How to Cheat Your Sales Numbers and Increase Your Odds of Success
As a branding agency, we think of branding and marketing as a way to support sales and drive revenue. By thoroughly understanding your company’s revenue goals, you can learn how to work backwards to “cheat your sales numbers” and make sure your efforts are going to produce the desired results. The more you know how to cheat your numbers, the more you increase your odds of getting new business. Here are eight ideas you should apply to your business to increase your odds of success:
1) Know your numbers
Know just how much marketing and sales activity you need to have in your pipeline in order for you to obtain your forecasted revenue goals and objectives. Understand and know your close ratio and how that affects your numbers.
2) Have a large pool of prospects in the database
Most companies don’t understand that marketing and sales is a numbers game, it takes a large pool of quality suspects and prospects in the database to make the numbers work in your favor. So to cheat your numbers and reach your sales/revenue goals, you must have a big pool of prospects that you consistently stay in touch with.
3) Use a CRM tool/database
It is consistently baffling that there are a number of companies that don’t have enough suspects and prospects to call upon to get the results they are aiming for. Even more surprising is the number of companies that do not utilize a true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. A CRM system can help manage the client information and provide help and real-time information on how you’re tracking against those numbers. Many companies are still relying on an outdated excel sheet to “manage” their clients, when using a CRM tool is far more effective.
4) Regularly reach out and touch prospects
They say most sales people give up after 3-4 touches, which sounds about right; yet they say it takes 7-12 touches in order for a prospect to get to know your company and make a purchasing decision. Make sure you are a company that makes enough touches to get them in your store.
5) Use strategic partners to help build relationships
One of the most effective things companies can do is to tap into strategic partners for referrals and co-market each other’s products or services to both customer bases. Utilizing a key contact for leverage and an introduction is priceless and often can be one of the most effective things companies can do to shorten the sales cycle. Get a quality referral, and stretch your marketing efforts.
6) Identify your unique position and own your space
It is critical to not only be different, but also have strong value points spelled out clearly and concisely. These value points need to verbalize why you are better and what differentiates your company, making you the clear choice and the only real option available.
7) Utilize a strong call to action
In order to help get the response you need for your marketing, advertising and sales efforts, make sure you have a strong call to action. To do this, utilize an impending date or deadline that a special offer expires, a value add that they can only get for a limited amount of time, or an added incentive or bonus to sweeten the deal if you act now.
8) Reevaluate and refine your efforts
To ensure you’re going to reach your goals, you need to consistently evaluate whether your efforts are producing the desired results. If they aren’t, you will need to make adjustments, tweak your offer, or find other strategic partners that understand the benefits of a reciprocal partner relationship.
Cheating your sales numbers is like adjusting the carburetor on your car, a little fine tuning is sometimes required to have a smooth running engine. Once you get the engine running just the way you want it, you can blow the doors off your competitors.
It’s July – we just had our Independence Day and we have been in a recession for years. Millions of people are and have been out of work. We are facing a debt and budget crisis. Our political parties seem to just be jockeying for positioning instead of getting real things accomplished. The people of America want and a need a Brand Champion.
Brand Champions don’t come up with catchy slogans or cool-looking logos. No, they understand that real results come from developing a brand promise that people can get their arms around, and they deliver on that promise by creating a great brand experience, consistently.
America is just like any other business or organization that needs a leader to take charge. Who will define what an organization wants to get accomplished, craft and create how that is going to happen, and execute that on a consistent basis. We need someone – anyone – within our government to step up and be our Brand Champion, and act as a leader who builds consensus and builds bridges. We need someone who has not just an idea or an agenda, but a real action plan. Someone who has tactics that will help us as a country overcome our problems, (debt and budget) and put people back to work. This requires a Brand Champion that all people, not just one party or the next, but all people can believe in, stand behind, support and have faith in.
