Earlier on this year you may have read several blogs and videos related to our 1,100 kms cycle from Brisbane to Sydney to raise funds for young people with Cerebral Palsy at a charity called Fighting Chance KONA would like to say a very big ‘Thankyou’ for the way you supported us and to let you know where your donation went All up we raised over $345,000 for severely disabled young people and a big part of it was invested in their new van, including money for modifications and ongoing expenses including insurance and on-road costs (see picture below) The van is making a huge difference to Fighting Chance and they are already planning to extend their services to change the lives of more young people with disabilities, including providing transport runs to pick them up from home where otherwise they would have been housebound We have attached a 45 second video of the team decorating the van with handprints, relating to the Make Your Mark campaign we ran last year Please click on the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUJ4RkaSXs. Without your help we simply would not have this very important piece of equipment, so thank you all on behalf of the whole KONA and Fighting Chance team for the massive contribution you have made Best regards Glenn

It is not rocket science to know that every organisation needs great customer service skills as they are essential to maintaining existing clients and securing new ones. Excellent customer service is at the heart of a clients purchasing process and organisations that give extraordinary service to clients are immediately distinguished from other organisations in their competitive marketplace. This is the primary purpose why successful companies make this an imperative component of their business plan and make a special effort to provide better customer services through the following 5 Conversational Skills.

Clear Communication Skills

Client service providers must convey information and thoughts positively and clearly whether it’s on the telephone or through email. It is vital that the individuals who interact with the clients every day can pass on information about products and services to clients effectively and accurately, without going into a diatribe of features with no benefits and specifications with no value. Over the telephone, and via email, if your people can’t get their message across in short insightful and ‘client focused sentences’ then your clients will switch off.

Keeping Things Positive

A simple trap to fall into is when telling a client “no,” and not giving them an alternative Switch selling is a skillful technique to transform a negative into something positive. “No, we don’t have any of those left” or “No, we can’t do that this week”, is a very different response to “while unfortunately we don’t have those we do however have these and what they will do for you is….” Or “while unfortunately we can’t do this week we can in-fact do next week and the benefit to you of that is….”

Patience

Too many Customer Service Teams and Call Centres are focused on AHT, Average Handling Time, or the Quantity of calls and minimum amount of time a Customer Service Person spends in a telephone conversation with a client. Quality of conversations is highly important to clients, who frequently need support when they are frustrated and confused. Successful Client Service People offer a good service rather than a fast service, which lets the client feel that they have been listened to, and cared for, even when they might not get the outcomes they wanted.

Listening Skills

Customer Service People need to have the capacity to listen to a client’s issue, assess situations and find appropriate solutions. However, while common sense, not everyone has the ability to listen carefully. Good listeners make the best Customer Service People on the grounds that they are going to identify customer needs accurately and quickly, and not jump in or talk over the client.

Negotiation Skills

Customer Service teams are frequently placed in the position of negotiating with clients to buy an item or accept a certain policy. To reduce ‘delayed service’ by regularly escalating a decision to a Team Leader or Supervisor, they must have the ability to ask intelligent and insightful questions to discover shared ground with a client. Spouting a list of features, product specifications, timeframes, prices, and stock levels, while getting the customer off the phone quickly, doesn’t add value or strengthen their relationships. Customer Service Teams must be given the skills and a basic structure so that they can negotiate with a client to achieve a beneficial outcome for both the organization and the client Going forward All employees should understand the importance of their role in providing excellent service that doesn’t only involve helping the clients, it tries to go far beyond client fulfillment. Going an additional mile to provide amazing service will keep clients returning and directly increase sales. Monica Wynne is the Customer Service and Call Centre Training and Coaching Specialist of The KONA Group, Australia’s leading corporate Sales and Management Training and Coaching organisation. If your business is needs to increase sales and customer retention contact Monica at: 1300 611 288, or email info@KONA.com.au Alternatively go to https://kona.com.au//customer-service-training or, https://kona.com.au//Hearts-and-Minds-Sales-Training

The financial year 2013/14 was a good year for Australian organisations with many businesses incorporating new business development initiatives aimed at increasing sales and profits. With the ongoing changes we are seeing due to the digital revolution, managing sales results by revenue and profit numbers alone is becoming increasingly ineffective Unfortunately too many sales operations are making the profession of sales far too complex and while nothing in sales is easily predicted many of our clients believe that the following trends will positively impact their sales results this coming financial year.

