Author Archives: Alex

SURVEYS

Information is Power

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• Don’t let yourself be intimidated by the jargon
• You can do it yourself, outsource it all, or go for a combined approach
• You have to know your audience, their habits and their preferences to make the right business decisions
• Make up your questionnaire by listing the info you really need to know
• This may include customer info, competitor & brand preferences, perception of your business
• You may also harvest crucial contact data through a survey
• Choose the best channel/s to run the survey – in-store/onsite, electronic survey forwarded by email, on your web site or FB page, over the phone, physically interacting with consumers in public places
• Sample size can vary greatly, often a minimum of 500 questionnaires is required
• Analysis may be quite easily done using simple spreadsheets
• Make sure you utilise the results to adjust your business development and marketing

FULL ARTICLE

Market research, sampling, survey methodology, client perception survey, survey data collection, statistical reports, questionnaire construction, data analysis – the jargon goes on and on and on.

What I would suggest to the uninitiated is to simply ignore all of the above and simply ask themselves one thing. What are the important details and the crucial information about their market and their customers which would be vital to have in hand?

It might be these daunting terms and the seemingly insurmountable complexity of surveys that put so many businesspeople off this extremely vital function.

Do not steer your business in the blind. You cannot operate in the dark. Your assumptions are much further from the truth than you believe. No matter how improbable this might sound, the reality is such that the more you know your business perfectly from the inside, the less you know it from the outside.

It is therefore always best to stop guessing and assuming and to collect some real facts and figures.

You can do it all yourself, you can outsource it all, or you could also combine both with a mixed approach. Whichever direction you take it will always serve you well to know the basics.

Start off simply and logically from the beginning and ask yourself the most basic questions.

What would you like to know? Is it who your clients are? In that case your questions will relate to relevant issues such as gender, age, marital status, location of residence, occupation and interests.

You might want to know their purchasing behaviour and ask questions such as how much they spend, how often they buy, how and where they purchase and why, what they look for before buying and even test some of your sales ideas to see if these sound attractive or not.

You could also focus largely on your competitors and inform yourself perfectly of how the market is divided and why. In this case your questions will be based on asking for preferences of suppliers/outlets, brands, product types, pricing and other related issues. This could be given different perspectives. You could ask the customers to quote names themselves, you could ask them to comment upon your pre-established lists, or you could also ask them what each of your selected competitors signify to them and to what they associate each one of them to.

Your survey could also focus on the perception both customers and non-customers have of your business. You could start by asking who and how they heard of you initially, then inquiring about the products they purchase from you and the ones they don’t, their likes and dislikes, their suggested improvements to what you offer and gauge their satisfaction in various aspects and levels.

Many surveys are in fact a mix of all or several of the above. Often surveys are also utilised to obtain customer contact details which are then used directly for marketing purposes. However always keep in mind that people’s time, patience and attention span are very short, so your questionnaire must be brief, or at least look brief. In many cases consumers are offered some form of reward or incentive for completing the survey.

You then need to identify the best channel to run your survey and here again there are many convenient options. If it is a client perception survey where you are targeting your existing clients, then by far the most practical method might be to conduct an in-store/onsite survey, as that is where you can most easily find them. Otherwise you could create an electronic survey via many of the dedicated web sites and forward this via email and other online methods to your contacts. You could create a dedicated area on your web site or Facebook page. You can also conduct telephone surveys and you could engage interviewers to physically interact with consumers, either in public places, or in strategic locations.

The size of your sample base is another decision you will have to make based on practicality and resources. It is obvious that the more data and information you collect the richer and the more precise your data bank will become. In most cases the benchmark of 500 questionnaires is taken as a minimum quantity, but this too depends entirely on the circumstances at hand.

So this leaves us with the analysis of the data collected, which again does not need to be a weird and wonderful science. You can do miracles with a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Create a column for each separate question/reply and enter all the data accordingly. Naturally you can create pop down menus for the answers with set replies to speed up the process of data entry.

