Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 171
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| Thought for the week: "Ventures may fail, but the failures are not disasters." Claude Hopkins |
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In this week's issue:
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Sales tips to avoid turning your customers off
There isn't a small business market in existence that's not becoming more intensely competitive as every month goes by.
Although it may be true that there will always be a handful of prospects 'ready to buy' today, in general people are not just sitting there waiting for an opportunity to buy from a business like yours.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't also a large number of prospects out there who are secretly willing to buy from you, but who are currently just too distracted by other things to make a move.
To reach these people, you need to be proactively hunting your prospects down, and using a range of different techniques and tactics to get more new customers coming in and your inactive customers coming back to buy again.
It's also a fact that today's buyers and consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and as a result increasingly hypersensitive to being 'sold to'. In other words, it's actually easier to turn your prospects off than it is to turn them on to your offer.
The only way to overcome this is to focus your attention on your marketing, and in particular on the more subtle, stealth marketing techniques that will be less likely to be resisted by your prospects.
Here are some tips to help you understand some basic but vital selling principles that will avoid turning off your prospects:
1) Knowing and believing in your product
If you don't know, fully understand or believe in your product or service, and are not completely familiar with its features, benefits, functions and advantages, your prospects will also not believe in it and hence won't buy it. There's probably nothing that will turn a prospect off more than lack of conviction and familiarity with a product coming from the business owner who is selling it.
2) Knowing what the customer needs from you
Going beyond your understanding of what you are selling, it is equally, if not more, important to understand why you are selling it. In other words, you need to understand your product's purpose in terms of the needs it will satisfy and the problems it will solve for your customer. Unlike the specific features and functions of your product, these less tangible aspects can be more difficult to put your finger on, and they may well vary from one customer group to another, and quite possibly from one individual customer to another. To sell successfully, you need to be able to talk to your customers in terms of what your product or service will do for them.
3) Knowing why your prospects might not want to buy from you
Most novice business owners don't realise that a large part of their selling efforts will be spent overcoming objections from their prospects. It's absolutely vital that you can identify in advance the specific reasons why your prospect(s) might not want to buy from you, and can provide an answer for each of those reasons.
You must also try to avoid falling into the trap of simply telling your prospects that their objections are wrong. Instead, by anticipating their objections, you can highlight things that might change your prospects' perceptions about your product. In particular, you can focus on advantages such as your guarantee, and provide social proof in the form of testimonials from other satisfied customers.
4) Knowing when to change course
There's a great business tale recounted by Mark McCormack in his book What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School, in which he tells the story of a dog food company holding its annual sales convention. During this convention the company president sits listening to his advertising director presenting their hottest new ad campaign, his marketing director introducing their new point-of-sale scheme and his sales director extolling the virtues of "the best damn sales force in the business".
The president then takes the podium and says: "I have only one question. If we have the best advertising, the best marketing and the best sales force, then how come we sell less goddamn dog food than anyone else in the business?"
After complete silence from the convention hall a small voice from the back of the room answers, "Because the dogs hate it."
The point here for the small business owner is that sometimes, no matter how hard you try to sell it, and no matter how many different ways you try to sell it, your product or service just isn't desirable, or isn't working for a particular group of prospects. And the more evidence you have that your product isn't saleable, the more you need either fundamentally to change the product or service so that it more closely meets the needs of your target audience, or to walk away from it altogether.
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The UK Small Business Marketing Bible is packed with hundreds more practical tips and techniques about growing your business, finding new customers and increasing sales. |
Options for starting up a family business
If the control and management of a business is vested in members of the same family, it is a family-run business. The family connections don't necessarily have to be by marriage or parent-and-child: a much looser association of life partners, step-children, cousins and close friends can take on the role of a 'family' business.
There are three main business formats you can use as ways of running a family business:
One person may be very much in control and can employ the other family members in the business. Two or more members of the family can be sole traders in complementary businesses and trade to mutual benefit.
A stage up from just helping each other out, a joint venture may lead to the formation of a partnership. This can happen where assets are owned jointly, making it easier to do business together and formalising and legalising the relationship. Husbands and wives often go into partnership when they decide to set up and run a business together.
One or two family members can initially decide to run a business together and add partners as their family grows. Under this arrangement you can still employ other members of the family or outside workers in a partnership.
A corporate structure can suit the long-term nature of a family business. Shares can be issued at the outset and then bought, sold or transferred between family members. Family members can vary their involvement with the practical running of the business, as they can be shareholders but don't necessarily have to work in the company on a day-to-day basis.
Whichever formal structure you decide on, it is essential to obtain professional advice about setting up your business.
