Debbie Mayo Smith, International Motivational Speaker
Motivational Speakers, Sales, Marketing, Time Management, Productivity, Technology, Tips

Archive for the ‘communication’ Category

VIP book

Friday, March 5th, 2010

You have no business if you have no customers. And to customers it’s often the little, inexpensive things that matter most. It therefore makes infinite sense that if you operate in a competitive market, you can improve your bottom line by implementing good, customer focused processes and service.

Here’s an example. I lost the advice battle with three of our six children when we last ordered Domino’s Pizza. I suggested they not order thin crusts. When we got them home, opened the lids, sure enough they were a little too crispy you might say. I telephoned the store, asked for the manager so I could complain about the pizzas. I expected an argument. Instead they didn’t quibble: ‘We’ll put you down in our VIP book for four complimentary pizzas, just tell us you’re in our VIP book the next time you call or come in.’

You could have knocked me down with a feather when one day later a letter arrived with another apology from the general manager, a promise of five (not four) free pizzas and, to the kids’ delight, a coupon for free garlic bread and Coke.

This is an idea to steal. You can name anything VIP to make your customers feel special. It’s corny, yes, but it does work. Doesn’t a VIP book sound much better than a customer complaint book?

Article by International Speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. www.debbiespeaks.co.nz Debbie@debbiespeaks.co.nz

How To Create Superior Proposals That Get Results

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

In the current environment of slashed budgets preparing a superior proposal is more important than ever.

 

Here are two strategies that should significantly increase your success.

 

1. Them. Not You

Almost every piece of marketing material, proposal, sales presentation that I see has the wrong I/You ratio.  Your prospects care solely about themselves. Yet most marketing material focuses on how wonderful ‘we’ are. How great we do. Send this chest thumping guerrilla marketing philosophy packing. Replace it with a customer focused what’s in it for them strategy. How will it make them more successful? How will it make them happier? How will it make them more money?

 

2. Quantify.

Money talks. Fluff walks.

Put a dollar value on how they’ll benefit. Measure their rate of return. 

 

This exercise is easier than you might think. Will your product/service save them time? Put a value on it by estimating how much time it will save per annum multiplied by the value of that person’s time (their wage per hour, salary). You can reduce stress? Does that lead to happier employees which helps reduce turnover? You can quantify the recruitment costs saved along with the productivity continuum.

 

Help them make more sales or increase turnover?  Take the average value of one sale (you can even factor in the life time value of that one new client) multiplied by the number of new ones expected.

 

You can get the base information any number of ways. Research on the Internet. Their Competitors. Annual reports. Talk to HR professionals about salary levels. Colleagues in that industry. Allies within that company.

Lessons from an 84-year-old

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

My 84-year-old mother-in-law asked me, ‘Please can you come over and help organise my computer files?’ I replied, ‘Of course, my pleasure. I’ll be over tomorrow about 1:15–1:30.’ At 2:00, she rang. ‘Yes, I’m on my way, I’m sorry I was a bit delayed. Be right there,’ I said, feeling guilty as hell. The job wouldn’t have taken fifteen minutes, but I got tea, muffins and a profusion of thanks. It was no effort at all really. Later that afternoon, while on the office phone, my cell rang. It went to my voicemail. My mother-in-law had left a message to say thank you once again. My initial reaction was, ‘Gee, she really didn’t have to do that. And a cellphone call to boot!’ Ten minutes later, it dawned on me how lovely it was. I really appreciated that little extra that she had done – it made me feel special. How different this was from my experience of sending out over seventy hand-written cards with a gift of my just-published book to a group of clients the previous month. While I expected nothing in return, it still floored me that I only received two thank-you emails from the seventy. Now, I know an 84-year-old grandmother has far more time on her hands than you or I. We have so much to do with the 101 calls on our time. I suggest that by making time, you’ll reap a greater business reward. You’ll have happier clients who feel more appreciated. You’ll make better networking connections. You’ll have better word of mouth and referrals. Will you be a leader or will you simply be one of the pack, who has no time for the equivalent of good manners in business?

Four successful pitch tips

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Here are four tips to help you achieve a successful outcome with your next sales pitch

  1. Strong opening If you’re pitching a $500,000 contract and have only 10 minutes, ‘good morning ladies and gentlemen, thank you for having us here’ just cost you over $8,300 by wasting 10 seconds. Open differently and strongly. Paint a picture. Take them into the future. Describe how they’re benefiting from the clever decision they made years ago working with you. Decision makers want to benefit the company, they also want personally to be sure they are taking the right action. So highlight how they’ll be remembered for doing the right thing by using your company (not too much of a butter up though)
  2. Answer questions up front, What do they want to know from you? How can you help them? If you’re more expensive, will take longer, are the underdog – do not ignore the fact. They’re thinking it. Come straight out early into the presentation with a “I know what you’re thinking’ statement, then answer their objections.
  3. Premise Build your pitch around the structure of how they will benefit from what you are asking them to do. ‘You will save $2’ million dollars by using our software’, ‘You will cut maintenance expenditure by 20% ‘.  Phrase it so they say to themselves ‘how?’  Which you then answer in a logical and structured way.
  4. Strong Close Refer back to your opening story or bring all the elements together describing how they’ll benefit.  If you didn’t use the looking into the future in your opening, you can use it in the closing. “picture yourself in two years’ time. It’s the gala dinner. Award night. Everyone is abuzz because the success of the new software system you approved and installed the year before. Five different staff have come to you through out the evening – all award winners from their significant leap in productivity….

