This week’s book review on Small Business Trends is on “Creating Competitive Advantage” by Jaynie L. Smith.   You can see a summary of the book review as a feature video as well.  It’s one thing to read the book, get the principles and think that it’s a great idea, it’s quite another to sit yourself down and start comping up with a real competitive advantage that you can use to actually increase your sales. (more…)

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I just ran across an article that outlined the recent results of some studies that again show that more than 85% of our decision-making is EMOTIONAL and not rational. We’ve all known this to be true on a very basic level, but for whatever reason, we still cling to this notion that we need logical arguments to convince people of our point of view.

It’s no different when we are pulling together a sales and marketing strategy.  Even though we know that emotional triggers drive the decision, we continue to sometimes force our logic into the conversation.

Have you ever heard this phrase? “Most businesses sell things so that they can have customers.  We have customers so we can sell them things.” This is one of my favorite quotes (if you know who said it, let me know).  It speaks to the fact that selling more to existing customers is more profitable for your business, and for your customer because it reduces your marketing cost and their supplier complexity.

The best way to sell more to existing customers, is to build a relationship and a history with them.  And the best way to do THAT – is through direct marketing. Direct marketing doesn’t just mean Direct MAIL.  It can include personal visits, events, sales calls, social media as well as direct mail.

In this article I’m going to give you a task list that will get your customer audience started – so you can connect with them on an emotional level.

1. Get a list of existing customers.   This may seem obvious because “everyone has a customer list.”  This is a list I want you to start BY HAND.  Don’t just do a data dump.  Pull your team together and literally start listing people and companies that are top of mind for you. This should not be a HUGE list.  You might have 5 or 10 or maybe 50.  But not too many more than that.   This is the list of either great customers or crappy customers.  The great one’s you’ll want to create strategies for.  The crappy ones you’ll want to discuss and see if you want to make them great or refer them out.  Once you’re done with that, you can go to your database and pull down some more customers that might be in the “danger of losing” category.  And see what the deal is with that.  The question you’re asking here is – “Will building a connection with this person/company increase my sales and profitability?”
2. Segment and group these customers according to “benefit segments.”  These would be groupings that might include something like “Customers who like having stuff overnight, Customers who order in small quantities, Customers who use our product outside, etc….” Notice that these groupings are based more on how your customer experience and interact with your product or service and not just their demographics or location.  This kind of grouping or segmentation is KEY to increasing your profit margins and building great relationships and connections.
3. Develop a profile of these customer segments and the decision-makers in each one.  Think of this as literally developing a Facebook or LinkedIn profile for this personified customer.  Is it a man or a woman, what is their name, where do they live, what is their day like.  This is the best way to get into their world.  Start a list of what’s important to them in their personal and professional life.
4. For each group, make a connection between what’s important to them and what you actually provide that solves their problem or challenge.  Use index cards or sticky notes in two colors.  Use one color to list what’s important to these customers, then use the other color to list the offer that you provide that gives them that.

Whew – that was some work wasn’t it.  But it will be worth it when it comes to creating direct marketing campaigns that really connect.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 6 Ways to Increase Your Sales NOW (thecustomercollective.com)
• “7 Common Logical Mistakes People Make.” (talatfakhri.com)

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One of the things you can expect from DIYMarketers are periodic reviews of tools and resources that you’ll find helpful in selling to small businesses.

We all have a long list of blogs and articles we read every day – but I have to strongly recommend “Selling to Small Business.”  If you’re already an avid reader of Small Business Trends, then you might know about this one.  Both are online publications by Small Business Expert, Anita Campbell.

Anita truly has her pulse on what’s happening in the small business world.  In light of full disclosure, Anita is a client and a friend — but BOTH of these roles actually came years after I started following her work, reading her blog and relying on her online publications for my industry and trend information — heavily, I might add.  I only have one criticism of how Anita’s publications — I wish they had a portal that was all Anita Campbell small business stuff – all the time.  My biggest issue is that I have to hop from URL to URL and that they aren’t just a portal all their own.  But that’s just me and it goes to show how much I rely on her unique way of pulling information together in digestible bites and using the most credible resources on the web.

I’ll be reviewing several of her sites in the coming months, but I really want to start with “Selling to Small Business” first.

Who Should Read Selling to Small Business and Why?

Like the name implies, if you intend on SELLING to SMALL BUSINESS – you should read this blog.  But don’t even think about using this as “Chamber event” where you constantly pitch the audience on whatever your wares are.  It doesn’t work like that. Selling to Small Business is a resource to those of us who serve this market.  It will educate BOTH the large multi-national company like a Microsoft of an Intel on what’s important to small business, as well as the smaller provider of products and services.

How to Get the Most Out of Selling to Small Business?

Regardless of how you organize your blog reading, I recommend that you put all of Anita’s blogs very close together, so that you can take a quick glance and what topics she’s covering.  So put it on your reader.

It runs on a standard blog format, so the most recent stories are on the top and you can scroll your way down.  But remember – this is not so much a time driven source of information, as it is valuable category information – so be sure to look to your right where you’ll see the categories and the number of articles in each category.

Currently the categories tell you something about what’s happening in small business.  For example, she’s got one on Baby Boomers.  I never would have thought that as a category – but read the stories that are tagged and you’ll see that she’s thought this through – the stories aren’t just ABOUT baby boomers, some of them are stories baby boomers who are responsible for selling to small business should pay attention to.  Love that.

The next tab is “About” and you can learn more about what Anita was thinking when she started Selling to Small Business.

MY FAVORITE TAB – Small Business Lists!

Look you DIY Marketers — it’s all about the LIST.  It is so about the list and the community that you should not every kid yourself about this.  Here Anita gives you a wonderful resource ; calendars of small business events that you might find interesting to attend.

The other “list” she gives is the link to her SMBTrendwire podcasts.  These are weekly interviews that Anita and Steve Rucinski do with a variety of small business experts and authors.  There is so much to learn from these – you’ll have to put yourself on a daily budget of what to listen to and how much.

The last list resource is a directory of small business blogs. Againk you’ll have to look through these and identify the ones that are most useful to you.

Finally there is the archives section – which is what you’d expect it to be – archives of articles by category and month.

I highly encourage you to not only check this blog out, but I encourage you to become a subscriber and regular reader.  When you’re in dire need of quick, high quality info and data — this is your place.

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