Like other brands our Brand Champion has to be real, in that he can connect with his constituency with real ideas. He must use tactics that will show signs that we are making real progress. He can’t be all hat and no cattle, he has to deliver the goods and produce economic stability that helps businesses and the markets buy into his plan. This plan needs to work and signal stability, and with that stability, businesses can start to hire again: bringing down the unemployment rate, stabilizing the housing market, and generating cash into the marketplace.
America and I need a Brand Champion that we can believe in, whoever this Brand Champion is will probably get elected or re-elected this coming year. Whether that Champion is our current president or someone else, I pray that this Brand Champion stands up soon and leads the charge to a real plan that produces results, because that is what real Brand Champions do. They deliver real results through their leadership, consensus building and ability to get things done and execute.
Will our America’s next Brand Champion please stand up, NOW?
Do you think about your value proposition and how it is helping your business? According to a recent survey by Marketing Experiments only 10% of businesses are considered to have a strong, unique value proposition and an overwhelming 30% have no real value proposition.
Considering how important value propositions are in every process of business plans and branding this is startling and makes us wonder how you can set yourself apart and captivate your audience.
Paul Cheney, a blogger for Marketingsherpa Blog offers some important advice on these issues and how to distinguish yourself among competition. He notes how in the movie “Elf,” Buddy, played by Will Ferrell, believes a storefront sign boasting “The World’s Best Cup of Coffee.” We as consumers know not to believe such a claim so, the issue many companies are faced with is creating a value prop that is believable and different from competitors.
Cheney says that a value prop will not be determined it is discovered. This involves a certain shift in thinking and can be created with the implementation of these steps.
1.) Why buy from you over your competitor?
2.) Compare what you are saying with what your competitor is saying, if your competitor can say the same thing about their products and business without lying then you do not have a strong value proposition.
3.) Your value proposition must be instantly credible, use a statistic with as much specific information as possible.
4.) You need to be able to test your value proposition by making it visible in every step of your sales process.
I want to introduce you to the Brand Champion’s blog. Over my 20-year marketing and branding career, I have realized that successful companies and brands succeed because they have a Brand Champion — someone who “champions” the business cause — pushing them to be the very best they can be, ultimately reaching their goals and objectives.
Branding isn’t only about logos, websites or looking cool. No, it’s about real business results. I have worked with hundreds of clients over the years and one thing stays consistent: the top brands have a leader who is committed to driving the company to be the best, being the best, and owning the space in which you do business in. They also identify and bring on the best people that produce the best results. I call these leaders Brand Champions.
You don’t have to be the CEO to be a Brand Champion. You just have to be committed and willing to kick ass and produce real results. In this blog I will periodically introduce you to all kinds of Brand Champions – those who live for their brand, set the company up for success, and set good examples for brand ambassadors — individuals within the organization who may someday represent the brand and be a Brand Champion.
If you have a Brand Champion within your company that should be recognized for their efforts, let us know and we’ll highlight them.
Most of us have a favorite color, all of us know what color our mother thinks looks best on us (and which colors look horrid) and consciously or not we all associate certain feelings with certain colors:
Our eyes absorb light, convert it into a form of energy and allow us to see color. The way that people feel or react to certain colors, or why they choose to favor one color over the next, alludes to how it makes them feel. Scientists have studied this energy for years to understand how certain colors affect our moods, health, and thought-process. And it’s a good thing they have because color has the ability to condition an action, for example (and for effect), consumer buying habits. In layman’s terms, the color of a product or a brand can encourage or dissuade a sale.
Let’s do a quick mind test. Think of a brand for each of these colors:
Red
Yellow
Blue
Green
Now, think of a color for each of these brands:
Pepsi
Campbell’s soup
McDonalds
Gap
I bet that when you pictured each brand you immediately knew how you felt about that brand, if you liked it or not. In some cases, you may have remembered the last time you enjoyed a warm bowl of tomato soup or how you could really go for a cool refreshing soda right about now.
The color of a logo, website, package, etc. is the first impression that is remembered and registered by consumers. It will be the color associated to the brand. If the color sends the right message and invokes the right feeling to a consumer, the company may encourage a sale and a brand ambassador. There’s good reason why brand management is occasionally referred to as the study of science and art. To have a successful, lasting brand, it takes more than listening to the customer, it takes understanding their emotions and how those emotions trigger their purchasing decisions.
