It begins with your staff, all of your staff. No matter how junior, how senior, how seldom an individual employee engages with a customer, each member of your team has a crucial role to play. The front desk receptionist, bookkeeper, or cashier is as much an ambassador for your business as the manager of your sales or service department. As the business owner/manager, your job is to ensure each employee has a clear understanding of how the organization must adapt to the times and where they fit in, with clear direction and whatever training or other support is necessary.

Why? It all comes down to service. When times are tough and money is tight, customers invariably focus more on value. They comparison shop far more diligently and will opt for the product or service that they perceive provides the best value. To avoid your product or service being commoditized and evaluated solely on cost versus benefits, providing personal and attentive service that focuses on identifying and addressing the customer’s pain points is crucial. How you engage with customers and prospects, how you identify their needs and respond to them, so they feel they are being helped, rather than sold, will make all the difference.

Focus everyone and everything in your organization on the customer:

• Make it real for every single employee, not superficial.
• Provide real-world practical training to make it happen.
• Look for fast ways to improve service (such as having a live person pick up the phone rather than frustrating callers with an automated system).
• Ask customers what you can do more for them.
• Make contact personal, not email.
• Improve every aspect of customer responsiveness (make it faster).
• Look for little ways to increase value for the customer (such as service deals).

Back-off on the big marketing investments. Instead, do your research and focus on opportunities that reach a more relevant audience. There’s no point in putting out the big bucks to get before 5,000 prospects if you know only 500 of them are fit your customer profile. For example, favour:

• Intimate seminars near a cluster of customers, instead of a big trade-show.
• Use direct marketing rather than grape-shot, such as ads in specialty magazines rather than national newspapers or TV).

Look at your competition, because they are no doubt looking at you:

• Copy their best ideas.
• Exploit their weaknesses.
• Consider hiring their best people.

By the same token, aggressively search for best practices in your sector. Third party business-to-business research organizations such as APQC and ISBM have a wealth of research available on various industry sectors.

Reduce costs and overhead, without compromising customer satisfaction. There is a distinct difference between cutting the fat, maybe even a little muscle, and cutting into bone. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish by implementing cost reduction strategies that negatively impact your level of service or ability to bring new business in the door. What you can do is:

• Ruthlessly cut back on internal reports.
• Provide employee incentives for cost reduction ideas, which are implemented and work.
• Attempt to reduce operating costs in areas such as re-negotiating your lease, or finding a better deal on office services such as telephones and IT support.
• Work with your suppliers – do not unilaterally extend payment terms; you need allies, not adversaries.

Don’t lose focus by trying to implement too many organizational or operational changes at once. Focus on only one or two modest initiatives at a time, then:

• Measure their effectiveness.
• Stop what isn’t either increasing customer retention or reducing fixed costs.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment with a new idea for a short time.

Make customers feel valued by giving them direct access to the senior people in your organization – particularly yourself. Solicit your customers’ feedback and opinions on how your product or service can be improved, or what new products or services you should develop:

• Ask customers what they want, rather than to critique a new service idea (seek guidance on the best ways to have these interactions and hear meaningful feedback).
• Re-focus your team on thinking from the perspective of the customer (such as on benefits, rather than features).

Remember, you’re not in business to make money. You’re in business to serve a need. If you imbed this philosophy in the culture of your organization, success will follow.

Everyone buys for different reasons and with different priorities. When you made that purchase, who made the final decision? Was it you, or the person selling it? Was it the words they used that pushed you into committing to the buy, or did you take the step with certainty?

Well of course, if the purchase was a good one, it was you who made that decision. You were motivated by what you wanted to take away from doing business with that person. It wasn’t the mass of reasons for buying that may have been sprayed at you by the seller. How could they have known what truly motivated your decision? Maybe what you wanted to buy was peace of mind, or a product that delivered lots of action, or to save time and money; or maybe you were investing in something that would help make you money. Whatever the case, it was the result you wanted to take away, not the specific product or service in question.

Buying without remorse

And what about when it wasn’t such a good purchase? Have you ever experienced “Buyer’s Remorse?” Have you ever said, “I didn’t really want it but I was pressured into buying it.” How did you feel about doing business with that person the next time? If you’re like most of us, it wasn’t a good start to a long-term relationship. As a consumer, being pushed into the wrong buying decision may result in lost money or inconvenience. As a business, it can result in a poor, perhaps fatal, return on investment that means money wasted and productivity lost.

