Selling isn't so Bad

I get all flustered when think about "selling". Why? It conjures up pictures of slimy door to door salesmen (or women but the slimy ones tend to be male for some reason) or exasperating telesales people which make me instantly switch off. My brain knows that selling is an important part of the marketing mix but the rest of me hasn't caught up yet.

Then I went to a business networking event last week where I go to "meet an expert" in sales. It was one of those moments where I thought "run now" and was about to go on the hunt for the marketing expert instead (well there's always something you can learn) when the door was closed and we were "speed experting". That meant we had 15 minutes with each expert and then got moved onto the next one.

Well I definitely learned something (with each of them as it happens, including the health and safety chap) - and forced to come up with a sales question I put my mind to what I needed to know. "Face to face selling" I asked - "how do I do it as a service business?". Oddly this is something that terrifies me despite the fact that I love meeting people and networking. And this ultimately was the point - he said that I shouldn't think of it as selling and that it's all about relationships at the end of the day. Also to only go with one objective in mind the first time you want to make contact - if that's just getting the right name, leave it at that and go back next time to set up the meeting or make the telephone call.

Very obvious I know but so much less scary. So fired up (as I run my own marketing business too) I made myself a small list of the people I really wanted to make contact with and one step at a time I think I'm going to do it...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

Back to Marketing Basics

Do you find that you get so caught up in the new stuff sometimes that you forget the basics? I've spent a lot of time in the past year focusing on "internet marketing" and get very animated about it when given the opportunity (so much so that people are getting wary of letting me get onto the subject these days). I still think it's amazing and love that fact that I can measure practically everything online in a way that you just can't with traditional marketing. I reckon I'll soon be able to find out what my customers had for breakfast as well as how many times they visited our website, although I'm not sure that's terribly useful.

I'll get back to the point - see it happens every time... In spite of all of the above, we recently got the chance to sponsor a local business event in the East Midlands. This was excellent - a fab networking opportunity too and you know how much we go on about that. As the event got closer I thought I ought to get organised and prepared a short set of slides with some big screen-shots of MarketingPlanWiz - well it is an online service so that made sense. Then I had to think about what I could leave on people's tables (it was a sit-down dinner).

I know this should be obvious to somebody who's supposed to know about marketing but I had to think. I'd been so used to promoting us with pay per click advertising, SEO, linking and the like that we didn't have any "stuff" to leave on a table! So back to what I (used to) know best and on with producing a leaflet - a memorable one of course that stood out from all of the other leaflets. Do you know it was really nice to go back to good old design and print? It's still good to have something you can get hold of, wave about and feel (is it only me that does that with literature?) and read it without peering at a computer screen. And heaven knows we spend enough time staring at people's websites and googling.

I'm happy now!

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk

The Silver Lining

Following on from my comments about thinking laterally last week, I've had one of those weeks where it doesn't matter how good you think your planning is - it just doesn't work out. That's really annoying but we've discovered that those are the best moments because there's often another opportunity that you were meant to go for instead. There's always a reason and that's the law according to Karen and Fay. Well otherwise it would be depressing.

So from a business point of view how do you deal with a complete change of direction? If you've put together your business or marketing plan for the year you're hopefully using it - this is the moment to re-visit it and think backwards. Sometimes we get so single minded about following a particular track we forget what we were aiming for and that there's usually more than one way to get there. Fay and I do this regularly with food if possible (I'd like to add "and a glass of wine" at this point but unfortunately it tends to be coffee) or over Skype (not usually with food). We remind each other what it is we're trying to achieve and once we've got past holidays/new car/MORE SHOPPING (sorry Fay but it is really important), we invariably come up with a new idea for promoting our products. It's easy to add this back into our plan with a quick tweak and it's good to look again in any case as we always think of something else.

Anyway, this week we had to change our plan and now we feel better, hence the silver lining.

Karen McNulty
MarketingPlanWiz

Creative Marketing?

Speaking to some friends recently I was advised that blogging with a glass of wine might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure if this means my blogging is really bad when I'm sober or whether it might just need to be more relaxed generally. I'm sure I've said before that blogging doesn't come naturally to most marketers - we're far too used to writing perfect copy, proof-reading it and getting everything "signed off". Doing it in this easy way just feels dangerous!

Simon, our website developer, finds my blogging frustration particularly amusing - "don't worry" he says, "you'll find your mojo". I'm still not sure what a mojo is or where I'll find it, but clearly he wants me to chill out too.

So I started thinking (in a very long winded way, sorry) that taking a different approach is also good for our marketing. I've just written an article for our monthly newsletter on money saving tips for marketing and the message is the same - start being a bit more creative and you'll be amazed at what you can do. We particularly like the simple ones such as changing the shape of your sales literature or sticking your website address on a big poster in the back window of your car - very simple but quite effective.

So my next blog will be with wine (I promise Simon) and the next time Fay and I meet to discuss our business - we're doing it in the pub!

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Cheers...

Karen McNulty