Steve Clarke: Business Mentor, Author, Columnist, Speaker and one of the country’s leading experts on grassroots sales and marketing strategies shares his knowledge in today’s guest blog.
In my book “How to Thrive Not Just Survive”, (a business book where the title says it all) I talk about the importance of automating your systems. It’s how to achieve more, with less blood sweat and tears.
But what else can you automate in your business?
Well, the fact is that so many of your systems and procedures within the business can and should be automated.
Obviously there are things like your bookkeeping and accounting, purchasing and stock control. But what I want to touch on here are ways and means of automating your sales and marketing procedures.
In fact, if you want to grow your business, it is vital to understand how to automate your systems and procedures so that others can step into your shoes and in order for you not to be a slave to the business.
Automating my own systems (and I’m a one man band and incredibly non-technical), allowed me to grow my business by 512% in January and for two weeks of that… I was on holiday in Mauritius. That’s automation for a small business owner working properly in my book.
It’s 2012 – embrace technology.
I want to whet your appetite just by mentioning ‘auto responders’.
Are you aware of auto responders and the power they have to help you with your sales?
If not, allow me to explain.
An auto responder is probably one of the most important marketing tools you can have if you have an online presence – and don’t we all. In fact, I would go further: it’s a vital marketing tool that will help you automate your business.
In simple terms, an auto responder allows you to engage, build rapport and communicate with your prospects and your customers via e-mail.
The best part of all, it does it on autopilot.
Most of us know that with simple tools such as Google Analytics you are able to determine the amount of traffic your website generates. However, how many of you actually know ‘who’ your interested visitors are?
Don’t you think that would be a good thing to know? Of course it would.
Imagine this ludicrous situation:
You invest in beautiful retail premises, and you invest in merchandising materials and inventory. Your advertising campaign has generated a huge amount of interest, and you just know people will be lined up at your door when you’re ready to open.
You’re up bright and early on the morning of your first opening. You turn off the alarms and unlock the doors. But before the first customer sets foot over the threshold, you remove yourself to a dark corner of the room, put on a blindfold and gag your mouth.
The doors then fling open and crowds of people descend upon your shop like a plague of locusts. You can hear footsteps, and lots of them, and you know there’s excitement.
All day, judging by the foot traffic and visitors, you’ve had a veritable feeding frenzy in your shop. As the last visitor leaves your store and closes the door, you get to remove your blindfold and your gag.
You look in the cash register, but there’s only a measly few pounds in the draw. It can’t be right you think, you had so many visitors. What happened? Many of them were just looking, that’s what.
People are only ready to buy when they’re ready to buy – not when you’re ready to sell.
Read that again…
So what can an auto responder do for you? It removes your blindfold and your gag! It let’s you automatically engage with potential customers in a non-threatening way, share information with them until they get to know you, like you and trust you enough to want to but from you.
Can you imagine how much more powerful it would be to not just know that you’ve had traffic to your site, but to know ‘who’ actually visited? That’s what an auto responder can do for you.
Your website needs to be set up in such a way that you can collect contact information from every qualified prospect that visits your site. I wouldn’t suggest this is done by simply offering a newsletter – people are really tired of that concept.
You need to consider what information you can give to the people that will be visiting your site. It needs to be free of charge and of real value for that person to give you their e-mail address and name in exchange for your report or information.
A gardening company for example could offer a free report for example on “The top five essential tips when gardening in spring”, or “The top 10 tips for keeping your garden in the best shape in summer”. You get the idea… provide something that someone who has come to your site because they are interested in gardening will want because it’s free and of interest to them.
Don’t be tempted to try and sell it. Be prepared to give away something with perceived value because it will allow you to start to communicate with that person and earn their trust.
Once you have their contact information, with their permission you begin to build a relationship until you reach a point where they are ready to buy. The real beauty of auto responders is that you create a series of follow up e-mails just once.
You determine the time lapse between each of the series that you want to send out and then forget all about it.
Don’t get me wrong, e-mail marketing and auto responders are not the marketing panacea; it is, however, a weapon you must have in your armory if you’re to compete in today’s marketplace and to make your website produce results.
All of this can then link into your CRM system and help you segment and market to your customers with specific needs wants and desires.
Collecting good prospect and customer data this way and automating your sales systems will allow you ‘narrow your message’. Offer products and services to a smaller group of customers who have identified themselves as good prospects. Results – a more receptive market – more sales – more profits.
Steve Clarke
Business Mentor, Author, Columnist, Speaker, Steve is one of the country’s leading experts on grassroots sales and marketing strategies. Not a theorist or a guru, but a doer. He grew his last company to £30m in annual revenues in just 8 years before it was sold. He now offers 1-2-1 coaching, runs mentoring groups and seminars for business owners looking for serious growth.
