– A Practical Viewpoint

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• ISO Certification is an internationally recognised label of quality

• It is a certified Quality Management System (QMS)

• It is relevant and may be applied to any type of business

• It is most useful in a B to B environment and with businesses of a certain complexity

• ISO may be strictly required or strongly preferred by your business clients

• It can also be effectively utilised for marketing purposes

• A QMS can greatly increase your business’s efficiency

• It also focuses greatly on customer satisfaction and feedback

• It should help you to obtain and retain clients better

• It ensures that all processes and their stages are properly logged and recorded

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ISO certification has been around for a long time. For those however, who might not be too familiar, it is an international Quality Management System (QMS), which ensures that your organisation reaches and maintains certain standards in its overall operation and its relations with the needs of its customers and stakeholders. Depending on the products and services you produce and/or offer, specific criteria based on official, commercial and management aspects, will be established and must be abided to.

It was originally designed for the industrial sector, however today it encompasses any type of business, with very few exceptions. Whether your business requires this certification may be a question you might consider at some time in its growth and progression.

It has long become a very significant, internationally recognised label of quality for any business that carries it, as it automatically indicates a high level of competence within that organisation.

There are various motivating factors which compel businesses to obtain ISO certification. One of the most frequent is because they deal directly with overseas businesses, which might even make this a strict requirement for all their partners. Even if this is not made compulsory, in certain countries and many cases, when seeking a certified partner/supplier abroad, certified organisations will always be given preference over others. Furthermore, in all cases, ISO certified organisations will always by far prefer to deal with other similarly certified businesses.

Besides these very compelling and valid reasons, obtaining such a label of quality can only indicate a certain level of professionalism and quality. So even if none of your clients and partners specifically require this from you, it automatically shows that you know your stuff and that you know exactly what you’re doing.

Some businesses in fact, obtain ISO purely for marketing purposes, and this too may be a valid reason for its acquisition. Once obtained, you may stick that precious label everywhere, including on all your stationery, marketing material, online footprint and everywhere else you are present. This will naturally have varying levels of effect and interest on your clients, depending exactly who they are, and admittedly is usually much more effective with business, rather than final consumer clients.

But having been through this process various times, I feel that the most important reason of all to obtain such certification, is to urge yourself to instil a quality management system (QMS) into your business. Understandably, the more complex your organisation and its internal procedures, the more necessary a QMS becomes. There are many categories of small and straightforward businesses which do not merit such a process. However, the more a business grows in complexity, the more relevant this becomes.

What a QMS does is to impose upon you the exact systems and procedures with regards to most internal and external processes. These usually encompass most factors of management such as production, research, purchasing, operations, personnel, marketing and most of all, customer satisfaction. So it can really be extremely useful to ensure that your business is running on track in all its aspects.

What is also important to understand, is that it is the business owners themselves who choose and indicate which processes need to be included, and how these will be managed and monitored within the QMS. So in most ways you will be imposing these criteria yourself, back onto yourself and your collaborators.

If handled sensibly, without going to either extreme, whereby either you impose far too ambitious principles, or ridiculously easy and slack ones, a QMS can work wonders to your organisation. Just to give some practical examples, you might want to include in your QMS that say any client enquiry must be handled and replied to with 24 hours of receipt and in a certain required format. You may impose that all complaints be dealt with within 5 days and if the client is still not satisfied, then a full refund must be given. Or that all goods received from suppliers must first be checked upon arrival at your storage facility, then stored only within certain conditions, and then that all their successive movements be registered accordingly. That at least once a month a minimum number of clients are contacted to generate feedback and gauge levels of satisfaction. That all personnel in a certain department receive six monthly training. You may also include the type and frequency of management and other internal meetings. You simply include any and all processes which you deem to be important for the correct functioning of your business.

The scopes are endless and what the QMS also does is to ensure that all steps and processes are perfectly logged and documented. Basically it keeps you and your staff on your toes and generally ensures that you are running an efficient and professional organisation.

As it also focuses a lot on customer issues and satisfaction, your QMS should also be working in your favour to obtain and retain clients much more efficiently. If it is not, then there must be something wrong with it and it should be seriously reviewed. Incidentally all QMS’s are reviewed regularly and this review process is, in fact, usually even built into the system itself.

