invite other leaders to speak and/or be interviewed on your podcast? This helps to build vital relationships. It can also open the door for you to be invited to speak on someone else’s podcast.
  4. Have you screened interviewees to determine how articulate they are?
  5. Have you done your research on your interviewees and put together a series of evocative and provocative questions?
  6. If they’ve written books, have you read them?
  7. Have you also produced podcasts geared to customers and consumers? If you have, you’ve firmed up your relationship with the people who make your business thrive and give it meaning.

Always Have Transcripts for Your Podcasts

As much as people are drawn to the spoken word, we must always recognize those who respond most strongly to material they can read. I know people who won’t take a course that’s primarily video- and audio-oriented unless they can also read transcripts of the lesson modules.

Don’t leave such people out of your calculations. A 30-minute podcast usually becomes 4,000-5,000 words. People only retain about 5% of what they hear. They may remember something they wanted to review, but they don’t want to take the time to re-listen to the entire podcast. A transcript allows them to go over the material that most interesting to them and to underline key phrases.

Podcast transcripts should be readable. “Readable” also means well edited and proofread. Yes, you can use artificial intelligence to get a transcript in minutes, but in my experience, it is not as accurate as a person. And it takes even longer to proofread and edit it.

A skilled editor/proofreader will not change the meaning of the conversational entries in a podcast. He or she will instead edit what’s said so that it’s very clear to the reader. At the same time, he or she will correct grammatical and spelling errors (and any transcription errors).

Your reading public will appreciate a transcript.

That’s not the only reason to have one. These transcripts can form the foundation for a longer piece. As a ghostwriter and editor, I often hear people who want to write books say that they don’t have time. So often, they don’t realize that blogs, position papers, and podcast transcripts are just waiting to be assembled into book form. They provide a solid foundation for that work. I’ve turned podcasts into seven books.

Still don’t have time? Hire a professional. Many authors repurposed material to create books or hired a person to do that for them.

In addition to its immediate value, a podcast may open the door to a rewarding publishing career.

Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100. Executives hired Pat to help them share their expertise in non-fiction books. Pat’s site describes her editing and ghostwriting services. Connect with Pat through her website at patiyer.com.

 

 

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Best Practices Culture Management Marketing Personal Development Sales

Are sales leaders ahead of the game in the ‘new normal’?

Yes!!!

Most of the things that leaders are coming to terms with and learning how to master with a remote team are already second nature to sales leaders. Conducting day to day business activities without being in the same room at the same time is par for the course.

It’s also the case at pretty much all sales leadership levels, specifically with field-based sales. In my case, running global sales teams, the people are literally all around the world, adding the lovely additional factor of time zones. For any of the regional leads, say across EMEA, the same is true, with multiple countries, cultures, and languages, as well as a sub-set of time zones. Even a territory sales manager is used to leading, coaching, and developing their sales reps, with very infrequent ‘windshield time’ or face to face office interaction.

The “new normal” for most office workers is the only way for most field-based sales team leaders. As a result, they have a wealth of experience as well as tips and tricks that can be valuable to people who are still getting familiar with working remotely.

Managing a virtual team still has the same fundamentals in the engagement of the team and individuals. It’s so important to truly be present in every interaction. “oh sorry, I was on mute” is a sure-fire indicator that you were not present!!! Video certainly helps here, especially in a 1:1 session or small groups. But it’s just as important in phone only interaction. Keep it short and focused but include time for beyond work chat.

That said, never forget the importance of in-person bonding. When the environment is right to allow group gatherings, it is hugely important. Many sales professionals will tell you it’s a lonely world, working remotely and only occasionally meeting their colleagues in the same team, or across other areas of the company. In my experience, the energy gained from occasional in-person team meetings is a critical component of leading a virtual team. This ranges from small team sessions, each quarter maybe, through to larger annual all-team gatherings such as sales kick-off sessions.

