Sales and Marketing Tips to Make You Stand Out

That was the sentiment of several speakers at this week's Breakaway XChange conference here. Yet despite limited IT budgets these days, many customers have room to play if solutions can address a specific problem and offer measurable and fast return. That means finding salespeople who know how to have intelligent conversations with customers on how a solution can help make or save money, achieve a goal and penetrate a new market, said Mike Bosworth, founding partner with CustomerCentric Systems, Boston.

"Real selling is when you call on someone who isn't actively looking for a solution because he doesn't really know there's a solution to the problem," Bosworth said during a panel on sales strategies Thursday. Bosworth said that too often, solution providers have young salespeople who were essentially "order takers" during the boom are not equipped to engage with customers in the current climate.

Solution providers need to use their professional services people to better understand what their customer's business requirements are rather than how to plug in technology just for the sake of it, Bosworth said. Though such a focus is often touted, many are still guilty of focusing on their technologies, he said.

"Technology companies have been so focused on how cool their stuff is, that they haven't focused on their customers use it," he said. "It's the number one problem we run into time and time again."

Likewise, many solution providers are guilty of not marketing their services to their customers properly, said Nashville-based independent consultant Robin Robins, author of the book Total Marketing Tool Kit, who likens trying to reach customers to marriage. "Successful marketing works for the same reasons successful marriages do--you have to know each other well, there has to be trust and patience," Robins said.

During a breakfast session Thursday, she offered tips on how to create ads that will stand out. Her observation is that many ads and Web sites are like oversized business cards, and offer little value in convincing a customer to contact them. Among her pieces of advice for creating effective ad campaigns:

• Avoid image advertising. Fancy pictures and clever slogans may win ad agencies and Web site developers awards but they rarely convince customers to business with you.
• Put a claim or promise in the headline of an ad. The headline is responsible for 70 percent of the response.
• Talk about how customers will benefit from your services, not about your business.
• Use bait--offer a free report, audit or something that will benefit the customer to inquire. Free estimates don't count.
• The ad should be used to sell the bait not your service. The intent is to get a reluctant prospect to at least talk to you--marriage comes after successful dating, she said.
• Plan multi-step follow-up. Robins said on average people don't buy until the seventh contact.
• Offer a low-risk way to do business. She said Columbia House's effort to offer 12 free CDs and Gevalia Coffee's free coffee makers to those buying their first 2 pounds of coffee makes them a lot of money in the long term, even it is initially not profitable.