Coaching

Tag: Coaching

Decoding Word Of Mouth Messages

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Tom Kavanaugh, MA

What You Think I Said

Decoding Word Of Mouth Messages

Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.

There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:

Expert to Expert
Expert to Peer
Peer to Peer

When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.

Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.

There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:

First impressions from an expert
Organized trial of your products or services
Pooling peer experiences

It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While, you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.

Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:

Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
Offer to video tape their testimonials
Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
Offer them a premier customer membership
Ask them to join a referral incentive program

There are lots of things you can offer your biggest fans to help spread the word about your products and services.

Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:

Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
Boring, lacking something fresh and new
Too short of a time slot to offer enough information

While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible and be delivered at the right time in the medium.

We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.

Without these results you can’t fine tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a whole lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyze whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:

Direct experience with the product
Interaction with peers using the same product
Experts’ experience
Scientific journals and other resources
Independent reviews and opinions

You can accelerate this process by:

Providing your own demos and free trials
Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
Offer a good, true story that can be passed around

Once you have the ability and can work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better.

If you’re having a hard time deciding on what you want, the tools, resources and coaches in the GUIDED TOUR can help you define the wants and needs of your company in relation to customer service.

I can help you work through all these areas and give your business a jumpstart that puts you ahead of your competition right from the start.

Feel free to visit https://newcoachingstrategies.com for your GUIDED TOUR and a complimentary copy of my first book in the five-book series:

Business Breakthrough Secrets, Volume I, The Secret Formula To Discovering $10K Hidden Inside Your Business In 45 Minutes Or Less… Guaranteed!

You can also invest a few minutes of your time to watch this revealing video presentation on the best marketing secrets for your business as my gift to you:

https://newcoachingstrategies.com/thetruth

If you have further questions about this article, please leave me a message and I’ll respond as soon as possible!

5 Killer Mistakes That Kill A Deal – Part 1

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Tom Kavanaugh, MA

5 Mistakes To Killing A Deal

5 Killer Mistakes – Part 1

There are 5 big mistakes you can do that will kill a deal with a big fish. They are:

1. Not meeting the client’s expectations
2. Mishandling a client crisis
3. Taking on more than you can handle
4. Putting all your eggs in one basket
5. Up cash creek without a paddle

Any one or combination of these can not only kill the partnership, but have the ability to take down your company as well. We’re going to take a bit of time to talk about each one of these, in this lesson we’ll cover the first two.

Not Meeting Client’s Expectations

It’s essential you give your client’s exactly what you promised during the negotiation portion of your relationship. If an event does happen where there is no way to meet the client’s expectations, not only do you have to find a way to fix the situation, but you also have to find out where it all went wrong.

A couple of things could have contributed to this problem:

Bad salesmanship. This could mean the salesperson was trying too hard to seal the deal and didn’t listen to the client’s needs.
Lack of communication. This breakdown occurs between the salesperson and your operations department.

In order to avoid these mistakes, you need to put a clear plan of action into place that all of your sales staff needs to follow:

- - - Think before you speak.
    - Give yourself a break.
    - Perfect your process.
    - Pre-format over-deliverables.
    - Stay hands-on throughout the entire process.
    - Define success.
  Mishandling a Client Crisis
  
  Crisis’ will happen, but how you respond and fix them will define your company and interaction with your clients’. You need to respond quickly and effectively. This will help you gain even more trust and confidence from your client.
  
  Some simple tips can help you deal with any client crisis:
  - - - Take responsibility and apologize no matter who is at fault.
      - Act swiftly and effectively.
      - Step in and take control of the situation.
      - Never point fingers or place blame.
      - Stay in constant communication with your client.
      - Stay calm throughout the situation.
      - Keep your eye on the ball.
  Now, that you know the top two mistakes you can make to kill a big fish deal, you’ll know better how to avoid making these mistakes in the first place and know how to put a plan of action into place in case of a crisis.
  
  If you need help with any of this, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you could ever need.
  
  Next time we’ll talk about the 3^rd and 4^th killer mistake you can make in working with big fish clients.
  
  If you’re having a hard time deciding on what you want, the tools, resources and coaches in the GUIDED TOUR can help you define the wants and needs of your company in relation to customer service.
  
  I can help you work through all these areas and give your business a jumpstart that puts you ahead of your competition right from the start.
  
  Feel free to visit https://newcoachingstrategies.com for your GUIDED TOUR and a complimentary copy of my first book in the five-book series:
  
  Business Breakthrough Secrets, Volume I, The Secret Formula To Discovering $10K Hidden Inside Your Business In 45 Minutes Or Less… Guaranteed!
  
  You can also invest a few minutes of your time to watch this revealing video presentation on the best marketing secrets for your business as my gift to you:
  
  https://newcoachingstrategies.com/thetruth
  
  If you have further questions about this article, please leave me a message and I’ll respond as soon as possible!

Multiply On Your Maximizing Resources – Part 2

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Tom Kavanaugh, MA

Multiply On Your Resources

Multiply on Your Maximizing Resources – Part 2

Last time we talked about how to start multiplying on the resources you worked on maximizing. We covered the following areas:

Call in the Troops
Bring ‘Em Out of the Woodwork
Black Sheep Clients

Today we’ll talk about the next three:

Olympic-Size Sales Staff
Open Water Fishing
Call for Back-Up

Olympic-Size Sales Staff

Now we all know you can’t have a sales staff of 10,000 who work around the clock for free, but there is a tool that will do exactly that-direct mail marketing.

Direct mail is a written piece of sales and informative copy that offers information about your company and your products/services to potential customers/clients. You can sales letters, brochures or proposals that can be mailed out to a list of leads.

This approach can not only open your door to thousands of new customers/clients, it can save you thousands of dollars in advertising.

Open Water Fishing

You have to be careful not to waste your time on clients who are simply not interested. You have to focus on bigger fish. Remember, the lessons we talked previously about how you should always be targeting higher-quality prospects.

To do this you have to take the time to research and learn about your potential clients to make sure you are targeting the right companies to work with. Make sure they are companies who will benefit from your products/services over a long period of time.

If you’re not sure where to start in finding big fish clients, go back over our previous lessons or look into purchasing a direct mailing list that specifically targets the clients you need. You can purchase or rent lists with name, title, job specs and contact information. This gives you a jumping off point in finding high-quality clients.

Call for Back-Up

Don’t be afraid of telemarketing. It’s a powerful tool than can be done tastefully and be highly effective. However, keep in mind, when not handled correctly can bring about negative reactions. To be successful with telemarketing you need to use these tips:

Your first line of defense should be mail marketing.
Test before you start a telemarketing campaign.
Set the price for your offer.
Use a progressive approach with your campaign.

Progressive contact helps build trust and allow the potential customer/client to establish a positive relationship with you. These are the progressive steps you should take:

Put your prospect at ease.
Present your offer in a natural, conversational way.
Avoid being argumentative or pushy.
Always be honest.
Perfect your 30-second elevator speech.
Clearly state your name, business name, reason you’re calling and where you got their information.
Offer the benefits of your products and services.
Mention one of the features that back up the benefits.
Ask preliminary questions that gives you information about the prospect.

These step-by-step methods can help you be successful with a telemarketing campaign and avoid a negative response which could stigmatize your business forever.

This wraps up these three areas of multiplying your resources. We’ll continue with this series for the next two posts to give you all the resources you need to get the most out of your current resources.