Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Sales 2.0

Pat Mason, Simple Sales

Many people are writing about the new crop of social media tools, also called Web 2.0 and how they can be applied to business. This article is about Sales 2.0, or how these tools can help you sell to your customers more effectively.

Let’s start with a definition. Sales 2.0 is a term that refers to the use of on-line tools that can help establish and manage a community for the purpose of selling. Examples would be blogs, RSS feeds and so on.

Now for a little science. How does Sales 2.0 work? As is often the case, the tools alone don’t do the trick. If they did, I wouldn’t be writing this article, I’d simply set up a blog and let the money roll-in!

Effective use of Sales 2.0 tools boils down to three things. Process, community, and technology or what we will call “tools”.

Before you apply technology, you need to make sure you have a process to connect and organize sales activities from beginning to end. If you don’t have one already, find one that is simple and straightforward. This will make it easy to understand, implement and most importantly use.

Next up is community. What people do you want to include in yours and why? It’s important to recognize that Sales 2.0 is not just focused on sellers and buyers. In Sales 2.0, anyone can get involved!

Your community is key to your success so it’s important to think carefully about who will be in it, and how they will help you sell. One way to tackle this exercise is to lay out your sales process, and then imagine who could help you at each step in the process and how. If you don’t know what the tools can do, you can pause here and go find out, or you can simply make an assumption that once you create this communityyou will find the tools to suit your needs.

Finally, think about the tools. For the first time, the tools are available to quickly, easily and cheaply reach a mass audience. What you will find is that Sales 2.0 tools are very people friendly too. They are web based and easily support rich content such as images, audio, and video. This makes them easy to set-up and dare I say it, fun to use. Most importantly, they are also built to connect people together quickly and easily letting you create and manage a community like never before. Think of it as technology with a built in snowball effect.

So, what kind of community will you build?

My next article will provide examples of exactly what tools are being used in each step of the sales process, and how they can be used to help you sell! If you want to know more, please visit me at www.simplesales.ca or drop me a line Patrick@simplesales.ca

Patrick Mason is the principal and owner of Simple Sales, a venture that is all about making sales and sales consulting better. Way better. Simple Sales looks to improve our clients’ sales results quickly, effectively and in lasting and meaningful ways. We do this by drawing on our experience in sales, sales methodology, and where appropriate the focused application of technology to capture opportunities and solve problems.

Related Topics: Business, Entrepreneurship, Sales, Technology    1 Comment    

Raving Fans and Loyal Customers = More Sales (Pt.4)

A Loyalty Measure for Businesses of All Sizes - Net Promoters

The idea of Net Promoters of your business is a quick and easy way to identify the positive, raving fans (net promoters) vs. the detractors of your brand.

The concept is based on one question: Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague? Then answer is provided in a format of 0 for “extremely negative” to 10 ” extremely positive.”

What does a high percentage say about a company? A higher Net Promoter score has been correlated to a future increase in sales and referral sales. Categories of responses are shown below:

Promoters ( those who answer 9 or 10) are loyal enthusiasts who keep buying from a company and spread the word to their network

Passive (7 or are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers that can easily be lost to competition

Detractors (0 to 6) are unhappy and will stop their relationship with the company at the first opportunity

NPS (Net Promoter Score) = % of Promoters - % of Detractors

Why is this metric important? Especially to a small business.

1. It is easy to implement and monitor over time, it is for all intensive purposes one question.

2. It is easy to score and monitor over time.

3. It is easy to explain and understand.

For more information on Net Promoters: www.netpromoter.com

Loyalty as Part of a Program

The most common form of loyalty is seen in programs from Credit Card or Airline type programs. These are incentive programs, not true loyalty programs. The test of loyalty is if the program discontinued, will the customers stay. If not, it is an incentive. The use of incentives are perfectly fine, however, understand why your customers are staying with your business.

However, non-conventional loyalty programs are less incentive based. They can be internal programs for service, sales or marketing; goals to hit shipping times, quality tests, or customer service levels. It all adds up to loyalty.

It is a key driver of success for enduring businesses, small and large. The importance of knowing your customer groups, their lifecycle, needs/wants that drive their purchase behavior and finally consistent measures of loyalty that correlate to increased revenue. It is a long journey to understand your customer; loyalty is a large part of the journey of that understanding.

Related Topics: Branding, Business, Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Sales    No Comments