But what about when you experience a “Good Buy?” When you’re with a good salesperson or with someone who’s a great influencer, it all seems to go so well – they don’t seem to pressure you at all. It’s just a pleasant conversation that ends in a desire on your part to buy their offering, or to accept their ideas. Sometimes they even seem to accurately know what you need better than you do. Occasionally you’ll even end up buying something completely different from what you had intended, but you’re actually much happier with the result. Do you go back to that person the next time? Do you recommend them to other people? If they ask you for a reference, do you give it to them? Well of course you do.

If a seller is well prepared and professional, they might even be able to give you evidence that their offering can actually do what they claim it can. You can feel this “locking you in” to believing in, and championing, them long after you met or discussed it.

Why do we make selling so hard?

Well, it’s probably no surprise to you now, but when you are selling something – whether it’s goods or services, or maybe just an idea, the person on the other side of the table is no different from you when you are buying something. They have their own unique way of making buying decisions; they have their own list of what, in the longer term, they want to get out of the transaction; they don’t like being sprayed with annoying or irrelevant information; and most of all, they won’t come back if you tick them off.

So where’s the problem? If we’ve all experienced being the target of both good and bad selling, why do so many of us do it so badly ourselves? We do it over and over again … and we make it SO hard!

Why do we become different, and far less effective, than we normally are? Isn’t it much easier to turn someone into a Willing Buyer who tells you what they’d like to purchase? Then you can start discussing how they can complete that purchase and stop focusing on “Closing.”

Inevitably, we get nervous, we talk too much, and we force the prospect to go to the effort of selecting what they actually need from the mass of information that we’ve not been able to filter for them. And what’s the effect on you (especially when times are hard)? You end up stressed because you can’t measure how effective your “spraying and praying” will be or by the wasted time on lost causes that were never going to buy; then you make the oh-so-dangerous assumptions, guesses and self-delusion that can take hold when people are under pressure to close sales and create new prospects.

Wouldn’t it be just great to get rid of all that stuff and at the same time improve our use of time and our effectiveness? Maybe by an order of magnitude?

Take the pressure off

It all begins with taking the time to step back, take a deep breath and evaluate whether your communication with other people is truly Two Way, and then investing a small amount of time in making it so. In tough times, you need to give your business every chance you can. It’s no longer sufficient to simply go through the motions of “putting yourself in their shoes” to understand where they are coming from.

What truly motivates that person; how they filter any information they receive; what “model of the world” they use to make sense of what’s going on around them – these are all key things that can make your approach to “influencing people to buy” far more effective.

To make you even more productive, you can add an insight into how others observe your interaction and how other stakeholders are affected by the sale or the decision. This could include customers, colleagues, family members and competitors –  the list can be long or short, depending on the situation.

View the accompanying video for a simple yet extremely effective exercise for gaining this insight into the motivations, concerns and agendas of the individuals you are trying to influence or sell to. This exercise is a fundamental step in learning how to turn “Selling” into “Buying.”

This piece is the first in a series that will give you solid tools and insights that you can use every day to survive and thrive in today’s tough markets, and to become a far more effective and comfortable influencer, seller or business partner.

It takes a significant commitment of time and resources to provide adequate answers to these questions and determine if there is in fact an opportunity worthy of the pursuit. If your organization is challenged by lagging sales, consider first if you are in fact doing all you can to a maximize revenues from your existing customer base.

It is far easier to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. I have seen examples where having the sales team devote 25 per cent of their time upselling existing customers has boosted revenues by 30 to 40 per cent. Get to know your customers, understand what they need, and how they can derive more benefit from what you have to offer. Odds are, you have a product or service that could be of interest to an existing customer and they are not even aware of it.

If you do identify a new market opportunity to pursue, don’t lose sight of how important this established client base is to your business. Avoid the pitfall of devoting so much of your time and resources to developing a new market that you neglect your existing customers. Otherwise, you may be leaving money on the table, or even worse, giving customers reason to embrace overtures from your competitors. Customers always need to feel the love.

When looking at a new market

Address it as narrowly as possible. The more you understand your market, the better you can target your marketing. How to go about this depends on the scale of your business. Are you a local retailer looking to open a new location on the other side of town? Are you a growing software company with a solution that has an established track record in the banking industry that you believe can help manufacturers improve their supply chain logistics?

Biggest is seldom best. Expanding companies often think they should go after the largest market. But it is often the smaller niche market that can provide higher margins and greater profitability. A large share of a small market is often more desirable than a small share of a large market where there may already be well-established incumbents. If you control the market, you will see a greater return on the investment. Competitors will be at a disadvantage and will find it difficult to undercut you.

