Sales

Client retention issues? I bet I know why.

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I often get calls from business owners telling me they need marketing because their sales have “dipped”.   I dig a bit deeper asking questions about why they think revenue and retention have dropped.  I get the following:

  • My competition is eating me a live
  • I need better employees
  • My customers don’t value me like they used to
  • I’m not competitive anymore
  • No problem – I just need marketing!

When I get these type of responses, it’s the red flag zone for me.  99% of the time there is a deeper issue and marketing is the last thing they should be focused on right now.

My next step is to head to their office – I want to be there first thing in the morning when employees are showing up.  I want to just watch, listen… and learn.  What I typically find is an unhappy situation, a morgue with Stepford Wife type employees who fake being happy there.  Where’s the boss?  In his/her office drinking coffee, with the door closed.  It’s Monday and there is work to do.  The Grind. The Misery.

In my line of work, the #1 reason most companies fail to thrive is due to their culture and the lack of a leader who understands the importance of TEAM.

When you hire the right employees into the right culture with a leader who embraces a culture of learning and mentoring– your customer experience will soar.

It all comes back to the Core Values of the company – the driving principals. The Ten Commandments – it’s how you act internally and how you project yourself externally.  When there is a disconnect with the Core Values of the owner and those of the employees – it becomes a hot mess and those dissatisfied employees become a cancer – which then trickles down to the customer experience.

If your retention and revenues are dipping – please take a hard, holistic look at your business and ask WHY.  WHY are customers not sticking?  It’s rarely because of price or your competition – it’s because of their experience with you and your brand. They left because they didn’t feel the love and someone else was loving them more than you were.

Employees matter.  Culture matters.  Most importantly, how your employees express your culture to your customers matters.

Until you fix this – don’t spend a dime on marketing. You are tossing dollars out the damn door.

Client retention issues? I bet I know why. Read More »

Prospecting with Email Marketing

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Email is 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. — McKinsey. We do a ton of email marketing for clients and Red Barn – some of it is thought leadership focused like my Thursday morning Tribe Mail. (sign up here), but much of it is done primarily for prospecting.

So how do we get consistent above average open rates and click through rates AND conversion with our email marketing?Consistency, Great Content, and yep – a lot of trial and error with subject lines.

Consistency. They don’t call them “Drip Email Campaigns” because you just do it once. Effective email campaigns do just that – drip like a leaky faucet until someone takes notice and takes action. AHA moment – you immediately thought annoying leaky faucet. But think deeper – most sales people give up after 1 or 2 connections yet people don’t take action until after 10-12 touch points.

For thought leadership emails, I’m a fan of weekly. Same time, same place. No visuals – just great content that spurs thinking. It’s all about building your personal brand and connecting it with your company brand. Having people see you in a different light – you know, showing off your secret sauce.

For Drip Campaigns, you need multiple touches weekly and they run over several MONTHS. Visuals happen when they take action – so going to a landing page or your website, otherwise I keep them text only. WHY? One word: mobile.

Content.  Once someone clicks on your email – you need to give your prospect something valuable to read!  Remember people buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST – in that order.  So, if you are prospecting to a cold list – don’t go in for the kill immediately.  Let them get to know you and like you first – this can happen all in one email or it can get built up over time.  Why should someone take the time to know you or even like you?

I’m a fan of giving something to get something.  Offer a free download, give them some “tool” for free or some free insight into what you offer.  Again – you need to build up to the Trust phase before they will buy.  Toss in some testimonials, send them back to read a blog you’ve written.  Give them something valuable.