Sales trend 1. Commercial Awareness

This year your sales people will have to be more commercially astute and professional than ever before, rather than relying on their technical and product knowledge Business leaders are saying that they want to work with a salesperson who understands their vision and strategy rather than one who just knows how their own products/services work In short, do you have ‘product flogging, order taking, proposal writing, fact spouting’, sales people or are they seen as a Business Resource to your clients and customers?

Sales trend 2: Current Day Marketing

This trend is seeing more and more business managers employing current methods of marketing and especially through social media. Instead of seeing online marketing as a tack on to their advertising budget, businesses are now increasingly setting up their own social media platforms, especially Facebook and Linked In to build their brand, promote their expertise and advertise their products and services When business is quiet with the low cost and real time flexibility of Online Marketing, organisations now have no excuse to cut costs by reducing their marketing spend (And if you are sitting back saying we are already doing this, KONA Group recently surveyed over 200 clients of one of Australian Top 100 businesses, and 85% of their clients didn’t even have a website, and were wondering why they weren’t winning more new business!)

Sales trend 3. Managers as Coaches

Sales management will have to get out from behind their desks and become better field sales coaches Too many sales managers are being pressured to cut costs to make more profit rather than working on how can they generate a greater ROI from their sales resources As a result the main focus will be on sales managers becoming better ‘on the job’ coaches and building on the Quantity of sales activity by developing Quality sales activity of their people as a gauge of success

Sales trend 4: Change your sales and marketing language.

This shift is underway in several industries as prophesied 15 year ago by Cluetrain Manifesto, which stressed the need for organisations to talk to their customer/clients in their customer/clients language and not in the “soothing, humourless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure and ‘your call is important to us’ message”. Organisations are realising the time has come to stop playing ‘buzz word bingo’ by overloading their Value Proposition statements with as many verbs and adjectives that their sentences can carry If your sales and marketing people can’t get your message across in short sharp and easily understood sentences then how can your customers/clients really know what you can do for them

Sales trend 5: Collaboration is a key to getting a bigger piece of the pie.

Smart businesses are continuing to collaborate with other companies in their space, instead of being in competition, to win their share of a larger opportunity or project On the back of Jim Collins   Good to Great Hedgehog Principle, identifying which organisations can add value to your business will help you get specific projects over the line. Typically, 50% of 100 is far better than 100% of 30, and businesses are realising that collaboration will increase sales and profits without increasing overheads, as well as opening the door to other opportunities that you can work on together In conclusion: Irrespective of the emerging trends, organisation’s managers and leaders must start or continue to focus on enhancing customer engagement activities and capabilities, rather than ‘Internal navel gazing’ and ‘I am SO busy’ projects Glenn Dobson is the Managing Director of The KONA Group, Australia’s leading corporate Sales and Management Training and Coaching organisation. If your business is are not making the sales and profits you need, bring in the specialists in Strategic Marketing and Australian Sales Training from the KONA Group and provide your business with the expertise and tools to turn your results round. Go to https://kona.com.au//Hearts-and-Minds-Sales-Training or https://kona.com.au//Marketing-Strategy Or call 1300 611 288, or email Glenn@KONA.com.au

