Sales

Sales Funneling – A Marketers Guide

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Sales people often feel that all marketing needs to do is to drive loads of leads their way. If this is the approach in your organisation, then you are missing sales and lowering potential profitability. Careful management of the tone and quantity of your marketing content across a planned sales funnel can deliver pre-qualified leads to a sales person, significantly improving the chances of conversion.

Many of us will have experienced a sense of ‘information overload’ where we simply switch off, or the frustration of wanting to know more about a product or service before we commit and not being able to find it. Both happen regularly, and when they do – you’ve lost a sale.

For almost every purchase we make, we run through a broadly similar decision-making process (I say almost, as the impulse bar of chocolate at the supermarket counter is quite a different process). Typically, and particularly for more complex purchases, our thinking will go something like this: ‘My laptop is heavy – I saw that ad for really light weight ones, who was it again?’ (Latent need); ‘There’s that ad, it’s X-brand’ (Awareness); ‘I’ll just check out their site’ (Interest); ‘Hmm, well the weight certainly compares well, but can I afford it, what are the other options?’ (Evaluation); ‘I’ll pop into Y-shop to see what it feels like and ask a little more about it’ (Trial); ‘I’ve researched the best price, I’ll get it from there’ (Purchase). Kotler and others have spelt out various different versions of this process, there’s bound to have been one modelled for most markets. By understanding the way people make buying decisions, you can map your sales funnel: 1. Awareness, 2. Interest, 3. Evaluation, 4. Trial, 5. Purchase.

Against this process you should map and measure your sales funnel, you’ll steadily whittle down your audience at each step, with interested parties moving through the funnel and those who either don’t want what you offer or who are turned off by your messaging going elsewhere. To maximise the conversion at each stage, marketers should consider two key elements; tone and quantity.

What do I mean by tone? As short-hand, think emotion. Against the sales funnel, there is an appropriate tone at each step. If you imagine a continuum from emotional to rational, typically your marketing material will need to start at emotional and move to rational through the funnel. To really get noticed, you need to appeal to our most human side, our emotions. If you hit a nerve, they notice you. However rational you are, e.g. ‘we’re cheap’, if they don’t feel a need for what you’re offering they’re unlikely to notice your communications in the first place. Successful emotional appeals, in marketing terms, usually hit on a negative feeling and say that you can take it away. This is called finding the point of pain. Once you’ve established that emotional appeal, your communications need to move into more rational territory, where proof is needed. As a sanity check on the tone of your marketing materials, map out each stage of the sales funnel and look at the material (offline, online, sales person, in-store, etc.) and then judge the emotional appeal – are you delivering rational messages too soon? Is your material providing further emotional messaging, when your buyer is looking for rational proof?

Quantity, in regard to sales funnelling, is a fairly straight forward concept – start ‘short and sweet’ and then provide more information at each step. Where most organisations fall foul of this is on their websites. Home pages are often jam packed with information. In a typical sales funnel, an organisation’s website is the second or third step – this means that people typically reach you looking for an emotional appeal (what’s the benefit for me?) and they are looking for key messages. Again, map out your journey and assess the quantity of information you are serving at each stage, it should start small and increase at each step.

So, if you’re experiencing lots of web traffic, but low numbers of enquiries – or lots of footfall and low sales, think about the sales funnel. An initial assessment against tone and quantity will signpost where your blockage might be and put you on the path to a free flowing sales funnel that has a tangible link to your bottom line.

Copyright (c) 2008 Bryony Thomas

Cross Country Running Shoes

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One of the greatest sports I can think of is cross country running. A popular sport in high school and college athletics, and also a popular activity among outdoor enthusiast and runners in general, cross country running offers the opportunity to get out into nature and experience it in a very personal and intense way. If you enjoy running, either for the health benefits or the runners high, you should try getting out to one of your favorite spots in nature, find a good trail, lace up a decent pair of trail running shoes and go running through the forest.

I remember when I first went to purchase a pair of cross country running sneakers as a high school freshman. The sales person told me about durability and ruggedness and other things he had no knowledge about and sold me a pair of low quality tennis shoes. Well, needless to say I paid for that mistake with injuries and terrible times, but I learned a valuable lesson. It is important to be informed before going to shop for an important item like a trail running shoe. Your health and well being may depend on it, and you cant always rely on the sales clerk to know what he is talking about.

