Here at Alchemis we are always keen to hear the views of others within the marketing services industry. So, with this in mind, here’s the first in a series of guest blogs – this one from Daniel McHugh of inbound and outbound call centre Leadline.

When the world economy plummets, it is easy to become self centred and focus on what is best for you, or for your business. We all have mouths to feed and bills to pay.

In all honesty, it seems like a fantastic idea at first, but, in terms of growing your business often it is better to be more generous when it comes to business, than following our natural instincts to think of Number One.

Your customers or potential customers have no reason to engage with you or your business, your products or services unless you have built trust and engaged with them.

Consider this:-

1. A customer’s first instinct is to be selfish and think of themselves

2. Other businesses base instinct is to be selfish and think of themselves

Therefore….

If you are generous and offer to be generous with your service, your offering and your time and think about others, they are more inclined to engage with you and your business!

‘In the world of business, the gift I give almost always benefits me more than it benefits you’

So does this mean free gifts for all?

A lot of businesses aim to pick up new customers and clients with the offering of a free gift. How many ‘Car Tool Kits’ ‘Free skin cream with the mascara’ ‘Free PAYG sim card’ do you actually need?

The reality is that free gifts cost both money to you as a business and don’t always encourage sales. Giving someone something for free doesn’t earn you trust. It buys you a little bit of short term confidence.

The only true way to gain trust with someone is to engage. The only way you will truly engage with someone as a business is to give them something to think about and the best way to do this is through sharing knowledge and ideas.

Heinz Tomato sauce and HP Tomato Sauce

So I use Heinz Tomato Ketchup and I have all my life. I’m on the way to buy some sauce from the local supermarket. HP Sauce is BOGOF or… Buy one HP Tomato Sauce and get a brown sauce free.

Which one do I buy? Heinz of course…

Why? Because I trust Heinz. No give away is going to take me away from a product I trust. The only way that I will get into HP is if they build trust and trust can’t be bought.

The Gift of Knowledge

It doesn’t matter whether you supply a product or a service, all firms have a gift of knowledge. A story to tell. A tale worth sharing. Some hints or tips that have lead to more business for you or one of your customers.

Most businesses are keen to find out how to engage with their customer and get more business. By sharing knowledge, you are providing your potential customers with much more than a free gift they can use once, like a bottle of ketchup. You are giving them something which they can use time and time again to grow their firm.

‘If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you give him a fishing rod, you feed him for a lifetime’

How about a new perspective on this proverb.

‘If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you teach him how to fish, you can sell him a fishing rod!’

As a Business Development Manager, my role is to get marketing agencies in front of the people who will potentially do business with them.　

There are lots of reasons why a Marketing Director will dedicate an hour of his time to finding out what an agency that he’s never heard of before can do for him.

One of the key differentiating factors between the many “sales calls” that will be rejected as a “waste of time”, and the rare “interesting call with an agency worth meeting with”, is the ability of the person who is calling to have an intelligent conversation – i.e. a conversation that focuses on something that is relevant, that makes good business sense, and that is with someone you enjoy talking to.

There’s no big secret:　

• be clear about why you are calling and what you want to get out of the conversation
• be curious
• ask relevant questions (get the prospect to open-up and focus on relevant issues)
• have a genuine interest in the person you are talking to
• listen
• listen
• listen
• resist the urge to tell the prospect everything about what you do and why you are the best thing since sliced bread
• listen
• listen
• listen
• make sure you understand what the prospect is telling you
• let him know you can help
• ask for the meeting!

Although you don’t need to be an “expert” in everything you are talking about (other people are there to sort out any technical details after all), it’s important to know what’s happening in the market/sector that you are targeting, understand the issues that prospects are faced with and be able to demonstrate how your client can help with their priorities.

Which is why it takes a special breed of people to make the kind of calls that will stand out.

Nobody wants to receive a call which is scripted and goes over a list of services offered; that’s just “another bloody cold call”!

Any agency that wants to seriously stand out and win new business needs sales people who can think on their feet and can engage prospects in an intelligent fashion and on a personal level.

Winning new business is not rocket science; it’s hard work, but it can often be fun and interesting if you have the right attitude!

Well, it’s nearly over, this mixed bag of a year. Sitting where we do, in the middle of agencies and clients, we get to see and hear a lot of different views of this economic climate.

We know personally of several agencies who have had to shut their doors this year, never good news, particularly when staff have been laid off.

Interestingly, most of the agencies we know who’ve gone under have blamed themselves rather than ‘the market’. They attribute their demise to leaving it too late to respond to the changing needs of clients and their marketing budgets. Examples include:

• not developing a serious digital offer whether through acquisition or partnership
• not having a clear offer and/or targeting strategy for business development
• a lack of investment in proactively looking for new clients and/or markets

On the other side of the coin, we’ve added over 600 new agencies to our already extensive agency database and more of our clients have won business this year than for the last 5 years.

Out of interest, here is a breakdown of client wins by discipline:

• Research: 19%
• Digital: 17%
• Full service/integrated: 17%
• Design/branding/packaging/corporate com: 17%
• BTL, PR and media planning &buying: 30%

As a glass half full kind of person, I always look forward to the forthcoming year with the hope of more and better! I wish this to all my readers!