Get to know your customers. It’s one thing to identify an untapped market opportunity, but quite another to understand how you should address it. Talk to prospective customers, ask them what pain points they are trying to address for which there isn’t an adequate solution, then tailor your offering to fulfill these needs. Don’t even bother proceeding with new product or service development until you have obtained this intelligence from the field. Customers should first be consulted at the earliest stages of product/service development, rather than asked to critique something that is about to roll out.

Where do I find new markets?

A new market can be one based on geography, industry or price point. The type of business you operate and the nature of the new market will dictate how you should go about defining and capturing it:

By sector/industry. This generally involves targeting an existing product or service at a new industry or sector. It may involve customization by tweaking functionality and features, simply retooling your promotional literature to highlight the product/service’s relevance to this new market (case studies with established customers in this market are great marketing tools in this regard), or some combination of both.

By geography. In this circumstance, you may be targeting the same customer profile, but in a different part of town, country or continent. Geography obviously means different things to different kinds of businesses. For a retailer, it could mean the other side of town, or a neighbouring community. For a high tech firm, it can mean another continent. Whatever the individual circumstance, the same rules apply – you must identify and qualify the market opportunity and in the case of international expansion, the culture of your target market.

If you are an export-oriented business, the further away the new market is from your home base, the greater the likelihood that you will have to establish a satellite sales office. When operating in other countries, there are obvious differences in culture, customs and language that necessitate an on-the-ground presence.

By price point. This involves tweaking your product or service to provide customers with different price options, such as the deluxe version with all the bells and whistles and the most scalability, versus the stripped down, more economical version appropriate to a smaller customer with basic needs and fewer staff. In a challenging economy, being able to provide customers with that economy version can make a significant difference to the bottom line.

“We knew we had to proactively re-engage with existing customers and expand our outreach efforts to get traction with different groups we hadn’t sold to before,” Larter says. “And we had to go looking where prospects were likely to be. That meant going beyond advertising and promotion in traditional outlets such as newspapers and radio to engaging in two-way conversations with our target audience through social media outlets such as Facebook.”

There is no denying the strategy has demanded significant time, effort and commitment from staff, but Parlez Wireless is seeing the results. The key has been keeping the team involved.

“Transparency is key in engaging team members,” Larter says. “I have taken the time to share with them how the business is doing, and ask for feedback on how to impact sales and minimize costs. We win as a team and we lose as a team, so in order for the overall plan to be successful and work, the team has to be involved.  They may not always like the decisions that are being made, but at least they understand why they are being made.”

Her team’s efforts to promote the business and grow revenues have focused on three key areas:

Sell more to your existing client base

“When the market is soft, it is easier to sell to people who have already experienced your service,” says Larter. “We chose to actively contact clients who had made purchases two years prior and invited them back to our location with a special offer.”

To build this database, Parlez Wireless as a policy asks clients for all their relevant contact information. This information is used for programs such as one in which people are notified when a warranty is up or they have the option to renew a contract.

“We started this outreach program with an incentive to get people to come back to our specific location to buy,” Larter says. “We opted to do this instead of spending the dollars on advertising. This way our ROI is guaranteed and our clients benefit from that spend.”

Sell to a different group

“We realized that if we relied on retail consumers only we were at risk, so we embarked upon a new program to sell to other businesses,” Larter says. “This created opportunities for us to sell one-on-many versus one-on-one.”

To support this strategy, Parlez Wireless created a new part-time position focused exclusively on outbound sales. This sales person was responsible for going out in the community and door knocking to try and garner new business.

“We offered free services such as complimentary annual bill assessments, number portability, set up of e-mail on Blackberry devices, in-store or on-site training, single point of contact for all account needs, and bilingual service and support,” Larter says. “This initiative has gone from one day a week to a full-time position.”

Utilize Social Media

Larter is quick to emphasize the value of social media as a marketing tool that can be used to grow a business and a brand for free.

“Social media is fun, free and happening,” she says. “We spent more time focusing on being present in areas such as Twitter and Facebook, updating our website to include a blog, and focusing on delivering quality information to our clients via email.”

This “quality information” includes insights into new products and applications, software upgrades on existing products, and tips and tricks on how to better utilize a technology purchase.

“Clients regularly talk about us – praise our service on both of these mediums unsolicited. They just do it because of the relationship we have built with them,” Larter says. 

