marketing mistakes

Happy New Year to you all – and best wishes for 2017! Welcome to a new year of blogging, and we will certainly try to do our best on this blog platform. We have been receiving extremely encouraging words from our fans. These words really motive us and compel us to continue at our game. The year 2017 is another good opportunity to explore various areas to improve our enterprises as entrepreneurs. Isn’t it? If you desire to preside over an investment or enterprise that is perennially in trouble that’s up to you! It’s your choice.

Now, I closed 2016 with a blog on debt financing. I do hope you enjoyed and benefited from it. As an opening for 2017 I would like to talk briefly about marketing and sales communication. I believe as an entrepreneur you really understand that your enterprise has to generate cash. You and your staffs (if existing as some of us run very tiny one-man enterprises) must market and sell like the world is ending and make some money for the business to make profit and progress. I sometimes have a good and hearty laugh at entrepreneurs who don’t like marketing and selling. I don’t think there is any short-cut to generating revenue.

And then, on marketing and sales, I would like to focus on the communication aspect now. Do your sales communications really make sense? Have you seen good actions and responses from the market to your sales communications? Candidly, do you and your marketing and sales team understand that communication is cash? Have you heard about the AIDCA of selling communication, and does your team deploy this to the advantage of your enterprise? Come on, let’s read on and see.

  • Attention or awareness – as a starting point. Your selling communication should focus on attracting attention of the market, or rather the target customers and clients you intend to sell your products and services to. How will someone even consider making a decision to buy when he or she is not firstly attracted to what you have on offer? Don’t screw your sales communication from the start, OK? Haven’t you come across some sales communications that shockingly and embarrassingly fail to attract your attention? Watch keenly – and you will not miss to see some.
  • Interest – is the second thing here. Your communication should stir interest of the target customer, client or buyer in your products and services. Interest is more than attention. Do you understand this? One could have attention and move on, but interest retains someone to enquire more. When you have people enquiring more then it means the desire is being developed and you could turn the interest into a sale if well managed. Are you getting something here Mr. Entrepreneur? By the by, this interest has to be high enough to enable the buyer to progress to desire the product or service. Don’t you agree with me here? Interest brings along the ‘could’ or possibility thinking at some stage.
  • Desire – is the third thing that selling communications should aim to achieve. As I mentioned above, the desire created has to be strong enough. Desire is simply a strong wish or feeling to have or want something. I’m not going to add ‘someone’ to ‘something’ here – for reasons you can guess. I’m talking about business goods and services here and not personal relationships – he he he. Desire moves the interest for the product or service beyond the logical element to the emotional one, that is, from the head or brain to the heart. Come on Mr. Entrepreneur. At this stage you have to quickly guide your effort towards the next stage, and that is conviction.
  • Conviction – follows strong desire. When your customer is convicted then considerations such as reaffirming the want or need or desire, checking whether the timing is correct or near-correct, ability to afford the purchase, or possibly alternative considerations etc. come into play. At this level you have in your hand a goner that simply has to be moved into action. It’s interesting how some naïve salesmen just miss it at this stage. They start stammering at the excitement of a sale and then fail to move the customer or client into action. This is why I strongly recommend that you train your sales team Mr. Entrepreneur. Your meanness and over-assumption might be costing you thousands, millions or zillions of whatever currency you deal in. Don’t you think so? I’m talking here to entrepreneurs who hardly spend a dime in staff training.
  • Action – is cash and it’s what every salesman and entrepreneur wants. When I say cash don’t begin imagining that you will carry the hard cash there and then – OK? I mean a decided customer who will order the product or service. Some will pay you immediately, others will pay in a couple of days or weeks or even months, and yet a few will want you to chase them for the value they got months back! Strange world, isn’t it? It’s not that they don’t appreciate the value you have given them. Some simply don’t like parting with a dime. These characteristics might have been acquired in this life or perhaps inherited. Now, don’t laugh at me – but I candidly think some people inherit this trait.

I think the above is OK for today. Not too much I believe. I don’t desire to quickly take you away from your slow and relaxed start to the New Year, OK?

Have a terrific and fantabulous 2017!

Till then,

The Wise Entrepreneur

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