I received an email from a current advertiser in which she states that she has not received any response from her ad.  On the other hand, I have had people tell me how much they like her ad and what a great idea the business is (they run errands, etc).

I invited her to participate in a vendor expo,in which she seemed very excited about, but then didn’t return any calls or emails and didn’t do it.  I have invited her to a professional group that I belong to, but she hasn’t come and also invited her to join the Chamber, but again, she choose not to. She has stated that she sees this ad as a tax deduction and nothing more and at the end of her 6 months she wants out.

I replied saying that I am sorry to hear that she is disappointed and suggested (again) some ad changes, that she has agreed to try.  Is there anything else that I can do?  Any and all help is appreciated.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy with this kind of victim mentality. If your advertiser wants to stop advertising with you it means you have done a poor job of educating the advertiser, and you have  done a poor job of creating value…..even if it’s apparent value.

Your job as a Coffee News owner is not to sell advertising….it’s to create relations and to educate. You are an educator. Teach the people advertising. Teach the people marketing. Give them stuff. Give them a monthly marketing class for free. They will beg you to advertise.

Turn what you do around.

As you may know I am putting a little ebook together on advertising. Here’s an introduction

Some time ago a fisherman had a problem. He had this fish cage in the water right where big and small fish were. He noticed that many large fish came to visit him, made use of his offer and then disappeared again. He also noticed that some of his large fish never came back. But he saw them at his friend’s cage. This was upsetting. After all the work he did giving fish what they want they had the audacity to leave him.

The fisherman made another starling discovery. There were many small fish reading the story that he left on the door of the cage. But they all stopped there. They read and disappeared. But as these small fish grew fatter his friend collected most of them.

He gathered all his courage and asked his friend why he was so successful? The friend said it’s pretty simple. But he was not sure if he wanted to share the secret. This secret has been part of his family for ages.

However he noticed how desperate his friend was and decided to help.

You already have your cage where the fish are but you have a problem. You are only attracting the few big fish who want what you have on offer today. Most of the fish coming past your gate and reading your story are not ready or don’t want what you have. They don’t want it when they read it. They do want it tomorrow but then they have moved on.

You have no bait for the small fish who want it later. You must add other bait that will attract them to you even if they don’t want to take your main offer.

Let me say that to take your main offer is a major commitment from the fish and they cannot or will not make that commitment yet. What I want you to do are to offer something they want today! But something that does not need any major commitment from them.

The other problem that you have is that when you do catch a large fish, and you exchange the offer, you let the fish go. This is a waste.

I want you to go and create two cultivation pools; one for the big fish that grab your offer, and another pool for small fish who are not yet ready to make the major commitment.

Then I want you to change your story on your cage door. Tell them about your major offer but also share information about your cultivation pool. Tell the fish that you will feed them tips and secrets on how to survive. You will share “For Free” when they become part of your cultivation pool. The cultivation pool is their place where they can grow huge with knowledge. And only when they are ready can they take you up on your offer or they can leave. There’s no obligation.

But you may say that I am stupid telling them there’s no obligation. This is a long story and I will suffice to say that I am getting more fish in my cultivation pool because of my “no obligation” statement. I think it helps fish coming into my pool because they feel at ease.

But that’s not all. You must also offer a cultivation pool for the large fish who took your offer. This will keep them happy until they are ready to take another offer.

It is that simple.

If it’s that simple why are more fisherman not using the cultivation pool?

Not so long ago a friend was burgled. A few minutes after I learned about the incident I was on the phone and I asked if I could assist. My friend said that he would appreciate it if I could research home security systems and advise him.

I knew a local provider, even the name of the business, but not the phone number. That was unfortunate because I have done business with Hawk Eye Security. I have met the owner at various events. And his technicians did some work at my home; they are pleasant and professional.

Hawk Eye advertised in every possible off-line publication. They were involved in, and sponsored, many local events. Peter, the owner is well known and liked in the community. He grew up here.