Once all the data has been duly entered, you can create different sheets presenting the replies in different formats and each sorted accordingly. Add in your formulas and calculations to indicate totals, subtotals, averages, medians, etc. And you can finish it all nicely by also including any percentages you find of interest. Percentages may be calculated for the same answer within the same column, as in how many of these people purchase product ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’. It may also be calculated across different columns/questions, as in how many people over 40 purchase product ‘a’.

The permutations are endless and you may analyse any data against another, finishing off with figures and proportions of say females, who have heard of you, but who have never purchased from you (non-clients), who shop at competitor x, but who would shop from you if you stocked product ‘y’.

The last and by far the most important factor in all of this is that you do not conduct the survey for nothing. Quite incredulously this is often the case. A survey is commissioned, conducted and analysed and the data sits in someone’s in-box/tray for months on end, until it is filed somewhere in the dark never again to see the light of day.

Conducting a survey is a very good idea. But only if you then read and reflect on the finding and truly use them to adjust your overall business plan, your marketing strategy and your promotions accordingly.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Aim For The Bullseye And You Might Come Close

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• Find out your market audience before you embark on any business project
• Many crucial initial decisions depend on your market audience
• Main factors are : age, gender, location, marital status, income, social standing, profession, lifestyle, interests and pastimes
• Your audience could also be segmented into various subgroups
• Will your audience remain local, regional, national, or international
• You may conduct surveys, questionnaires, interviews & focus groups
• Inexpensive methods also include sourcing data online, online groups & platforms, informal chat and surveying competitors
• Also find out how these people communicate, chat and purchase similar products
• All your marketing spend should be focused on this audience and communicated through the same media and platforms
• If you are a B-to-B not a B-to-C business the same principles apply

FULL ARTICLE

Knowing your target audience is one of the very first steps any business needs to make, whatever its type. This crucial knowledge will help you to decide on virtually everything – name, slogan, style, location, products, services, specialisations, customer focus and above all – your marketing type and spend.

We all want as many people as possible to get to know of our business. But the trick is to ensure that these people are potential customers who might be inclined to buy from us. Furthermore, as getting others to know about our business always costs time, effort and money, you will get infinitely more Euro for Euro from directing your marketing spend strictly to your target audience. Any other approach would simply dilute your marketing effort considerably.

What are the key elements which identify your audience? The main ones are usually characteristics such as : age, gender, location, marital status, income, social standing, profession, lifestyle, interests and pastimes.

These factors will enable you to identify your typical customer profile which is synonymous with your target audience.

There are many ways of finding out who your audience is. The most obvious and effective are direct or primary methods such as surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and other such technical methods. These are however the most costly and laborious to conduct and to analyse.

You might also consider secondary indirect measures, such as sourcing such details online, following related discussions and fora, creating dedicated chats on social media and very simply asking around.

One of the very simplest and often effective methods is simply to ask others already operating in the same markets. Call it mystery shopping or market intelligence, or any other fancy name, but all you have to do is ask a simple question to the right people who are already in the know. Often in business, as with the rest of life, the simplest things are the best. Depending on circumstances you can choose to go in person. to phone, to email or to enquire over social media. You can equally choose whether you want to pose simply as who you really are, or a surveyor, or a student on an assignment, or a reporter. Often positioning yourself as a surveyor works best.

These secondary methods are normally much less costly than the primary ones and in most cases they are completely free of any costs. Ideally you will assign some budget for the primary methods but will always also conduct some of the latter.

Once you have established fairly clearly your market audience you can always test your results through social media groups and other online platforms by gauging people’s interest within and outside of your target groups. If you are say encouraging any form of interest or sales enquiries, you can then compare the difference in interest registered between your target groups and others, thus confirming your audience.

Once you have closely honed in on your audience, you then need to find out how these people communicate, how they operate and how they purchase. Knowing these habits is paramount to choosing your own communication methods with them.

Do they email, do they Google, do they Facebook, do they Twitter? Are they obsessed with Smartphone apps, are they addicted to social media chats and groups? Which web sites do they use? Which social media? Do they still buy newspapers and magazines? And most important of all, where and how do they shop for these products.

The answers to these questions should be exactly the way you communicate, advertise and promote to them, simply because that is where they are.

