How to Lose a Sale Anyone selling today using the methods they learned ten years ago is going to have problems. Covid changed everything. The pandemic changed the way people feel about work, time and personal worth. Call it what ever you want: the Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting. Buyers, who may hold positions of power or the executive suite, place a high value on their time and they aren’t very tolerant of people who waste it. It can take dozens of attempts to secure a meeting with a prospective customer. Before covid it took 27 touches to make a connection with an unknow person. Now? You can double that. And when you do connect be ready to hit the ground running! There are NO second chances! When you’re finally in the room with a decision-maker, don’t make mistakes that will cause them to end the meeting or deflect any attempts at following up. Follow-up is the key. Remember the rule of 27 even if it is now 54 or more. When we talked to buyers Buyers, no matter if the person your facing as a future customer is a professional buyers or a manager or owner. the majority of them told us in follow-up interviews that the salespeople visiting their offices were doing it all wrong. Conversations were unfocused (or focused on the wrong topics). The salesperson did not have a plan of action which they wanted to present to the customer. The prospects had a hard time understanding why they should do business with the salesperson calling them. Sales people are selling all wrong in preparation, presentation, and follow-up, and worse yet they did not do their homework! Preparation Mistake #1 - Failing to take time to learn about the company and individuals with whom you will meet. The prospect has probably done research on your company before you set foot in their office. Think about this a minute, doesn’t this mean you need to do the same. Are you the professional here or what? Just wing it when you get there, you will be fine. . .  NOT!   Mistake #2 - Forgetting about preparing thoughtful questions or anticipating objections. If you think you need to ask only one question after you make your pitch - “Well, what do you think?” Be ready to whip out your price sheet in case they say, “I’m ready to buy. How much does it cost?” or my favorite from days gone buy: "Press hard 3rd copy is yours", guess again. You need to know your prospect and his industry as well as they know themselves. Online, trade magazines, industry trade shows it is all out there for you. Preparing for the meeting includes identifying the prospect’s likely objectives. Why did they agree to meet with you? (Hint: It’s not getting the lowest price. If it is, you’re probably talking to the wrong person). You’ll also want to identify your desired outcome. Send a pre-meeting agenda and stick to it. If you or the prospect has a time restraint keep to the time allotted. If you are invited to stay longer make sure you can use it wisely and not blow your entire presentation. Presentation Mistake #1 - Start the meeting by talking about your products and services. This is always the most fun (for you) The prospect may not have a need for half the things you mention, but they probably won’t say anything, so just keep going to show them you really know your stuff.  Mistake #2 - Ignore what the prospect is saying. Their objectives and business challenges are just distracting. Keep focusing on why you’re there—getting the order no matter what! Steer conversations away from specifications, it is not time for that. What you want to discuss are the prospects business goals, such as customer acquisition, retention, conversion rates, upselling, lifetime customer value, regulatory compliance, and customer experience. By aligning your services with their business goals allows the prospect to move forward with finalizing decisions with you still in the hunt and not road kill. Follow-up Mistake #1 - Leaving follow-up to administrative people back at the office. Your job is selling, not nurturing. Besides you have more prospects to go see!  Mistake #2 - Ignoring the prospect’s buying process. It’s your sales process that’s most important. If customers insist on extra steps, it just slows everything down. You have a time line and that is the way it should be. Everyone sends a thank you email after the sales meeting, in this age of electronic communication if you really want this account you might just want to send a real thank you card though the mail. Almost no one does this anymore so think about how you will stand out from the crowd! Going back to our interviews, the prospects we talked with said they were disappointed if post-meeting communications didn’t include guidance about the next step. You are the professional right? So what would you suggest them do if they use your company? Follow-up notes are a great way to show you were paying attention and you have ideas about helping solve their problems. I never hand anyone tell me NO don't take notes on our meeting. You might even do a little research on what you think is the best solution for there situation. Include some relevant content, or a research report or case study, that is helpful towards your solution and help them as they progress through their (not your) decision-making procedure. We learned from the people on the other side of the desk that salespeople had plenty of room to improve the way they approached a business about buying their products and services. These concepts are even more important today, given the experience of the last couple of years. So Why Use A Lead Generation Service Like Larson & Associates? Mistake #1 - They said no last time so they will say no again. Things change, situations change, needs change. It is not our place to think that hard. Really. If they are in your power niche, your geographical territory we make the call!  Mistake #2 - Overselling! Yes you do a data dump on them. We don't do that. Tell them who we are what we do and ask if they need to meet with us. Qualifying a prospect isn’t about what they can do for you; it’s what you can do for them and if your services or products fill a need they have. We don't think hard about it, there is only one question to ask "When do you want to meet." Mistake #3 - Features and benefits! A prospect will not be impressed by a laundry list of generic features, benefits and capabilities. Instead, the discussion must focus in how we will elevate the prospect's business. Because we are using niche selling we already know and understand their challenges and pain. Armed with this knowledge we can empathize and offer solid industry specific pointed solutions that will grab the attention of a busy entrepreneur or executive.  Mistake #4 - Building the relationship. Sorry Charlie but I am not here to be your best friend. I mean trying to develop a friendship and not asking any probing questions if it gets that far is not what lead generation is all about. You have to immediately look for ways to be significant to them and build value, and ask for the order or appointment. What we do is bring you QUALIFIED leads, not just names! Some of our competition thinks that handing over a name with a job title which fits a job discription is a lead. Is it? At Larson & Associates we take the pain of cold calling and new account acquisition out of your sales equation and bring you actual sales leads with real names from real companies with real people. If I could really bring your company QUALIFIED leads at a fraction of cost of what it would cost to generate in-house would you be interested? Larson & Associates, is a performance-based sales support company exclusively designed to meet your business needs as we become a professional sales team trained in your products/services to engaged ourselves to generate new business for you, for a mutually agreed upon success-based payment plan. We work to keep your sales pipeline filled with qualified leads. We train our staff to your companies needs and target market so you reap the rewards of our efforts.  Larson & Associates We make good businesses great and great businesses even better. Larson & Associates 3475 Steeplechase Way    Suite 101 Grayslake IL 60030 847-991-1294

