Being self-motivated as a leader is one thing, but how do you get your sales teams to work just as hard to keep customers happy and business growing? There's no doubt about it — to be a salesperson, you must be a people person. Some of the world's most renowned businesses achieve such high success simply because they put their customers first. How salespeople interact with a customer, from the acquisition stage right through to the final transaction, is the difference between making a sale and losing an opportunity to control the narrative and build your reputation. Customer experience, teaching your sales teams to understand context and pricing, and reinforcing your point of difference will arm your team with everything they need to take your business to the top. Sales and marketing strategies Reinforce to your sales team that they are a welcome guest, not annoying pests. Sales representatives often get a bad rap for being too pushy or disingenuous. People's time is valuable, and the last thing your teams should do is make prospective buyers feel like they're being conned or forced into purchasing something. If you don't have customers, your business has nothing. Treating them as people rather than a source of profit is the only way to make authentic client connections that provide mutual benefit. It's a leader's job to inspire their sales teams to want to get to know their potential clients — to really care about providing them with something that can change their quality of life. Leaning on your marketing to inform your audience about your brand is also crucial. Tell them who you are, what you're about and what you can do to solve their problem. By having a strong marketing strategy that sends a clear message about your business to potential clients, half the convincing will already have been done before they even get the sales pitch. Context and pricing When talking to your team about the pricing of your product or service, context is everything. Leaders and their sales teams should always be aware of how people consume their goods based on factors such as market, business climate, price and demand. This is where price elasticity comes in. If the demand for a product or service increases based on a change in its price, it's considered elastic. If there is very little or no change in demand with a price increase or decrease, it is deemed inelastic. Let's take fuel, for example. This resource is widely considered a necessity, making it inelastic. Without it, drivers can't get from A to B using a fuel-powered vehicle. While consumers may choose to go to one fuel station over another, say, based on the cost per gallon, they still require fuel. The same goes for things like bottled water in areas with limited access to clean water, electricity, housing, etc. Price elasticity can work in your business's favor when pricing is presented in the right context. Much like price, so many things can influence a person's decision and ability to consume certain goods, so emphasizing the importance of context to your sales teams is crucial. By encouraging confidence in pricing and assertive fee strategies amongst your teams, the sale is much more likely to land. Differentiation There are billions of dining furniture brands out there, just like there are billions of different toothpaste brands, formal wear brands and even gardening tool brands. If your sales team spends their days searching for leads, whether through cold calling, emailing or door-knocking, they should know how to market your brand well. Telling a potential customer about your product or service is one thing, but convincing them that your product is better than the next requires sales representatives to understand your business's points of difference. If a customer is going to ask, "Why would I buy your product over this product?" that sales rep better have a compelling answer. In fact, they should have a list of 10 reasons why your product is superior to your competitors' products. If they can't do that, quite frankly, they're wasting their time. Arming your sales team with the knowledge they need to make customers see that your business offering is the only choice out of a sea of options is how you go from making a few sales a week to thousands per day. Hosting brainstorming sessions with your teams, workshops and welcoming feedback are transformational ways to encourage creative thinking around your sales model and establish a set of unique value propositions and market positions. Getting the sale No matter what industry you're in, getting your 15 minutes of fame as a brand, let alone being a market leader, is not easy. There will always be competition, but with a well-prepared, motivated and tactful sales team backing your business, the rewards will always be there to reap. As a leader, reinforcing the values of client care, understanding the relationship between context and pricing, and what makes your product or service the best of the best is the surest way to make your sales team impenetrable. Nurture your sales teams at all costs — your future business will thank you for it. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com Image Credit: Photo by Lisa Fotios/Pexels
