All Posts Tagged With: "Sales"
Lazy Marketing in this Economy?!
You gotta be kidding me. Lazy marketing is never OK, but you’re absolutely doomed if your current marketing strategy is kickin’ back, spamming the world with jargon and asking the prospect to do the work. You will get out-hustled, out-muscled, and buried. Check out these two emails I just received.
Popularity: 70%
Making More from Happier Customers
I am often asked by distributors if they should charge a setup fee for creating a customer catalog on Four51. My standard sales answer is almost always “that depends”…
Just kidding.
Popularity: 96%
Q. When Is Too Much Choice a Bad Thing?
A. When you offer 700,000 products.
I regularly see online catalogs that are created by distributors using a promotional products site to offer their customers over 700,000 products to choose from and I cringe every time I see one. When confronted with so many choices, your buyers will become frustrated searching the massive database just to find that stainless steel travel mug they’re after.
Popularity: 36%
Making More from Happier Customers (sales series part 2 of 2)
Sales Series: What is the real value of online ordering?
Want to increase your margins? Want to leverage technology to increase your order volume without increasing staff? Want to sell more products to existing customers? Want to have your customers stay with you forever? (I know you need to fire customers occasionally, but most of them you want to keep around!) Get all of your customers ordering online now!
Popularity: 39%
May I Please Pay More? (sales series part 1 of 2)
In a recent post, Four51 CEO Mark Johnson discussed the question of charging your customers for costs associated with creating a catalog to enable online ordering. In the end, I think it is best to provide the technology solution with no additional financial barrier to getting online. One of the main reasons not to charge a setup fee is that once you get them online, customers have a difficult time switching vendors. Another less obvious reason is that the customer becomes much less price-sensitive and you can actually get them to pay more for product when they order online than when they don’t. I have personally experienced this phenomenon on several occasions.
Popularity: 39%
Of selling and blogging
“Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.”
-David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Blogging is hard if you don’t have a passion for it. Readers are a demanding lot. They want you to blog well. Staring at a blank page is awful. There aren’t any real tricks that help you get going. Especially if dread is the first thing that pops into your mind. While there are definite rules for writing essays, for blogging anything goes. Basically, one simply needs to present the material with passion and honesty and in an organized manner, and then follow up on threads.
In a way, it’s actually a lot like sales.
Popularity: 35%
Sales: Their pain is your gain
I subscribe to a number of blogs on a wide range of topics from effective financial management to snarky Project Runway commentary. This article from the Small Business Branding blog struck me, as it’s something we preach here at Four51.
Popularity: 29%
Sales: How do I compete with the big guys?
I recently signed a customer under very interesting circumstances. Having heard the question that is the title of this post numerous times, I think the following story might be helpful to a lot of you out there who feel the frustrations of competing with large corporations.
I was talking with a small distributor who competes with one of our newest, largest customers. The first thing the distributor mentioned when we got on the call was the press release regarding our recent deal with this big customer. Naturally, I was expecting the worst (because I hear it a lot): “How am I going to differentiate myself with your solution when it is available now from one of my biggest competitors?”
Popularity: 32%
Sales: Franchisee or Franchisor?
In my opinion, franchises are the ideal fit for the Four51 application and our data can back that up. Currently, more than 30% of the Top 200 Franchises (based on worldwide sales) are buying online through the Four51 platform. This includes everything from restaurant chains to convenience printers to upscale coffee shops. Therefore, they’re concerned about brand continuity, order cycle times and spend management.Four51 addresses all of these issues. However, when selling your capabilities, do you start with the franchisee or the franchisor?
Popularity: 35%
