Author: Phil Jones

Best-selling author, multiple award winner and one of the most sought after speakers on the circuit, Phil M Jones is highly regarded as the world’s leading sales trainer.

From training more than two million people worldwide to coaching some of the biggest brands in the world, Phil’s mission to teach the world to sell has resulted in his expertise being globally recognized.

By understanding behavior, he’s able to use his infectious thought-provoking style of delivery to make long-lasting change by re-wiring beliefs and instilling what he refers to as his Magic Words.

By teaching audiences how to use particular word patterns and showing them exactly what to say in order to work around difficult situations, Phil is able to help non-sales people to increase their activity and have more of the right conversations to generate more of the right outcomes.

Having won multiple awards, including the prestigious Sales Trainer of the Year in 2013, Phil has written a series of best-selling books and has a number of online training programs that have enrolled tens of thousands of members.

From working with small business owners that are looking to increase sales to leverage their livelihood to globally recognized companies that want to drive more activity from their staff, Phil’s unique skill set allows him to serve a vast mix of people with entirely different goals.

Phil now travels the world, speaking to audiences in all corners of the globe. To date, he’s spoken in 56 different countries across five continents, and with his growing popularity, he’s expected to add many more to his roster.|Best-selling author, multiple award winner and one of the most sought after speakers on the circuit, Phil M Jones is highly regarded as the world’s leading sales trainer.

By understanding behavior, he’s able to use his infectious thought-provoking style of delivery to make long-lasting change by re-wiring beliefs and instilling what he refers to as his Magic Words.

Business Builder – A Tool to Help You Acquire More Customers

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 17, 2017
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The business builder is a chance to find out a simple strategy or technique to acquire more customers, get customers to spend with you more often or get them to spend more money when they shop.

This is about creating opportunity from what otherwise would be wastage. We’ve all had opportunities where we’ve met with customers, we’ve introduced what we’d like them to buy from us and it’s been too rich for them at that period of time–too big a decision. They were interested, but couldn’t say yes at that moment in time. Typically in those scenarios, we leave with our tails between our legs and we put it away for another day to revisit in the future. You’ve all heard about how effective it can be to upsell, to add to people’s purchases, to add stuff on top, to increase the average transaction value. But what I’m talking about here is the power of a down sell, the opportunity to acquire a customer when otherwise they would have said “no”.

Let me give you an example of an incredibly effective down sell that happened with a client of mine around 12 months ago. The client in question runs a relatively new start up accountancy practice looking to acquire new customers. The key service she was looking to introduce was a high-level accountancy, non-exec financial director position, a fair sum of money, a fair size investment. She’d meet lots of people who were interested in the proposition, they would show a level of interest, maybe ask for some details to be sent or written down, and then she’d typically get a response of “I’m going to need some time to think about it.” This happens in all of our businesses.

What’s the simple thing that could’ve been introduced as a product or service to get them on board as a customer right now so we could build their value over a period of time? What she chose to introduce was some fabulous online accounting software. In fact, it’s the same accounting software that we now use ourselves, and she’d introduced it to these clients for a low monthly fee for an initial start-up, and they took this product on board because it was a no-brainer.

Introducing your down sell is what I call your “Columbo Moment”. Columbo was famous for saying “Oh, just one more thing.” That was his chance to get his real golden piece of information.

You’re going to introduce your down sell almost as you’re heading out the door, as if it’s a no-brainer, so that you get more customers from your activity that you can then revisit to grow into the size and scale of customer that you would like. But a customer at a low value is far better than no customer at all.

Management Marketing Skills

Magic Words: Increase Your Average Transaction Value

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 16, 2017
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If you sell a number of anything, then there are magic words to increase the number of items, objects, or hours upwards. You’ll typically get people stuck in indecision between two options based on size, and we want them to pick the top one, the bigger number, as this is the one that rewards us most.

