Archive for April, 2009
Celebrate Earth Day With These Unique Promotions!
Posted by Gallant in Promotional Ideas on April 20, 2009
I’ve taken the time to source out a number of quality promotional “Earth Day” Themed Promotions for everyone!
Take a look at the PDF presentation below…
Make your Marketing Message “Stick” With These Simple Marketing Rules
Posted by Dan in Business Tips on April 16, 2009
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
Simple – Create a Simple Message
Kiss – Keep It Simple Stupid
Sticky = Simple
Simple yet profound – i.e. Clinton’s “It’s the economy stupid”
Simple Ideas presented well will sell.
Unexpected – Give them a marketing message they won’t be expecting.
Surprise them with your unique standout message and then back it up.
Our brain is wired to notice something different.
Use this when building your marketing story.
Concrete
Provide concrete data – the brain is also wired to accept and understand concrete data readily.
Ask yourself – what associations to your message can you conjuring up that will help back up your statement?
Credible
The brain is also Wired to believe facts.
Use facts in a credible way like :
Create Sticky Thoughts through painting pictures that prove your point through things that everyone can relate to.
Emotional
Logic leads to conclusions but Emotions lead to actions.
We relate to human stories, use emotion in your story telling when selling your point.
Stories
Tell stories to make your marketing message stick.
Use the principles like Subway did with the Jarred Story Campaign.
Don’t forget to build your brand presence with P.O.P and customized marketing products from GallantGifts.com
Benefit Big Time by Using Promotional Items
Posted by Gallant in Business Tips on April 10, 2009
There are several marketing strategies that incorporate the use of promotional gifts and items. It is due to the fact that more people are easily attracted to custom made items especially if these are offered as free. Several types of promotional products are designed according to the merchandise it supports. In selecting which products are to be used, you should take into consideration the relation of the item to the service or product you are selling. You may want to base your choices depending upon its usability and effectiveness in promoting your product.
As for choosing the right type of promotional items, it does not necessarily have to be something that is closely related to your advertised services or products. For example, if you are in the sector of beauty and health solutions, you may consider giving out some alternative promotional products such as bags, manicure sets and scented candles. These items would still help in your marketing procedures even if it is not related to products you distribute.
The main purpose of giving out promotional products is to get your company or brand name to be recognized by more people. In order to do this, you may have to consider the customer’s interests before choosing on which of the available types of promotional items that you would use. If you want to consider increasing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, you may also want to consider not just the preferences of the customers but their associates’ as well. By doing this, you are letting your satisfied customers do the advertising for you. The influence that your promotional products make would eventually take effect when it comes to gaining popularity.
There are several techniques on how to use promotional products on your marketing venture. The best place to start marketing your merchandise is setting up a stall on upcoming mass events such as business seminars, trade shows, conferences or exhibitions. You may hand out your promotional items to people that are passing by your trade stand or stall. By doing this, you are not just getting your company or product known to new customers but also enable your name to be openly broadcasted to the public.
Given the fact that the success of your promotional activity depends upon the spreading of your promotional products, you may want to consider choosing between items which are durable or often used by your target customers. These products are proven to be effective when it comes to promoting a certain service or merchandise. You may want to consider this in your decisions in selecting which items are to be handed out to potential customers and clients.
Since the success of your promotional product depends upon its ability to reach the most number of people, you may want to utilize items which would be seen by people for a long time. Promotional products which are durable and practically used by people would give best results in helping you boost your marketing success.
Leadership
Posted by Gallant in Business Tips on April 10, 2009
What great leaders do:
Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self confidence.
70-20-10 rule ( 70% life blood – 20% stars – 10% should be out )
What are you going to do this year to upgrade your team?
Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
Get a vision and speak about it.
Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
Show your passion – You are on a stage every day.
Your employees will be watching your every move.
Even when times are tough, you must
Leaders establish Trust with candor, transparency and credit.
Candor – don’t be afraid to speak your mind.