Subject lines. Depending on what stats you look at – up to 50% of people will decide to open or not open an email based on the subject line. More daunting, subject lines can also toss you in a SPAM folder depending on what you write and to whom you are sending it to! In the end – it takes some A/B testing depending on your Target Client Profile. Here are some quick stats from our friends at Hubspot:

  • Emails that contain the word \”you\” in the subject line are opened 5% less often than those without.
  • Emails that contain the word \”tomorrow\” in the subject line are opened 10% more often than those without.
  • Emails with subject lines containing 30 or fewer characters have the best open rates.
  • Emails with personalized subject lines are more than 20% more likely to get opened.
  • Emails with the word “Meeting” in the subject line were opened 7% less than those without.
  • Emails with the word “Newsletter” in the subject line had a 18.7% lower open rate than those with out
  • Use the word “Alert” – and see 61.8% higher open rate
  • The top 5 subject lines in recent studies all included “Re:”

Of course, these are some general observations – you need to try and see what works for you!

Email marketing works.

Prospecting with Email Marketing Read More »

Q4 is here – and this what your competitors are doing!

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Like a ninja in the dead of night, Q4 has crept up on us, again – regardless of the fact that it comes this same time every year! Yes, it’s Q4 and I’m in shock. Wasn’t it just New Years? How have 9 months gone by in the blink of an eye? As the shock slowly wears off, here are a few things that you should be doing for your business: (btw – your competitors are probably already doing them!)

Talk to your team – No, I don’t mean saying Hi on your way to the coffee maker, but check in with them, conduct Annual Performance Reviews, see if they have any feedback on how things are going and what can be done better.

Improve brand recognition and reputation – If your website is from 1999 and you have no presence on social media – it’s time for a rebrand. Make sure your mobile friendly on the social sites that your clients visit. If you have negative reviews, don’t ignore them, address them, and find out how you can fix the problems. If your competitors are ranking higher on Google than you, then you’ve got some work to do!

Set sales goals – Even if you won’t reach your sales goals for 2017 – make sure you set goals for 2018. If 2017 was too much of a stretch, make sure your 2018 goals are a little more reserved. If you blew 2017 out of the water, then it’s time to get realistic and set more challenge goals. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by setting goals that aren’t somewhat of a stretch.

Clean up your contact list – That customer who won’t return your call – probably is not going to buy from you. Clean up your list and weed out any prospects who aren’t interested. It’s just a waste of your time to chase them, and probably frustrating on their end to keep dodging your calls or emails.

Plan for Q1 – It’s all about preparation! If you want to start Q1 off with a bang, you have to be ready. You should always be planning at least a quarter ahead if not more. What’s in the sales pipeline? What’s your marketing & sales strategy? Cash flow analysis and updated business planning – all need to happen now for next year.

Even with the best laid plans and intentions, Q4 can be a very hectic time. As you close out the year, and prepare for a new one, don’t forget to appreciate your staff and all their hard work. After all, you couldn’t have done it without them!

Q4 is here – and this what your competitors are doing! Read More »

The Digital Insurance Agent – yes, we are still talking about this

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The Independent Insurance Agency world is still behind the 8-Ball when it comes to digital marketing. I’m not here to tell you that you should do it – because hopefully by now you know that. What I do want to share is what I’m seeing out there in the real world, and if you are truly vested in growing your agency, take the time to read the rest of this article!

  1. Not understanding their Customer – Their Target Client Profile. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat with an agent and asked them to tell me about their book of business. What’s it made up of? Tell me about your customers. RADIO SILENCE. As in they don’t know. This is SO important. You can’t create any marketing strategy unless you know who you are marketing to. More importantly you need to be able to look at your book of business and find your best clients. The one’s you like, you have the most experience, the best markets and are of course the most profitable.
  2. Not mapping the Customer Journey. You need to understand HOW your clients find you and HOW they like to be communicated with. After #1 this is perhaps the most important part of the Pre-Game. It’s the before they buy, after they buy, during the policy period, during the renewal, after the renewal and GASP after they leave. And yes – drawing an actual map is part of it. Plus – I’m a visual person and I like post it notes.
  3. Not having a Narrative Statement. You have to be able to communicate who the hell you are and what you are delivering to your clients. What is your unique value prop? Why should anyone buy from you?
  4. Not having a Content Strategy. This is different than an overall Marketing Strategy – that’s #5. I call them Content Buckets – what will your content derive from? What are the most important conversations you want to have with your prospects?
  5. Not having an overall Marketing Strategy. This includes your digital channel plan – where you will share your content, get your message out AND your traditional marketing such as print, radio etc. It should also have a month by month breakdown of what you are going to do and an overarching Editorial Calendar showing blog topics, email topics, hashtags etc.