I, therefore, felt that Hawk Eye Security was a trust-worthy business I could recommend with confidence. Unfortunately I did know Peter’s or Hawk phone number. And I went searching on Google. I entered “Hawk Eye Security.” Nothing. Hawk Eye Security did not exists, at least not according to Google. The alternative was the Yellow Pages but we treat this 5 kilogram book as a dangerous implement. The Yellow Pages is not easily accessible.

Google provides easy alternatives. I phoned another security company and spoke to a pleasant man. He was in the business for 6 six years. It was obvious that he knew his story because he fed me with advice. And the more advice he gave me the more I liked him. At the end I asked him to call my friend in need. He said he will.

But what about Peter and Hawk Eye?

Eventually I found his number via Google. He was listed on an obscure classified ads site.

I phoned Peter but he was not available. I told my story to the staff and ask them for advice. They said Peter was the only one able to help me. I asked if they have a brochure that they could email or fax to me. Nothing. I asked for Peter’s cell phone number.

The assistant hesitated and eventually told me she could not share Peter’s cell number. The next thing I was transferred. Another assistant told me that Peter is not in. I explained again that I wanted info. He could not help me. Reluctantly he gave me Peter’s cell number. I left a message and Peter phoned me back later the afternoon.

This is what this book is all about. Peter spends mind blowing amounts on advertising and sponsorships but he is wasting most of it.

What can we learn from this?

1. Advertising is more than placing an advert.
2. Your staff needs to be educated.
3. Staff is not incompetent the boss is
4. Your staff needs tools to communicate and sell when you not there
5. The boss is not the only seller
6. You must be visible online
7. You need to ensure your advert is not designed to sell
8. Your advert needs to cater for people who want info
9. When people ask for info you need to collect names and email addresses
10. You need an automated system to follow up with these people until they spend money with you
11. When they have paid you for services or products proved, you need to keep them well fed with info and tips until they spend again

I call this process the Creation Of A Cultivation Pool. And as I said, I will include the final mind map with the ideas on how to set the record straight.

Please share this with your friends on lets get the mind mapping the problem experienced by small businesses.

Image by Sailing "Footprints: Real to Reel" (Ronn ashore) via Flickr

Today I read this request, from a small business person, on cold calling. And I thought that you may be able to help.

I was wondering if some of you could help me out. When you have to go out cold calling what do you say to get the best results? I guess what are some of your lines? I have trouble sometimes not getting to make contact with a decision maker and only hand off information to a receptionist behind the desk. I am not sure if the focus should be on going in to get an appt with a specific decision maker on advertising or if you just go in and try to start selling them on coffee news. Just need some help with boosting sales.

I had a look at the request and though I may be able to help with the last part of the request, therefore I did not address the issue of getting past the gatekeeper.

Here’s my proposal on how to handle the cold call when you got trough to the main Mac:

Cold calling is like asking for the kiss on the first date.

There’s nothing wrong with asking for a kiss on your first date as long as you can handle the smacks you’ll get.

Mostly these smacks are 90 people saying no and 10 saying yes.

It become pretty painful at the end of the day as you feel personally injured because of all the nos.

But you know that.

My point is that when we expect the sale or appointment (the kiss) when we cold call (ask for the kiss) we miss the point.

By the way: Most Coffee News ads also expect the kiss on the first date and we will have to change our approach to ensure more success for our advertisers. But that’s another related story.

Getting back to your question:

What should you say when you cold call?

Here’s what I do:
————————————————————————————————————————————
Say you call and the potential advertisers answers you then start
"Hi Jane here I am from Coffee News.
I am sorry…. did I interrupt you?…………….(give it some time)
I am calling because I want to share a FREE small business marketing book with you called "Learn Why Jean Daum’s 17 Marketing Secrets Rocked The Small Business World"

Would that interest you?
————————————————————————————————————————————-

This approach means that you are not selling anything

You are pre-selling…..

You are giving and the floor is open for easy discussion

You can now ask for the contact details to send the free ebook

(You can have an ebook or a hard copy)

Then you should try and get an appointment

If you don’t get the appointment you have the email address and hope the free ebook will do the selling for you.

If you have an appointment see that as the bonus.

