Buying-cycle

The Buyer’s Journey

by Communications

Buying-cycleWhether you are a business to consumer retail store or a business to business professional services company, customers buy from you for a reason. How do you help a potential buyer on their journey from awareness to purchase?

Establishing relationships and rapport to generate trust in a product or service is the first step in the sales cycle. Once that trust is earned, you must work hard to keep that customer. They become your cheerleaders in telling others why to use your services.

How often do you see on Facebook or other social media channels – “hey I need a good _____, can anyone recommend someone?” You want that recommendation to be your business or service. Those recommendations come from not only satisfied customers, but also from loyal customers and there is a difference.

Loyal customers visit your store often or rely on your expertise for professional service delivery and/or advice. Do you offer those loyal customers something special? We see it in restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and retail chains. VIP status, free beverage with a purchase, special coupons. What are you doing to keep your loyal customers happy? How are you making them feel special?

Buying Cycle Steps

There are three steps to the buying cycle – awareness, consideration and purchase. These are things to keep in mind as you seek new customers. People need to know about your product or service before they can consider purchasing from you. So how are you putting your business out there? Are you advertising in the right place? Do you network with potential clients? Are you hanging out where your customers are? This includes social media. If you want to attract a younger audience, you might consider using Snap Chat. A business service may focus on LinkedIn.

What’s the hold up in your customers’ buying decision? Maybe they need to see your offerings in a different light. Perhaps they need to justify the financial investment you’re asking them to make or better understand how others have benefited from using your offerings.

Here are some things that may help move from new customers through the sales cycle.

  • Send them articles, case studies or interviews with industry experts that are relevant to them. This helps to demonstrate your knowledge in the industry or vertical trends.
  • Offer to provide an assessment or a one hour consultation. This allows for some face-to-face interaction to uncover what the potential customer’s pain points are that exist.
  • Provide them with a payback analysis tool. Show them how to use an ROI calculator to determine the $$ they will make/save using your offering.

Understanding why your business is different that someone down the street offering similar services and creating a brand that conveys that message will be key to leveraging your unique selling proposition and closing the sale.

Sometimes the timing just isn’t quite right in the purchase cycle, but those regular touches with potential customers will help to keep your product or service top of mind when it’s time for the purchase to occur. Patience and persistence with targeted messaging is key to business growth.

About the author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long term basis. Core areas of service are business development, marketing, strategic planning and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business growth.

business-pulse

The Pulse of Your Business

by ArticlesCommunications

business-pulse As a business owner, it is important to know the pulse of your business. What does this mean? It is a solid understanding of why people buy from you, what your customers think, how you react to unsatisfied customers and your willingness to accommodate specific customer or client requests.

Whether you sell a product or service, successful business owners know the value of paying attention to the pulse of their company. Delivering on promises and following up with customers will help to ensure your business is meeting expectations, growing and maintaining a high rate of customer satisfaction.

Let’s start with the question of “how well do we deliver on what we promise?” This is the foundation of your company’s reputation in the community. This one simple question should be the cornerstone for everything the company delivers on – whether it is goods or professional services. While one or two unhappy customers may not hurt your business, it is important to address their concerns. With the power of social media, these unhappy customers have the ability to reach a much larger audience.

That’s why it’s necessary to address any negative comments publicly and to then offer to address the problem off line. By doing this, you have shown that resolving the issue is important. Likewise, when people give you positive reviews, always be sure to thank them. A satisfaction survey is a good tool to use to follow up with your customers and clients to ensure that their expectations are being fulfilled. Lastly, it never hurts to pick up the phone and ask your clients how things are going.

Willingness to adapt. You will find that situations often arise when it becomes quite clear that your customer or client is requesting something out of the ordinary. Can your company adapt and flex to meet the customer’s needs? Accommodating your customers will not only create a strong business relationship, but will also result turning them into loyal customers. Loyal customers become your cheerleaders who will tell others how your business has helped them.

Everyone is human and mistakes are made. But, if those mistakes occur regularly, it’s time to look at how your business is run. Here’s an example. Imagine that a customer orders delivery food from your restaurant, and when the food comes, part of the order is either missing or wrong. The customer now faced with the decision of calling the restaurant back and complaining or accepting what was wrong. The customer realizes that they didn’t get what they paid for. The positive experience of food delivery from the restaurant has just decreased. It is important to provide the product or service that was promised the first time. This prevents your customers from taking one of three courses of action: 1) addressing the mistake, 2) accepting the mistake or 3) telling others of the poor experience and choosing not to use your service again.

Customers have a choice where they spend their money. Keep a pulse on your business and know how customers perceive your service. If they aren’t willing to recommend you, it is important to find out why and fix the problem.