Transparency – if things are going to be tough, let people know and when things get better, let them know too.
Credit – Give credit where credit is due.
Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
If you have your employees trust then they will understand when the tough decisions have to be made.
Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
If you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to ask about it. Don’t be afraid to not know and
Then followed up with Action.
Leaders inspire calculated risk by setting the example.
Taking calculated risk is a MUST DO in business.
Be pro-active and future thinking.
Leaders Celebrate.
Celebrate with your employees.
Inspired by Jack’s book about Winning.
Cutting Marketing Could Prove Costly
Posted by Gallant in Business Tips on April 10, 2009
Household and personal-care companies that cut spending on marketing in a recession could suffer immediate and long-term business losses, according to a new study. Analysis by a University of North Carolina professor shows home and beauty companies that reduced marketing in previous economic slowdowns lost share to private labels and failed to regain it.
The results of the study are especially timely, as a significant number of these companies slashed marketing at the end of last year. Using data provided by TNS Media Intelligence, which tracks advertising media, multiple researchers have found household and personal-care companies lowered marketing spending by 14% on average in the fourth quarter of 2008. For the year in total, the companies reduced marketing by 8.8%, ahead of the 5% cut by advertisers across all industries.
According to data from Goldman Sachs, a handful of personal-care companies did choose to increase marketing spending late in 2008, contrary to trends. For example, Procter & Gamble Co. devoted more money to advertise its laundry detergent brands, hoping to at least maintain sales and protect against gains from rivals. Further data provided by Information Resources Inc., a marketing services firm, showed foreign-based multinational companies tended to outspend U.S. companies in the home and beauty industry. L’Oréal, for instance, boosted its fourth quarter advertising spending and could stand to benefit in expanded market share.
Conversely, according to the UNC study, about half the share lost to private labels in past recessions has never been recovered by household and personal-care companies. However, research shows leading premium brands that maintain advertising budgets in a recession do not lose business to smaller non-premium labels.
How to Grow your Promotional Business in Tough Times
Posted by Dan in Business Tips on April 6, 2009
Keep your eye the horizon
When times get tough I always find it helpful to keep my eye on the horizon and focus on where I’m going rather than focusing on all the bumps in the road along the way.
I’ve found that representatives who make a long-term commitment to their profession tend to focus on the positives and what they can do and not so much on the negatives and what they can’t do without figuring out some type of solution to their problem.
One of the biggest advantages to following this philosophy and deciding to make it through the tough times is that many other companies in the promotional field will not and when they give up, you’ll have the opportunity to earn new business from their client base and grow your business to new heights. Smart companies that are determined to weather the storm put themselves in a great position to prosper once things get better.
You have to realize that we work in a $19 billion industry, even if we lost half of our sales, there is still approximately $10 billion worth of promotional business to be had. The representatives who will succeed during these tough economic times are the ones who believe they can and demand the very best from themselves.
They’ll challenge themselves like they never have before and they take pride in the fact that they are able to survive the journey when most others couldn’t.
“Believe that you can, and you give yourself a chance;
think you can’t and you’ll probably be right.”
–Gallant
Value vs. Price
Don’t make the mistake of becoming a price-seller; in tough times, your clients will be looking for the very best value — not the cheapest products.
You need to remember that promotional products are used to represent your client’s organization and help them market their brand. If you sell them cheap promotional products to imprint their corporate images on, you’ll be doing them a major disservice.
Ask yourself this: What type of impression would it give your customers if you imprinted your name on a cheap product? What type of impression do you think your clients would have about you and your organization?
Your clients would be much better off by not making a promotional investment at all rather than giving away cheap promotional products that will give their clients the wrong impression about a brand.
Instead, I suggest that you recommend only quality promotional products, but then you have to go the extra mile by finding them the best possible value through taking advantage of specials, closeouts and weekly specials.