So the next time someone asks you what your favorite color is, know that they may actually be reading a little farther into your personality.
Hello! My name is Madeline Smith, I go by “Maddie” and recently graduated from the University of Colorado in May of 2010 with a Communication degree. I grew up south of Boston right on the harbor or “hahbah” as Bostonians would call it…they tend to frown upon the pronunciation of R’s. I decided to leave Boston for college after witnessing my sister’s lifestyle throughout her four years at CU. Although, I miss the ocean, I love the never-ending sunny days, mild winters, compared to Bean Town, and of course the fresh powder out west.
During my senior year of college I worked with a natural consumer goods company, Justin’s Nut Butter based out of Boulder, Colorado. I loved working with a start-up company and was able to dive into many PR, Marketing, and Advertising aspects from a client perspective. I also loved working in an industry with two of my passions; food and health. This exposure made me want to get into the agency side of this line of work. After making the big move from Boulder to Denver I did some contract PR and Marketing work for Scream Agency. I realized I wanted to stay in the agency side loving the variety of clientele and day to day work.
I am thrilled to be apart of the Brand Iron team. I love the diversity of clients, the work we do, and of course the team here at Brand Iron, Patches included. I am looking forward to baseball season as well….but not The Rockies…Go Red Sox!
Minus the long hair and leather pants, today seems a little too much like the 80’s if you ask me. It was the time where being rebellious was “cool” along with listening to “the devil’s music” and smoking cigarettes after school. Today’s cigarettes and devil’s music are still around; they’ve just changed a little. Today its racy television shows and gory video games that are making parents cringe. And the more the parents seem to cringe, the more the kids seem to watch, buy, and play.
Advertisers are using this to the fullest extent. The popular video game DeadSpace2 has built its entire advertising platform on the slogan “your mom will hate this”. And television shows are using movie like ratings PG-13 and R as a bragging right instead of a warning. So why the big move towards “rebellious” advertisements? It seems the more outrages the ad or promotion, the more controversy. And controversy means people are talking about your product, service, goods, etc. and that’s exactly what advertisers want.
Check out this Redbull ad which blatantly advertises one-night stands and “hook-ups” with multiple people. Do you think it’s appropriate? Does it make you want to drink a Redbull?
Another TV spot getting some major attention is the MTV show Skins, based off of a British teen show, the new hit is causing quite a stir among parents as it depicts “the life of real American teenagers.” The controversy might have something to do with the fact that these “real” teenagers are drug addicts, alcoholics, party-animals, and law breakers. So would you let your kids watch this? And if you told them they couldn’t do you think they’d find a way to watch it anyways?
The bottom line is it works – this is nothing new, we saw it in the 80’s with rock and roll, we saw it in the 90’s with sex and today is no different. If you tell kids their parents will hate it, or don’t want them to see it, it makes them want it more.
Have a comment? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you think about these new ad’s and the impact on kids.
Hi, my name is Kassandre (in short, Kassie) and I am the newest Brand Manager here at Brand Iron. I hail from Madison, Wisconsin and yes, I do like cheese, own a Cheesehead, think brats provide a great source of happiness, and feel any winter day above 20 degrees is a heat wave.
Before trading lakes for mountains, I lived in Europe and South America, experienced my first Heli Ski Trip, and discovered my innate favoring of the right side of my brain. I took my first job out of college with a food marketing and advertising agency in Minneapolis, MN, combining my love of food and creative story telling (about said food). I got my fill working in production, media relations, traffic management, and account services. With my never-ending quest to learn more, I took my shiny new skills to Target Corporation and learned that there can never be enough training on what to do if pirates take hold of your shipping vessel. I am not lying. While at Target, I worked in strategic sourcing and imports. Right off the bat, Target hit the bullseye and positioned me in the Ready-To-Wear clothing team, and then the shoe team. I oversaw the entire import process from sourcing the vendor, analyzing sales trends, planning and purchasing, to shipping products safely to Target stores without any trace of Captain Morgan.
