Make More of 2024
As one year passes and rolls into another one, it is important to examine what we have learned from the passing year that we can take into the next one in an effort to make it better. Since the landscape of digital marketing changes with new trends and legal restrictions it is NEVER wasted time to review and adjust as needed. Since change is the only constant some adjustments are in reaction to new market place developments yet some are fundamental and need to be revisited. Why? Because fundamentals are never obsolete and everything we do to market, create opportunities and follow up on leads needs to be tied back to the bedrock foundation of solid selling fundamentals. Because human nature doesn’t change, only the way humans apply it, it will always be important to apply what we do using what we know to be true.
The goal of this year end article is to draw attention to some things to keep in mind as you set up the way you do things to accomplish your goals in the upcoming year. I will paint with a broad brush and leave the nuances to the individuals that will apply the substance unless a nuance has proven to be critical. The subject matter here is influenced primarily by activities and results we have observed. They are presented in the context of today’s selling environment. If you seek to perform at your highest possible personal and sales staff level, the topics are not editorial in nature. The solutions can be debated based upon the way you want to apply “culture” and “technology” to your situation but the topics are of current importance.
The very first topic has been important since forever, but is now a hot button sales term for many modern tech companies relative to the applications they sell. REPUTATION MANAGEMENT is something your marketing people, the marketing platforms you employ, and your salespeople should always bear in mind as they navigate the waters of the new year. It is an established fact that “credibility” is the first element of influence in the psyche of the consumer. Sometimes, companies have an established reputation in the market but often when a prospect is starting their discovery process they are heavily influenced by reviews. Don’t doubt this as a universal importance, and don’t try to pigeonhole it as something less important than it is. Even my eighty-five year old mother uses online discovery before she orders a product or meets her friends at a new restaurant.
Efficient review collection and display is critical to making new prospects view you as a dependable option when they begin their trip down the purchasing highway. Babysitting company Facebook pages and other social sites and making sure you delete or use negative comments as a teaching opportunity that positions you as a high integrity specialist are a must in our digital age.
LIST MANAGEMENT: In the old days we were talking about the collection and proper management of postal lists but today we are managing audiences in email marketing servers. Many companies don’t bother, they simply send out a monthly savings message to the entire population of emails they have gathered. This is a marketing iniquity. Taking time to organize a list into audiences by interest type is critical to being able to convey messages with the most weight and impact to the right folks. This statement is the perfect segue into the next important topic…
CONSISTENCY IN MESSAGING: Whether you are a parent, a church or a company the fundamental need to be consistent in your messaging is paramount to your believability. This one item affects the first two topics presented and the others to follow. If you want to brand an attitude and mission, it must permeate your operation since you want everyone to have a clear picture of who you are. The best place to start? Make sure everyone inside your organization is onboard with their attitude and understanding of your mission. Challenge them to apply it liberally and often to all they come in contact with. This consistency in messaging allows the dealer principals to lay their heads down on the pillow at night and know that all that could be done was done. This will positively affect the performance of the organization regardless of its size. The next topic is intensely related to the accomplishment of being consistent.
DEFINE AND REFINE YOUR SALES CULTURE: Establish a company method and direction so that your staff are all involved and singing off the same page of the old proverbial hymnal. You cannot refine a method, share selling thoughts, techniques, ideas and role play to overcome objections without having a structure. Simply allowing sales persons to come to work and wing it or figure out their own personal way around regardless of how the others on the team execute is not a culture… It’s a group of random sales individuals showing up to do things their own way in the same place. Another critical sales barometer is to establish the prospecting activity numbers. Everyone needs to know how many outbound attempts it takes them to make a sale. That is the only way to manage activity properly and do what it takes to hit a goal. Sadly, most piano sales pros don’t even know their necessary activity numbers in relation to their goals and even if they do, they don’t apply the discipline to allow the numbers to help them sell more. My activity numbers are: 25-5-2 and 1. If you are interested in knowing what they mean please contact me.