This is what I do:

1) Set up a blog with free tips

2) Make my cold call and offer the free book

3) Get the email address, name and phone number

4) See if I can get an appointment

5) Add the email address to the blog/newsletter

6) As soon as the email is added to the blog newsletter an autoresponder dispatch ebook

7) Once a week I publish more tips on my blog that gets emailed to all my subscribers

8) Now I can cultivate them and after some time of cultivating they will give me the kiss because they now no and trust me.

You’ll notice that the process is not focused on selling but on designing a system to create trusting relationships.

I have written many articles on the subject but this one may be the most relevant as it covers cold calling.

I am at this moment creating such an ebook for the South African small business people like the Coffee News Marketing agencies. If you want a copy subscribe to our free tips newsletter (see top right for the subscription box).

Regards

Johan Horak

One-step advertising is when the ad goes all out and asks for the sale. This is also known as ‘selling off the page.’ It is by far the hardest advertising method, and is very difficult to achieve successfully when selling a high value or complicated product or service. [I call this kiss on the first date advertising]

On the other hand, two-step marketing, or lead-generation advertising is relatively easy to achieve, and your response will be much higher than if you used one-step advertising. Two-step marketing

  Therefore when you start using two-step marketing you will attract more potential clients. Now that you have them you can cultivate the relationship until they know, like and trust you. And when they do they’ll find it easy to take out the purse and pay you good money.

But How Do You Get People To Respond To Your Ad

Let’s look at an example:

If you read the following ad and you had a problem at home then I am sure you’ll respond.

Are You Ashamed of 

Smells

 In Your Home?

Get Your 

FREE Report 

On 

How To 

Get Rid Of Smells

Visit 

ProudSmellingHome.Com 

Today

Do you think this advertisement is enticing enough that people would be moved to ask for the free report?

This is an example of a free gift that would make your prospects eagerly anticipate receiving it. These reports costs you almost nothing to produce but it could transform your business, reduce your advertising cost and make you more successful.

Let me conclude with a nice idea from a blogger who reminds us that two-step marketing also allows you to measure the success rate of your advertisement. And if you are in advertising you know how much more business you can have if you can show the success rate. The number of prospects that asked for the free stuff.

The work you do today creating your two-step marketing approach and tools will pay back many times.

Have Fun

Johan

P.S. Say Good By To Cold Calling When You Use Two Step Marketing

John Jantsch wrote an excellent article on two-step marketing. His idea on cold calling is excellent and I recommend it:

Set-up a 2 step lead machine and you can say goodbye to cold calling while generating all of the qualified, permission based leads you can handle. I know, I know, you shouldn’t ever need to cold call but, if you do, do it this way.

Call up those prospects on your list and instead of trying to convince them to give you 5 minutes of their time a week from Tuesday, offer them the address of your power-packed free info and then shut-up. Your prospecting time will be much more productive if you can use it to turn cold calling into 2-step prospecting.

Let’s consider the new process (see diagram):

1. You have identified the target population you want to attract to your business.
2. You have designed a two step advertisement that invites people to your website to get the free report. (See Get Your FREE Report in the green box). Your ad is designed to attract people who are interested in your product but not ready to spend money yet. Instead of allowing them to pass-by you give them an opportunity to make  a small commitment that will not cost them money. They have to give you their name and email address in order to get the free gift. 
3. As soon as they give you their contact details you can cultivate them in your cultivation pool; you can now send them regular free tips giving them advice on your product/service until they are ready to take out the money and buy.

In order to use the cultivation pool you need to:

1. Agree that all people reading your ads are not ready to spend money today and that they must be brought into your cultivation pool.
2. Design all your promotional material so that it invites potential clients to your cultivation pool.
3. Create a blog/newsletter/auto-responder but you can also do it manually with a fax or answer machine.
4. Create free gifts, free reports and e-tips that you can publish on your blog from where it can be sent to your clients and potential clients.

