1. Settle On The Right Way Forward

The purpose of your promotions is to get more sales, not to soley enhance the image of you or your company. As a salesperson you must understand this right at the beginning or you will be wasting your's and every one else's time.

You must be enthusiastic about the product or service you are promoting. If you're not why should the customer be?

Communicate with the customer on their level and talk about what they want from your offering. Its a simple enough way forward. But how often do you not hear this being done?

2. Start To Target Your Customers

Not all customers will buy your product or service. The skill is in targetting those who are more likely to. The end result is more sales and reduced costs for contacting them. Amongst customers there are good ones and bad ones.

The good ones are repeat buyers; those who have bought before and are happy to use their favorite supplier. Unfortunately, this type of customer is least likely to be swayed by advertisers lile yourselves and therefore hardest to win over.

Conversely, the bad customers are far more likely to respond to advertisers, including you, then move on to another advertiser, leaving you behind...and they always complain and want more and more for less and less.

You want more business...the right sort of business... the profitable sort. To be as exact as possible is very important.

Finding the best ones for you; Apparently only the top 20% of potential customers are very profitable and the bottom 20% will lose you money.

Therefore, depending on where your company stands in relation to the above there are diferent strategies to use;

• If you are not currently selling to the top 20% then you could increase your market share of customers and make good profit. - concentrating on the top 20% means less customers need to be obtained.
• If you are already selling to the top 20% then any increase in customer numbers (market share) means less overall profitabilty

Finding repeat customers: Apart from new customers, the obvious source of more sales is existing customers. This is often forgotten and the costs are small in comparison to getting new customers. Customers who have bought before are less likely to be wooed by competitors, as long as they are happy. Or should I say, kept happy.

Some budget should be set aside for existing customers and establishing or reinforcing some 'Loyalty' strategies or scheme. You know the sort..Discounts for existing customers and repeat purchasers.

3. Supply Customer Satisfaction

If you can convince your customers that they will be more satisfied than with your competitors then you will win. But to do that you need to know;

a) what satisfaction they want
b) how you can provide it and
c) how to tell them.

Customers are satisfied when all their needs are fulfilled. But it would be practically impossible to satisfy everyone's needs in one communication...there will be so many. And mass marketing rarely hits on the most profitable segment.

That it why it is important to target specific groups who have similar needs with specific advertisement messages.

4. Identify Important Customer Groups

Large companies can afford to send out separate promotions to lots of different customer groups, addressing their specific needs exactly.

Smaller businesses can't do this but there may be common needs amongst their customer groups, albeit not primary ones for all of them, but enough commonality to be effective for one promotional publication.

This one publication should wherever possible combine the customer groups and their satisfied needs into its structure (story). e.g. Combining the primary manufacturer customer group and secondary retail customer group, the producer and the seller.

5. Use People Who Can Make Things Happen

Identify those who can help you in your promotions.

• Directors of other companies who can recommend to departments within their control.
• Press release about your product/service
• Product/service review by recognized authority.
• Establish referral system (you pay a commission or similar for sales/work obtained)

Incentives for all your 'helpers' will vary and need to be judged carefully. But remember, your competitors will be doing the same and maybe to the same people you are dealing with. Its promotion after all, so bear that in mind.

6. Find Out How Much Your Customers Know About You

You need to find out from your prospective or new customers what they know about you. This can done through surveys and questionnaires (with incentives to complete). After all they might never have heard of you and are hardly likely to buy from you.

They may be misinformed and have the totally wrong impresion of what you do or supply. Sales promotions can't be planned properly without this information.

(c) Paul Curran, CEO of Cuzcom Internet Publishing Group and webmaster at Wealth-Building-Secrets.com, providing strategies and advice for financial success, sales success and personal development success.

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