If you are going to be running cross country, you will inevitably find yourself running on every kind of terrain imaginable, from pavement to track to grass to trails through the woods. You will often find yourself jumping over roots and rocks, making sudden inclines or declines and crossing drastically from one type of surface to the next. However, ultimately you are still running, and a running shoe is what you are looking for.

trail running footwear is a running shoe that is generally a little sturdier and focuses on delivering a lot of cushioning and lateral support. The often treacherous and unpredictable paths a cross country runner takes requires a shoe that can withstand a lot of abuse. Trail running shoes are often made to be a little more weather and element resistant, as you will often find yourself trekking through mud, wet grass and perhaps even snow.

One sacrifice trail runners will sometimes make is in weight, as the added protection and durability come at the cost of more material and therefore more overall weight in the mens or womens running shoe. However, as you go up in quality, the trail running footwear will get lighter and lighter, until you find a range of durable, supportive, quality running shoes with the appropriate tread on the bottom and support to survive the rugged sport of cross country running.

Fitting a trail running shoe is exactly like fitting any other athletic footwear. Trail running shoes come in all the varieties that other running shoes do, so choose an appropriate style of shoe for your particular needs. When you try the running shoes on, put on both pair and walk around the store a little bit. Crouch down and bend the toe to see how flexible and comfortable they are, and whether or not they rub around your ankles. Try them on with a pair of socks that are like to the ones you run in, as many cross country runners will have special socks that they wear. Move side to side, jump a little bit and run a short distance.

The shoe should fit snug but not pinch your foot. This is especially important in trail running shoes, because the terrain you will be moving across is so varied and uneven. If a shoe pinches your toes, the result can be anything from twisted ankles to bunions to stress fractures. The runners stride depends on a certain range of motion to operate properly during a step, and the trail running shoes you choose should enhance and support that range of motion, not inhibit it.

Human Channel Marketing

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Human Channel Marketing was founded on the principles of discovering the most effective ways to train and motivate sales people to achieve the highest level of performance . Beyond saying that “People are our business” we believe that creating successfully people is the success of our business and that of our clients. HCM is committed to creating success through sales excellence in everything we do. We fully believe that people are our highest resource and investing in and creating opportunity for others is where our ” Tire hits the pavement”. Human Channel Marketing, Direct Sales, Marketing, Company Management, Sales HCM is focused on creating partnerships with all of our clients to co-manage the development of a sales objectives to expand the customer base in their markets. In creating effective programs to penetrate each market we are able to fully support our clients in both retaining and expanding their market share. Human Channel Marketing was founded on the belief that given the right support and opportunity people are able to achieve the life they want to live while creating value in the marketplaces. HCM was Founded by Tim Padden and Sam Custodio in 2007 with the mission of creating an organization that can create opportunities for other while delivering sales excellence for our customers. To achieve this we focus on 4 important concepts in everything we do. Intentionality – Keeping a focus on what you want to achieve and knowing what you are committed to achieving. Integrity – Becoming part of a structure where commitments are kept and communication is real and precise. Honesty – Being accountable for your commitments and having integrity in your actions. Results oriented communication- Measuring your live based on real results and setting measurable goals to achieve them. Backed by a team of industry experts, Human Channel Marketing’s unique hands on approach to marketing both penetrates markets and increases customer retention. With a focus on increasing company revenue for our clients we are constantly innovating marketing methods to more effectively convey value to our customers clients. Human Channel Marketing was founded around the idea of creating more effective methods to support our clients in reaching and expanding their customer base. With more than 40 years of hands on direct sales experience, our management team is constantly innovating our marketing proven methods of direct sales.

Production Volume Growth, Mpv Market Has Become Hot

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The past two years, MPV market rapidly growth, has allowed many enterprises to the charm of this big cake irresistible. According to China Automotive Technology Research Center released data shows that the first half of this year, China produced a total of MPV 18.94 million units, year-on-year up 136.68 percent, sales MPV 16.23 million units, year-on-year increase of more than 100%, reached 101.47%. In the whole passenger car market, MPV become one of the fastest growth market segments.