Covid Marketing

A seven-point plan To Get You Through Covid

The good and the bad is this is only a starting point to provide a plan for marketing  throughout Coronavirus pandemic. But it is a start. Now you need it to be your start.    As we go along in the pandemic our businesses are all facing challenging times as the economic impact of Coronavirus starts to bite longer. And when faced with challenges like this, it's time to turn to The Godfather for that inimitable advice: “Go to the mattresses.” In other words, prepare your business for the long haul. Get your mattresses ready for your company to go to battle. We need to work smarter, and be ready to tackle the challenges ahead.   Here are seven steps you can take to prepare your marketing activity during this Coronovirus downturn:rt to retain your existing customer base Work harder at expanding your prospecting list Work harder at expanding your prospecting list Get even more visible in front of your target market Fine unique ways of grabbing marketing share in your niche area(s) Focus on driving market share Measure, measure, measure Test, learn, test Seven marketing techniques for powering through Corona Businesses are looking more carefully at budgets, making sure we can squeeze every penny of profit out of our investments, and looking for the most cost-effective way to deliver products and services. Marketing budgets may appear to be a soft target for businesses looking to make budget cuts. But a cut in marketing activity is a short term fix that is sure to have long term consequences. Maintaining visibility in your market is essential for long term profitability and continued investment. And our customers are also watching the pennies, but they are still spending money. They may be spending less, but we need to figure out what they’re spending their money on. They don’t want to risk wasting a penny; they want to buy the right products from companies they can trust. 1. Work smart to retain & expand your existing customer base Out of sight means out of mind. You need to keep in touch with your customers or you risk losing them. It's always cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one. Marketing automation is the lowest cost, easiest, and most effective way of keeping in touch with your customers. I’m not talking sending automated email marketing spam, nor am I talking about broadcasting cold calling messages to get new customers. Well, I guess I sort of am. You need to be sending out niche specific, contextualized, targeted messages to existing customers, prospects, suspects and any anyone else you can find to hear your message. Maybe they are not a customer but maybe, just maybe they have a friend who is. You need to be keeping in touch at every touch point possible, social channels, through the web email, direct mail, phone. Doing this systematically and as automatically as possible will ensure the job gets done, and free up your finite and expensive human talents to deliver creative messages that will bring an even higher ROI that a single or two channel attack. Content production is an essential for your niche specific marketing campaign. Share what makes you the unique and better option for their covid recovery. Explain how you are best choice in what differentiates your offering from your competitors. and promote your story showing how with you the client wins. Getting more social means engaging in conversations with your existing customers. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email. Direct mail- these are places where you customers are reviewing you and your products, analyzing their purchasing decisions, exchanging views on your business. Create a high impact low cost plan for reaching customers at every touch point point you can use effectively to get them through in the sales funnel As you use these tools, what are your customer's and prospect's reactions, listen to your customers, hear what they’re talking about, keep track of the call backs, the opt outs, learn more about your market. And remember, it isn’t ALL about you – your are speaking to people you should understand in regard to needs and remedies to problems and solutions. Your message and to the conversation needs to be valuable and appropriate.   2. Work harder at expanding your prospecting list Use Linked-In, find directories, online "zoom" networking meetings,virtual trade shows. There are a million ways to add into your. The point is you need more names in your data base. Do  what ever you can to add marketing share. Personally I have a daily special going to grab prospects and market share. I love market share more than anything else. Even with covid people still  need what you sell. They might need less of it but someone somewhere still needs it. 3. Get even more visible in front of your potential clients You have to build your brand awareness and get more visibility, which means driving visitors to your website to make the sales. And one of the best times to get found by potential clients is when they’re searching for what you’re selling. You need to get found at every stage of the purchasing life-cycle, from exploring new suppliers to evaluating specific offerings. The Mere Exposure Effect is the