About the author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long term basis. Core areas of service are business development, marketing, strategic planning and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business growth.

becoming-an-expert, Edmiston-Group

From Yeah But… To Because: Becoming an Expert

by BlogCommunications

becoming-an-expert, Edmiston-Group What draws people to you or your company? What sets you apart from other companies that offer similar goods or services? Being able to turn the, yeah I could do that but, to we are the best at what we do because, will make you not only a more positive person but a stronger business owner.

Knowing your BECAUSE is why people buy from you. If you don’t know why people come into your business, or purchase your product, it’s time to find out. That’s what makes you different than the business owner down the street.

Being a business owner in what we can refer to as my more seasoned years, I have learned that it is important to be able to move past the yeah but. Yeah but.. people won’t support my cause or yeah but.. it’s overwhelming to learn. The But’s stop you in your tracks and the fear or complacency of moving beyond the Yeah but…keeps your business stagnant. These are phrases that you have to replace with, I can do this because.

Whether you are a business owner, a manager, or an employee, you have more than likely been faced with having to learn a task or start something new and wanted to respond with the, yeah I would do it but…. The ‘yeah but’ is your resistance to change. It allows you to justify a reason as to why you cannot complete a task.

Over the course of the past ten years, my business has evolved. Like anyone else in business, if you don’t evolve, you just stay stuck. For me this task was digital marketing – social media, email marketing and websites. It seemed such an overwhelming task and I had no idea where to start. I didn’t know how to # a twitter feed, nor did I really understand what twitter really was, or how to follow a group on Facebook, nor how to put together a website site map. That was back in 2007, and let’s just say I have come a long way since then and even manage to show my own kids new features from time to time on these social media platforms and in the digital marketing arena. How you may ask? I turned the yeah but… into the because.

People didn’t turn to me to help manage their digital marketing programs when I was still floundering myself. They did however turn to me when I learned it, attended webinars, watched YouTube videos on how to increase followings and yes even took a few classes. People came to me for help BECAUSE I made myself a well-educated expert in this field as I knew that it would be part of my key to success.

Since my first webinar I have learned many more tricks of the trade that allow me to be a successful blogger and manager of social media. There have been many hours spent on training. I turned my yeah but, into my, because. People turn to me for help because I have become educated in my field. The Edmiston Group stays up on the social media trends and integrates digital marketing into an overall marketing strategy.

There will always be lessons to learn and people that are more talented than I am to learn them from. However, I am a lifelong learner and will always find new things to learn. You can bet a few years down the road the Edmiston Group will continue to evolve and find new technologies and services to offer our clients. After all….isn’t that how we bring fresh ideas to grow your business?

About the author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long term basis. Core areas of service are business development, marketing, strategic planning and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business growth.

comfort-zone-to-stretch-zone, Edmiston-group

What Zone Are You In?

by ArticlesCommunications

comfort-zone-to-stretch-zone, Edmiston-groupDo you find as a small business owner that you often feel like you are peddling as fast as you can and are going nowhere, or not near as far as you had hoped? Many of us do. Effective time management and the development of solid people skills will help you set yourself for success and accomplish more.

As a business owner it is important to have people skills. Knowing how to handle other people has a large part to do with how successful you are in in life, as well as business. Many people overlook the fact that these skills also involve you. Recognizing gaps in your own skillset or knowledge base is the first step to becoming better and more efficient at running your business.

Step Out

Becoming more efficient starts by setting goals that are above your abilities. While this sounds crazy, it forces you to improve. Let’s look at three personal zones that you can achieve when setting goals – the comfort zone, the stretch zone, and the extreme zone.

By staying in the comfort zone you essentially stop your learning process. You remain comfortable in the status quo. You have your set clients and you’re happy. Nothing rocks the boat right? As methods of doing business and technology change, you choose to resist change. Efficiencies that come with those technologies are lost and you continue to work harder, but accomplish the same amount or less due to increasing demands. Perhaps during that time one of those long term clients decides to take a different, more progressive direction and leaves you behind.

As you step into the stretch zone you begin to stretch your abilities. This is where you push the envelope on what you are comfortable with. You have stretched your knowledge base and with guts and fortitude learned how to accomplish these tasks in new ways. As you continue to learn new things, you may receive more responsibility at work, or develop a new product line if you’re a business owner. These things didn’t appear to be viable without the stretch so you’ve opened yourself up to new possibilities and opportunities.

Last we have the extreme zone. Entering this zone can be dangerous as you are reaching into an area where you simply don’t have the skill set necessary to be successful and thus can set you and your self-confidence back. You can’t go from couch potato to a triathlon participant in a week. Without proper training, sacrifice and learning how your body reacts to this preparation, you set yourself up for failure.