Let’s imagine it was numbers of people in a training course. You were speaking to the training department and they were unsure whether to send three or four people. They need help making their mind up, and they’re almost about to say we need time to think about it. Ever heard that before? Knowing you’ve heard that before we want you to try and bring them to a decision, and we want them to choose four.

The magic word that I’m going to share with you is the magic word, ‘enough’. It might sound simple; it’s a tiny little word with only a few characters in it, but if you say to people at the very right time ‘Would the four places be enough for you?’ Provided you’re reasonable, people will take the higher option, because the brain asks itself the direct question that you’ve asked it: “Is four enough? Yeah four’s enough so let’s move forward with four”.

So what about if you sold on quantity and maybe you were selling print? You typically sold 500 letterheads, but you’d like to sell 1000, and they couldn’t choose between the two. Imagine what a difference it could make if you said, ‘Would 1000 be enough for you?’ Imagine you were selling consultancy services and you were selling days of your time over a month and they weren’t sure to have you for one day a month or two days a month. ‘Would two days a month be enough for you?

The beauty of ‘enough’ is it’s difficult to go backwards from, provided you’re reasonable. So try this today, tomorrow, or the day after. The next time you’re speaking to somebody, ask how many they’re looking for, and using the higher number, ask them ‘is it enough for you?’ You might be amazed at the response.

I do hope that’s been enough for you, and until next time, keep moving forward, keep picking up pace and let your momentum carry you as far as your ambition guides you.

Management Marketing Skills Technology

The Social Devolution of Business

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 13, 2017
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Since the mainstream takeover of the social networks in 2008, every small business owner has been nudged, persuaded and cajoled into adopting a presence on all major platforms, and for many the results are perhaps not what you may expect.

We all hear and read of the massive success achieved from the small independent business that blew up from their inspiring Instagram account or the personality-led business that became an overnight success with their viral YouTube channel. These meteoric results create a desire that you must heavily invest in your presence on social media to have any success in a modern business landscape. The reality is, many small businesses are performing mass self-sabotage from their current efforts and their involvement in social media marketing is causing their business to go backwards.

Before I get into the dangers I want to make a very clear and simple point. I am a HUGE supporter of how digital marketing and social networking can have a MASSIVE positive impact. It is just the practices that I see adopted by the masses are quite frankly embarrassing.

The primary problem is that the “dark-arts” and “ninja tactics” orchestrated by some of the world’s most creative marketers have delivered results beyond expectation and suggested to the masses that these tools provide the answer, missing ingredients or short cut to success. So much so that they now have forgotten many of the core principles of building a business.

In all of my experience to date, the one thing that has been the single driver of every single successful venture, project or campaign has been the following of my personal mantra for success.

“Do the basics, to a high standard, consistently.”

What is happening in thousands of businesses right now is that the core principles of sales are being forgotten in favor of rolling the dice with the next magic campaign, social post or viral video attempt looking for short-term success.

In the real world, there are no short cuts and developing a sustainable customer base is created over time and built on trust.

Business developers know that questions lead to conversations, conversations create relationships, relationships create opportunities and opportunities result in sales.

Slowing the process down often speeds the outcome up. I often draw comparison here as looking for a partner for life as opposed to sex on the first date.

Back to the self-sabotaging behaviours that are costing businesses a fortune.

1. Pissing in the Wind

I do not understand why thousands of independent business owners rush to build their social platforms, invite a handful of friends to like or follow their page and then never plan anything else to build their audience. Worse than this they spend fortunes on creating graphics and then invest bucket loads of time into collating and creating content to post regularly and nobody is listening! They are just pouring productive time and effort down the drain and could have gained more success by opening their front door and shouting their offers into the street!

2. SPAM

We are all in the “people” business and to gain true influence it is important that both visibility and credibility are established before any opportunity to do business ever exists. Yet daily the prior trend of spamming people’s email inbox has been replaced with sending 500 word messages with links to videos or squeeze pages via Facebook messenger, direct messages or as an auto-response to a new follower. Please, please pretty please can people put a stop to this blindly unsophisticated intrusion of privacy and if you have something that may benefit me – please get to know me a little first.