If on the other hand your clients are other businesses rather than end consumers (B to B not B to C), then similar exercises should be engaged to identify which profiles of businesses make up your target audience.

There are often cases where your audience is not so straightforward, but is made up of various subgroups, normally known as market segments. In this case the same rules apply, however you should first prioritise between each segment and allocate your marketing budget accordingly.

One factor to keep firmly in mind, is to define whether your audience will remain local, regional, national, or international. You could very easily start off by focusing on say local and regional only and then gradually target further afield.

Unless you truly have an infinite marketing budget and endless overall resources, it makes absolutely no sense to promote your business haphazardly with anyone. Know exactly who your typical clients are and find the best ways to focus all your spend and time on them.

In today’s endlessly intricate marketing world there are boundless targeting possibilities which will hit the nail right on the head and not hit your business down to the ground.

GUESTS FROM HELL, WINES FROM BEYOND

I wonder if I will have any friends left after writing this piece. I certainly hope not. Not the type I am referring to at least. But truth be said that I have been meaning to write this for ages, so anyone who has been very recently invited to our house need not feel particularly targeted, well at least not any more so than anyone else.

Truth of the matter be however, that many people are cheapskates, even to the extent of not even caring to be openly seen as such.

Those who know me well know that I anything but snobbish or pretentious, and this firmly includes matters concerning wine. I do know just a tiny little bit about wines, and I am not being overly modest I promise. As I always like to say on the topic, I really only know just the basics, but these I know well. However my knowledge on wines greatly pales in comparison even with many people I myself know personally.

What I certainly know about wine is that you must be an ignoramus to drink cheap plonk yourself, and an even bigger one to offer such a bottle of the nasty stuff to your friends when invited to their house.

I am not some hoity-toity conceited prick, who only drinks the very best. On the contrary, much of what I drink is plain old simple inexpensive wine, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be the very cheapest. I rarely allow myself the enormous pleasure of drinking very expensive wines, but this neither means that I am on some sort of death-wish to source the very cheapest and vilest plonk on the planet.

There are other gifts and tokens of appreciation you may offer to your gracious hosts when being invited. These may include flowers, in which case I doubt that you would nick them off the closest grave at your local cemetery, on your way to your friends’ house. Or pull out a couple on nondescript wild flowers which would be as wilted as your willie, when you will be ashamedly pressing that doubtful doorbell.

And if you intend taking chocolates, yet another standard gift, I doubt that you will be turning up with a mini Mars bar, being the very cheapest confectionary item you have been able to source.

So why on earth do so many people insist on offering the worse, most disgusting and cheapest wines around? Do they really think that their hosts never go to supermarkets to see these same wines marked at €3.00? Cannot they imagine that if, like me, their host happens to know even the tiniest bit about wines, even if they have brought this wine from abroad, or if for whatever reason it is not commonly available, its rough cost, and more importantly its overall quality, will still be more than obvious?

I can tell a crap wine from when our guests are still parking their car down the road, with it still being wrapped up in several bags and firmly wedged in the boot, under their shopping bags and car tool kit.

I am very tempted to say that it would be better not to take anything at all, rather than a cheap nasty wine – but I won’t. No, I won’t, because that is about the vilest and most dreadful thing you could ever do. I have been invited to exactly 12,650,432 meals and parties at friends’ houses, and yes I just counted them all right now! And not once, really never ever, have I turned up with empty hands. And ‘never’ only has one distinct meaning. In the same way that I have never turned up stark naked (unless it wasn’t incidental…) and never forgot to put on my clothes before turning up at a friend’s house, I have never ever forgotten to bear a gift upon arrival.

Admittedly, unlike clothing, there have been several times I have left home without a gift, but guess what, there are shops on the way. And don’t come say that it’s a Sunday and everything was closed, unless you like a heavy door slammed straight into your face. Virtually everything is open now, Sundays included. And if we did forget and were running very late, then I would deposit my wife, whose fault it very probably was in the first place, at our friends’ house, as a temporary token of sorts, while I would desperately go find something in the vicinity. Anything, wine, spirits, cakes, can of baked beans, in which case I only buy Heinz which is the best, but I will NOT arrive empty-handed. If on the other hand you are alone and are in this terrible plight, just take that small rectangular thing which you are probably holding in your hands right now to read this, and you make a call or send a message telling your hosts why you are further delayed. If it is a matter of buying them a gift I am sure that they won’t mind.