marketing phenomenon by which consumers develop a preference for your products or services merely because they are familiar with them. Now is the time to explore low cost techniques that will keep your brand visible in front of potential clients on a steady basis. It may feel counter-intuitive, but setting aside an advertising budget for keeping your brand visible will deliver long term benefits. Focus on creating high quality content that is going to get shared, and reduce your budget for generating low value, low impact content. Update your evergreen content. Your business has an archive of perennially relevant, interesting content that does not become dated and is still of value to your customers… and the search engines. Revisit your content, update it, give it a spring clean, with the objective of improving your rankings in the search engines. What other people say about your is more important than what you say about yourself. Another low cost way of getting visible in front of a larger pool of potential clients is to leverage the authority of other respected experts.   4. Focus on driving market share A low cost, high impact covid marketing is about grabbing market share Don't focus on conversion rate, clicks and likes. Yes that is (sort of) important but we want action. I have a plan where in certain days in a certain niche I will set up and run at no charge for 2 months a content based email marketing plan no cost. I have a customer Estimator Cloud who has a covid special of after a demo you get to run the print estimation program and no cost or obligation for free for 3 months.  Small incremental changes to the user journey will turn more of your website visitors into customers. Social proof and post positive stories about your business. Revisit how you are using your cases studies, recommendations and reviews at every touch point in your marketing, and take the time to weave this content throughout your website and share actively on social media. Customer experience is king. Invest in your website to ensure you are giving a fast, personalized experience. And in terms of keeping costs down, remember that small changes to your website will have a huge impact on the final results. Leverage artificial intelligence. Now is the time to get up to speed on the latest developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence that will give your business competitive advantage and access to the right prospective customers at the right time. Taking advantage of current developments in AI will drive down your cost per acquisition of new clients by ensuring you are getting the right message to the right person at the right time, and reducing waste.   5. Fine unique ways of grabbing marketing share in your niche area(s) What can you offer to attract people? I sell marketing so what do I do. I over limited time teaser work do get them into the Larson Way of marketing. I know m way works even in the age of covid so if "MY" way can get them visibility and maybe even a customer to two think what it will do when things get going full steam again. Lock them in and put the hammer down! 6. Measure, measure, measure If you don’t measure, then you can’t manage. And if you’re not managing, then you could be pouring money down the drain. Measuring means accountability for your marketing spend. You need to be measuring against your success criteria. You may want to measure sales, numbers of lead generated, up-sells, or referrals. Now is the time to ensure you have defined your key performance indicators. Configure your Google Analytics correctly. Ensure you are covering all the basics and that you are using the data to drive your marketing inefficiencies. Do you have goals set-up correctly? Have you connected your search console?  Have you defined what you are measuring?  Are you taking advantage of all the free data that Google Analytics provides to you that can shape your strategy? Measure your social media ROI. When budgets get tight, you may need to make tough decisions on how you are going to spend your resources. One soft option might be to put the breaks on your social media activity. Social media can appear to be very time consuming and an optional non-essential activity. But before you make that decision, ensure you have explored how social media is contributing to your bottom line in terms of engagement, visibility, and profitability. If marketing budgets are tight, then knowing what works makes it easier to make the decisions of where to invest your cash. 7. Test, learn, test And finally, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the the conventional, digital and social marketing puzzle. You will need to be nimble and quick. Creative and memorial. Measure your success, and learn from the experiment. Here are some parting tips: Experiments should be quick, cheap, and easy to deliver. If it works, wonderful, do more of the same. And if it doesn’t work so well, then kill the experiment and move on. No harm done. Be quick and be ruthless. You will have tested something, learned from it, allowing you to move on and test something new.   Larson & Associates Making Good Businesses Great and Great Businesses Even Better Is it time to make you great? Phone 847-991-1294