Bottom line, your company already has experts in leading teams in the ‘new normal’, your sales leaders, so be sure to capitalize on their experience, now, and as you plan the various steps to your post ‘Stay at Home’ environment.

Categories
Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development Sales

The perils of ignoring customer feedback, should Nokia have paid more attention to AT&T?

It’s critical to be in touch with your customers although too often we fall into the trap of wanting to share all the great things we can bring to them, to help them in their business. What must be a two-way dialogue can become more of a monologue if we are not mindful to stop and listen.

That’s probably truer now than it has ever been, due in no small part to the enormous changes everyone has faced in the last few months with Covid-19 and its impact on all of our customers’ business and their changing needs. It’s essential to make listening to customers an ongoing process, even when you are being hugely successful, growing strongly, and enjoying significant market share. And it’s not just engineers and product people who need to listen to customers. In fact, great sales teams make it a point to listen to their customers and help identify unmet needs. If you fall into the trap of thinking all of your customer’s needs are being satisfied you end up being blindsided to what’s coming.

A stark example of this for me was the later stages of my time at Nokia. In the mobile phone world, Nokia was the acknowledged leading vendor. Market share across Europe and the Middle East was 40%, closer to 80% in China and India, and many other parts of Asia. Central and South America were also growing rapidly, with the only real gap being in the US, where Motorola and RIM/Blackberry, had taken the leadership position.

Our largest ‘customer’ in the US, AT&T, was giving us feedback on our user interface, complex menu approach, and product design. This was difficult to hear based on a long history of leading the industry with the intuitiveness and simplicity of our devices. The feedback was also discounted because it came from a country Nokia considered to be “behind” in terms of mobile phone technology and design and because Nokia’s US revenue was low compared with the market potential.

Clearly, with 2020 hindsight (pun intended), we didn’t listen well and we didn’t act on what we heard. As you may recall AT&T was initially the exclusive seller of Apple’s iPhone, the pioneer in a mass-market touch screen interface on mobile devices as well as offering simplicity and application access in an intuitive and friendly UI. And the iPhone’s rapid acceptance was a humbling surprise for Nokia.

The moral of course is always listen to your customers, even when their feedback is hard to hear or perhaps especially when it’s hard to hear.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“This Is How To Be Better at Negotiations With Bots” – Negotiation Tip of the Week

 

People don’t realize; they’re always negotiating.

As negotiations become more intricate, smart negotiators are finding value in incorporating bots into the negotiation process. And while some bots can differ in their purpose, chatbots, as they’re also known, are tools that more negotiators have begun using in their negotiations.

By using bots in your negotiations, you can improve your negotiation position and outcome. Discover how to use chatbots to enhance your negotiation efforts! https://bit.ly/31XQCE9

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://c-suitenetwork.com/radio/shows/greg-williams-the-master-negotiator-and-body-language-expert-podcast/

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Negotiation Insight” click here https://themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

How to Leverage Digital for Sales

Leverage Digital

For this #kTip, we discuss how to leverage digital to help your sales.

Welcome to another #kTip from Kak Varley…

Let us talk about how you can leverage digital for sales. Now, I don’t want to focus on the tools themselves because we kind of already knows the tools, right? Email, social media, etc…

Rather, I’d like to focus on how you can use those tools for your sales. The best way I know how to do that is through a story that was given to me by a friend named Jeffrey Hayzlett. Jeffrey Hayzlett is an accomplished businessman, speaker, author, was the CMO for Kodak, and was a judge on The Celebrity Apprentice.

The Hunt

He once told me a story about how he had wanted to get a speaking engagement with a particular company because he knew that the company paid well for public speakers. So he spent a considerable amount of time trying to get in front of the person that scheduled speakers. But he wasn’t getting anywhere – no replies, stuck in the mud. So he decided to come up with a strategy which looked like this:

He reached out directly to the CEO of the company by email and asked him if he would be considerate enough to do an interview on Jeff’s podcast. The CEO accepted and they did the interview. Jeff didn’t stop there though. He then took that interview and transcribed it into an online release. He then took the link from that online press release and shared it with the CEO by email.