After an increase in mobile and communication media the last two years, this financial year is going to be a year of reaction, recovery and backlash. The Soccer World Cup and winter Olympics will increase Australian business’s International target market and many organisations are looking to how they can promote their products and services to a wider, more Global prospect base To achieve this we are going to see some of the recent software innovations like programmatic ad buying systems and mobile shakeup reach a more accepted stage in the market. Consumers are often unpredictable and they may reach a point where they will start rebelling the overindulgence of electronic connections in their day to day life. Thus marketers will have to deal with the overflow of digital information with no human connection which will eventually lead to a focus on qualitative research and personal interactions to win the Hearts and Minds of their customers. Bottom line: “We want to do business with people, not with a machine” Here are some of the trends to look out for in 2014/15

Trend 1. Mobile Advertisement

Desktop is no longer at the top of e-commerce due to the explosion of tablets and smart phones, and the targeting of mobile users is going to be the top of mind to campaign successes. Mobile ecommerce is growing faster and marketers are now shifting their attention to marketing everything through the phone or tablet.

Trend 2: Short and Precise Advertising

With the rise of mobile, information has to be reduced to fit the smaller mobile screen and capture the attention of consumers easily. Long videos and detail heavy ‘wordy websites’ are losing the race gradually. If consumers can easily understand a brand faster, the rate at which they spread will also increase.

Trend 3. Programmatic Buying

In an interview with Ken Weiner, the CTO of display advertising platform Gum Gum, he said that in 2014/15 there would be an increase in programmatic buying of digital advertising which will rise into premium placements such as in viewability, content and image. This program is growing as publishers look for ways to increase efficiencies and reduce costs of advertising

Trend 4. People Engagement Research

Most marketers are investing a lot of money in Qualitative research this year, where the consumers are being asked about their experiences with specific products and services, rather than Quantative research, which is based more on maths, stats and numerical data.

Trend 5. Elimination of banners

There is a strong possibility that online video will substitute banner ads in the year 2014/15. Most people this days are spending most of their time with their tablets and not the television screens. (Thank goodness for the ability to record our favourite TV programs so that we don’t have to watch those endless boring adverts!!) Video advertisement will now shift to become more prevalent in maintaining brand awareness, market share and business development. However they must maintain quality messaging and customer focus as that is what most consumers are yearning for these days.

Going forward

These are just five trends that organisations need to watch out for in 2014/15 and considering how to incorporate them is essential to keeping you in front of the game. If your business is not making the sales and profits you need, bring in the specialists in Strategic Marketing and Australian Sales Training from the KONA Group and provide your people with the expertise and tools to turn your results round Go to https://kona.com.au//Hearts-and-Minds-Sales-Training or https://kona.com.au//Marketing-Strategy Or call 1300 611 288, or email Glenn@KONA.com.au

Following on from last week’s article here is part 2 of Michael’s “What can I do to generate more leads for my business?”

Call To Action

If someone takes you up on your offer what is it that do they need to do? You want this action to be as easy as possible. For example click here or call this number or fill in this reply paid card. You want a single step easy call to action. And you want your call to action to be void of any hint of a sales person about to pounce – we all have built in radars to protect ourselves from sales people pouncing.

Provide Repeated Value (for free) & Call to Action

Think of this as a boxing match. Now whether you are a fan of boxing or not you probably know that it is unusual, very unusual, for a boxer to jump into the ring and land a knock blow with his first punch. Yet that is the approach that many businesses take with their lead generation.

They put something out there to attract prospects with an offer, a prospect responds. And bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Buy me now. Buy me now. Buy me now.

This certainly doesn’t work now and even if it did work in the past was not the best way of doing things.

Imagine that you are a single person – easy to do if you are one. You go to a party. You see someone that you like the look of and they notice you too. You start chatting and you kind of hit it off. You think you like them and they seem to like you.

Then after 10 minutes the other person says “marry me.” At first you think it is an amusing complement then you realise they are deadly serious. And for the remainder of the night – or the part of the night that you are brave enough to stay at the party – they follow you round: “will you marry me, will you marry me.” Pretty quickly you would flee the scene and disappear into the night.