The data also shows that sales in the first half of the top 10 MPV models had six types of independent brand car; accounted for half of the MPV market. Now, in the MPV own brands market, in addition to jianghuai refine, the grand hiace and so on models have also been won a place in the market.

MPV has across multiple-market segments.

It is can be seen that MPV market performance in the first half of this year continued the good momentum of 2009 growth, the rate of growth has been exceeded sedan and even more than rapidly increase SUV model (growth rate of 87.06 percent year on year), which has let entered MPV market independent brands enterprises, including BYD, etc. will impact the future of the market.

In fact, MPV product is not for a niche market,” Minister of Brilliance Duyuan Peng said in an interview, it is because the MPV product is a versatile car, so it may be in various market segments have their own audience. For instance, it can be used for commercial, public, private, or can be used for logistics, which is why the MPV market in the whole passenger car market growing fastest reason.

The traditional impression of MPV, people thinks that MPV is only one passenger car segment, but it is because of the particular product form and performance, you can let the audience throughout the various market segments, while the needs of their current base already large and still expanding. In the first half year grand hiace reached 70% or 80%.

In Europe, United States, Japan and South Korea these mature cars countries, MPV popularity is very high, its sales accounted for about 10%, most are oriented to domestic markets. For example, in Japan, MPV market share of about 30%; and in the United States, MPV and SUV accounted for 55% market share, every three people will have an MPV in the United States. While in China, the current MPV’s market share less than 5%, if calculated at 10% share, the domestic MPV market will reach millions scale. BYD is very optimistic about the future potential of this market, with 421 families in China increased; in the future MPV market will maintain rapid growth, BYD M6 at this time of listing, is to seize this opportunity.

What Are The Main Objectives Of Advertising

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Advertising is defined as a non-personal form of communication deployed through various media by industries, non profit organizations, business firms, individuals etc. Advertising persuades, informs, instructs and educates target audiences about a particular brand or service and influence the purchasing behaviour or thought pattern of the audience. Advertising is one of the most important tools of marketing and can be coupled with other marketing tools such as sales promotion, personal selling tactics, publicity etc.

Advertising as a tool of marketing is quite different from personal selling. In personal selling, the customer is guided by a sales person, but publicising the advertisement is shown to the customer and the decision is in the hands of the customer. Therefore, advertising may be called written personal selling. Advertising is effective for every single brand, service or business to gain its position in the market.

Advertising creates an impact on every walk of life irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed or religion. Advertising is carried out in various proven tools and mediums and with defined techniques. In this article let us discuss about the four main objectives of an advertising campaign.

Objectives of advertising

The objective(s) of advertising imply the communication tasks to be accomplished. These tasks are directed towards specific customers that a company or organization is trying to reach during a defined time frame. An organization which involves in advertising activities usually strives to achieve at least one of the four common objectives of advertising i.e. trial, continuity, brand switching and switchback.

The purpose of trial objective of advertising is to encourage customers to make an initial purchase of a new product which has been launched in the market. Companies typically deploy creative ad strategies during product launch so that they can stay ahead in the competition. Repeat purchase of the product follows suit so trial objective of the ad campaign should be given more emphasis so as to invite targeted customers.

The next objective of advertising is continuity. Continuity is a typical strategy to keep current customers to stick to the same product. To keep the customers engaged the company usually provides new and different information about the product which is designed to build brand loyalty.

Thirdly, brand switching is one of the widely employed objective of advertising. This technique is adopted when companies want customers to switch to their brand from their competitor’s brand. Brand switching strategy needs a convincing communication so that the mindset of the customer is changed.

Last but not the least brand switchback objective is another strategy used by advertisers or brand owners to win back their former customers. For this a particular company may highlight new features about the product, discount of price, provide useful information about the product- all these to attract back their former customers.

Advertising is a tricky art for brand communication. As an advertiser one should have exceptional advertising skill(s) to influence the right target group and to provide a lasting impression about the brand so that customers stick to the same brand in the future.

Reference Website: – www.tdiindia.com