Finally on this topic, a culture where the older associates and younger associates trade skill sets to mutually benefit one another is a modern day necessity. Regular meetings with content of substance is a must when establishing a team where ideas are shared and everyone is pulling in the same direction and pulling one another therefore the entire company upward. And this segues into the final category which is…
CHEMISTRY: Why isn’t chemistry a part of the previous section? Although culture and chemistry shake hands, in practicality you can have structure and protocol on demand without the team buying in but simply doing as is expected. A cultural structure without the vitality of good chemistry is kinda like “faith without works… dead.” If you want your staff, no matter how small, even if it’s just two of you, to believe that; reputation management is important, that list management has benefits as does consistent messaging and that a culture that promotes well thought out protocols is important, you must connect on a deep personal level with your teammates. Whether you are the boss and want to motivate those in your employ, or the sales associate in the trenches wanting to convince management and ownership to give you the leads and tools you need to succeed, remember this old adage: “You catch more bees with honey.” The best athletic championship teams of all time, the Marines, the best music bands of all time and even the best marriages all have that one thing in common: chemistry. It behooves you to care enough about those around you to create an environment of creativity. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, sales and marketing are ever evolving fluid entities that need the creative fuel of kinship to be harnessed properly.
Now for some straight talk – Selling should be made fun. It IS fun and we have fun doing it around here. If you get to the retail selling season, Q4 in our industry, and don’t have enough in the pipeline that has matured to guarantee a successful home stretch, it’s almost always because your efficiency isn’t what it should be. If you’re falling prey to blaming politics, the manufacturers, the economy, too many recreational dollars competing with piano dollars, and really I could go on, but the reality is this: There is SO MUCH online piano interest that there is never a reason to have a bad year. Will they all be as good as the last, no, yet there never again has to be a bad year. What this industry needs to do desperately is to achieve efficiency in talking the online interest onto the showroom floor. To get cyberspace to translate into floor traffic and here’s the great news; we have clients doing it! We have clients growing in a shrinking industry and becoming juggernauts by way of using technology not only to survive but grow and thrive. We don’t want to simply benefit short term in a war of attrition. We endeavor to leave the world a more musical place that appreciates the piano. We want to see this industry start trending climbing back up where it deserves to be. We must embrace and employ technology to accomplish this and I don’t mean vanity boardroom and/or monthly local ad agency stat reviews and reports. We need to use these new tools to get more and more fish in the boat and restock the pond. These are realities we have brought to bear here that need to be duplicated by a larger and expanding portion of the piano business.
Summary: The next time a disappointing year has you lying to yourself and telling yourself that “sometimes the interest level is just not there” or that “that’s just the way it goes” and “we did all we could”, STOP. If these are your thoughts and statements, and just in case you haven’t admitted it yet, you are whining and that is not a solution. Unless you can examine all the above segments needed for a successful ongoing sales operation and did them all to your utmost, no you did not “do your best.” The internet is chock full of people with piano interest who need to be educated on the best way to choose a new family member. We need to learn better to engage, educate and make more friends of those in need of more music. The task at hand? Embrace the new tools in the sales tool box, apply them to these categories and do yourself a favor; be honest to yourself about your company’s proficiency and then go about the task of getting it where it can be by fine tuning these elements. You will then be in a position to be the best version of your sales self and be amazed at the new heights available for you to reach.
Self-examination is not always easy or fun, but to be the best we can be it is the necessary medicine. We subscribe to it and it is a principle that has served us, our most successful business partners, and will serve you well. It is the prescription for improvement. If we think we can’t improve because we “already know it all” or just don’t care enough to invest the appropriate amount of effort to meet our goals, we just need to find something else to do we care enough about. If you do care enough, examine these items and begin shoring them up for the best year you’ve had in a long time and Make More of 2024.
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”- Aristotle
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
Jack is a thirty year marketing and sales veteran with an insatiable appetite for contributing to the sales success of others. After leaving Cox communications in the late eighties Jack has serviced clients such as: Goodyear, Allstate, Verizon Wireless, Steinway & Sons, and numerous independent businesses. His knack for creating targeted strategies has endeared him to clients who he has been privileged to service in many instances for over two decades.
Latest posts by Jack Klinefelter (see all)
- Be a Member of the Survivors Club - April 22, 2024
- Don’t Be Color Blind - March 14, 2024
- LeadFlow Clients Add Locations in a Shrinking Industry - March 6, 2024