Once you do 1-5 – now you are ready to take action. Please don’t go down the route of hiring someone who gives you canned content for your website, or canned email content. You will be lost in a sea of blue insurance logos looking like everyone else. People are buying from YOU. Share your story, show some personality.

Final tip – get your team involved. Your front-line folks are the ones who are interacting with your clients day after day. If you are looking for content – ask them WHAT your customers are asking about? Maybe it’s auto rates rising, or cyber liability or AirBnB or UBER questions.

I would have to say the majority of agents I work with haven’t done the Pre-Game. They dive right in and have miserable results. No super bowl was won without a lot of planning up front.

Just my $.02

The Digital Insurance Agent – yes, we are still talking about this Read More »

OMG – yes you have to track it.

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I can always tell a good salesperson and yes, the ones that just are going to drive their managers bat s**t crazy and then some.

Rainmakers, top dogs – you know the superstars all have this one thing in common: They are a slave to their data.

They know:

  • Their sales goals, and how close or far off they are at any moment in time.
  • They know their stretch goals, bonus tipping points and anyway they can make extra on their book of business.
  • They are data monsters – they eat it up. They know everything about their top prospects.
  • They know who their Target Client Profile is – they aren’t wasting a lick of time on someone who isn’t going to buy from them. EVER.

Here’s a big one – they have an organized trackable process. Yes, I said process. They know exactly what to do NEXT when they get a lead, they make a pitch, they close a deal. Rarely do they waiver.

Oh Shocker – they track it all in a CRM. Now for some that are old school that may mean a spreadsheet or God Help me paper files – but however you want to track your pipeline is fine, just do it.

If you are a salesperson that doesn’t fit into what I just described you might want to search out another career. Sure, you may sell some stuff, but you won’t be the top dog. Can you change? You betcha!

Managers – if you have someone who isn’t in the “KNOW” – we need to get to the bottom of WHY they aren’t quickly. Trust me, the frustration will only get worse…and worse…until you become a passive aggressive evil boss. Yea – it will happen. Seen it more than once.

Here’s the good news – there are so many training support systems out there. (Like Red Barn – sorry – had to plug us)

If you want to win the coveted Top Sales Dog award at the annual business meeting – then trust me, you need a sales coach. A mentor – or hell, someone to get you organized!

Call us – we rock at the whole sales organization and getting act together stuff.

OMG – yes you have to track it. Read More »

Social Media and Health Care: Improving the patient experience – digitally!

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Let’s face it, we live in a digital social world. Brands of all types have made their mark on Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram – but where are the health care providers?