May you cultivate those people who want to do business with you but who are not ready today. Because if you do they will not end up with your opposition.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. Coffee News South Africa local marketers provide a fully inclusive marketing solution for small businesses. Contact us today if  you want to take control of your marketing efforts using these ideas. Not only will we help you with the design of two step ads we will also create your cultivation pool and teach you how to use it.

P.P.S. Do you like cold calling? If you do then you are one of a few. If you don’t like cold calling then read how the cultivating pool (two step marketing) can help you become more effective when you cold calling.

Unfortunately the small businesses have to continue wasting money on expensive advertising. But when they start incorporating a cultivation stage then they find that advertising becomes the net catching clients in their cultivation pool. In this pool potential clients are fed with gifts and education until the clients are ready to pull out their purses and spend money.

Like in the traditional small business advertising post we have the same stages but we have included the cultivation stage; consisting out of a ‘gifts and committer’ stage. I will discuss these two stages today and then in a follow up article I’ll illustrate how to implement the cultivation pool. 

Let’s consider the diagram above;

We get the target audience that we want to advertise to, as soon as they read the ad some of them will become wanters. A very small number of the wanters are hot prospects and may become payers (willing to take out their purses and pay for the goods). However most of the wanters are only lukewarm and not convinced yet; they may not have the money to pay today, they may not feel comfortable with the advertiser yet, they may not know if what’s advertised is what they want. Now is the time to educate and create relationships with them……… in the cultivation pool.

What Happens The Cultivation Pool?

We provide the lukewarm wanters with gifts until they are ready to commit and then buy. Therefore the intention is to keep them with in our sphere of influence and not send  them back to the target population. Because when they are sent back to the target population we need to use expensive advertising to get them back. So lets rather keep them in the pool.

While they are in the pool we give them gifts.

What are these gifts? We provide them with:

• Testimonials from happy customers
• Information on the products and services
• How to use the products
• Elaborate write-ups on guarantees
• Education

Basically we are creating a trusting relationship so that our lukewarm wanters can take out their purses and buy our products.

You’ll also notice that we can send our post-payers (people who have paid) back to the cultivation pool until they are ready to buy something else.

1. With the cultivation pool we never have to let anyone, who has seen our advertisement, back to the target population.  
2. With the cultivation pool we can increase our advertising conversion rate by more than a 100% and reduce the cost to get a new client by a factor of more than a 100.

Please note: I am not suggesting that small businesses should spend less money on advertising. All I am saying is that traditional advertising is expensive because it makes the same mistake over and over again.

When you advertise with the idea to catch lukewarm wanters for your cultivation pool your advertising becomes effective and cheap.

As I have mentioned; the next article will look at how you create a cultivation pool. Then we will look at how you adopt your advertisements to get more lukewarm wanters in the pool.

Good luck 

Let’s look at the traditional advertising cycle and see how it relates to a fishing net.

The traditional-advertising cycle used by most small businesses follow the same cycle. Basically they pay for an advert without thinking about the mentality of their potential customer.

Today I will discuss the traditional advertising cycle and then, in a follow up post, I will look at a multi-step-marketing cycle as an alternative to the outdated traditional advertising cycle.

Diagram: You get 10 000 people called the target population, only a 1000 read the advertisement, 100 like what you have advertised and become a wanter. Only 10 decide to buy but when it get’s to taking out the money only one have the guts to actually to take out the purse and pay for it. Every time during these stages the potential client is returned to the target population. Never is there a place were relationships are cultivated. In the next post I will look at the cultivation cycle then I will just focus on the cultivation cycle.

I believe that traditional small-business advertisers make a fundamental mistake because they assume there’s only three (to four) advertising stages.

Let’s consider the traditional advertising stages:

1. Out there is a mass of people (population) and some of them (target population) may be interested in the product being advertised. Let’s assume that only 10% of the target population see the advert. (The other skip the ad because it was not well structured to draw them in).
2. Then we get the wanters; those who read the advertisement. They want the product. They may not want it today but they want it. This stage is over looked by traditional advertisers. These wanters may want to buy today, others may want what is advertised but may not have the money today or need some time before they spend the money. Other wanters are at this moment gathering info on your product. Traditional small business advertisers ignored this stage and allow these people to become part of the general population again.
3. A small percentage of the ‘wanters’ will take out their purse and buy what’s on offer and then they become a ‘payer’. They give you money. The other may not yet trust the offer and become a expensive non-entity.
4. I have also included a stage that I call “Post Payer.” This stage is also not considered during traditional marketing. It’s included here to show you that in traditional advertising the ‘post payer’ also becomes part of the general population.