The cost of creating and more so of maintaining a QMS is also a common concern for businesspeople considering its application. First of all you may develop an internal QMS without seeking ISO 9000 certification, which admittedly will relieve you of certain costs and charges. However in many ways it would be a pity making such an effort without then being able to officially show this off to others. It would be like studying hard at a subject, without passing an exam and obtaining the relevant certificate.

Usually the biggest cost results from the time required both to create and develop it, as well as to maintain it. You are usually required to assign an individual within your organisation who will be in charge and responsible for its maintenance. So your overall cost will very much depend on the efficiency of this individual. If you have created a good and efficient QMS which is not too complex and cumbersome in itself and which does not require a lot of tedious recording and logging, then the system should not be too costly to maintain.

One common mistake is to include several similar procedures, which prove to create duplication of work, others which might be unessential and redundant, all in themselves unnecessarily increasing the workload. This is not the scope of a QMS. It is not there to increase your workload but to ensure that your current work is executed properly. It will always add some additional duties, but as it principally deals with efficiency, it too must be efficient.

Like most other things, this is a tool which, used well, can be very beneficial to your organisation. If on the other hand, you do not embrace it fully and ensure that you use it in your favour and to your advantage, it is best not to go down this road.

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• Good salespersons are very hard to find
• It is often best to engage a junior and to mould them to your desired manner
• Never disregard or neglect the sales function in your business
• An in-depth induction course is imperative with new salespersons
• Make sure they are closely mentored by yourself and by others in your business
• They must always be positive, motivated and inspired – negativity spells defeat
• In the initial phases they must attend a short motivational meeting every single day
• Achievable targets must always be given, then slowly incremented in time
• They should always be paid accordingly – not too little and not too much
• Even on a long term ongoing basis, continue giving them as much training and chance for discussion as possible

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Finding good sales people just barely falls short of a miracle. To be properly qualified, a sales person truly needs to be smart, confident, outgoing, a perfect communicator, persuasive, tenacious, organised and hardworking. These are not fancy buzzwords, but really very basic requirements for anyone in this field.

Our stock of such talented personnel is extremely low, and what employers usually find is that either they have to poach some big shot who will earn three times what they do, or else resort to individuals who very much fall short of the necessary personal skills.

The very worst thing you could do however, is to ignore the sales function, and try to operate with few or no salespersons whatsoever.

Your business is like a vehicle with its different corresponding parts. Operations could be say the body, administration the chassis and accounts the wheels, but sales is definitely the engine and therefore the main driving force of your business. Without it you will be simply freewheeling in neutral and will never go anywhere fast. So putting sales on the back burner is a very big mistake for any business.

If I really had to choose, I would rather be making lots of money while still having to update my operations, catch up on my admin and improve on my accounts, rather then have everything perfectly oiled and functional, while remaining stationery.

So give sales the priority it deserves. Put it first and foremost at the forefront of your business, and then, in function of your sales levels and results, all other processed should follow. Businesses that are set up operationally, administratively and accounting wise in the same manner as one which turns over €5M annually, but which only achieve a small fraction of these sales, have obviously been focusing on the wrong functions and priorities.

The front end of any business venture is sales! First start selling, sell as much as you can, then sell a bit more, and only then do you need to start worrying about the rest. For if you don’t sell, everything else is totally superfluous.

Having hopefully clarified the incomparable importance of sales, let us discuss how best to go about it. First of all, as the owner of your business, stop reasoning that nobody can do it as well as you can. That applies to most aspects of your business and is therefore besides the point. If you cannot afford, or rightfully do not wish to employ, someone who will drain your business dry, then it is probably best to go for a junior and to train them thoroughly and effectively all along the way. In the end even an experienced and seasoned sales veteran will have to be trained and moulded to your particular business’s specific requirements, a task which can prove to be infinitely harder than with a novice. The trick is to select the right novice and more so to conduct the right intensive and continuous training as you go along.

If you leave such green salespersons to their own resources, you might as well tell them to stay at home and send them their wages there, without even seeing them. You need first of all to give them an in-depth insight into your business, in the form of an initial induction period, which will take many days, upon their engagement. They need to understand you, to feel you and to identify with you, before they can hope to sell you. Do not be afraid of passing them through a school type exam at the end of their induction period. This will only encourage them to focus more on their attention and learning.