The Catch

The CEO loved it so much that he had it promoted across his company on social media. It was at that time that Jeff got a call from the person that scheduled speakers and ended up getting
a speaking engagement. So he made the sale!

Now I want you to think about that…let’s break it down…

  1. He knew the audience that he wanted to go after.
  2. He did that through a digital tool called email.
  3. He offered him an interview with another digital tool called a podcast.
  4. He took that interview and made it into another digital tool, which is an online release.
  5. Sent it over to the CEO.
  6. The CEO promoted that on another digital tool called social media.

…and so on and so on…

So you can see here that Jeff did not think of digital as being that “other thing”. He didn’t look at it as something mystical. He looked at it as a part of his portfolio in sales. And so he just literally extended his physical sales world into the digital world and used the tools within that to make the sale.
Great story, right?

For a free digital assessment, head over to KakVarley.com

We’ll see you back here next time! Thanks so much and have a great day!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

8 Powerful Book Marketing Lessons

1. Aim higher. Are you writing the book to just “have a book” or are you writing the book that your fans, subscribers, followers, clients, prospects, customers, and influencers want to read? The second one takes more careful thought and strategic action. But it will also skyrocket your book’s influence, impact, and income.

2. Act faster. How long have you been noodling on your book idea? According to surveys, 81% of people say they want to write a book but only a tiny fraction of a percentage take action on it. If you’re tired of years and years of wishing and you’re ready to start doing – now is your time.

3. Your book needs to FLOP. FLOP is an acronym for “Feature and Leverage Other People.” And you specifically need 3 groups of people to help propel your book’s sales – your endorsement posse, your contributor tribe, and your launch partners. Nothing great is ever achieved alone.

4. Books don’t sell themselves. Just like “good work should speak for itself” is a complete myth, good books don’t speak for themselves, either. You need to promote, market, catalyze, tease, tempt, help, and serve your readers in lots of ways – and your book is just one of those primary ways.

5. Offer value, invite engagement. Nobody likes to be talked at. But we all love to be talked with and listened to. Make your book marketing and promotion campaign more like a conversation and less like a data dump. Interact, interview, be radically generous, be radically helpful, seek to converse, and not to convince… and the sales will come flooding in.

6. Marketing your book = Marketing YOU. Don’t think about marketing your book as a one-off project. If you’ve written the right kind of book, it will serve and support your business for years to come and vice versa. In fact, the activities that you need to be doing to market the book are the same activities that you need to be doing to market your business!

7. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t fall into the trap of short-term thinking. Your book launch is the beginning – not the end – of your book marketing journey.

8. Focus is everything. If you make your book the focal point of your business, it will become the central driver of your high-payoff marketing, sales, and business development activities. Put massive goals in place and then create a game plan to take baby steps every single day. Rain or shine. Happy or sad. Feel like it or not. That’s the fast path to results.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Operations Personal Development

Party City Creating Joy Despite COVID: CMO Interview

 

Change is inevitable – it’s a part of life and if there’s one thing I’ve learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that change accelerates everything. As I like to say, “Days are weeks, weeks are months, months are years.” Your actions today have major impacts on the weeks to come.

 

I spoke to someone who knows all about change. Julie Roehm is the Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at Party City and she joined the C-Suite Network during our High Stakes Leadership Forum recently. But, let’s rewind back to March, and though it may seem like it was ages ago, it really wasn’t. Julie said she was still settling into her new job at Party City when the pandemic hit.

 

“I had just gotten (my laptop) and the next day we shut down stores due to COVID. It was a mess,” Julie recalled. “But, it’s actually been really great because the team has had the vision for transformation since I got there.”

 

During her short tenure at Party City, almost the entire c-suite leadership team was relatively new; therefore, changing the company’s mission.