Our mailing address is: Larson & Associates 678 N Eagle Lane    Suite 201 Palatine IL 60067 847-991-1294 howard@larsonassocaites.ws www.larsonassociates.ws

Got The Coronavirus Blues? It's not over till it's over! People, companies still need to buy things. So why not buy them from you. Larson & Associates can and will get you out in front of the people you need to have see you and know your open for business you so they can buy. Hide and they can't find you! So let Larson & Associates shout it out WE ARE HERE!  Are you ready to market to the buyers regardless of the what is happening this year? We are! Yes, this market place is one if the most difficult and crucial opportunities to interact with buyers and potential buyers – so whats your plan? When it comes to marketing, you need something powerful, fast and inspiring,  More then ever you need to convey your message quickly and efficiently. Larson & Associates has years of experience working through disasters. Remember after 911 or the during the SARS virus when people were afraid? We have been here before so we have opened up our playbook and took out our notes on how we worked with our clients after those disasters. You can still bring in sales and meet with buyers leaving a positive impression and a memorable experience.  Let us bring your marketing theme to life and reinforce your branding through marketing and virtual tools. We can assemble an audience or buyers to hear a presentation which puts your product on the buyer’s radar screen. Our professional presenters deliver YOUR message in an engaging manner in order to make the presentation memorable. We can give your staff an opportunity to highlight your company’s selling points. From virtual meetings to streaming videos Larson & Associates has done it before and we are doing it again! Here is a quick view of some of our services Appointment Setting Lead Generation Email Blasts Direct Mail Content Development Blog Writing Niche Development Lists development Inside Sales Work house accounts, dormant accounts, or small accounts; freeing up your strong sales people to be out on appointments! Data Cleansing Customer Surveys Association Marketing Trade Show Marketing Membership Drives Renewal Calls Trade Show Registrations Prospecting for exhibitors or sponsors Seminar Marketing Webinars YouTube Virtual Meetings Streaming videos Setting up 1on1 virtual meetings Enhanced Social Media Marketing For the Larson Marketing Planning Guide: Yes, for a free pdf or word doc copy of our Marketing Planning Guide  just email to howard@larsonassociates.ws and I'll email it out to you. Then I can sit down with you and show you how you could be making 50% more in sales! Even more if your an under 500K company and have the grit. This year we are getting right down in the virtual world with you to keep your sales funnel filled with high quality buyers, you or your sales staff set up with appointments.   We Make Good Companies Great And Great Companies Even Better