In addition, distributors who sell on price create another problem for themselves by developing a client base that is solely looking for the lowest price. This type of client is loyal to just one thing — PRICE. This holds true even if you come up with creative ideas, meet rush deadlines and supply them with superior service.
When a new company offers them a lower price, their loyalty will not be to you but only to the lowest possible price and you’ll end up losing their business.
Eventually, this leaves you with a client base that isn’t growing, doesn’t refer others to you and doesn’t place reorders.
Don’t make this rookie mistake just because times are tough. Seasoned salespeople realize that they serve their clients best by providing them with quality promotional products at the best possible value.
Believe me; they’ll appreciate it in the long run.
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
–Warren Buffett
Develop a Road Map
OK, so you’re committed to weathering this storm. Before you head off on your journey, I strongly suggest that you lay out a road map for yourself to help guide throughout your trip and help you map out the best possible route for your individual needs and wants.
It’s time to develop an MBO (management-by-objectives) plan for yourself and your company. Set out by outlining your 10-year goals. Make these goals dreamy and a bit of a stretch. A reporter at the opening of Epcot Center once asked Roy Disney what his brother might feel if he could have seen the site. Disney replied that it only came to exist because Walt had already seen it in his mind’s eye. Your 10-year goals should be somewhat like that; they are where you see your destiny.
Like a road map, you have to account for where you are today and where you want to be in the future. Once you establish that, it’s time to plan your route and choose your pit stops along the way — that’s where your five-year goals, yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals come into play.
One of the biggest benefit in working an MBO system is that you get daily feedback on the job that you are doing and a chance to reward yourself for a job well done. In doing this, your self-confidence will snowball. Every day you’ll find yourself motivated and drawn to complete your goals so you can get that sense of accomplishment. Even on days you don’t feel like you’ve made progress, you can see that you did what you challenged yourself to do and that you’re on your way toward your destiny and moving closer and closer toward your long-term goals.
Reminder – Just remember to keep your eye on the horizon but pay attention to the daily details that need to be accomplished to get there.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
–Victor Frankl
Know your Clients better than Anyone Else
The only way that you can know your clients better than anyone else is by asking them lots of questions. You must have empathy for your clients, not sympathy. You should always look to put yourself into your client’s shoes. Get to know their real needs and how you can help them before you make a rock solid recommendation and start showing them how they’ll benefit personally from your solution.
You must:
1: Know more about your clients than any of your competitors.
2: Get closer to your clients than any of your competitors.
3: Emotionally connect with your clients better than any of your competitors.
And the best way that you can do that is through understanding. It’s been said that information is power and the more information you have about your clients real needs, the more empowered you will be as a sales representative.
When you know more about the customer than your competitors do, you have the distinct advantage of knowing how you can help your clients personally which starts the process of you getting closer to them than any of your competitors which begins the process of connecting to them emotionally.
Combining these three actions through asking quality questions gives you a great competitive advantage in the business world.
Nothing else can begin to touch this process in terms of enabling you to transcend commodity and defy comparison.
You must remove yourself from being a commodity salesperson, meaning with price, product, and service and transcend yourself into a valuable partner that offers benefit filled solutions for your clients. Asking questions and knowing your clients real needs is one of the most powerful ways to become a true partner. The type of promotional partner your clients will depend on for the long term. Then and only then will you be able to separate yourself from the trinket salespeople.
“For knowledge, too, is itself a power.”
–Sir Francis Bacon
Invest in Yourself and Your Business
Even when times are tough, you must invest in yourself and your business. One of the biggest mistakes you can make when times get tough is to stop investing in yourself and your business. And when you think that you can’t afford it, that’s exactly when you need too the most. You must realize that you’re in the promotional field and if you don’t believe that you can afford to promote yourself and your business, than how will you be able to convince others that they should?