Allow them to sit around and learn and watch and listen, and then do not throw them out on the street alone, even when they think they are ready. Do not have them facing or calling clients before they have seen or heard you, and others in your organisation, do it over and over again. And if you consider that the senior person/s you have at hand are not very good at it, this really doesn’t matter, we often learn much more from others what not to do, rather than what we should be doing. So provided that you indicate to them that this is a negative learning experience, then it will still be a fruitful one.

The most important thing of all is that they are truly inspired. Salesperson must be inspired by the company, by its products and most importantly of all, by themselves. They must above all believe in themselves, how good they are and how talented. If you manage to put them on a high, then the sky’s the limit, they will even surprise themselves at what they can achieve. If on the other hand they fall into that deadly negative spiral, it is going to be very hard to pull them out of it and for them to survive.

So whatever happens, good or bad, you must always encourage them. You must always tell them that they will soon succeed, even if you don’t really believe it. For this is the only way they might have the slimmest chance of success. If you really don’t think that they will make it, it is even worse to scold them and put them down. Just terminate their employment and save both you and them a lot of useless time and hassle.

One of the golden rules in the beginning, is to have a meeting with them every single day. Don’t even dream of the once every fortnight or even once a week. You have to sit down with them every single day, even for just a few minutes, to discuss what went right and what went wrong yesterday and to plan and motivate them for tomorrow. Salespersons thrive on small tips, hints and ideas. Often it only takes a new, short, witty reply which they can start to use with clients, to turn the balance into a positive one.

You cannot manage salespersons without targets. It would otherwise be like a race without an end. And targets should always be relatively easy to achieve, otherwise they will be counterproductive. The trick however is to make the targets themselves incremental, so once one is being repeatedly achieved, it is then replaced by a higher one.

Always remunerate them accordingly, not too little but not too much either. Both extremes are wrong and believe it or not, an overpaid salesperson will become lazy, complacent, big-headed and nonproductive. Similarly to the products and services you are selling, people should be paid what they are worth, no more and no less.

The more ongoing time, effort and training is given to them, the better they will become. You cannot expect them to improve on their own as it will not happen. Make sure they are exposed to as many different internal and also extraneous experts and savants as possible, as they go along. Build into their routines as much time which is perceived as training as possible. Time they can reflect, discuss, query, analyse, adapt and improve their sales techniques, until they get it right.

It might be a long and tedious road, but like most other things, if it is done properly, it will eventually bear its benefits.

Don’t Tolerate It, Don’t Accept It, Just Embrace It

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• In most working environments you will not be able to restrict employees from using FB
• In many cases such restrictions could even result in other destructive consequences
• Accept the fact that everyone is constantly on FB and use it to your advantage
• FB may become your main business platform due to the enormous exposure it offers
• Most of FB functions and usage is also totally free
• Establish your page/s with all functionality such as apps
• Build a community with Likes and contacts
• Start migrating all your communication and interaction onto this platform
• You can market, advertise, promote, prospect, sell, source, purchase recruit
• Employees may then be lead to use much of their time productively in this way on FB

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I thought it was a typo the first time I saw someone post this. “I won’t be on FB much tomorrow as I’m not working”. Surely that word ‘not’ was misplaced, I thought. But no, this has become very much the norm for so many people. If they are off work they have things to do – shopping, errands, jobs in the house, outings, leisure time. Whereas when they are sitting at work they are constantly logged on throughout the day, unless something very important and intense such as a management meeting is called, which is only when they log off temporarily.

Otherwise the typical pattern today is to do a few minutes of intermittent work, constantly interrupted by posts and comments in favourite FB fora. We talk about our pets, our offspring, our cooking adventures, what to wear tomorrow evening, our current constipation and literally anything else under the sun. And sometimes, to justify our presence there and to slightly ease any insignificant remaining notions of guilt, we also give ourselves pointless and nonsensical work-related reasons for being there. “I use FB to calm myself down between irritable customers”. “I get important work opinions from my FB friends”. “I need the occasional break so I can perform better”.