How you venture into the stretch zone depends on your personality. Some people prefer to take small steps while others jump in with both feet. Reaching into this zone will help to build your confidence and enable you to gain skills that will allow you to move onto tasks that perhaps were originally in the extreme zone. Knowledge is king.

Set goals.

Setting goals helps to keep moving you forward toward reaching that goal. Attainable goals that are set with deadlines will also force to keep you to stay on track and measure your results. The 80/20 rule is also called the “Pareto Principle” named after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto from 1895. What this means is that 80% of result comes from 20% of the focused effort.

Our daily to do lists can be overwhelming and it’s tempting to complete small tasks throughout the day, but at the end of the day, feel like we’ve not accomplished anything. Setting focused goals and blocks of time in your schedule when you’re fresh and where you’re laser focused can help you achieve those goals. Successful people work toward their top two or three goals all the time.

Often goals can be overwhelming and leave you wondering where to start. Fortunately there is a simple solution. Just as dissecting a big project, breaking your goal down into smaller segments with target dates can help to make the goal seem more achievable.

While at times you may feel like these smaller goals are insignificant, be sure to step back every now and then and look at the bigger picture. So tell me…are you ready to stretch?

About the author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long term basis. Core areas of service are business development, marketing, strategic planning and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business growth.

Near Year Strategy, Edmiston Group

A New Year A New You!

by ArticlesCommunications

Resolutions and Vision, Near Year Strategy, Edmiston GroupAre you like the thousands of Americans who have made a New Year’s resolution?  Have you made them in the past and struggled or failed to be able to keep them?  In 2016, I made a commitment to take control of my health.  For me, a little extra motivation was the fact that my son was getting married and I wanted to look healthy and fit for his wedding.  It was a nine month journey, not without its sacrifice, setbacks, trials and times when I wanted to give up.  But with consistency, planning and focus on the goal I was able to achieve the end result.

How does that equate to being a business owner you may wonder?  For me, eating healthy, exercising and feeling better about myself was a great boost in productivity and self-confidence.  Business has grown, projects are larger and more complex.  But, I feel I can tackle them.

A New Year’s resolution can vary greatly from something personal such as being more active, getting in better shape or eating better, to performance goals at work.  Whether it is a personal goal or a business goal, you can take steps to help ensure that you are able to stick to your New Year’s resolution.

Resolutions and Vision, New Year Resolutions, Edmiston GroupWrite it down or create a vision board.  For me…I found my mother of the groom wedding dress that I fell in love with and bought.   It was a size I hadn’t seen in years.  I needed to say on track with diet and exercise to still fit into it for my son’s wedding.  I looked at it regularly, tried it on occasionally and knew I needed to stay with the program to have it zip!  Focus on the goal.

Studies have shown that when you put things in writing it is easier to stick to your goals.  Don’t just jot it down and throw it in the bottomless pile of papers on your desk.  Put it somewhere that you can see it and hold that dream, touch that piece of paper or whatever you need to do to fulfill that dream and not become complacent.

What do you want for your business?  How many new clients or projects do you want?  How much do you want to grow your retail business?  As an employee, what education or training don’t you have that you should obtain?  Is there a next level of position you seek?  If so…what qualifications are required and are you willing to educate yourself to ensure you have those skill sets?

Make your goals attainable.  Most people give up their weight loss resolution by February.  They look at the total number of pounds they want to lose instead of breaking that total number down into smaller goals with attainable numbers and dates.  As a business owner, it’s pretty unrealistic to think you will turn your start-up business into a million dollar company in 3 months.  Start out small and know that you can always give yourself new goals as the year progresses.  Shoot for goals such as to lose 10 lbs., walk 7,000 steps, then 10,000 steps and then compete in challenges with fit bits or friends.  Look to increase your business by 5-7%. Add one or two new services or products in the coming year. These are things that are attainable.

Create a plan. There is no better way to get to your destination or goal than to have a path laid out as to how you plan to get there.  It may be to cook your meals on Sunday and have healthy snacks ready.  Perhaps instead of browsing social media for the latest in what’s happening with friends, you take an online class or volunteer at a nonprofit organization.  You gain experience and expand your network.

For the business owner, simply saying you’re going to be more profitable with no plan as to how you are going to do it, will often leave you empty and discouraged.  Have dinner with trusted colleagues and discuss your plan.  Then put the plan to paper and execute.

The New Year is a great time to start a new steps in the right direction.  Be sure to set yourself up for success and create a path to follow.  Little reminders of what your goal is and being able to see the progress will help you continue down the path the success! Take time to celebrate the little victories.  I will tell you that it’s easy to slide back into old habits.  Commit to eating right, exercising and plan for your next position or business growth opportunity.  Be the best you can be in 2017!  Are you up to the challenge?

About the author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long term basis. Core areas of service are business development, marketing, strategic planning and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business growth.