We have been selling print for too long
Think about selling print from your customer’s point of view They don’t know anything about print. They don’t care about what sort of press you use or understand your systems. They don’t want you to be selling print. Today’s customers want three things: They need to know how your product will help their business How will your signs increase footfall? Or your direct mail increase online sales? Can your loyalty vouchers increase repeat business? Will your packaging allow them to raise prices? Note, that we are not talking about print any more: we are talking about products and services. We are…
What are your January targets?
Welcome to 2021: it is time to set January targets It is not the start to the year that many of us would hope for. But I’m sure that, if we approach the coming months with positivity, we will find interesting opportunities. The best way to do this is to set January targets. What are you going to do in January? I always find it useful to write down targets and to share them. If I write them down, I commit to them more. And if I share them it starts to make me accountable. So here are my three…
Here’s the secret to successful print sales in 2021
If you want to achieve successful print sales next year you need to start planning now Here are all the questions for successful print sales you should be considering at the moment: What will my 2021 offering look like? What products and services are working with customers who are surviving the current pandemic and fallout? What does my financial target look like? How much business do I need next year that allows the company to survive and takes into account customers that I have lost but also any reduced business costs? What is the best way of communicating with my…
How to set up 4 LinkedIn meetings in less than 30 minutes
How do you get hold of people you have lost contact with? It is simpler than you think to set up LinkedIn meetings! One of my clients had moved jobs. They couldn’t take the contact details of their network with them. And there were a whole bunch of contacts that they had lost contact with and who had moved jobs. So how did they turn this situation around? Here’s a quick 30-minute exercise to set up LinkedIn meetings that anyone can do I got my client to reach out to twenty of their old contacts that they had lost touch…
LinkedIn prospects are better than other prospects: here’s the proof
I’d sooner have LinkedIn prospects than prospects I found elsewhere There’s a simple reason for this: on average, LinkedIn prospects are higher quality prospects than ones found through traditional means. Do I sound like someone who is either completely hoodwinked by LinkedIn or desperately trying to sell LinkedIn training? Well, I’m keen to train you in my LinkedIn systems, but let’s look at the proof behind what I say. Here’s why LinkedIn prospects are better I have been given access to findings from a large corporation. They asked me not to reveal their name, but they are in the printing…
Can you really get results from LinkedIn? The warm prospect process
What’s the point of LinkedIn? I often get asked this question. Lots of people are told to join LinkedIn because everyone says it will help their business. But once they have created their profile, nobody tells them what to do next. How do you achieve results from LinkedIn So here’s the strategy that I use to achieve results from LinkedIn: I use LinkedIn to create warm prospects My activity is based around having a network of people who are ideal clints for me. They are likely to find my products and services interesting. And they see interesting information from me…
Here’s the secret to making sure that you achieve sales results
If you want to succeed in sales, make yourself accountable Sales accountability is key if you are going to get things done. Here’s why it works: You focus on activity Being accountable is not about saying how much you sold last week. It’s about setting activity targets and making sure that you carry them out You overcome challenges A good accountability partner will help you recognise any challenges you came across. They will also help work out how to overcome them. You make sure your activity achieves the desired results Accountability is also about making sure that your activity is…
Can a rep really earn a living selling just print?
What is print? One of my readers asked me “Can a rep still earn a living selling just print?”. To answer this, we really need to define what “print” is. We are in such a diverse industry now and there many ways of describing what we sell. For the purposes of this article I came up with three possible definitions of print: Selling printing By this, I mean the traditional approach of telling prospects that you will carry out any printing that they need. You have an awesome press with loads of bell and whistles. Your company offers excellent quality…
Why giving people choice results in fewer sales
What has selling jam got to do with selling print? If you want to learn a valuable lesson about sales it is worth looking at a study carried out in 2000 which was based on selling jams. The research focussed on buyer behaviour at a jam stall in a local market. At some periods the stall displayed 24 varieties of jam. At other times it displayed only six varieties. These two scenarios resulted in very different buyer behaviours. The stall with 24 different jams had around 40% higher engagement, based on people who stopped at the stall. But the stall with…
When Is the best time to contact a prospect? Here is the definitive answer
The research is wrong! There have been numerous research studies, advice and opinion published on the optimum time to try and contact new prospects. And there is one thing that is the same in all the pieces: none of them agree on any time. Some will tell you that it is 11.10am on a Wednesday morning (how did they manage to work out that every prospect is in a talkative and engageable mood at precisely that time?!). Others will say that it’s a Monday afternoon. But although there may be loads of prospects who are ready to take calls and…