3. IDGAF

I am pretty certain that most people do not want to read some of the mindless drivel that people are sharing on their social streams. Ask yourself before you hit the “post” button, will this represent me and my brand well? Can people engage with it? Does it serve others? Everybody now has the ability to be a full media production unit – great that you can be the journalist, please do not forget that you need to hold the role of editor too! In this age of information we are awash with content to consume – if you want yours to stand out then please make it good enough.

4. Egocentric Results

Yes, you are the most important person in your life – I get it! Unless you are Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump or Selena Gomez then the likelihood of people being that concerned about what is happening in your world is slim to none. Make your contact about your audience, understand them and provide them with things that serve their life, make their day easier, and things they love to talk about.

5. Aimless Distraction

Whether it is the thumb on your iPhone, the index finger on your mouse wheel or two fingers on the trackpad, the action of mindlessly scrolling through the sea of nonsense on your social walls is causing a tragedy in lost productivity. For many a homebased worker, high pay off activity such as prospecting, serving customers and planning marketing campaigns has been replaced with the vacant distraction of the soap opera of social media.

This article is delivered with the purpose of holding up a huge STOP sign and helping you to re-evaluate your activity and ask yourself if it is really working and genuinely driving results or is it simply draining from your limited resource and standing in your way of building a solid business foundation.

Perhaps the shift could move back to understanding the biggest value in these tools is how they can increase productivity, reduce geographic constraints and accelerate the building of new relationships.

Build your audience, serve your audience, engage with your audience and be prepared to bring the conversation “offline” and work the old fashioned way if you would like to see some true returns.

And if you can’t wrap your head around it to make it pay for you, stop it and get back to delivering the basics, to a high standard consistently.

Management Marketing Skills

The Easy Way to Gain More Referrals

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 12, 2017
No Comments on The Easy Way to Gain More Referrals

Since people of the world started trading with each other, the number one activity and action that would drive future success was gaining new business from the word of mouth of others.

Despite all the modern marketing methods and new lead generation strategies it is still the creation of referrals from your network that brings you the biggest, quickest and most authentic return on your marketing investment.

I know that you would LOVE to have an endless stream of referred clients and would do anything to make this happen. Yet for the majority of business owners and sales professionals there is just one HUGE reason why they fail to gain the referrals they deserve.

They simply do not ask their existing contacts to open the doors into their contacts.

What could be stopping you from asking?

For me it comes down to one of the following 3 things:

1. You’re too LAZY, bone idle and cannot be bothered…
2. You don’t know WHEN to ask …
3. You don’t know HOW to ask…

My guess is that option 1 does not apply to you – because if it did then you would not be reading this article. Therefore – if you knew the answer to the other 2 questions then you could probably ask more often.

Timing is everything and for many, the fear of finding the exact right moment to introduce an idea is the primary reason that stops the idea being mentioned. In my work I am renowned for helping others to know exactly what to say, when to say it and how to make it count. Let’s see if today we can help you understand how this relates perfectly to referrals.

When is the right time to ask?

The short answer to this is at the point that your prospect or client is happy. The difficulty in this answer is that there are literally dozens of examples where this could be the case. At the point of sale, the delivery, at a success milestone or even at the point of resolving a complaint, to name but a few. This abundance of opportunity creates a chaos of confusion and typically results in an inability to ask the key question of the other person.

The better answer is to set the small antennae on the side of your head (AKA ears) to listen out for one simple phrase. This phrase is a coherent clue to the fact that the other person is not only happy with what you have done for them, but also in that precise moment feels indebted to your actions to a point they may even feel like they owe you. There is no better time to ask for something than when the other person feels indebted.

The words you must listen for are the words…

Thank you.

When you receive this sign of appreciation please do not pat yourself on the back and think “I’ve done a wonderful job”. Understand instead that this is your perfect moment to ask for more.