But we all know that the only reason is that most people today are totally hooked and can no longer survive without it.

So employers tried to ban it. They blocked FB on computers, they warned their employees and they tracked their online activity. But even if there was any remaining glimmer of hope this was totally extinguished when everyone got their smartphone, making any form of control a thing of the past. I know of cases where FB is still strictly forbidden, which in practice have resulted in personnel constantly going to the loos to catch up on things. Others where, along with the smokers, non-smokers too take constant Facebook breaks. And also instances where absenteeism and staff turnover was increased.

But before employers throw in the towel and resign themselves to the conclusion that the Facebook battle has been totally lost, there is more to this story. As the old saying goes “If you can’t beat them join them”.

Start off first of all by forgetting the past. Facebook is here to stay. It has permeated all levels of society. It is now also capturing users attention to the extent that most never leave its platform or rarely so. It is used to chat, to play games, to watch videos, to work on one’s person profile, to search for contact numbers and details, to search and purchase products and services, to take part in quizzes and competitions, to look for employment and for most other uses in the net.

Businesses too are now catching up by prominently featuring themselves and their offers, with a marked shift from websites to FB pages. More and more are gearing themselves up to function entirely within this platform.

Naturally when compared to a site FB has its pros and cons, like anything else. But never underestimate the biggest pro of all – exposure, traffic, visibility. Nothing could ever even come close to this one omnipotent aspect. Yes it is true that FB still lacks functionality and convenient features compared to sites, but my verdict on this would simply be – who cares.

I would always blindly prefer limited functionality with great exposure to full functionality with virtually none.

Your current online strategy might focus on driving traffic to your site, which is a good thing. But FB doesn’t work in this manner. You can place little posts and links and ads and comments all over the place, all leading to effective networking, community building, and above all, full interaction with your customers and contacts.

Based on all these factors the way forward is no longer to block or to forbid the use of FB, but to fully embrace it as the principal means your business uses to communicate with the outside world.

First of all establish yourself perfectly well with the page/s you require utilising all of the available functionality such as apps. Build yourself your initial community in the form of Likes and contacts and interlocutors. Then slowly but surely start migrating as much of your communication and interaction onto this platform.

You might want to continue feeding material onto your website, but gradually more as a reflection to what you are doing on FB. It would be inconceivable to stop using email, however more and more may be communicated on Fb with clients, prospects, suppliers and collaborators.

You could start marketing, advertising, promoting, prospecting, selling, sourcing, purchasing and recruiting mainly on FB, if you aren’t already. And this for two main reasons – this is where everybody is and most of it is scot-free.

So knowing that your employees are spending much of their time there already, rather than pointlessly trying to drive them away, drive them onto it and to use it more and more for every possible company function.

This will automatically turn much of their downtime into productive time. Furthermore, they will most certainly enjoy this type of communication more than formal emails, they will not have to find the time and the motivation to force themselves to change platforms and they still associate FB to fun. So overall they will be much more productive and efficient.

Almost Everything

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• The name of your business is about the most important factor
• It automatically and strongly portrays a certain image
• Select the name that gives exactly the desired image
• It directly influences prospects to look for further details and consider you or discard you
• Catchy and interesting names are good, but not complex and obscure ones
• If targeting an international audience check the meaning and sound of the words
• Choose words which are easily understandable and pronounced in other languages
• If you want to sound different & avant garde be original, if conventional then find a traditional and conformist name
• To distinguish yourself from competitors go for a different type of name, if you want to ride their wave find a name which can be confused, or at least associated with theirs
• It always pays you to be high on an alphabetical list

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The name of your business, project, shop, outlet, website, trading name or venture is not only extremely important, but if you want to isolate any one single feature, then it may probably be considered as the most important of all.

It is what defines you, what you are known as, how people remember you and what creates the mental image projected into people’s mind.

Let us look at some fictitious examples. Compare restaurants called :
Joe’s Diner, Linda’s Eatery, Mamma’s Meals
as opposed to :
Le Grand Canard, Heat & Eat, Aqua

I just made all these names up, but the difference is immediately apparent. While the first set evokes very informal, casual if not clumsy dining, the second immediately summons up much grandeur visions.

