These recommendations are all related to the most crucial tool you must have working on your behalf in today’s “new normal.” They are all relative to having an efficiently working sales funnel. In the old days it was a media mix or advertisement plan. Since conventional advertisement: radio, TV, newspaper, billboards and marriage mail no longer are effective options, it is safe to say that digital marketing and face to face network selling are the only two truly viable options left in the piano industry. Since inviting people to a party to work relationships into sales is something that is dependent upon the strength of the prospect bank of any piano company, we end up right back at digital marketing as square one. More relationships begin digitally than ever before in the business world these days.
With that in mind here are the five items crucial to having the
very most successful year possible ahead. Here we go:
#5 The Best Possible Targeting. Every dollar you spend should be aimed at a
segment that you know is part of pool that historically holds more piano interest
prospects. Based upon a typical piano gallery inventory you will need to be sure
your audiences include potential high-end purchasers, families, new
homeowners, ethnicities who value the instrument most and people who are
inclined to get excited about technology… often a prospect will own more than
one of these traits. Bottom line: since approximately 4% of the general population
cares about pianos you need to spend your money where it has the best possible
eventual ROI. Proper targeting is a foundational necessity.
The Internet is really about highly specialized information, highly specialized targeting.
– Eric Schmidt
#4 Offers Which Move the Marketplace to Engage with Your Company. Branding
dollars are hard to justify and come by these days. It is important to place offers
in front of people who have exhibited (or are look-a-likes of those who have exhibited)
piano interest. Since there are different needs inside the pool of people who have
piano interest it is important that your offers speak to people that are in various
stages of the buying process. This is one HUGE reason; we have found the
inventory list method to be so effective. A diversified inventory list has something
for every type of prospect. For more intensely targeted micro-niche initiatives
more specific offers can be offered. The most important characteristic of a good
offer in today’s digital world is one that creates engagement, therefore a lead.
In marketing, offers are the gateways to lead generation – HubSpot
#3 A CRM Which is Enabled with Critical Follow-up Capabilities. PianoLeads 2.0
offers it’s users some incredibly notable features to assist in follow up. Some
important ones to have at your disposal are lead enrichment which gives you the
social media make-up of a large number of your prospects, customizable
automation which allows you to thoroughly use question-based selling to all your
prospects and color coding which invokes the highest possible level of phycology,
emotion and organization in your follow up. Whether you use our CRM or another,
these key features need to exist for your sales staff to operate at the most
productive level. The necessity to make a CRM with great follow up capabilities
available to your sales team is in sync with this old adage, “information is power.”
A CRM helps turn you into an improved informational organization – Salesforce.
#2 A company Sales Method. Allowing sales associates to “do their own thing”
without a company way of selling is a loose way to run a sales organization. I have
always been a proponent of the 5-step sales process and there is a recent post on
our website about the reasons why but suffice to say that the method you decide
upon is secondary to the fact that one exists! There should be some basic
chronological guidelines that your sales staff is expected to abide by. It should not
be an effort to program specific personalities rather; a track for your people to
run on so you as a dealer principal or sales manager know how prospects and
customers are being dealt with, therefore treated. It should be mostly about the
things you believe your people need to do to properly represent your companies
image to each and every prospect and buyer. Your method should support the
goal of a great customer experience because the end result of consistent
honorable exchanges is that you get to be profitable while doing something of
value.
If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you
always put the customer first, success will be yours. – Ray Kroc
#1 A Chemistry of Teamwork and Mutual Respect. If you mundanely interact
with your sales staff as an owner or manager, you are not allowing yourself or the
team you are part of to be all you or they can be. Regular sales meetings that
ensure that caring accountability is the main fabric of your culture are a sales
staff’s most valuable occurrence. Getting Millennials, Gen X’ers, and Baby
Boomers to share each other’s strengths can most effectively address weaknesses
and improve the overall performance of the entire sales environment. This is true
even if the piano company is small and there are only two people to bounce
things off of one another. Continual learning and improving is a “forever until
death do us part from our craft” attitude. A positive attitude is the life’s blood of a
creative atmosphere and since sales is a creative act a positive attitude is the very
best way to build results. Having all the aforementioned tools in the world but a
lackadaisical approach is a recipe for underachievement. Anything worth doing…
well, you know how that ends.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – Peter Drucker
So, allow me to bring this list home and the article to a conclusion with this
summary – The most important things for you to review and make sure are in
place so that your 2020 can “be all that it can be” are these items and how they
relate to your sales funnel:
Your funnel should be on target with the ad dollars it spends, it should employ
offers that create engagement because disseminating information in our busy
age is never enough, it should have the use of a CRM capable of first class follow
up, your staff should have a clear understanding of how you want your
company represented and finally your sales people need to be interactive and
unselfish with one another so as to create a strong and positive selling
environment.
We have presented these “things you can do in 2020” items in what we believe to
be in priority order from bottom to top. Note that the top two are not simply
marketing tools but have to do with the proper management of sales associates
which as anyone who has ever run a sales organization knows is a full-time job.
Focusing on these items and not allowing the daily unadulterated crap to keep
you side-tracked is the key. Keeping things on task and as simple and righteously,
fundamentally true as need be is complicated! It is however the secret to a productive
environment and as is my habit very often I will cop out and use the words of an immutable
and greatly respected business voice to drive my point home…
Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking
clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there,
you can move mountains.” ― Steve Jobs
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