Deciding not to endure another indescribably cold mid-west winter, I packed my boot-bag and skis (and a few other items) and made my way out-west. I fulfilled a lifelong dream of being a ski bum before rejoining civilization at Daniels College of Business earning an MBA in integrated marketing and brand management. During my two years as a student, I competed and won the Race & Case Competition, consulted with a local marketing firm, and came across a company that believed in the power of branding as strongly as I. Enter, Brand Iron.
I am beyond excited to be a part of this creative bunch of engaging, intelligent people and look forward to telling the gravitating brand stories of our clients!
So if you have not already, stop by, say “Hi!” and bring me some cheddar!
I’m sure you’ve already noticed that Brand Iron recently launched a new website. But why???
Actually, I was asked a great question yesterday: “How do you know when it’s time to redo your website.”
There are many reasons to update your site: refresh graphics, add functionality, restructure navigation, add a call-to-action – but the main reason we updated our site was because the message didn’t accurately reflect the high level of support we provide our clients.
Our previous website didn’t communicate the true value we were delivering to our clients. Yes, we still do websites, we still do PR, we still do corporate IDs – but we do those things as a part of an integrated plan to help your business succeed. We have also developed new programs for developing brand champions, helping companies get acquired or go public, raising capital, etc.
We help our clients determine the activities that will make the biggest impact to their bottom lines. We take a holistic look at their brand and company – and help them forge the plan that will make them competitive in their market. Brand Iron works with our clients to drive short- and long-term revenue while identifying the activities that will make the biggest impact.
If your message has changed and you need to reposition yourself in the market, contact Brand Iron today. We’ll help you develop an integrated plan to drive short- and long-term revenue to your business.
It was the beginning of my sophomore year and the entire student body at USC had just gained access to the newbie social networking site. We learned that Facebook originated at Harvard, spread to the other Ivy’s and finally made the 3,000 miles journey west to Stanford, UCLA, and USC. My friends and I carefully crafted our retrospectively primitive profiles by adding birthdays, classes and other basic information. We agonized over the perfect profile picture because if you recall, users were only offered one pixilated representation.
Recently Facebook has undergone scrutiny regarding their privacy settings. It seems that people are suddenly feeling violated by the somewhat complicated privacy options. In fact, recently I have found myself defending Facebook’s honor whenever a disloyal user casually threatens to un-friend the online sphere. I stand by my conviction that social networking will only further infiltrate our society; there is no sense in fighting an inevitable. I’m sure there was much controversy over e-mail in its infantile stage; how impersonal! Can you imagine not using it now?
Honestly, having been a Facebook user for six harmonious years has afforded me the luxury of growing with the network. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have introduced countless changes and tweaks every year, which has made understanding what Facebook is today fairly seamless for long-time members, such as myself.
However, every one of those new additions was met with resistance from users, because people don’t like change. Some people might remember the controversy over the introduction of the news feed about three years ago. The modification took some adjusting, but right on its heels followed its cousin, Twitter.
But back to the privacy uproar of present. Yes, more information is available online; your information to be exact. However, skeptics tend to overlook that users are in full control of how much information is given. The only real requirements are your full name and email, which is a heck of a lot less incriminating than ordering a pair of shoes online.
While the sharing of personal information is admittedly a scary subject, it’s the future. I suppose I just don’t find our future to be bleak. The world wide transmission of information has led to so many wonderful reunions and created an easy way to connect. I personally keep in touch with literally hundreds of people I would have otherwise let fall to the wayside of my life. Aside from personal connections, I feel more connected to the world in general, and I don’t even mind being shown targeted advertisements every three seconds.
Bottom line: Next time you get frustrated/upset because you keep getting Farmville invitations or you just saw that your Ex is engaged…rethink pressing the delete button. The truth is you’ll only end up signing up again once you get bored/curious/over your Ex.