I heard a sales story once where a sales manager of a housewares company went out to help one of her slumping sales rep’s by visiting him at his house to give him some sales guidance. One of the first things the manager did was to excuse herself to get a glass of water and in the process she noticed that her rep wasn’t using their product line. When she got back to the living room, she asked the rep why he wasn’t using his own product line and the rep said that he couldn’t afford them. He used just about every excuse in the book, “Times are bad”, “I’m not making sales”, “I can afford it”, “My old set works just fine”, etc…
Right then, the manager realized how she could help her rep out of his slump. Sell him a set of his own products! So she went about selling him on all the benefits he would receive personally by utilizing his own product line, she overcame ever hurdle that her rep gave her and ended up selling him a set of his our products. What’s the point? If you don’t believe that you can afford to invest in your own promotions then how will you be able to sell someone else on your solutions?
You have to have a rock solid belief that your solutions will deliver benefits to your clients. You have to know that promotional products are one of the very best marketing investments in tough times like these. They’re one of the only types of advertising vehicles that stick.
Hint – You must also remember that not everyone buys exactly like you and that you must understand peoples real needs and not just sell to people like you would sell yourself.
More importantly, especially in tough times, you MUST investment in improving yourself. Remember that sales are the life blood of any organizations and you’re in sales.
Be proud of that fact, especially if you’re a professional. Professionals constantly invest in their education and that’s why they are also some of the highest paid individuals in the working world. You must constantly look to improve and sharpen your sales skills. There really is no better investment than the one where you’re investing in improving yourself. If you’re saying to yourself that you just can’t afford it right now then that’s a clear sign that you can’t afford not to make the investment in yourself right now.
“The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.”
–Dolf de Roos
Dan Levin
Gallant is celebrating our 15 Year anniversary this year
Making Sales in Tough Times
Posted by Dan in Business Tips on April 6, 2009
There’s only one problem salespeople face when times are good—getting sloppy. It’s easy to be deluded by success into believing success is due to our incredible ability to convince customers to do business with us. Truth be told, we believe customers are flush with cash and just want to place orders.
For the moment––and perhaps longer––customers are cautious, somewhat fearful and far less willing to sign our orders. They are more thoughtful and slower to act. In such circumstances, what are salespeople to do? Simply hope for the best or emphasize lower prices? I offer these 20 tough-times sales tactics:
1. Keep customers and prospects informed, but don’t bombard.
There’s been hardly a day since January that the warehouse retailer, Costco, hasn’t e-mailed to its customers.
2. Don’t blink.
There’s a tendency to want to hunker down and let the storm go by. This is the time to increase your visibility, particularly since the competition will likely become invisible, waiting for the good times to roll.
3. Offer help.
What customers need more than anything else is help with innovative ideas. Be their sounding board. You’re the expert. Help them. If you can’t be of assistance, you don’t get business. Show them you can deliver more than a product or service.
4. Stay away from stupidity.
In tougher times, the scam artists come out of the woodwork to prey on companies and salespeople feeling the impact of a downturn. It’s easy to be drawn to such offers as “100 FREE leads” or “We’ll make you more appointments than you can handle.” Salespeople are believers who fall for a good sales pitch.
5. Hang on to customers.
In the summer of 2007, Sprint Nextel sent letters canning a group of customers who called too much. While getting rid of high-maintenance customers may seem tempting, it can backfire. Wharton professors Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang indicate that dumping low-value customers may actually reduce profits, while efforts to enhance their value can be counterproductive. Instead of firing high-maintenance, low-value customers, a better approach may be to keep them but find more efficient ways to serve them.
6. Get serious about prospecting.
The goal of a prospecting program is long-term growth, not instant sales. Get serious about identifying those who fit the profile of your best customers and start staying in touch with them via opt-in e-mail and direct mail campaigns, for example. Let them get to know you are serious, competent and can help them. It pays off over time.
7. Focus on value.
A clear shift is taking place with buyers. They want to know, “Where’s the value?” If this isn’t made clear, will they go elsewhere?