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This might sound crazy coming from an entrepreneur, but I've always had a thing for honesty. I despise lying and misleading because they inevitably cause more problems and create unnecessary challenges, both in one's personal life and in one's business endeavors. Admittedly, it's not a common sentiment in the world of business, where the "fake it till you make it" mantra continues to ring loud, where the vast majority of business owners are deathly afraid of any failure and where it takes courts to extract admissions of guilt, incompetence or malfeasance. As a former investment manager at a VC fund, I've had a front-row seat to entrepreneurship in the startup scene, which trades in smoke and mirrors like a commodity. Let me tell you — it's almost never about blatant lying. Most commonly, it's about twisting reality to craft a suitable narrative, e.g., cherry-picking growth metrics to aggrandize one's company, gaslighting customers despite legitimate complaints, making promises that are nigh-impossible to follow through, etc. Some companies, like Theranos, manage to fool everyone—even investors—and become massive success stories, albeit sometimes short-lived. But most startups cannot keep up the charade. In the U.S., half of all startups don't make it to their fifth year. Of course, failure isn't always because of dishonest practices. There are countless legitimate reasons for a company to go under. But I know what it's like to be at that critical juncture where your company is at risk, and I know the temptation to try to weasel through it with a seemingly small white lie in the hopes of saving face until things pick up in the future. In fact, I've been there several times. And, every time, my business and I have come out stronger on the other side by owning up to the issues and tackling them with brutal honesty and transparency. I hope my experience can encourage you to do the same — not just because it's the right thing to do, but because I believe it's good business. 1. Transparency in crisis My startup, Supliful, is a white-label CPG platform. Our clients are entrepreneurs — influencers, companies and online business owners seeking to launch their own private-label brands effortlessly. Accordingly, when our business runs into trouble, the trouble reverberates down the chain, affecting the operations of our clients. One such recent case was in January 2024, when we faced many operational issues while moving to a larger warehouse in response to rapid business growth. Our fulfillment times were extremely slow, leading to complaints from our users. Timely delivery is the very core of our business. If we have delivery delays, we make our clients look like fools in the eyes of their own customers — a surefire business killer and not something that can be fixed overnight. Instead of promising the impossible, ignoring complaints, or giving up, I set up an "ask me anything" session with our customers. I stood before them, let them voice their concerns and complaints and honestly admitted where we had fallen short. After that, I directly addressed the issues, explained our current situation in detail, and provided a realistic roadmap for when things would be resolved. Our customers are entrepreneurs, too, so they understand what it's like to have business growing pains. They also loved the transparency and appreciated being fully in the know of what exactly is going on with their fulfillment provider, gaining a clearer picture of not only our business but theirs, too. Crucially, we also delivered on the roadmap we promised them. 2. Owning up to your mistakes Much earlier in Supliful's journey, we had a different issue with an equally critical component of our offering — we encountered a major issue with the quality of one of our products. Customer complaints were piling up, and it became clear that one of our suppliers was not meeting the necessary standards. Again, we could have tried to brush this under the rug, claim everything's fine with the product or make up excuses to deflect blame. But the reality was that ensuring product quality for our customers is our responsibility and no one else's. If the supplier doesn't cut it, then the onus is on us to find a better one. We took a hard look at the customer feedback and acknowledged the problem openly with them. We sent out a heartfelt apology, explained the steps we were taking to address the quality issues and took the financial responsibility by offering refunds or replacements, even though our company was already facing rough waters. Looking back, the price we paid to retain our clients was a valuable investment — some of those who were most furious at that time are some of our biggest clients today. Again, customers appreciated our honesty, transparency and commitment to resolving the issue. Internally, it prompted us to find more reliable suppliers, ensuring better product quality moving forward. Honesty is good business Today, transparency and honesty are the cornerstones upon which our business is built. For example, I regularly share my business data and performance updates on LinkedIn — even when the figures paint an unfavorable picture. Brutal honesty doesn't have to be a reactive thing to do reserved for when shit hits the fan. Sharing our story publicly and directly addressing all the issues builds trust with all the partners. This gives new business owners the confidence to partner with us and our long-term customers to stick with us. It has also paid back in spades in terms of business growth. Sure, sometimes honesty is painful. It's not easy to own up to mistakes, especially when you know that they have negatively impacted others. But doing so is critical for getting to the end goal, namely, building a robust and sustainable business that can weather any storm. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com Image Credit: Photo by Jopwell/Pexels.com