Let us try the same with imaginary accommodation properties :
In ‘n Out, The Friendly Lodge, Cathy’s Cottage
as opposed to :
The Cunningham, Grand Golf Hotel, Clifton Lord’s Palace

Again these are all bogus names simply created to highlight how significant a name can be. And the same applies to absolutely any type of business. I purposely chose restaurants and hotels as these should be easily understandable to everyone.

Your choice of name will make an enormous difference in the overall success of your business. If you don’t accord total attention and thought towards it, then you are really starting off in the wrong direction.

So what are the basics about selecting the right choice of names? There are many pointers which can effectively lead you in the right direction. Like most other things, it may sound like a fairly complex process, but then again most things in life tend to be that way. Following these methods will however put you on the right track.

The name is your very first and most powerful marketing tool, so use it fully to your favour. Start off by asking yourself what your customers will search for and what they want to hear.

To continue using the above examples for simplicity’s sake, is it cheap and cheerful and homely and informal that you are offering, or is it chic and classy and stately? Do you want to project yourself as a quick bite when you’re hungry and don’t feel like cooking at home, or your special night out on that most special of occasions in the best of venues? Are you the local inn offering the most inexpensive accommodation for budget travellers, or aspiring to be the best hotel in town for visiting dignitaries and for the jet set?

This reasoning may be replicated to any form of business and without going to such obvious extremes, no matter the line of business and the positioning, your name should strongly represent the image you are trying to portray.

Clients are strongly influenced by a name and much of their choice of provider will be based on this one factor. Let us not forget that in today’s information age we are all swamped with options and what is the very first, and often the only, thing that comes up? The name!

When searching online and elsewhere, we always start off by a list of names, some of which inspire us to look into and others which we are happy to skip and overlook. So the very first rule is to be true to your image and audience. Try to find the best name which evokes what you are really all about and which will instantly attract your desired audience.

The name should be catchy and appealing, it should be memorable and strongly tied to who and what you are. So reflect well on each word in the name, which should all clearly lead the viewer to exactly who you want to be.

Names which are too complicated or ‘clever’, those which are ambiguous and also introspective, referring to matters which few besides yourself can understand, are simply not a good idea. So catchy and interesting yes, but complex and obscure definitely not.

If you are appealing to an international audience then this must definitely also be taken into consideration. Be extremely careful to check the meaning of similar and similar sounding words in the languages of your target audiences. Choose words which are easily understandable and more so easily pronounced in their languages. If you are aiming at a wide international audience then ensure that you name is as cosmopolitan as possible and not showing a marked penchant towards any nationality. Try to use global, easy sounding words, of which many exist.

Many theories abound about the advantages of long or short names, about abbreviations, about personal names within a business’s name. In my opinion all of this depends entirely on each specific case and to generalise would therefore be risky.

What I believe should also be kept in mind is that originality can be very useful if you want to be labelled as different and avant-garde, while conventional sounding names are better if you want to portray tradition and conformity. If you want to strongly distinguish yourself from existing competitors, then go for a strikingly different type of name to theirs. If on the other hand you want to ride their wave then find a name which can be easily confused with theirs, or at least directly associated.

Back in the old days when it was all about directories and listings, it was always strongly recommended to have an alphabetically advantageous name, ideally starting with an ‘a” or even a number, for very obvious reasons. Entire studies were conducted to prove that enquirers would simply scroll through the first few names and send out requests, or even purchase directly from these, without ever bothering to look any further down the list. This reasoning is exactly in line with being on the first page of Google upon a given search. This reasoning may have understandably waned over the years, however I am still a keen supporter of the concept that if you had to choose between two shortlisted favourites, then definitely go for the first one alphabetically.

Give your name a lot of importance and a lot of thought. For it is also something you will hardly ever be able to chance.

That is Not the Question

SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM

• Your marketing decisions should not be based upon this distinction
• Start off by asking who your target audience is, which are the best channels and media to be seen by them, how can you best communicate through these channels and what budgets to allocate
• When promoting a purely online service then online might make more sense
• With traditional outlets certain offline promotion can still be very effective
• Think of where you will be mostly seen by your specific audience, go where they may be found
• Offline media is often the best for display type advertising, such as branding and visual impact, while online allows you to modify your message and interact with your audience
• At times consumers are influenced more through an offline message than an online one
• When searching for specific products and services most customers go online, so make sure you are also featured
• You must be very present online so running an online campaign is often more effective
• Online campaigns are usually much more targeted and also much less costly

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Clients often ask me the question – Should we focus our marketing online or offline?

