Month: May 2018

Often a business will see that their lead to conversion rate is quite low and this is obviously one of the most alarming stats as it highlights an inability to really capture the customer’s interest.

One of the biggest reasons behind this is that a business will put substantial time, money and effort into the generation of leads but then lack the structures and processes in place to enable staff to convert them. Not investing in your sales staff and the conversion processes ultimately leaves your lead generation investment worthless.

There are 3 key factors that need to be considered when it comes to the conversion of sales:

1. Quality of the lead

The quality of your lead is heavily dictated by your marketing efforts. These needs to be highly targeted and accurate to ensure you have high quality leads to people or businesses that are genuinely interested or have a need for your product or service. If you fail to do this, you will waste time dealing with low-value customers and your conversion numbers will look bad.

2. Poorly-skilled sales people

Your sales representatives need to be highly skilled in the value proposition and providing additional value to the buyer. Too often companies fail to invest in highly skilled and highly relevant sales representatives leaving their customers unsatisfied. If the sales people talk about features and prices too early they fail to realise the value for the buyer.

3. Failure to follow up leads

Too often sales people will only follow up a lead with one effort. Statistics have shown that in order to convert a sale you may need to make up to 5 follow up calls and from the first showing of interest, a customer may not buy for three months. This means that sales reps need to be persistent and patient and regularly follow up leads and check in with clients and prospects.

In order to ensure that your business doesn’t miss out on leads, there are 3 important steps to take in your marketing and sales pipeline:

1. Know your business

Having a strong identity and goal will be reflected in your sales efforts. Make sure everyone believes in the businesses direction, values and is striving for the same goal.

2. Know your market

Capturing the right market is incredibly important so that your sales efforts are well directed and you don’t waste tie chasing low-value customers.

3. Align your sales process to your customers’ needs

This follows on from highly targeted marketing and ensures that you are providing your customers with value beyond your product or service. Look to provide relevant and meaningful solutions tailored to the customer.

Social media is all the talk of marketing in the modern world. The internet has allowed marketers to reach a wide variety of people and social media has made this even easier by automatically connecting like-minded people. This gives marketers unprecedented access to a large target market and one that they can divide into their own audiences.

The introduction of hashtags has added another element to this marketing labyrinth and understanding how to use them could have a significant impact on the success of your campaigns. Understanding what they are, how they work and how to use them will give your social media marketing a much needed boost.

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are the words that you see on a post that are clickable and accompanied by ‘#’, for example #hashtagmarketing.  When these are clicked, they take you to all of the recent posts that are related to that topic. Using a hashtag makes that post searchable using that specific hashtag or topic.

How do they work?

When you are posting about a specific topic, simple follow your post with ‘#’ and then relevant words that relate directly to your post. For example, when posting something about your new shampoo product you may use hashtags like ‘#shampoo’, ‘#thickerhair’ etc. or other trending hashtags.

There are a few things to keep in mind when using hashtags;

• Don’t use spaces, for the hashtag to work it must be one word.
• The case of the letters doesn’t matter but can be used to make it easier to read.
• Research existing ones so that you can link your content to other content and build a stronger profile.
• Don’t over dot it. Hashtags are great but too many can become overwhelming and annoying.

How do you use them?

Hashtags are a great way to increase the visibility of your posts and your brand in general. The most important thing about hashtags is making sure they are relevant and will lead users to other related content that could be interesting or useful.

It’s likely that you have seen posts with heaps of hashtags on them already. This may increase short term visibility but it is unlikely to win anyone over as it becomes too much to take in when ready the post. Use the hashtags sparingly with only a couple per post and understand whether it is best to use them within the text or at the end. Use them throughout the text if it doesn’t impact the readability but otherwise just put them at the end.

Using hashtags correctly will help you to build your brand and increase visibility to relevant customers.

Leaders will often oversee and bark orders to those working beneath them. The trouble with this is that it can often make employees feel disengaged from their leader and almost as a secondary compartment to the team. Leaders need to be engaged both on a business level and a relationship level with their team.

It is often the case that as leaders we can get caught up in the business goals and forget about the hard work that everyone else is putting in so that we can forward on the success. Going back to basic is the key to being an engaged leader. Here are 3 easy steps to help you get there.

1. Listen with intent

Knowing your employees well is the first step to 100% engagement and the only way to get to know them properly is by listening. However, knowing your employees is only the first step in building the relationship.

The second step is taking action when they voice concerns, complaints or ask questions. Employees respect a leader who listens and acts on their concerns and questions. It builds trust and also makes them feel worthwhile whilst also continuing to reach out building a better team.

2. Encourage and empower

Employees can often feel the pressure that a leader feels. Therefore, a leader must do everything in their power to make their employees feel relaxed and free. This means reducing the restrictions placed on them and trusting employees to complete tasks to a high standard and work hard when required.

Instead of placing time restrictions and not allowing lunch breaks during busy periods simply set your teams goals and deadlines and then leave them be to complete the tasks. This will likely improve productivity and also make them to feel empowered. The more you let them control, the more they will respect you as a leader and feel happier in the workplace.

3. Develop leaders

This point follows on from the above in allowing your employees to take responsibility for their work. Once you have empowered your employees find opportunities for them to influence and take control.

Giving them an opportunity to take control and lead themselves will motivate them even further to achieve success. Additionally it will help you to see their potential and work with them in a more meaningful way. Placing additional responsibility with your employees engages you and them in more work and also helps to build stronger relationships of trust.