Want to rank at the top of search engines? Sometimes, you need to pay to play. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the practice of running paid ads in search engines — namely, Google — to attract more online traffic and customers. But as a small retail business owner, you might not have the funds or technical know-how to run expensive, complicated paid ads. That's why it's essential to optimize the budget you do have and implement tried-and-trusted strategies to get the best return on your ad spend. In this guide, I share innovative and cost-effective techniques for more lucrative SEM campaigns, driving better results for your small retail business. 1. Implement geo-specific targeting The effectiveness of your SEM campaigns is largely dependent on targeting — whether your ads reach the right prospective customers in the right geographic area. Implementing geo-specific targeting allows you to focus your advertising efforts on people who are most likely to convert into real customers. First, determine the locations you wish to target. These should be areas where your prospective customers are most likely to be. These may include certain neighborhoods, cities or regions, whether close to your physical store or in areas where you offer delivery services. Next, log into your ads account and select the campaign you want to target geographically. In Google Ads, you can navigate to the "Settings" tab and view the "Locations" section. This is where you can add specific locations to target, such as by city name, ZIP code or radius to your store address. Use the targeted locations as keywords in your ad copy. For example, if you are targeting Denver, Colorado, you might use terms like "Denver boutique" or "Women's Clothing Downtown Denver" in your ad headline or description. Monitor your ad analytics to assess the number of clicks, calls or conversions generated by your targeted ads, then refine your strategy accordingly. 2. Reduce ad spend by adding negative keywords Negative keywords are used to prevent your ads from appearing in the search results for terms that are irrelevant to your business. For example, if you own a small retail store that sells luxury home decor, you might add "DIY" or "budget" as negative keywords to avoid attracting bargain shoppers or DIY-ers. To identify negative keywords, review past campaigns to see if any irrelevant keywords triggered your ads. Further, brainstorm any common terms that don't align with your products or business. Here's how to add negative keywords to a Google Ad campaign:
Negative keywords filter out low-intent or non-converting traffic. This leads to a higher conversion rate and better ROI. 3. Increase relevance with clustering and ad groups In SEM, clustering and grouping involve organizing your keywords, ads and landing pages into groups based on similar themes, products or services. This ensures that your ads are very closely aligned with the interests (i.e., search queries) of your target audience. Clustering and grouping can reduce your ad costs, improve your ad Quality Score and boost conversion rates. Start by identifying keywords that are closely related to each other. For example, if you own a dress boutique, you might create separate clusters for "formal dresses," "casual dresses," "summer dresses," etc. Each cluster should contain keywords that are specific to that category. Ad groups can then be used to house clusters of related keywords and the ads that target them. Using the same example as above, you might create separate ad groups for Dresses, Skirts or Formal Wear, respectively. For each ad group, you'll write tailored ad copy that specifically addresses the keywords in that group. Clustering ensures that your ads are matched with the most relevant search queries and the right types of customers, based on their interests. Grouping increases ad relevance, which can reduce your cost-per-click (CPC) and increase your ROI. 4. Increase online sales with Google Shopping ads Google Shopping ads are unique ads that are created using the product data directly from your Google Merchant Center account. They display your products directly in search results, leading to more online sales, as well as local traffic and in-store sales. Here's how to set up Google Shopping ads:
Shopping ads can appear in the paid Google results, Google Play, Google Maps and the Shopping tab, allowing you to get discovered by more customers in more places! With some creativity and refinement, you can generate more business for your small retail store with SEM. Adopt these innovative strategies to enhance visibility, optimize ad spend and drive more targeted traffic. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com Image Credit: Photo by PhotoMIX Company/Pexels
In an unpredictable economy, one of the most effective strategies for maintaining your company's growth is to focus on client retention. Research shows that acquiring a new client can be over five times more expensive than keeping an existing one. Studies show that increasing customer retention rates by a mere 5% boosts profits by up to 95%. This stark reality underscores the importance of prioritizing customer service and delivering an exceptional, white-glove experience. As the CEO of an 8-figure subsidiary of a publicly traded company that consistently achieves 7-figure growth each year, I have implemented time-tested techniques that not only enhance our internal processes but also draw inspiration from legacy luxury brands. These strategies exemplify the best methods to ensure your customers enjoy a truly exceptional experience, fostering loyalty and long-term success. Why exceptional customer service is essential for client retention In a world increasingly dominated by automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, the human touch in customer service has become a crucial differentiator in the competitive landscape. As businesses strive to innovate and streamline operations, the importance of maintaining personal connections with clients cannot be overstated. This is particularly true for companies looking to retain their best clients and attract new ones. Excellent customer service is not merely a function of responding to inquiries or resolving issues; it embodies a comprehensive approach that ensures every interaction with your brand is memorable and meaningful. Legacy brands like Ritz-Carlton and Rolls-Royce exemplify this principle, having mastered the art of delivering a white-glove experience that fosters loyalty and trust. At Ritz-Carlton, for instance, the commitment to exceptional service is evident in their policy that empowers staff to spend up to $2,000 per guest to resolve any issue or enhance their experience. At tec5USA, we have adopted similar principles in our approach to customer service and client retention. One of the