8. Make every meeting valuable.
Because most meetings waste time, have a clear purpose when you ask for a meeting and make sure the customer agrees it is worthwhile. Stop dropping in on customers.
9. Answer communications.
Prompt, clear and complete telephone and e-mail responses send the message that you’re timely and efficient, qualities that will set you apart from a majority of other salespeople. Use the spell-check, too.
10. Know the economy.
Reading trade publications is essential, but not enough. Know what’s going on in the economy, both short and long term. If you must choose one source, make it USA Today online (www.usatoday.com) with its concise, helpful and accurate information.
11. Keep your antennae up.
It’s easy to get blindsided in tougher times. Listen to customers. Don’t ignore their concerns and fears. Make sure your sales pitches and presentations speak to these issues and send the message that you are in sync with their concerns.
12. Show customers ways to reduce costs.
Don’t assume your customers believe you are looking for ways to save them money. In fact, they may actually feel you want to do just the opposite. Always be alert for cost-cutting solutions and be sure to let them know this is how you’re working for them.
13. Tighten your schedule.
We all fall into regular routines and would go nuts if we didn’t. Yet, this can work against us. Giving customers proper attention takes time, including making sure we stay in contact with them.
14. Introduce proprietary products.
There is nothing more useful and beneficial than proprietary products and services. Look at your supermarket’s shelves. Name brands are disappearing and lower-cost store brands are taking up more space.
15. Always tell the truth.
While being truthful is always essential, it’s even more important in difficult times when customers need candid, thoughtful advisors more than ever. In such times, you can demonstrate to customers your true value.
16. Make every minute count.
Never call a meeting without having an agenda. Also set time limits for meetings. If you’re making sales calls, do everything you can to group them as close together as possible. If you’re traveling to a specific area, arrange other appointments; don’t plan to drop in and hope someone will see you.
17. Stop the jargon and BS.
Some customers will tolerate it in good times but not when they are stressed and under pressure. Tougher times require plain, clear and direct talk. If you don’t stop acting as if everything is coming up roses, you’ll come across as disingenuous or a fake.
18. Be patient.
Acting rushed sends customers the message that you’re panicked. We don’t see it as much in ourselves as we do in others––and we don’t want to be around them. It’s time to nurture customers, not bombard them.
19. Don’t over promise.
This is a tough one. When there are fewer or smaller orders, salespeople often have trouble resisting the temptation to over promise just to get an order. Then, when you can’t deliver on the promise, the empty excuses only serve to undermine your credibility, and the next order goes to a competitor.
20. Don’t rely on the past.
While Shakespeare said, “The past is prologue,” it may not be today. It’s always more comfortable to look backward than forward and talk about what may lie ahead. Where we have been is more comfortable than an unknown future. How many salespeople say, for example, “I know what my customers want,” while totally oblivious to the changing behavior, needs and wants. They are blinded by a past that may lead them down the wrong path.
In tougher times, selling is more challenging than ever. To be successful and buck the trends, we must make use of every resource we can. These 20 tactics can be helpful in making the most of a difficult economic environment.
Sales – Tips For Selling During a Downturn
Posted by Dan in Business Tips on April 3, 2009
It seems like everywhere you turn there are ideas and tips for selling your way through the recession. But how many of them actually work? Here are a few no-brainers that have risen to the top of the “What do we do now?” pile.
1. Include a compelling offer in your ads
Use free information about your products or services to produce inquiries or interest in your website.
2. Get contact information and follow up
Most customers don’t buy the first time.
3. Eliminate risk
The biggest reason people don’t purchase things they want or need is that they don’t want to risk disappointment or, worse, losing money. Eliminate this risk with liberal money-back guarantees.
4. Excite customers
Sending thank-you notes and gifting them with free trips or coupons will make customers like you and recommend you to others.
5. Make it easy to buy
Create several points where customers can make purchases on your website.
6. Charge more
Frequently when customers balk at prices it’s because the reason isn’t justified. Make sure to explain your value to prospects.