Every time traditional business people advertise using this model they recreate the fishing experience.

They spend expensive money to attract the same people over and over again. They attract people that they are willing drop through the holes again. These holes allow potential paying clients, who read their ad, to get away. It’s like putting bait out and hoping to catch many fishes with a large eyed net.

Our initial net was caste to 10 000 people but we only caught one. This gives the advertiser 0.01% success.

When you plan on catching fish with the correct net and various cultivating tanks you will be able to increase your success rate by 1000 times.

Well, maybe only a 100 times.

But I will take a 100 times anytime.

Because:

Let’s assume you are small business person advertising;

• You have an advertising budget of 1000 per month
• You measure your response and get a 100 new clients every month
• Then for the same amount you’ll get 1000 new clients with the new marketing proposal.

Do you agree?

Have fun

Image by Stitch via Flickr

So many people tell me that the hardest part of selling is encountering negativity and refusal.  So I want to share with you one of Stephan Schiffman’s “rules” for selling success from Make It Happen Before Lunch.  Here’s the rule – are you ready?  EXPECT negative initial responses!

Here’s a framework for thinking about that.  In Schiffman’s words, “Any time you suggest something new to someone you don’t know well yet, there’s going to be some initial resistance.  In your first call, set the goal of getting that negative response out in the open – not avoiding it!”

“In the initial call, you are not selling yourself, or selling Coffee News, or selling your services.  You’re selling an appointment.  You’re making the appointment the topic of conversation.” Bill Buckley President Coffee News USA.

This reminds me of expecting the kiss on the first date. If you go out to your appointment expecting to get the sale from someone you have never met you must prepare for the negative initial response.

When you go to an appointment to sell your services you should have different walk-away-success measures. Selling the service is not always possible at the first meeting. I prefer to use the first meeting to introduce myself and the product I am selling, the next objective is to get the person to like and trust me. And if you are a great salesperson you may get the order today.

But that’s not possible for all of us at the first meeting and here’s the procedure I propose:

• Get the appointment and confirm it before you leave your office.
• Introduce yourself and listen
• Introduce your services and try and show your product.
• Try and (a) close the sale
• If you cannot close the sale ask if you can continue with the education
• If the person agree get their (b) email address and add them to your online blog newsletter.

From (a) and (b) you’ll notice that we have two walk-away-success measures. If we get the deal then it means a success. But if we don’t get the deal then at least we have the email address and can follow up………until we have the deal.

Instead of getting 5 sales out of a hundred, we now have 5 sales out of a hundred and 95 emails out of a hundred.

Now you can use a blog/newsletter, like the one I am using to send you this educational stuff, to cultivate long-term relationships. And when they need your services you’ll  be the first one that comes to mind.

Regards

How can you sell advertising with an off line marketing medium, like Coffee News, if your advertisers cannot measure the response they get? You may ask if it’s your job to teach them or even your job to worry about it…… because they advertise all over the show and they don’t measure anywhere.

I suppose nothing stops you from selling your services even if your advertisers don’t measure response. But when your advertisers start asking questions about distribution and poor response rates then it means they want out. They want to stop paying you. And it’s all because they have no way of knowing how to measure – and you have not told them how to measure either.

Before we get to the list of possible off line advertising measuring tools lets have a look at a few loop holes. Loops that are difficult to track off line.

When you measure off line advertising response rates you have many people who could potentially bypass any of the measuring control points, listed below. It’s therefore critical to create a measuring system that caters for this. 

How Do You Improve the Confidence And Integrity of the Measurement?