  1. Oh, there are a few out there, but many are adverse to jumping on the social media wagon and here’s why avoidance is a mistake.
    Your patients are there and they WANT to engage. Using platforms such as Twitter or Facebook to brand your practice is a given, but are you posting content that is ABOUT them vs. about you? 80% of your content should have nothing to do with the services you offer. How much can you really write about Breast Exams or Colonoscopies or wait times in the ER? Ask questions! Ask for Feedback! Talk about preventative care, families and lifestyle. Patients also want to see the team from the doctors to the intake folks and everyone in between. Who are they? Why would I as a patient want to engage with them? Trust them with my care – my life? It’s all part of the customer experience.
  2. Improve Patient Communication. We all know that social media is not the place to talk about personal health care issues, but it is the PERFECT place to address broad questions. The key is to have a Social Media Manager and/or Patient Advocate managing social feeds. If indeed a personal health question arises, the Manager can direct the patient to a secure portal or have a health care provider call him/her to discuss concerns. As with any business, there will be Frequently Asked Questions that appear and best practice is to create an FAQ page on your website to direct patients or prospective patients to.
  3. More Satisfied Patients. It really all goes back to communication and transparency. Patients want to feel they are involved in their health care decisions AND they want providers who are willing to help them along the way. There is also the connectivity factor – connecting patients with other patients who share the same illnesses – almost like support groups but online. It’s perfectly OK to have a private MONITORED Facebook page for a variety of topics/groups such as Cancer Survivors, Sports Injuries, Heart Attack Survivors or those currently going through some life changing issue or chronic condition. When the Health Care Provider CARES and is involved, patient satisfaction will naturally rise. You are developing a community that your patients can be a part of.
  4. Education – Teach and Learn. It’s a given that social media is a great venue to educate your patients, and video is by far the #1 channel to do it. Not only is video engaging but it shows the true personalities of the presenters – doctors, PAs, NPs and other providers. Offering educational videos on everything from pre-op to post-op procedures to stretching exercises and healthy menu planning – the sky is the limit! Every physician is an “expert” and has a point of view. Social media allows physicians to easily share that expertise with the world and further engage current patients as well as attract new ones.

In the end, it’s all about putting you and your practice/group/hospital out there and allowing your patients to learn, teach, and engage.

Your patients are begging for this – where are you on the social spectrum?

Social Media and Health Care: Improving the patient experience – digitally! Read More »

Who you REALLY want to work with

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What is the Target Client Profile – or TCP?

The Target Client Profile (TCP) is the criteria that makes up your ideal client. Clients who meet the following 5 criteria are the clients you should be on the look out for. We get it, not all your clients right now probably fit into this mold, but it\’s something to strive for. Hey, at the end of the day, having clients who fit into your TCP will make every one happier.

  • You need to have a strategic plan on where you want to be.  If it isn’t necessarily the clients you have now, it’s the clients you WANT to have. Who are they, where do they live, how much do they make, what do they like to do, are they conservative or not, what do they wear, what do they eat…you need to get that granular.
    • Find a picture in a magazine of your perfect client and start adding sticky notes around them that describe them.
  • You need to like them. This is so important. If you meet someone and you just cringe or think I’m going to hate answering the phone when he/she calls. Don’t do it.
  • Don’t be a slave to the almighty dollar – see #2
  • They need to be able to afford you. I never haggle on my price. EVER. I may reduce services, but my brain is worth something. Hell, 55 years of “stuff” in there has value. Don’t haggle or sell on price. If you do, you are training your customer that price is the point and you are a commodity. People will pay for things they see value in.
  • You have to be able to bring them value. If the prospect doesn’t drink your Kool-Aid – you will never bring them value because they will always be questioning your actions. The trust factor has to be there.

And there my friend is the TCP. When you start out you are going to take clients that don’t fit – hey, you have to eat. But if you can afford NOT to do that – you are in a great space. Taking clients that are not in your TCP suck the life out of you and then keep you away from working with your TCP.

Want some weekly advice and brain food? Join my Thursday email list HERE!

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Grab a microphone

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I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Perception is Reality” – and for the most part it’s true. People believe what they perceive to be truth. When it comes to personal branding – nothing is farther from the truth.

One of the first things I coach people on when they are trying to build out their personal brand is to hop on the speaking gig roller coaster. Yes, that means you will have to speak in public. If you need help with that take a class with Dale Carnegie or join the Toastmasters gang – but public speaking and effective communication is a must have if you want to be successful.
You know what I always say – “People buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST”.

More often than not, when you see someone speak at an event or you watch a TED Talk you ASSUME they are experts, if not at least extremely knowledgeable in their field. Your perception of them is that they know what they are talking about and are sharing it with you to help you gain that same knowledge.