Now that you understand the precise timing for the request we should probably explore a structured and powerful way of asking…

How to ask for referrals

The subconscious brain is a powerful thing. Particularly in the sales process. Why? Because it works a little bit like a computer. There is only “Yes” or “No”. There is no “Maybe”. Having the ability to trigger instant decision from your client or prospect delivers you a fair advantage in communication and can often allow you to get your own way more often.

The subconscious cannot stop itself from working. It’s like our human autopilot. When you drive to a familiar destination, you don’t always remember the journey between getting in the car and out of it again. That was the subconscious brain taking over.

To lead you into this precise set of word choices you must learn the power of a simple set of “Magic Words” that can be used to get people to agree to an action before they even know what the action is.

So they have said “Thank you”. And this provides your cue to ask your first question.

“You couldn’t do me a small favour could you?”

This simple question gains an almost certain agreeable response and gives you instant permission to continue with the rest of your request.

You can then go on to say:

“You wouldn’t happen to know…”

(This throws down a challenge, which makes people want to prove you wrong)

“…just one person…”

(Just one because it’s reasonable and seems a simple ask they’re more likely to think of someone by name)

“…someone who just like you…”

(Has the person narrowing down the options and gives you more of the right prospects plus pays a subtle compliment)

“…would benefit from…”

And then emphasize the specific benefit or positive experience they have just thanked you for.

Then…

Shut up!

When they have thought of somebody you need to know where to go next. You will probably see in their body language and movement when they have thought of somebody.

At this point you say:

“Don’t worry. I’m not looking for their details right now, but who was it that you’re thinking of?

This automatically takes the pressure off and the “but” helps them to only recall the final part of the sentence.

Find out then when they’re next likely to see the person they are thinking of.

“You couldn’t do me a further favor could you? (I mean they said “Yes” the first time) Next time you see Steve could you share with him a little bit about how it was doing business with me and see if he’s perhaps open minded to taking a phone call from me to see if I can help him in the same way I helped you?”

Your prospect will almost certainly agree.

“Would it be ok if I give you a call next week and find out how the chat went with Steve?”

They will most likely, again, be agreeable.

You then call him when you said you would and ask:

“I’m guessing you didn’t get around to speaking to Steve?”

As a person of their word they will either proudly say how they have spoken to Steve, or will be embarrassed and tell you how they will go on to complete the introduction.

The magic in this process is that if you slow the process down you can often speed the outcome up.

It provides you with qualified future customers who already have third party experience of your offerings and permission to make contact. I would take that over a name and a number any day of the week.

Management Marketing Skills

Always Be Closing – Get a Decision, in Place of Leaving a Brochure

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 11, 2017
No Comments on Always Be Closing – Get a Decision, in Place of Leaving a Brochure

I thought I’d tackle one of those challenges that we’ve been faced with time and time again in our business career. When we receive the objection early on in our sales process, such as “Can you send me the details?” This prevents you from getting down to the detail where you’ve given them enough information to make a full decision. You’ve got a conceptual yes, they’re reasonably interested in what you do, but not specifically interested enough to give a decision.

As the brochure is stereotypical, what happens when we send them out? At best it sits on a coffee table for a period of time. Does it really get digested or discussed or lead to a decision, picking up the phone and taking action? Sometimes it does, but typically no further action happens unless we make it happen.

When we had customers interested in an overseas investment property, I heard “would you leave me a brochure?” so often that I knew I had to find a way of tackling it. I had to get into the position where I could spec something in detail–the specs they would want if they did proceed. Now you know how much better we are at looking at things in hypothetical circumstances rather than in reality, and this is exactly what we do here when faced with this scenario. I’ve developed what I call the “Devil’s Advocate Close”, the opportunity where we spec something in a hypothetical circumstance.