Finally, check out our practical factsheets on setting up a family-run business and planning for the sale of a family firm for more information.
Getting involved in a WEEE consultation
Between now and 17 October, the Government is consulting on the implementation of the European Union (EU) Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE).
The rules will come into force on 1 July 2007, and will require affected firms to take responsibility for disposing of electronic goods or contributing towards recycling.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) says the Directive must be affordable and easy to understand for business owners, and warned that it could cause "monumental" damage to small businesses if the Government gets the implementation wrong.
To help you understand what is covered by the Directive, here are a few useful links to sources of further information:
Each
week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business
ideas in the UK.
Here
is this week's idea:
Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.
Do you know what 'contretemps' means?
a) a 'quick-fix' or impermanent solution
b) an awkward argument or disagreement
c) an addendum or appendix to a document
d) a setback or obstacle
Answer at the end of the Bulletin.
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The Prince's Trust
www.princes-trust.org.uk
This charitable organisation offers support, mentoring and finance to disadvantaged young people who want to become entrepreneurs. But how user-friendly and accessible is the website? |
Navigation
and presentation - the homepage is well-designed and appropriately colourful and vibrant for its target audience of young people. It's immediately clear where to go for different areas of the site, and the toolbar at the top of the page is genuinely useful, linking to a business directory and specific regional information.
Accessibility - the site can be viewed in seven languages other than English, but although all its images have the right tags, we couldn't find any accessibility guidance or information on the site. A text-only option is not available, and there isn't any assistance for users of different browsers.
Content
and usefulness - the content of the site is clearly written, well-presented and instructive. Users can get advice tailored to their location and circumstances, and there is even a collection of free, downloadable business guides covering areas like finding premises and writing a business plan.
Relevance - the info on the site is bang up to date, and there's an events calendar and an interactive media section featuring video news stories, which keeps things fresh. The news stories are even categorised into different areas to make key information easier to find.
An informative site that's not just packed with detail about the various support services that the Prince's Trust offers, but also manages to fit in tons of practical guidance for young business owners. Some more comprehensive accessibility options would make for a near-perfect score.
Our rating - 16/20
Businesses getting rapped for packaging waste
The Environment Agency reckons food and drink manufacturers and retailers should do more to reduce the amount of packaging used on their products in order to minimise household waste. The call comes after the Agency published its annual report, 'Spotlight', which looks at the environmental performance of firms in England and Wales. It says that the majority of household waste comprises food and drink packaging, citing Easter eggs (80% of which are made up of packaging) as an example.
Anti-spyware message carries virus
A Trojan Horse virus is being spread via an e-mail that claims to be from a software security company. Businesses should watch out for an e-mail that purports to be from SpysoftCentral, and which claims to have debited £79.39 from the recipient's credit card. The attachment that accompanies the e-mail supposedly contains a detailed invoice, but in fact contains the Trojan-Downloader.Bancos virus. It's feared that people will be duped into opening the attachment and infecting their PC.
Fair rents campaign for retailers
A campaign to modernise the rent system for retailers has doubled in size. There are now 80,000 small retailers and bigger chains are now backing the British Retail Consortium's (BRC) attempts to modernise the rent system for shop owners. The BRC has set up a great website to explain the campaign, which aims to persuade landlords to accept one month's rent in advance rather than three months' upfront - an archaic system that causes major cash flow headaches for firms.
Awards for 'olderpreneurs'
A new contest launched by Intel aims to recognise the entrepreneurial talent in Britain's over-50s. The competition, called profitat50.co.uk, will showcase and reward people over 50 who want to develop an existing online business, or who have a viable business idea but need support to get it off the ground. Judges include Dragons' Den panellist Simon Woodroffe, as well as experts from Intel and PRIME. The winner will receive £8,000 from Intel and a one-to-one mentoring session with Woodroffe. The closing date for entries is 31 August.
Free guide to web accessibility
A guide for businesses on how to commission a website that is accessible for users with disabilities has been made available for download free of charge by the British Standards Institution (BSi). The guide is aimed at readers without technical knowledge who would commission a web designer to build a site, and was originally priced at £30 + VAT. You need to complete a registration form to access the guide.
Aimed at anyone seeking to develop a basic understanding of the concept of market research, this concise and straightforward book provides practical information about finding market data. It also has a section on using the Internet for market information. Check out:
Just one word answer
The answer is b).
Contretemps means an awkward argument or disagreement.
You must make your payment terms clear to your customers to avoid having a contretemps over a late invoice. |
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Good luck
The EnterQuest Team
This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate. |