“You can read our blog and product page to see what we write about. I also blog at LisaLarter.com and have a lot of clients who read my updates regularly.”

While the use of social media has certainly increased Parlez Wireless’ visibility, more importantly, it has grown revenues.

“We’ve enjoyed incremental sales growth and even created a wait list for new products before they have launched,” says Larter. “We have utilized social media for recruiting, sharing updates with our clients and announcing special promotions and contests … We have also used search functions to find key words that our clients might be talking about in order to position ourselves as experts in our market.”

In 1980, Murray left the construction and renovation industry and went to work with his uncle, who operated the Town Cobbler, a shoe and luggage repair business with nine local locations. When Murray’s uncle sold the business in 1986, the Greenbergs struck out on their own and founded Capital City Luggage.

Murray made the leap into business ownership without the benefit of any formal training or experience beyond what he had picked up from working with his uncle. But while he will modestly shrug off his role in the Capital City Luggage’s success as a case of “flying by the seat of my pants,” the business’s longevity has clearly stemmed from a firm focus on the fundamentals.

Adapt to the market

In the early years, Capital City Luggage served as a repair center for all the major airlines and department stores in Ottawa and the surrounding area. But as times changed and a number of airlines folded, the business was forced to change and adapt. While it still offers repair services, retail now drives 85 to 90 per cent of Capital City Luggage’s business.

Adaptability has been key. Murray says the ability to change and adjust, or lack thereof, has made the difference between success and failure for the neighbouring shops he has seen come and go over the years. Formal training and education in how to run a business, while valuable, is no guarantee of success.

Know your customer

For any retail business, Murray says, the key is having a well-defined profile of your target customer.

“When we set out to expand the retail side of the business, we had to consider what audience we were going to target,” says Murray. “Whether it’s based on age, income level or travel habits, we had to be sure we were providing the right product lines, price points and services that would cater to their specific tastes and preferences.”

And answering these questions does not require costly and complicated market research and demographic analysis, he adds. “All it takes is just paying attention to what people are looking or ask for when they come into the store.”

Pay as you go

Throughout the challenges of shifting markets and repositioning the business around retail, the Greenbergs maintained a strict pay-as-you-go philosophy. Early on, Murray approached a bank for financing but was turned down. From that moment on, he vowed never to go back and instead relied on stringent cash-flow management to support the business.

“We’ve always operated this business on the principle of living within your means,” he says. “Don’t spend what you haven’t got.”

Regularly promote

Murray is also a firm believer in a program of regular and consistent advertising to promote the business and maintain consumer awareness. For years, print advertising in local newspapers was sufficient. But as time wore on and newspapers faced more competition from television and the Internet, Capital City Luggage saw less return from the investment, despite trying different approaches such as providing cut-out coupons or engaging in hard-sell campaigns with time-limited offers.

The Greenbergs responded by transitioning to advertising on local television and have been pleased by the results.

“You have to promote your business and make sure the dollars you’re spending are getting results,” Murray says. “On a regular basis step back and take a hard look at what you’re doing and whether or not it is bringing business in the door. If not, stop doing it and try something else.”

Fresh challenges

In recent years, the Wellington West area has undergone a dramatic facelift that has seen what was once a tired old neighbourhood revitalized into a vibrant retail strip with plenty of character.

But while this kind of transition can boost a retail area by attracting a whole new audience of shoppers from other parts of the city, it does come with short-term challenges that can, and have, driven many businesses into the grave.

The street is in the midst of a three-year construction project that causes traffic jams and makes it difficult for visitors to find parking or even a particular store. Capital City Luggage responded to this challenge in a number of ways, starting with its window display.

“Few stores put much effort into an effective front window display any more,” says Murray. “But for us it made a huge difference.”

The store embraced the construction theme with a series of attractive window displays developed by a relative with relevant experience. Not only did this pull in shoppers, it also brought in the construction workers themselves.

Offering outstanding customer service has been more important than ever. Capital City Luggage gave up its reserved staff parking out back to customers, while staff went the extra mile to assist customers navigate the street disruption and carry out purchases out to their car. Staff members have even parked customers’ cars for them.

“It’s simple,” says Murray. “Treat customers like human beings. Treat them like you would like to be treated yourself.”

Despite the construction headaches, business remains strong, and while the Greenbergs can attribute this to their efforts to promote the business and ensure the customer is well served, Murray feels it also comes from having been a part of the community for so long.

“There is a sense of community here,” he says. “Residents in the area want to support local business.”