What I decided to do was every time somebody said ‘Can you leave me a brochure?’ I’d say “Absolutely, but why don’t you play devil’s advocate with me for a second, so you know what it is that you’re saying ‘no’ to. I know you’re not going for one of these right now, but if you were to invest in one of these properties, just hypothetically speaking, would it be for–lifestyle or investment?’

Let’s say I get the answer “investment”…

“If it is investment, you’re looking at maybe something that’s going to bring you the best possible returns for the smallest amount of outlay?”

“Yeah that’s right Phil.”

“Let’s say you were going to go with it and use that property anyway, how many of you would be using the property?”

“Well it’d be me, the wife, and the kids.”

“So you’d be looking for at least two bedrooms?”

“Yeah that’s right Phil.”

“So if it were a two bedroom apartment and investment was in mind, I guess you’d be looking at a two bedroom, first floor apartment, because those are the cheaper properties and they rent for the same as a ground floor, hence your yield is slightly higher. It makes sense to go for a two bedroom first floor.”

“Yeah that’s right.”

“Assuming, with investment in mind, that you may want to sell this on one day and be able to get some use out of it, so you’re probably going to be wanting something with a nice outlook or pool-facing view.”

Yeah that would make sense Phil.”

“Then let’s have look at what’s still left on the development – two bedroom, first floor, pool-facing. Well I’ve got this apartment here, it’s apartment A202 and it’s 74sqm and here are the two bedrooms and the two bathrooms. Here’s the en-suite and the large open plan kitchen and here’s the balcony, and on the balcony you can see you’ll be overlooking the beautiful pool area. Now I know you’re not in the position to move forward with one of these today, but again just playing devil’s advocate and so you know what it is that you say no to, would you be open-minded to take a look at what the figures look like so that you would know what a yes would look like if you were ever in that position?”

“Yeah absolutely Phil.”

So I would walk them through the payments, I’d walk them through exactly what their investment for apartment A202 would look like, and funnily enough, their final decision in order to secure that property was just a small reservation fee. At the end of that presentation, I would say to the customer, “Well in terms of what we’ve gone through, obviously we’re showing you the best of our available stock. I’ve got a number of appointments later today, as have the rest of the team, and two bedroom apartments are the most popular because they’re the best rental option. No doubt the next person who reserves a two bedroom first floor apartment will probably come to the same conclusion that you have that A202 is the best apartment. So if you were to look to reserve, then all we need is a $1200 reservation, and we take cash, cheque, and credit or debit card.”

Where people have previously said, ‘Leave me a brochure’, we’ve now prompted a discussion between decision makers. Now let’s say we did that ten times in a week…most people would continue with the “Can you leave me a brochure” along with the numbers and the floor plans for the specific apartment in question–but two or three people out of the ten would genuinely move forward with a transaction that they would have previously have asked you to leave on.

We know how hard it is to create opportunities to sit in front of people and then create a genuine opportunity for them to make a buying decision with us. Just ask yourself this, is it easier to hang in there for another five, ten, fifteen minutes to give them enough information to make a decision and help them see what they could buy from you, or easier to start again with somebody new? Because purely by playing devil’s advocate you can get some great information out of people – valuable information that puts them in a position where they can make a decision.

Growth Management Skills

Don’t Talk to Strangers

When many of us are looking for new business, we can find ourselves in the mysterious world of business networking; for most, attending open networking events is a less than enjoyable experience.

We all know that to find new customers we must speak with more people, so why do so many of us find this such a daunting task?

The reason we find this difficult is that we were all conditioned as children by a simple sequence of words – “Don’t talk to strangers”. The first challenge is to defy that conditioning, and I’ve found that the easiest way to resolve this is to understand that pretty much everybody else is feeling the same as you. Getting over the initial “fear” is one thing; however, to succeed in a network, here are some simple rules that have worked for me, and I am sure if you choose to employ them they could have significant benefit to you too.