But never ever turn up with nothing in hand, you look like a dimwitted imbecile who has never been invited out before and who has less finesse and social skills than a floating turd bobbing aimlessly in a shitpool. Oh and this applies to everyone and in every occasion, if you think that you have been elevated to such social stature that bearing gifts is actually beneath you, then you simply look like a much larger turd in an infinitely more putrid shitpool.

So back to the wine. The vast array of wine available today at ridiculously inexpensive prices, leaves absolutely no excuse for anyone to turn up with a bottle of el cheapo. Crap wines are purchased at €2, €3 and possibly €4. If only you ‘invest’ the astronomical additional sum of say €3 you will actually elevate yourself from disgusting cheapskate or at best total dunce in matters of wine, to normal human being who graciously brought us a gift which does not mock us in our face.

Yes, that is all it takes – €3! Mark my words. And for those wiseguys who might say that a wine’s quality is not reflected by its price, I really have no intention of going into that intricate argument right here and now. This may apply to say a certain €50 bottle of wine which might be superior to another particular €60 bottle of wine. But I can guarantee that the chances of a €2.50 bottle of wine being better than a €6 bottle are very very slim.

I understand that unfortunately there are many who are still very slowly developing their wine appreciation skills and drowning themselves constantly in the cheapest wines available is not doing them any favours. Many are really under the false impression that these dirt cheap wines are much better than the dirt they truly are. I am not saying that a couple are not perhaps just about palatable enough to pass as your third or forth drunken bottle at a ten hour long party, but then again so would mild vinegar with a fancy label.

We never tend to scout around for the very worst and cheapest food. On the contrary, we by far prefer quality food even if this will cost a little bit more. There is absolutely no difference between wine and food. They both go into your mouth, are savoured on their way down, before they settle in there to give you joy and satisfaction or heartburn, indigestion, headaches and diarrhea.

So learn to truly appreciate wine. There is much more to it than simply getting drunk. Fortunately they all do that, no matter their quality and actually the good stuff is often the most potent and has the highest alcoholic content. But the flavours, the aromas, the taste, the overall pleasure and more so the aftereffects, are very very different. So if you are still at the abysmal level of drinking cooking wine, you really need to start evolving into a civilised human being.

Stop drinking crap wine! If you wear the tattiest clothes, drive the worst car, live in the dirtiest dump and only frequent the cheapest workers bars if and when you go out, then this would be perhaps acceptable. Tramps are unfortunately not the best advised and the most worldly individuals. If on the other hand you are slightly more elevated than this, then you really need to stop the terrible habit of insisting on the worst and cheapest wines around. For those are what the tramps should drink….

There is always a bright side to everything in life. Ours is that all this has greatly improved our cooking, as many of the wines we get offered end up in the pot, although admittedly some don’t even qualify for that. NOT joking! And again having some basic human pride, we wouldn’t dream of recycling plonk by passing it on to someone else as our gift to their party. We haven’t stooped to that level yet and very much never intend to either. Plonk is plonk and recycling it makes you an even bigger plonker.

When we are invited, I don’t exactly get out the calculator or take notes of the exact wines I take, but roughly this is how I function. First of all there is the smart dinner type of occasion, in which case you really do not have to take wine, as often other gifts are much more appropriate. Yes most people are stuck on wine while any other personalised gift would often be so much nicer. Also flowers, yes flowers! make an excellent gift, as they do the world over and are so often forgotten. And don’t turn up with a bloody potted plant, no, cut fresh flowers is what I am talking about. And if some idiot says that they are a waste as they will soon die, I can only say that I hope you die a little bit before them!