Five strategies for better profit from your database

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

1. Never let a viable prospect go You spent time and money through networking, good customer service, advertising and website development to get prospective customers to your figurative door. Don’t waste your money or time spent. Establish a communication stream to keep in contact until they are ready to do business or refer. 2. Excel is Magic It doesn’t matter what database software you use to store your information because it’s simple to bring it into Excel to then manipulate, clean, de-duplicate and add to it in seconds flat. 3. Plan for the future today If targeting improves success – do you have enough information to do so? Have you ever stopped to contemplate what new products, services, customer service initiatives you’d like to do over the next few years? A new branch or store? What about additional staff? Will you ever need to know or monitor their productivity or their contribution to business? If so how will you measure it? What fields would you need? Phone numbers.  Are you consistently collecting mobile phone numbers so you can do sms messaging in the future? 4. Categories not columns The last thing you want to do is work with an endless line up of columns. Don’t set up separate columns for clients, prospects, old clients, suppliers. Instead have one column called client type and have different Categories (or variables) you enter into the one column, being client, old client, prospect, supplier. 5. Treat your business referrers well Do you have a distinct communication, thank you and reward plan for those business colleagues that refer business your way? Why not? A suggestion to help them could be a tip newsletter about how to improve their business success. Why not create a recurring reminder to prompt you every few months to telephone for a chat. The more thought you put into developing and using your database, the more you’ll be rewarded.

iPhone for Business

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Once you have an iPhone you’ll never be able to go back. Not only are they personally fun, they’re significant for business.

  1. Make More Sales
    Create applications that your customers or prospects can download.
    Three months ago in the US, Pizza Hut launched an iPhone application (available through iTunes – but only in the States) for ordering pizza, pasta and wings. Not only has it brought in an extra one million dollars in sales during this period. It’s created a huge buzz simply by incorporating the ‘cool’ things you can do with the iphone. Stretch or shrink the pizza base with your fingers to select a small, medium or large size. Scroll for toppings and drag them on. After you select toppings. Tap and tilt to have the topping on half the pizza.  Select the sauce for wings, watch it pour on. Shake the phone to spread the sauce through the wings. They have even included a Pizza Hutt racing game to play while the waiting for the pizzas to be delivered.  Watch the video here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojw8I1CFu-w

  2. Help get Information fast as you need it)
    Got an appointment in an unfamiliar town or at an address you not sure of? Then Google the company on your Smartphone, clicking on address will show you where the company is on the built in map and you can even use streetview to see what the building looks like so, now you know where they are, how to get there and even what building to look for.

Another fabulous example of iPhone (and Google Android) technology is augmented reality. (Augmented Reality is the addition of virtual reality to actual reality)   In New Zealand, Zenbu (a free iPhone download) uses the GPS location, compass and camera so that as you look through your camera on the phone, logos and information can be laid over what you are looking at.
What mountain is it and how high?, What café’s are along on a particular street? You can check the reviews and get additional information of a restaurant you’re standing in front of just by pointing your phone at it. The iphone has free AR downloads for the Paris Metro and London bus services. You can liken it to a live Google Map satellite view.

Two customer communication tips

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Targeting equals success As you know, most individuals receive far too much information from a multitude of sources and can barely absorb what they have. If your communication to them is not spot on and relevant, why should they give you their attention, their time? The secret is people don’t care about you, which is what most business communications revolve around. Your clients and prospects care about themselves. They care about their world which consists of their family and their work. Why not take a moment now and re-read your last marketing communications – brochure, newsletter, sales presentation. How much of the content is focused on making the reader more successful in different ways? How many “I’s”, ‘we’s” do you have? How much was written from your perspective rather than what they’ll get from it? This is what I mean precisely about targeting. Your audience will find much more value in your communications if in addition to industry or occupation information, you think of them as people. Mothers. Fathers. Aunts. Would you like to know the one article that hands down has generated the very best response (from 1999 to this day) from my monthly online newsletter? Judging in terms of people clicking through, goodwill plus a massive amount of new subscribers? It was from a short article which offered our children’s rotating job chart and the suggestion the jobs can be substituted for ones around the office. To this day people still talk to me about the job chart. “But Debbie, you run a business newsletter. Why would you put a children’s job chart in it” you’re thinking. Ah yes, but almost every single person that reads my newsletter from CEO down to Personal Assistant will have children or be related to some or have friends with them. Your customer cycle. Think of a cycle of demand for your products or services. It flows from hot to cold to warm,. Before your customers first ‘buy’, be it a product or service from you, they are HOT.  After the purchase, they immediately go quite cold (in terms of demand). Depending on your product or service, you must have a communication strategy that keeps a dialogue flowing both to generate referrals from them AND until your customers move from COLD to WARM,  then back once again to HOT and ready to do business with you again or refer you to a colleague. Do your communications cater to all three stages?