Now, don’t get me wrong there are folks out there who spout off words that have no truth or sustenance, but trust me, someone perceived it as truthful.

So, what does this all mean?

One of the quickest ways to build your brand, gain brand evangelists and to heck – sell more of whatever it is your company does – is to grab a microphone and share a story.

Here are some tips:

  1. Don’t sell during your presentations. No one wants to be sold to – they want to learn and be entertained.
  2. Pick topics that are relevant to your audience and will give some immediate results – meaning when they finish listening they can take some type of action that will benefit them.
  3. Don’t read a script. It’s ok to write a speech or have speaking notes – but don’t get up there and read word for word.
  4. Practice and ad lib
    Don’t be a PowerPoint BORE! Use PowerPoint for visuals – but don’t use tons of words. You want people to focus on you, not the screen.
  5. Be engaging. Make sure you don’t have a monotone voice – practice and record yourself speaking OR take a class like I mentioned above.
  6. Watch your non-verbal communication. Be a bit animated – but not a circus clown

Public speaking is a great way to boost your credibility and get you in front of people who are interested in your expertise. If you want to increase your personal brand, increase your revenue and have some fun – grab a microphone and tell the world your stories!

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It might be time to fire your salesperson

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No-one likes to talk about firing people. Modern business is all about giving staff opportunities, helping them excel in the right role, and incentivizing your employees to do their best. But, sometimes, despite your strongest efforts, they just aren’t stepping up to the plate.

When that happens you need to make a tough decision — Do you continue to provide opportunities in the hope they’ll change, or do they get the pink slip? One area where it’s vital to make that decision fast is in your sales department. It’s your sales representatives who create your revenue, so when they’re underperforming, you need to take decisive action.

Here’s how to tell if you should show them the door.

Look at the sales metrics of the salesperson. There’s nothing like hard data to help you make a decision. Look at the evidence on how your sales teams are doing. Explore the individual measurements and performance data for specific employees. Review this information in context — How do they compare to other individuals or teams? What are the industry averages and benchmarks? This data is the first step in identifying weak performers.

Read through one to ones and personnel reviews.Your business should be holding one to ones and formal reviews with your employees. Take a look at their feedback reports, how their peers and managers view them, and how they present themselves. Keep an eye out for warning signs and indications they’ve been offered previous opportunities to improve.

Talk to their sales manager – or have a chat with yourself if it’s you! The next step is to speak to their line manager or team leader. Find out what they think of the salesperson and whether they have the potential to improve. Learn about the subtext of conversations they’ve had in the past. Find out if their lack of performance is due to their attitude and approach, an absence of skill and training, or for some other reason.

Summarize the key factors behind poor performance. Following your review process, establish the main cause of their poor performance, it could be for one (or more) of several reasons:

• Attitude and approach – They just don’t have the right interpersonal skills, autonomy, or approach to be a good salesperson.
• Lack of experience — They don’t have enough history and related experience with sales to be able to close deals.
• Lack of skill — They may not have the correct level of training to make the most of any natural talent they might have.
• Process issues — They don’t have a proper understanding of the sales process in your business.
• Issues with other team members — There might be friction in your teams with other people or interactions that are impacting their ability to sell.

Speak with your HR department – or this may be you again! When you know the background for the poor performance, it’s time to speak to HR. Learn if there are potential steps you can take to improve performance, or if they’re simply a “lost cause.” In some cases you might just need to provide more training and support, in other cases, the best thing to do might be the dismissal process.

Make sure you follow the dismissal process. You likely have strong policies and procedures around dismissal. Make sure you follow them to the letter and get HR support in place so you meet all your commitments as an (ex) employer.

If you\’re experiencing a decline in your sales figures, it might be down to one or two individuals. It’s important to take a rational, objective approach to learn what’s going on and why. If you do find out it’s due to individual performance, ensure you understand the background and context. Then, you can involve HR and make sure you treat both your employees and your business needs fairly.

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