And so it is in lead generation. No-one likes being hunted or pushed to do something that they are not ready to do yet.

Before your lead goes any further with your business you need to get them to trust you.

The best way of doing this is to give them repeated value without trying to sell them anything and without asking for money.

Each time you deliver value to them do so with a new call to action that makes it easy for them to take the next obvious step in building a relationship with you.

Engage

The number of steps that will you need in giving them value will vary depending upon your target market, what you are selling, the price point of what you are selling and the risk to the buyer.

When you get to the last step in your giving them value process the final call to action will be ask them to engage with you in some meaningful way where some more of your value is exchanged for either time and effort on their part or for a small number of dollars. This is unlikely to be the “big final sale” and is more likely to be the bridging step between no financial engagement and a complete financial engagement.

Think engagement and not marriage at this stage.

At this stage you may do a small paid for study, or a paid for diagnostic or paid for design or an initial paid for trial period.

You want the steps in your engagement process to continue to educate, add value to your prospect, and earn their trust.

During this process you should be able to fully qualify your prospect to make sure that you want them as a client/customer.

When you have a qualified prospect who trusts you then the lead gets passed to sales and the start of the sales process begins.

Building Your Action Plan

To build your Lead Generation Action Plan here is KONA’s 11 steps to create a powerful lead generation action plan.

11 Steps to Crafting a Powerful Lead Generation Action Plan.

1. Identify a Narrow Target Market.

The narrower the better. This may mean that you have several Target Markets – that is OK. The reason for wanting a narrow target market is that the wider you make your definition of your Target Market then the more difficult it is to identify specific burning problems that the Target Market desperately wants/needs to solve.

2. Describe your ideal prospects in this Target Market.

Your ideal prospect is one who absolutely should buy your product or service. It’s just perfect for them. They have the need, they have the money, they have the buy-in of any other stakeholders. You need to define who they are and where they are – the more detail the better. Here is an anonymised example from one of our IT clients:

The Managing Director of a training businesses in the Greater Sydney area. This type of training business is focussed on helping large corporates and medium sized businesses stay compliant with all forms of employment legislation. The MD needs more tightly integrated IT applications to support winning a bigger share of her client’s training budgets – at the moment the MDs unconnected IT apps are a barrier to this. The MD would ideally like a simple way for all their IT apps to work together and share the same data – this would unlock more revenue growth for them. The MD doesn’t want to ditch existing IT apps. Their revenue from training activities is at least $2M plus.

3. Their Problems That You Solve

The logical problems that you solve should be easy for you to document – go ahead and write them down. But to craft powerful Offers you need to go beyond the problem and solution statements to what it means for your ideal prospect to solve these problems. Start with a blank sheet of paper. (I recommend using pen and paper, not a computer, for this exercise). At the top of the paper, write the following:

“If I could only…“

Imagine you are your ideal prospect. What’s your name? (Really, give yourself a name. Don’t skip this because it seems silly). Age? Marital Status? Do you have kids – what ages? What do you believe? What communities do you belong to? What really annoys you? Who do you want to be like? What’s most important to you about your performance in your role? To be a hero? To avoid mistakes? To look good? To have fun?

Now imagine your ideal prospect at the exact moment they are about to search Google for your main keyword. Complete (“If I could only …”) from the point of view of your prospect. What are you hoping for? What are you afraid of? How will you know when you’ve found the right solution?

Talk about the emotional as well as technical aspects of the problem and its solution. Is it fun? Something you’re looking forward to solving? Are you worried about failing? About making a mistake? Who might be judging or second-guessing you? What triggered your search?

Write as much as you can.

When you’re done, search Google for the keyword and look at the search results page from your ideal prospect’s eyes. Do any of the ads or organic listings really speak to them?

What do you (as your ideal prospect) want the ad to say? What do you want to be promised? By whom?

For more information, contact info@kona.com.au or 1300 611 288

See you next week.