Well, this is a complicated story, which we only will touch now, but will discuss in detail in another post. The summary has two angles;

1. Give the responder (person reacting to the ad) a compelling reason to reveal the source where she saw the advertisement. This can be done by offering a free gift in exchange for the revelation (sounds like a line from a soapy). 
2. Have a system in place to collect the data, analyse that data and present the data in a useful form. 

Here’s A List of Ideas to Measure off Line Marketing Response Rates:

1. Generic Phone Number: This is a radical idea. Or should I say an idea to be expanded on by a marketing mind who wants to become the marketing hub for a community. You advertise a central (call centre) phone number on all ads. Depending on the size of your advertising business you receive the calls yourself or you ship it out to a professional call centre. When you get the call you do the entire ad source checking, and provide the caller number to the advertiser who will follow-up. This can be an added benefit service to your advertisers and if you package it well you may even get a premium rate. Read this story on becoming Yellow Pages for your community.
2. Fake Extension: Your advertiser includes a non existing telephone extension on the ad that relates to a specific advert or publication. The caller does not know this but the person answering the phone makes a note of the advertising referral.
3. Bogus Name: You advertise “Call Gerty for the special”, again  Gerty does not exist.  One suggestion from previous experience is using a contact name that helps the advertiser remember which source the lead came from. For instance for Newspapers you could use "Nate", for TV advertising you could use "Teresa", for magazines you could use "Molly" and for Coffee News you can use Cathy. That way there are less data errors because the first letter of the name helps people remember.
4. Promotional Code: Try using a promo code when people contact the advertiser. Example: "Mention Coffee News to receive X". Then use different promotion codes for different ads.  
5. Coupons: If you use coupons, put a coupon code in small print at the bottom. Same idea as above, count up the coupons which have different codes for different ads. If you do direct people to a website: Give different web addresses for different ads and then replicate the page you want the person to land on at that address. Ex: www.yourwebsite.com /coffeenews.html. Using your web analytics (Google Analytics is an excellent free option and highly recommended) you can get an idea of the response for each ad. This works well for print advertising, but also can be used in many different vehicles.  
6. Online Tags: Again, if you are using Google Analytics or a similar software and sending out any electronic communications, you can "tag" the links by hyper linking a URL which sends data as to the source, medium, and ad version. Check out Roirevolution’s analytics URL builder for an easy tool which will help you build the tags.
7. Questionnaires: If you use any customer response forms or customer service questionnaires: (Which can also benefit any e-mail marketing campaigns by helping to generate your e-mail lists.) Include a question on how they heard about your business. This is a tried and tested method: 
   • Train your first point(s) of contact to ask. I have seen this be incredibly effective, but it depends on the situation. Also, remember the follow up, if possible survey past contacts for customer service, and remember to include how they heard about you. Not as good as getting the info at point of contact, but can give an additional data point.
   • In the end however, the data is only as good as the analysis. A few suggestions:  Enter all of this information together in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Personally, I really like Salesforce.com, but there are plenty options out there and even some good free open source solutions. At minimum, excel will do in a pinch. [For another simple and effective tool consider a blog with an integrated and automated newsletter.] 
   • Data is only as good as how you use it. Many people use data for reporting, but really successful marketers use data for optimization. i.e. Where do I put my ad spend? What copy worked and why? If I A/B split test headline 1 and headline 2, what works better? etc.
   • Be careful about data integrity. It is important to be honest with how accurate your data is… the worst thing that can come about is to have bad data direct your marketing efforts.

I sincerely hope that you found this post useful. If you did, please leave a comment and if you want to add to the list feel free to do so.

I want to thank one of my friends Nicholas DeGraff at Linked for his contribution to this article. Nicholas DeGraff is the Marketing Manager, Pacific Business Centers. He provided me with the great ideas; 3 to 7. 

Have fun

Johan Horak

Author: Johan Horak is the South Africa owner of www.SA.CoffeeNews-4u.com a small business opportunity publishing a newspaper in local neighbourhoods. They also provide a marketing consultancy and training service for business who wants to adopt online marketing techniques. Tel: 0860 COFFEE (0860 26 33 33)