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Double your revenue by concentrating on critical business activities |
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By Grace Corporate Park LLC Do you start your day at the workplace at full steam? When you get to your workplace do you have a dozen phone calls and emails to reply to? If you do, how many of those correspondences are new sales leads? How many are business related items that generate revenue? Are most of your daily correspondences sales related or are they personal in nature?
Product Development
Whether you have widgets to sell or intangible services to sell, if you are selling some thing, you have a product. Successful businesses continuously spend time and energy improving their products. As a business owner and professional, how much time do you spend improving your product? For example, I'm in the Serviced Office Space business. I provide turnkey private offices and workstation desk spaces to my customers. My product consists of providing functional office spaces and workstations and managing everything related to running an office. This includes making sure that internet connection and telephone services are working properly, maintaining appropriate level of staffing such as receptionists and cleaning crews, making sure that the copier, printer and fax machines are serviced and that we have enough toners and papers for the machines. A combination of these and a host of other office management service is my product. As part of my product development process, I'm always looking for product improvement ideas. I ask my self, what else can I do to make my serviced office space a better place for my customers to conduct their business? I try to continuously improve my product to ensure that my products are up to date.
If you have the best widgets in the world to sell, would you keep it a secret? That is effectively what you are doing if you are not actively engaged in some sort of daily marketing activity - you are effectively keeping your product a secret from your potential buyers. If your potential customers don't know about your product, how would they buy it from you? Marketing is a critical activity for your business. You must get the word out to your potential customers. There are so many creative and cost effective marketing ideas out there. Just search for the term "Marketing Ideas" on Google or Yahoo and you will get a long list of websites and free articles. Taking my Executive Office Suite business as an example, I conduct a daily ritual of marketing activities both online and offline. I advertise to newspapers and online classifieds every day. There are many free classifieds websites on the internet and I try to take advantage of it as much as I possibly can. Why not? It's free. When I advertise, I try to be as direct as possible so that my readers will know exactly what they are reading. I try to avoid being vague so that when a person responds to my ad, there's no mistake about what they are responding to. For example, my ads may read like this:
Selling your product
If you've done a good job of marketing your product, you should receive a constant stream of sales leads. But the process doesn't stop there. You now have to sell your product to your potential customer - your qualified lead. Selling involves calling and talking to people. If you're shy about talking to people, overcome your shyness fast. It's amazing how often a sales lead is not pursued because the sales person has a good excuse why they shouldn't follow up on a lead. My personal favorite excuse for not calling on a sales lead is "I sent an email. They'll call me if they are interested in my office space." An email message is a great way to keep in touch with people but it's no replacement for a live phone conversation. You must get on that phone and make the call if you want to sell. In my sales process, I've established a simple rule for may self - when I get a qualified lead about my office suite spaces or virtual office services, I send an automatic email containing details of my product. The email may contain information about the different size offices I have currently available, what's included in the office rent and what other benefits my potential customers could get when they move in to my executive office suite. It's a great way to communicate the specifications of my product but I don't consider that email to be an act of selling. It's just a product brochure. It's not a sales effort. To sell, I follow up on the email with a phone call. Think about the last time you bought something. Did you want to talk to someone before you bought it? You have to get on the phone and talk to your prospect if you want to have a successful sale.
Closing on your sale
Informing a prospect about the features and benefits of your product is NOT the same thing as asking them to buy the product. You eventually have to ask your prospect to buy. A sales lead that keeps on leading but not buying is not a lead at all. At some point you have to close the deal by either selling or dropping the lead. Being in the executive office suite business, I get many calls from sales people who want to sell me widgets. The widget may be a phone service, or internet connection or paper supplies or copier toners. The experienced sales people will spend the necessary time explaining why their widget is better and answer any questions I might have. But eventually they will ask me to buy their widget and move on when they realize that I am not in the market for their widget. The inexperienced sales people however will just keep on telling me more about product features and benefits hoping that they will stumble onto some magic words that will cause me to buy. They are afraid of closing the sales process because I might say no. But they need to realize that the magic words are "Will you buy my widget?" and if my answer is no, just move on to the next lead. But they don't ask and when I say that I am not interested in the widget, they keep repeating how great their widget is.
In my Manhattan executive office suite business my prospects rarely make a decision on the spot after seeing the place for the first time. My prospective customers often need time to think things over and need to see a few other places before making a decision. This is prudent since settling on an office space can be emotional to the individual. Knowing this, I ask when we can talk again to see whether our office space in New York City will work for the prospect. When I call them at the agreed on time, I should know whether I should prepare a service agreement or move the lead to my "follow up in the future" folder. I try to help my prospects to objectively sort out their options without being biased. What ever their decision is, I should have closure on my sales lead and move on to my next qualified lead. There's nothing worse than pushing people to make decisions when they are not ready.
Deliver your product as promised
Once a sale is made, buyers often go through the "buyer's remorse" stage. Buyer's remorse is a period of time when buyers regret making the purchase for what ever reason. They may feel that they bought the wrong widget or paid too much for the widget or what ever else a buyer's thought process takes them. At this point, if they experience any snags in product delivery the "buyer's remorse" factor will be reinforced. The snag could be anything, late delivery, defective product, simply what what the buyer ordered. The result could be a bad impression or worse, a refund. Don't let this happen to you after putting in so much effort in your sales process. Deliver the product on time, on budget and in the quality and specification promised. In my business, this is even more critical since I deal with people's workplaces (pride of workplace is an emotion). If I don't have the office space or desk space ready on time it's more than an inconvenience for my client. They can get their work done. So I do everything I can to make sure that every aspect of their workspace ready on-time. I make sure that the telephone service is turned up correctly, the internet connection is working properly, the workspace is cleaned, company sign is posted and spelled correctly, and that all keys are available for hand over to my new tenants the day they move in. When I deliver my product I want my customers to know that they have made the right choice in taking an office space from me. I make sure that everything about the office space works the way they should and leave nothing to chance.
Follow up service
Delivering your product is not the end. Even after your product has been delivered and you have been paid, your product is under constant scrutiny until the buyer becomes comfortable with it. After a few days or weeks of delivery (whichever is appropriate your product), give your new customer a call to see if they are still happy with your product. If they are not, offer to fix the problem right away. This kind of willingness to go the extra mile will leave a long lasting impression that you are not just about taking their money and moving on. Your customers will appreciate the fact that you care even after you have been paid. It might even lead to additional sales in the future or a referral to a new qualified lead.
In my executive office suites business following up on a sale is unavoidable since my product is my office suite space where I also work out of. I see my customers every day. I always leave my door open so that my customers can walk in a talk to me about anything. If something is wrong I want to know about it right away so I can fix it.
Running a business involves many tasks and activities. It is easy to the trap of the daily grind and neglect what's really important for your business. No matter how busy you are, don't neglect your product development, marketing, sales, closing, delivery and customer service. These are critical activities for my Executive Office Suite business as they are most likely for your business as well. Take a step back and look at your daily routine. How much time have you spent lately on the critical things that matter for your business? Neglecting even one of these activities can have a crippling effect on your business. Embrace and incorporate them in to your daily routines see your business double and triple in no time. About the author Grace Corporate Park is a Manhattan Executive Office Suite company providing affordable virtual office, turnkey furnished office and serviced workspace solutions to businesses and professionals on a temporary or permanent basis. Casey's main responsibility is Sales and Marketing. |
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