Brand chemistry blog

Every year millions of dollars of marketing money goes down the gurgler. Why? Because thousands of businesses ignore a process that is fundamental to new client acquisition – b2b sales calls.

Phone calls are an integral part of marketing and are the most time and cost effective way for your sales team to mingle with clients. They are a fabulous way to initially convince a client to try your offering, but also to retain continued contact so that a relationship can be secured – the first step in turning the prospect into valued client.

However, we often see that people responsible for business development are too nervous to make sales calls. Nervous to interrupt someone’s day. Nervous in case of rejection. Nervous because they don’t know what to say.

This is unnecessary angst! Your phone calls are designed to help your clients. You just need to pick up the phone and turn your ‘nervous to service’. A slight change in your service attitude can really dial up your sales success.

For top tips on phone sales success, including how to get started, why not take a look at our free e-book ‘Dial It Up: Calling for Business.’ http://www.brandchemistry.com.au/free-stuff/

It’s a common enough scenario for time-poor, resource-poor b2b SME’s.  You find yourself needing to generate some revenue – quickly – and so you haphazardly grab the nearest marketing tool you can find, go at it hammer and tong, launch it to market and then, when it fails to make an impact, you wonder why. Its disheartening – and we hear you because we’ve seen it – a lot.

Creating a scientifically measurable and replicable sales process, based on real knowledge of your customers’ buying cycle, is a much more intelligent investment and will give you far greater ability to control revenue. And it doesn’t need to be difficult. It’s about knowing your customers, who in turn give you insight into your prospects.

Begin by asking your most valuable customers how they buy your service category – what steps do they take to make their final decision? Do this at your next client meeting with the aim of designing a process that pushes similar new customers through the same buying decision stages. Fold that into a marketable plan and give it a whirl. We bet you’ll be surprised at the positive outcomes.

We had fun this past month, working on everything from a re-positioning to a direct response campaign, with some really nice results. As with all SME’s, money and the cost of doing business is always front of mind. The sales cycle can be long, approvals slow and the hurdles many, and high. Bc are used to being asked “but how much will it cost?”

We know that controlling revenue streams in a B2B organisation isn’t easy, and we congratulate those of you who brave the elements and challenge yourselves to spend money on sourcing new business, particularly when the approach or idea may be outside your comfort zone. So, is it possible to control what’s happening within the business so that you can achieve a balance between working in the business and working on the business?

The answer is YES. It is possible for B2B companies to put strategies in place that will help them control their work flow and cash flow, rather than just responding to ‘whatever walks in the door’ and struggling to manage the peaks and troughs that result. Trial and measure is the first key to long-term success in marketing to drive business.

There is no guaranteed marketing activity that will work for every business every time. Marketing is all about trialing and measuring, because only your customers can tell you what works. Your job is to try as many different forms of marketing as you can – on a small scale – and measure the response rate and ROI from each. If you want to start small, a mail or email campaign could be just the place, with instant response giving you a sense of where the market is at and who’s out there. Baby-steps are often best to trial – so you minimise your financial outlay and the risk, but still take a crack – and measure everything you do.

So next time you’re considering the need to generate leads whilst managing cash flow, consider a small, highly targeted ‘test’ campaign. Control your budget and your message and get a feel for what’s out there in the market for your business. You might just get a nice surprise!

Welcome to Beaker – Brand Chemistry’s blog.

Brand Chemistry is a champion of SME B2B Marketing. Not familiar with the term SME? That’s ok, not everyone uses it. Small (to) Medium Enterprises, aka SME’s, actually make up a great percentage of all businesses in Australia and are responsible for generating around a quarter of our GDP – which is a pretty big deal in our eyes. And B2B – well, it’s business-to-business, not direct to the consumer or end user, but one business selling to another business so that they can`do business’.

Brand Chemistry LOVES B2B SME marketing, so we champion these oft-ignored businesses to create a network of support, provide a place to exchange ideas, celebrate your wins and share learnings from ‘lost campaigns’.

With consumer marketing dominating what we see, hear and read –it is hard to find marketing information that is relevant to us. Even if we could find the right information, consumer marketing can seem so much more fun, sexy, and exciting – especially when the big agencies are spending big money on big brands.

But we know B2B Marketing can be just as much fun – even with the budget constraints of smaller businesses and the complexities of our environment. Because our sales process involves multiple decision-makers and influencers, not to mention that our buyers are way more sophisticated in their field than we marketers are!, we are challenged to be creative, whilst being smart, direct and results-oriented. It’s these challenges that drive us to find new and unique (=fun) ways to market B2B products, and as they say,‘half the fun is in the journey!

So, as a community the more we share the more we learn; the more we learn, the stronger we are and the more success we all experience.

We hope you enjoy sharing and succeeding with Brand Chemistry.

What do you do if you’re a small-to-medium sized company with an enterprising spirit, a burning urge to boost sales, no marketing department and next-to-nothing budget?

We think we’ve come up with just the answer with our new range of online “DIY Tutorials”. They’ve been designed as a low-cost option for companies who don’t have a huge budget or a full-strength marketing department, but are keen to have a go at sales and marketing strategies themselves.

Each straight-talking tutorial runs through a tried and tested process for anything from repositioning a business to making winning sales calls. The tutorials are a mix of step-by-step instructions, planning activities, examples and tools (and there’s even a ‘next steps’ planner at the end to make sure your plans come to fruition).

Of course we’re still going good guns with our usual range of consulting, training and hands-on marketing services, and our tutorial clients can take advantage of the mentoring too: if at any point you need to run your ideas past one of us, you can book a quick ‘sound-boarding session’ for a nominal fee. The idea really is that you can use any of our services as little or as much as you like.

Our new DIY Chemistry tutorials will be going live in April.

Click here to find out more.