So back to the wine. Let us say that wine it is to a small,smart seated dinner type function. Then I would probably go for a nice red, probably priced in the region of €10. Everyone can afford €10 and with that price today you can get a very nice wine. With more informal events a €6 or €7 wine would still be very acceptable and would still not break the bank. And at the very other end of the spectrum, say at a large beach party which will last for hours on end, I would take three or four bottles of €5 wine for the two of us that is, although often I end up taking a box of six. You can find palatable cheap and cheerful wine at €5, but very rarely at less. And if there are two of us scoffing it down all afternoon and evening, taking just one or two bottles along is also an insult to the organisers. If you find that taking so many bottles is beyond your budget, then drink beer, or water, or nothing at all, or leave early, but do have the decency of not drinking up everybody else’s stock of booze.

It is funny how so many don’t mind being seen and labelled as cheap and tightfisted and mean and devoid of class, simply to save €2 or €3. They must either largely underestimate their hosts’ basic observational skills, or they have transformed themselves into such miserable, stingy bastards that they really don’t realise their own obviously wretched state.

I have purposely focused on wine here, however there are so many other equally disgusting behaviours which also merit a quick mention. I have seen some take either food or beverage items as their offering and contribution to a meal, only to ask for the leftovers back, to return with them back home. These troglodytes often come up with the dumbest and most obviously lying pile of untrue crap as an excuse, in the form of “oh it’s just that I hate waste”. Well then you must really hate yourself, you poor excuse for a wasted human being! Unless the hosts themselves are shoving it back in your face and explicitly telling you that yes, you are being treated as a trashcan, and the stuff is being given back to you rather than throwing it away, then don’t act like a trashcan yourself!

The only worst vermin on earth are those who actually ask to take home a takeaway of sorts, of stuff which they didn’t even bring themselves. Yes they too exist! Can you imagine being told that they won’t have their dessert at your place, so could you please wrap it up to go, as this would save them preparing food at home!

I, who am known for my more than dubious behaviour, who would do literally anything for a laugh, who really and truly have no sense of shyness or embarrassment, just cringe to think that some people do these things not for a giant laugh, but in the most serious of manners.

In the end I really and honestly don’t care how much people spend, that is not the real question. If they can somehow bring along something enjoyable which cost them absolutely nothing, or which they managed to purchase for 10 cents, then that is perfectly fine with me. I am using price as this is most definitely the best and most efficient indicator of quality in this particular case. I don’t want people to spend, I just don’t want to receive crap gifts which are totally useless and unsavoury and which I would never dream of purchasing myself.

A gift is something the person receiving should enjoy. If you are really that hard up that even those couple of extra Euros will hurt you, then there are still countless options. You could find a nice gift from your personal belongings. You can go fetch a peeble from the beech and paint a heart on it. You can write a little poem on the back of a card. You can print out a personalised photograph and put in the cheapest of frames. Use a bit of imagination and show your friends some love and respect.

But that horrible wine you shove down your throat every evening – you can keep that thanks. I already spend more in antacid pills than you spend on wine. And very soon we will be publishing a 500 page book called Cooking with Wine!

I wonder if I have any friends left….

TELEMARKETING

Pick up that Phone and Sell It

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• There are various aspects of telemarketing such as telesales, inbound, teleprospecting and tele-surveying
• Telemarketing needn’t be your main sales method, it may compliment your other marketing efforts
• It may be very useful to test the market before launching new products and services
• Many low profit sales meetings may be handled over the phone rather than face to face
• Telesales may also support and strengthen your sales meetings processes
• Online and offline shops may also introduce a small telemarketing sales channel
• Train one or more of your staff to do this in their spare time or intermittently when needed
• Write out a detailed well thought script before you start, which should be followed
• Try to give an incentive to clients such as a discount, a gift or an award
• Talk slowly, clearly, loudly, take your time, pause and let the customer talk. Tone should be firm, smart, polite, professional and friendly, but not over-friendly

FULL ARTICLE

Telemarketing has now been around for decades, however it is still often overlooked by many businesses. It does not need to be your main sales channel, neither the main focus of your business development. It can sometimes be effectively incorporated into your various sales and other communication methods and can be very useful to test new products and services and to obtain instant feedback from prospective customers.