key tactics we employ is providing end-to-end support. Our team members are not just available for troubleshooting; they proactively reach out to clients for routine maintenance and in-person check-ins to ensure equipment is functioning at an optimum. Moreover, we have built a robust network of partners that enables us to deploy third-party experts on-site when specialized knowledge is required. This ecosystem not only enhances our services but also reinforces our commitment to delivering exceptional value to our clients. Strategies for retaining your best clients 1. Personalized communication Personalized communication is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance customer relationships. Tailoring messages based on individual preferences and behaviors not only makes customers feel valued but also increases their engagement with your brand. For instance, I've seen firsthand how personalized emails — those that reference past purchases or suggest products aligned with a customer's interests — can lead to higher conversion rates. At tec5USA, we leverage customer data to create targeted communications. This means using insights from previous interactions to craft messages that resonate with each customer. When a client receives a tailored offer that reflects their specific needs, it fosters a sense of connection and loyalty. Moreover, personalization extends beyond emails. It encompasses all touchpoints, including social media and customer support interactions. 2. Discounts and exclusives Implementing customer retention and incentive programs can be highly effective across various sectors, also in industries with CAPEX equipment such as in chemical, oil and gas, food, feed and beverage, and pharma and biotech factories. These programs offer benefits such as discounts, exclusive access and special promotions tailored to industry needs and purchase history. In the CAPEX sector, where purchases involve significant investments, well-structured programs featuring tiered incentives can enhance customer loyalty, encourage repeat business and differentiate your brand in competitive markets. By providing targeted rewards and demonstrating added value, companies can strengthen customer relationships, foster appreciation and build long-term partnerships. For example, research shows that businesses that implement strong customer loyalty programs experience customer retention rates 25% higher than those that don't. Ultimately, loyalty programs not only differentiate a brand from its competitors but also create a sense of community among customers, making them feel valued and appreciated. 3. Excellent customer service Delivering excellent customer service at every touchpoint is vital for cultivating lasting relationships and ensuring customer satisfaction. Research indicates that 88% of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. Implement a system that tracks customer inquiries to ensure no question goes unanswered and issues are addressed swiftly. Additionally, training our team to handle complaints with empathy and efficiency reinforces dedication to customer care. In an age where customers have too many options, exceptional service can differentiate a brand. Companies that excel in customer service not only retain clients but also benefit from positive word-of-mouth referrals. Investing in customer service is not just beneficial, it is essential for long-term success. 4. Feedback and surveys Actively seeking customer feedback through surveys is one of the most effective ways to understand their needs and preferences. By gathering insights directly from the people who use your products or services, you can make informed decisions to enhance your offerings and improve the overall customer experience. Many businesses use online surveys to efficiently collect feedback — and with good reason. These are convenient platforms where customers can share their thoughts and experiences. Analyzing the data from these surveys often reveals valuable trends and highlights areas where improvements can be made. Incorporating customer feedback into your business strategy demonstrates a genuine commitment to providing excellent customer service. I've found that when customers feel that their opinions are valued and acted upon, they are more likely to remain loyal to a brand. Companies must establish regular feedback loops to create a culture of continuous improvement. 5. Social proof and testimonials One of the most strategic moves we make involves showcasing positive reviews, testimonials and user-generated content to build trust and reinforce the benefits of our products and services. Social proof plays a critical role in shaping consumer decisions, as 97% of consumers look at reviews before making a purchase. Displaying testimonials prominently on websites and marketing materials provides real-world evidence of customer satisfaction. When potential customers see others praising a product, they feel more confident in their purchasing decisions. User-generated content, such as photos and stories shared by customers, further enhances authenticity and relatability. Incorporating social proof not only boosts credibility but also addresses common concerns that potential buyers may have. Building strong relationships with customers is essential for long-term success. When we focus on understanding their needs and preferences, we create an environment where they feel valued and appreciated. Engaging with clients through personalized communication and actively seeking their feedback fosters trust and loyalty. Emphasizing these aspects not only enhances customer satisfaction but also encourages repeat business. Ultimately, prioritizing customer retention transforms our approach to growth, ensuring that we cultivate lasting connections that benefit both our clients and our business. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com Image Credit: Photo by RDNE Stock project/Pexels
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