Have a plan

Regardless of the size of the event, it is unlikely that you can develop lasting business relationships with all in the room, and I am certain that there will be some people who will be of considerable more value than others. Set a goal and stick to it. It may be to make a number of new connections or to set a meeting with a specific person. Just turning up and seeing what happens is leaving your success to chance.

Know what you are going to talk about

Starting a conversation is the hardest thing to do when entering a room full of strangers. To open conversation, the easiest place to start is to talk about a subject that you all have  in common. The one subject that you all have in common is the event you are at. As such, plan a series of questions related to the event.

Talk of how you help people

“So what do you do then?” This is a question that you are almost guaranteed to be asked, yet each time I witness it,  the receiver of the question looks startled and bemused , hesitantly giving their job title or profession as the answer. Your goal from this question is to open a conversation by being interesting to them. So when asked this question please rephrase it in your head to “How do you help people?” And answering that question instead.

Sell to the room

This goes against what you are often told when networking, yet is based on the simple reality that your best referrals come from existing customers. Therefore to gain a quantity of referrals, you need a good number of customers within your network. Now this does not mean forcing your products or services on people, but simply having a simple entry-level offering that makes it easy for people to try your offerings.

By utilizing some, if not all, of the above tips I am sure you will reap significant returns. Good luck in your networking!

Growth Management Skills

The World is Shrinking!

The biggest change in the way we now communicate globally is the revelation of social media. Its impact has been so huge that we can now communicate across the planet with such ease that our marketplaces have got significantly larger, and our networks are now much easier to reach.

For those unaware of what the term ‘social media’ relates to, it is the collective term of platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, and these forms of media are changing the way that we now communicate. This shift in communications sounds drastic, and for many we are fearful of change – particularly when there is technology involved. However, this is nothing new; this is just modern day word of mouth, and as a tool for building business is like stepping back in time. This is about building relationships with your customers and community, as well as understanding what others are saying about you, to build your brand and grow your business.

In this article, I want to give you the basics in a simple process that all can follow, get you off to a great start with social media and ensure that it can start to help you and your business. One thing I am not is an expert. However, I have used social media with great results for both my own business and for clients, and I am happy to share those lessons with you.

First Impressions Count!

Just like in the real world, you never get a second chance to make a first impression when it comes to social media. Before you open for business, I would seriously recommend that you take the time to fully complete your profiles.

On LinkedIn, this means completing all fields from start to finish. It serves as your online CV, and if you were looking for a new job then you would certainly make sure that your CV shared the right message and was complete. On Twitter, you only have a few characters, so ensure that your biography delivers a strong message that intrigues people to find out more.

On all platforms, the visual appearance is also critical. You can use certain areas to apply your brand identity and convey your business message. This can be done simply and easily by speaking with your designers to create the correct sized artwork. Consider your photography. These are social platforms, so images should be warm, friendly and not too corporate, and I believe should always include the image of a person and not just that of a company logo.

Build Audience

Once you are all set up most people start to worry about their outbound content. Now your content and posts are important, yet only when people are listening. Social media is particularly useful as a communication tool to the people that already know you, so I would start there. If using it for business, then my first action would be to connect with as many of your existing customers and contacts as possible. You can do this by uploading your contacts as a database and sending out an invitation. Additionally you should look to use all current communication tools to let people know that you are active on social media. This means adding social media icons to your e-mail signature and stationery, informing all your customers when you write to them, making it a news story on your website and adding leaflets or posters in the view of your customers to entice them to your profiles. To actually get them to your profiles is harder than just asking though, so running a competition or great offer to reward them for visiting your profiles, and connecting with you, will drastically improve your chances. Remember that investing in this audience is critical in achieving social media success; without an audience, your great work could be wasted.

Be interesting

When it comes to content, the key is to remember that these are social platforms. Very few people are enjoying times on social media because they want to be sold to. To be interesting, you need to be varied with your communication and show yourself as human. If your message becomes
monotonous, you become boring and people stop listening, so keep your outbound content varied. For me this means posting in 3 areas:

- Firstly, commenting on or sharing useful information relating to your wider industry as a whole.