I will start off immediately by saying that this is not really a very pertinent question. It is not what a businessperson should be initially asking.

Whatever you are promoting, you must first set out your marketing ideas and intentions. It is true that in today’s business world the traditional long term marketing plan has become less relevant and in many cases has been replaced by campaign-driven marketing and opportunistic marketing. However, it is vital that some planning and budgeting is concluded from time to time to set you back in line and not operating haphazardly.

Our choice of marketing and ensuing promotion should always follow the same strategic steps. Who is my target audience? Which are the best channels and media to be seen by my audience? How can I best communicate through these channels? What budgets can I allocate to do this?

These are the questions we should be asking. The answers could lead you to both offline and online media, or they could possibly lead only to one. But your train of thought should be the one above and not one starting off by differentiating specifically between online and offline, which in many cases is incidental to this process.

There could be circumstances where you might be compelled to make this decision. Your might obtain ambiguous results, or perhaps due to limited resources and other factors you are truly led to having to choose between one or the other.

In this case also it would be preferable to assess and consider each specific medium on its own right and forecasting its effectiveness, as well as its pros and cons, rather than evaluating it purely upon it being an online or offline platform.

If however, for whatever reason, you really want to make this distinction, then these are the principle considerations. Are most of your clients constantly online as so many people are today? And if this is the case, are they more likely to see and be influenced by your online message rather than through an offline media they are also likely to view? The answers to these questions often lie in the way people function when online and when not. More so it will depend on what you are promoting.

Here are a few very obvious examples, to drive the message home. If you are promoting say a discount scheme which operates online via web site or social media, then the most obvious manner of promoting this is by sprinkling around as many online links to your site or page as possible, through countless means and ways. As your potential customers are browsing around they are likely to encounter one of these and hopefully click on that link, taking them instantly where you want them to go. Doing this via traditional offline media is very difficult indeed.

If you operate a purely online shop selling say gift hampers, then you might want to focus your promotional efforts on online groups and fora where your audience usually congregates and communicates. You could also consider being included in most popular directories and listings, as well as work on your Google search optimisation, perhaps also putting some budget onto the key search words.

You operate a fairly large casual diner just off a busy main road. There is a large billboard on the main road just before the junction leading to your establishment – grab it and don’t let it go!

You are importing and reselling luxury branded products largely reserved for a select audience. You have a decent budget purely for branding purposes. In such obvious cases there is absolutely nothing wrong with a back to basics approach, so full page or back cover adverts in a couple of glossy magazines would hit the spot nicely.

There are also other considerations between these two main platforms which you need to keep in mind. Offline promotion is often in-your-face display advertising and is usually more effective for this particular function. That is why branding is still so prevalent in this sphere. Naturally offline also includes a long list of direct marketing methods as are mail drops, in-store promotions and telemarketing, which can be very effective means of pushing your products and services forward.

It has also been shown that in certain circumstances reaching your audience offline can have a much greater impact on them and on their purchasing decisions, rather than online when they are literally bombarded with all types of information from all sides, making them less receptive to it.

On the other hand when searching for specific products and services, most people now do this online and you want to be there when they search. An online presence also allows you to modify and update info at the touch of a button and as often as you want. It also allows for full interaction with your audience.

Most businesses are comprehensively featured online and this is where you ultimately want to direct your viewers. Reaching out for them using the same platforms, allowing them to reach their intended destination via a mere click, is therefore often the most effective and direct means to your end.

Having a sound and an extensive online presence is no longer an option today and in fact hasn’t been one for many years now. When you are conducting a marketing campaign you are often best to start off by ignoring the main on-off distinction. Just think of what would work best with your allocated budget, then tweak things to make it even more effective and affordable, being online or offline and never losing sight of costs, which admittedly are often much less when going online.

Lastly, there are many means of carefully targeting your specific audience, even with several types of offline marketing, however, few come close to the precision available when using online methods.

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

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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.

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.

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.