Motivational speaker Debbie Mayo-Smith improving business performance

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UogJRKBeAqs

Lessons to learn from ME

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Would you like get 30% to 40% of your non-returning customers back? Or conduct a fast, inexpensive offer to your customers with the double benefit of significant new business and new customers? Then I must tell you about the owners of ME, a salon in Auckland. The clever marketing and customer service initiatives of owners Andy Grant and Iain Smith have significant relevance for any business. They have combined clever thinking with three business ingredients to their advantage (that so many others ignore). A customer database. Everyday technology. Customer communications. Cross marketing Most salons offer hair, makeup and beauty therapy. ME strategically branded their three services as ME (hair), MAKEUP ME and TOUCH ME (beauty therapy). This creates three separate services to cross market. Their software system has built in bulk SMS messaging. They ran a campaign sending 500 (SMS) texts to hair clients saying if they use a TOUCH ME service they get a gift voucher of equal value for themselves or a friend. Lesson: You have targeting. Cross marketing. Inexpensive, easy, Immediate and personal value added communications. The result is 300 out of 500, 60% took up the offer. That is 300 non-discounted new pieces of business. The fact most gave the voucher away means a fabulous inexpensive source of new clients. Further by giving discounts on services rather than cutting prices means  generating revenue rather than cutting income and creates a higher perceived value for all clients than the actual cost. Raising the dead Each Monday they print two lists. The prior week’s clients and those that have not returned in four to six months. They have the receptionist telephone both lists. The first a customer service follow up ‘how was your appointment?’ The second a ‘we miss you, how can we bring you back’? Lesson: This raising the dead list gives you a great vehicle for feedback and tweaking service – ME normally get 30-40% of the clients to return again. If you look at the average lifetime value of a client, let’s say $2500 here, this simple exercise is a significant revenue generator conducted during a quiet time.

Activity equals success

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

If business is slow, don’t sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for the figurative telephone to ring, Listen to your gut for what would be good for your clients in this economy. Using your database, create your own activity. Activity Equals Success.

Let me give you a personal example. Last winter was going to be an exceptionally quiet one for business. While dropping the kids off at school at 8:25, I thought to myself “Why don’t I run some database marketing workshops around New Zealand and Australia By 9:35 I had segregated out my New Zealand and Australian newsletter subscribers, wrote a simple two paragraph plain text email to each group. I asked them to reply only if they were VERY interested in attending. A flood of over 700 emails had just arrived. Now two months later I conducted 14 workshops for 410 individuals, generated four speaking engagements and sold a lot of books. Let’s look at the aspects of this marketing campaign in relation to this economic climate.

Database
This entire exercise was marketed solely though my newsletter database. With the help of my readers, it was spread though their sphere of influence.

Targeted
Why burn the goodwill of your list by sending people in the UK, Spain, Brazil or Florida an email about an Australasian workshop? After the initial send, the communication continued primarily with those whom had expressed interest rather than the whole database.

Ease. Speed
From my initial idea in the car through to the final targeted execution and distribution of over 10,000 emails – only one hour had elapsed.

Inexpensive
The outlay was purely my time and that of an assistant helping with faxed forms and invoicing/receipts.

Not Fancy
It was simply plain text paragraphs. In fact I am 100% positive that the simplicity not only helped the email get through spam filters, it also was easy to digest and act on immediately.

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64 (9) 575-5359 NZ
61 (3) 9005 7563 Melbourne
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Debbie@successis.co.nz


Books

Marketing in Today's Wired World

Marketing in Today's Wired World alerts you to the many profitable and clever ways you can use email, txt, video and audio messages to boost revenues, recruit new business, cut costs, improve customer service and leapfrog in front of your competition.
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101 Quick Tips for Google and Email
101 Outlook and Google Tips Debbie's years of experience working with email and Google are packed into this easy to read #1 bestselling book.
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101 Quick Tips: Create a Great Customer Experience
101 Customer Experience Tips do you want more sales, referrals and repeat business? Then you need this book! You won't want to miss these 101 tips to place your head and shoulders above the crowd to build customer loyalty, word of mouth, and profits.
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101 Quick Tips: Surviving the Kids
101 Balancing Tips with nine children between them and busy careers, let Debbie and Mary Lambie use their experience to make this practical little book a goldmine of solutions for you.
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Conquer Your Email Overload Superb Tips and Tricks For Busy People
Save hours a week using clever, timesaving 'how-to' solutions to the top problems you have using email, your calendar, address books/contacts.
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