- Secondly, presenting your products and services but only with customer focused offers relating to the action that precedes the sale and not the sale itself. For example, if you were a car retailer, you should provide an offer to get people to visit the showroom and not to buy the car.

- Finally, be human. To succeed in Social Media, you must be prepared to share some personal information. Life and family events, as well as successes and failures, are great ways of starting dialogue.

Please remember that the aim of posting content is to start a conversation or encourage debate. Starting conversation with your contacts opens you up to their contacts and then your network grows!

Growth Management Skills

Account Management

We All Spend Time, Money And Effort Finding New Customers So We Can Grow Our Business. However, The Opportunity Of Growth Is Typically Among The Customers We Already Have.

Getting the most from our existing customers is a skill that is often overlooked, but can bring incredible results when perfected. I believe that the reason new customers are pursued with such vigor is that they always appear more exciting. The thrill of the chase can be addictive and emotionally more rewarding. By adopting this technique, we are not only overlooking our existing contacts, but missing substantial opportunities.

Ask yourself the following questions:

- Are you aware of your customer’s future plans?

- Do your existing customers know all the services you provide?

- Do you review your customer accounts at least every 6 months?

- Do you make regular contact with your contacts who never became customers?

If you have answered NO to any of these questions, you are losing out on winning business and making money.

Develop a systemized process

Great sales procedures avoid the requirement of individual brilliance. Integrating your process with a CRM (contact management system) will ensure that nothing gets missed and all promises are kept.

Design a method that details your ideal customer experience. Play out every eventuality from initial contact through to first meeting and onwards to close. You will know how to arrive at the desired outcome and how that is best achieved. Create a template for each e-mail and letter at each stage and develop a flow chart to record your process. Attach the relevant communication to each stage of the process and ensure this policy is followed. Also consider what happens once the prospect has made a decision. Continue this process with a number of scheduled communications, and integrate this into your CRM system.

Create a product matrix

Consider every product and service you offer and every customer you do business with. Plot this information on a matrix. Can you see the gaps? Now you know exactly the potential new business within your reach and what you need to discuss with each client.

Vary communication methods

Continually change the way you communicate with your clients and prospects. Every method has its place, but bear in mind that all will lose impact and minimize effect if used consistently. Consider social media tools, email with images, text messages, direct mail, pick up the phone or speak face to face. Variety will keep your contacts interested and engaged.

Hold review meetings

Your customers are your most valuable asset. They should be cherished and nurtured. Holding regular meetings with your customers presents you with the opportunity to under sell and over deliver. Introduce them to valuable contacts, techniques and processes that will help them develop their business or reduce costs. The key purpose of the meeting is to establish opportunities and discover how you can help them further. Determine problems you can fix or goals you can help them realize. Understanding your client’s plans and challenges presents you with an abundance of ways you can help them.

These are all practices you can implement immediately.

What are you waiting for?

Leadership Marketing Skills

How to Prove Your Future Worth to Customers

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 4, 2017
No Comments on How to Prove Your Future Worth to Customers

Many of us are great at what we do, and the very fact that you are reading this article demonstrates your desire to continue to grow. However, many of us do a great job of keeping our fantastic track record a secret from our potential customers.

Sporting greats are judged by what they achieve, and clubs recruit new managers based on their previous results. The same can be said when looking for new suppliers. If you can demonstrate that you have done a fantastic job for others in the past, it goes a long way towards suggesting you will do a good job for them too. This is more than having testimonials hidden away on your website, in a filing cabinet or in a folder in your bottom drawer, along with your customer letters.

In today’s age, social proof is one of the best convincers you have and growing your social proof can be a huge contributor in helping you win more business. Now, the distribution of your social proof is important. However, before you can showcase it, you must ensure that you collect it.