Telemarketing does not solely consist of telesales, which is purely the outbound sales application of it. There is also the inbound equivalent where incoming sales related calls are received and handled. It also consists of teleprospecting which is a wider term utilised for getting to know the market better and also speaking with prospective clients to obtain general trends, besides affecting sales. While tele-surveying is the use of the telephone to conduct surveys and polls.

So although any marketing term starting with the prefix ‘tele’ usually evokes large call centres churning out thousands of unsolicited calls every day, there is a completely other side to it all. Telemarking in its many forms may be reinforced within your sales and communication processes, enabling you to operate your business much more efficiently.

Before you embark and launch a new project and establish all details and pricing, get someone to make a series of sales phone calls to get some feedback. Just a few hours work can save you weeks if not months of readjusting your product line or operation.

Before wasting entire days and big budgets in driving, parking and meeting after meeting for a possible outcome resulting in a sale of a few hundred euros, stop to consider how much more efficient and cost effective you would be by doing all this over the phone.

If you are simply renewing a membership or a subscription of sorts, might it not be so much easier to do it over the phone?

Even with bigger, more complex sales which normally merit a meeting, your sales strategy could very easily include a small exploratory sales pitch over the phone, following your obtaining of an appointment. This may start off poised simply as a quick telephone reconfirmation, which is then strategically used to reaffirm, qualify and quantify the client’s true interests, enabling you to act accordingly and in some cases even to abandon the meeting and to deal with the matter entirely over the phone.

With businesses selling products and simply waiting for the phone to ring, or for an order to come in electronically, this can also sometimes be an option. With traditionally passive offline and online shops there are many which could incorporate a small telemarketing function with specific items and aimed at a specific audience. Admittedly certain products are more suitable to be sold over the phone than others, but you would be surprised how many may be effectively marketed in this manner. And if you feel that the message cannot be properly transmitted over the phone, then it might just be a question of lack of the necessary expertise.

One of the best ways of going about it is to train somebody within your organisation at being adept in this function. It is neither hard nor is it easy. It is one of those things which simply has to be assigned to the right person. Similar to face to face dealings, some people are very comfortable with it, while others are not and would therefore be the wrong candidates for such training.

Some form of useful telemarketing can then be attempted in parallel with other sales efforts from time to time. You can also start off the frequent process of interviewing customers, non-customers, suppliers and more, over the phone on specific issues which are important to the success of your business. This is particularly useful to guide you before making any important decision such as introducing new stock or services.

Although you may very easily source or obtain your base data to call people totally at random, it is always preferable to have your own contact data and focus on this.

Always give your audience a very good reason for them to listen to you. This could come in the form of a gift, a discount, or another form of incentive, which may only be awarded upon a sale, but which is reserved specifically for customers purchasing over the phone. Before you start selling your wares ensure that you are talking to them at a good and convenient time. Never try to force yourself on someone at the wrong time. If the time happens to be unsuitable, then take the opportunity of fixing a future telephone appointment. This will already help you advance one step in the right direction, as the customer will be expecting and agreed to your next call.

Talk slowly, clearly, relatively loudly, take your time, pause and then pause again. Ask as many questions as possible, inciting the customer to open up to you. Smiling too makes a big difference to your tone and is often felt by the customer. Be firm, smart, polite, professional and friendly, but not over-friendly, making it that much easier for the client to pull out.

One of the most important techniques is to encourage and to let the customer talk. The more the customer talks and the less you do, the more involved the customer feels. Never engage in a boring monotone monologue which nobody will ever listen to.

If the customer is being negative, the very worst thing you could do is to try and stop them. On the contrary, let them release all their negativity rather than harbour it within them.

Most important of all, before you attempt any interaction over the phone, you must always first write out a precise script, indicating word for word the ideal verbal scenario and sequence of the conversation. A script however is never to be read out in repetitive fashion, but used as a general guideline of where you would like to go.

It can also be very rewarding, both for your personnel as well as for the customer, to introduce a secondary target. Each time a sale is not concluded, then at least another productive objective is achieved. This could include obtaining vital additional data on the customer, registering the customer on your website, or to receive a newsletter, or Liking your FB page, or entering into a competition or loyalty scheme.

We all work in environments with several phones placed right in front of us. But we rarely use them to their full potential.