 

“We had this vision from the get go, to move us from the seller of party goods to the provider of a party experience because we’re so much more than selling stuff,” Julie said. “That’s what hooked me. I’m a sucker for a transformation project.”

 

“The beautiful thing about this group of executives, probably because more than half of us are brand new is that we were all in it to win it. We were working together. There’s no pride of ownership,” Julie said. “We’ve just got a huge amount of passion for what this business can be.”

 

With the pandemic literally changing the world, leadership at Party City decided to not just try to survive the shutdown, but to thrive in spite of it!

 

Julie reached out to her network and in a matter of days, struck a delivery deal with Hertz to bring the party to customers across the country. In fact, the CEO addressed the leadership’s teams entire plan to bring the party to customers in the post COVID response plan in the following letter addressed on the company’s website:

Party City’s promise has always been to help people create joy by making it easy to create unforgettable memories. And during this pandemic, we had to innovate and adapt quickly. Here are a few examples:

 

 

Curbside Pickup/Same-Day Delivery:

By the end of this week, we will have introduced our curbside pickup and/or delivery offerings to nearly 600 stores nationwide. We’ll make this service available permanently.

Adventure in a Box: In response to quarantine requirements, we created themed “survival kits” for families, to provide a convenient and safe solution to social distancing fatigue and boredom – from movie night to family game night. We’ve continued to expand these kits to include virtual birthdays, graduation, Mother’s Day, and more.

 


Drive-by Birthday Celebrations:

Even in this unconventional time, parents are finding innovative ways to celebrate their children’s birthdays virtually. To make this easy, we’ve created an assortment of “driveway drop party kits” that make it easy for parents to host virtual birthday celebrations for their kids and friends while respecting social distancing guidelines. And we have kits for the adults who celebrate, too!

 

“What I think people didn’t necessarily appreciate about a pandemic is every company was trying to figure out what the hell to do,” Julie said. “Companies were much more willing to let their guard down and not be as precious about whatever they might have been precious about previously. Was it perfect? 100% no. Was it the right thing to do? 1000% yes.”

 

While everyone at Party City were aligned to reach the same path, that hasn’t always been the case throughout Julie’s career. When she was Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Walmart, she made waves for painting her office chartreuse (which was not received well) and breaking the norms at one of the country’s largest retailers. Julie says her 11-month stint at Walmart was an eye opener.

 

“Culture eats strategy for lunch,” Julie said. “I think if you think about anybody who is great at what they do (and) you put them in an environment that is sort of the antithesis to who they are as a person, it doesn’t matter how great you are at what you do because there is no “I” in team.”

 

She continued, “The team that was there for me (at Walmart) wasn’t one that was of my culture. You could use the painting of my office a symbolic microcosm of a bigger macro issue, which is culture. I think some people liked it and some people felt violated.”

 

Fifteen years later, Julie learned a lot about culture and is excited to come to work every day.

 

“I don’t know how many people get to look at their daily calendar and you can be upset and look through it and it’s like there’s not a break. I don’t know when I’m going to pee, but you know what? I don’t care because all of my meetings are about balloons or birthdays. I’m excited about that. I’m in the business of creating joy. I have to come in every day and think about how I can make somebody happy,” she exclaimed.

 

Life in the c-suite isn’t all streamers, party favors, and celebrations. Sometimes current events, like the pandemic, unemployment and the Black Lives Matter movement need corporate attention. As a result, Party City set up a diversity committee and temporarily changed the theme of its website to reflect the make-up of its associates and customers.

 

“We’re about joy,” Julie said. “This is a beautiful thing. Let’s celebrate our togetherness. It doesn’t matter what we look like.”

 

Despite the changing business landscape Party City is committed to focus on their mission to create joy and memories and have mobilized a response plan to keep their mission moving forward.

Julie was a great guest as well as a long-time friend and I admire her for being an agent of change, community builder, and for being transparent. I’d like to thank her for her time with the C-Suite Network. Her interview is just a sample of the quality content and connections you receive with your membership. Not a member? Click here to learn more.