The first bit of advice I would give is that if you don’t ask, then you don’t get. We are all busy people, and taking the time to say nice things about each other in a usable way is rarely top of the list; therefore, we have to help jump it up the list.

Asking after you have delivered your product or service is likely to bring you a better response than after that moment has passed.

Asking in a format that makes it easy for them is also highly likely to bring a better return. The two forms that have worked well for us are video and of course, LinkedIn.

Just asking will bring you huge results, but being prepared will help even further. The ability to record video on the spot will have you leaps ahead of your competition, and asking at every opportunity will give you heaps of great video to showcase what others say about you.

Once you get good at asking you’ll have so much content that you’ll want and need to get in front of people. This is some of the stuff that we do which has had fantastic results, and could work for you too:

Point people from emails to your Linkedin profile to read recommendations
Leave written testimonials in a folder in the office reception
Photograph written testimonials and post on Facebook
Distribute video testimonials across the social networks
Encourage others to post their positive comments on Facebook and Twitter
Update website testimonials as often as possible and ensure they are easily visible
Utilize the words of others in marketing literature

The simple lesson in all of the above is to put your social proof in front of as many people as possible. However, the real trick is to ensure that every testimonial can be traced back to its source.

Ensuring that your future customers can see the credibility in the source of your social proof will add to its effectiveness which is the bit that makes it all worthwhile.

Growth Leadership Skills

Winning Language: What to Say on Social Media Platforms

Post author By Phil Jones
Post date October 3, 2017
No Comments on Winning Language: What to Say on Social Media Platforms

In the world of sales, often the only distinguishing factor that we have is the words that come out of our mouths or the ones that we type. There’s one challenge that I bump into time and time again for nearly everybody in business, and that is to have more useful conversations with people who fit their target market, that have qualified in and which will bring better results.

There are stacks of people right now using the social networks to try and promote their business, and one of the most common mistakes is all that they are doing is trying to sell. They are broadcasting messages left, right and center saying “buy from me, buy from me, buy from me, buy from me” creating a monotone approach that certainly doesn’t engage.

In terms of different platforms, I’m talking about what we do on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for the purpose of lead generation.

It’s unlikely in your business that somebody’s going to read a Facebook post, watch a short YouTube video, read a tweet or a LinkedIn update and instantaneously jump to the position of wanting to be a customer.

You will rarely win business directly. If we get our minds right, the best strategy for those tools is to generate conversations with our target market. We’re looking to start a conversation, and that’s what our language should dictate. This means asking questions of people as opposed to making statements.

I was working with a business a short while ago that helps people save money. They said “Phil, how do we use Facebook to generate more of the right kind of people to speak to?” What they were doing was making broadcast after broadcast of case studies of people and how it would save them money, hoping that that was going to capture attention. I said “let’s just try something by alternative. Let’s just try a question”. The question I asked them to try was “if I could show you a way to save $500 a month, then what would you spend the money on?” That was the question I asked in a social context, and rather than the typical response that this client had, add one or two random comments, within 45 minutes the post had 70-80 comments on it. This created an instantaneous prospect list for that person to follow up.

A travel company wanted to speak to more people about their holidays (I’m pretty sure we could all think of somewhere we would rather be). So the post that we put out on Twitter and LinkedIn and on Facebook simply said “if you could be anywhere else in the world right now, where would you be and why?” A stream of people shared places that they would rather be and why they would be there, which allowed the company to make direct contact with those people to help them to make those dreams into reality.

Instead of making statements, we’re better off asking questions. Not talking about what we do, talking about the results of what we do. Accept that people probably won’t buy from that award winning post but, if we ask them a good enough question, they will join the conversation. We can then educate and understand more about their circumstances and then we can start to recommend our product, service or solution to help them achieve they want.

If you want to succeed in these platforms, be a great conversation starter. Stop trying to do the whole job in one sitting, and you’ll be amazed on what happens onwards from there, purely by starting more conversations, keeping those conversations going and then enjoying the rewards that they bring.

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