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

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 merfam via Flickr

We promoted Coffee News as home based opportunity in South Africa. And we believed it is business you can run from  home. But just in this sentence you may note the difference;

1. Home based business
2. Business run from home

A lady who purchased Coffee News complained to us, after a few months, that Coffee News is not a home based business.

I am not sure how you define home based business but to me home based means that you work from home, you don’t have an office in town, etc. It does note mean that you can sit on your base the whole day. You have to get off your home base and meet people, help them and do things for them.

If you want to sit on your home base then Coffee News is not a small business opportunity you should ever consider. If you want to use your home as a base to work from  and not sit in an office across from the nasty boss then , yes, Coffee News can give you the opportunity to work from home.

Have Fun