15 Astounding Marketing Facts

Marketing facts and figures help marketers understand where we stand against the averages and norms. They also help us understand consumer trends, business trends and where the industry has been and where it is going.

Here are 15 of the most astounding social media, email and other marketing facts and figures that I have come across.

1. Companies spending more than 25% of their marketing budgets toward optimization are twice as likely to enjoy high conversion rates, according to a recent study conducted by Adobe. Does that mean optimizing your current marketing mix is a better investment than putting dollars toward new channels? Many marketers are not optimizing their current marketing channels to the fullest extent. Marketing optimization comes down to applying best practices and testing various techniques to improve response.

2. According to the 2013 Marketing Trends study conducted by J&C, 75% of marketers are planning to use social media this year. Social media was second only to email as the most used tactic in marketing. Social media users are now being inundated with messages.

3. According to HubSpot, in 2013 marketers spent almost a quarter of their overall budgets on blogging and social media.

4. According to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, companies that blog 20 times per month get five times more traffic than those that blog less than four times per month.

5. HubSpot also reported that 80% of marketers with a company blog reported positive inbound ROI for 2013. These organizations are likely implementing a number of inbound marketing tactics with a blog being one.

6. This year, 43% of marketers found a new customer via their company blog, according to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report. Blogging takes a strong commitment to content development. Learn more about how to evolve your content development strategy.

7. In 2013, 90% of marketers say they will increase or maintain their use of email. Furthermore, according to Lyris, more than 145 billion emails are sent annually, equating to every user receiving approximately 9,000 emails a year. Breaking through a cluttered inbox isn’t easy. Be sure you are doing everything possible to test and optimize subject lines.

8. According to MarketingSherpa, 69% of consumers are willing to give up personal data in exchange for more customized service. Personalization is becoming an expectation and a norm by consumers and business decision makers.

9. According to Google Think Insights, 74% of mobile users rely on their mobile devices to check email. This number is likely to continue to grow, demonstrating the growing need for mobile optimized emails.

10. Mobile open rate on emails is up 138% in the last 18 months, according to Google Think Insights.

11. Almost half of mobile users feel frustrated and annoyed when they visit a site that’s not mobile-friendly, according to Google Think Insights. Ensure that your emails and landing pages are leveraging responsive design.

12. According to FierceCMO, the volume of triggered email increased 73% in 4Q12 from the year- earlier period.

13. Open rates for triggered emails hit 49.8% in 2012, almost 95% higher than general emails, according to HubSpot’s blog, December 14, 2012. To learn more about how to optimize your triggered emails, check out J&C’s Triggered and Behavioral Email ebook.

14. The direct mail business is growing by 1.4% annually, according to the DMA. Direct mail is a viable marketing tactic, and direct mail effectiveness, measured as response rate, continues to remain steady.

15. Two out of three people who receive direct mail make a purchase or also engage in a different marketing channel, demonstrating the power of integrated communications. Ensure all your marketing channels are working together to create a cohesive prospect and customer experience.

These marketing facts and figures help paint a clear picture of the state of marketing in 2013. Hopefully this information can help you shape marketing strategies and convince others of the approaches that should be pursued.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Fact is that Social and Social Media Marketing are getting more and better looks but Google and the other search engines than your web site. Add that to all the above and what are you waiting for?

And if you want your business to be more and have more, call us for an appointment.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.