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Using Information That is Right Under Your Nose to Sell More - A 2 Minute Tip |
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 The main point of the last 2-Minute tip was to emphasise the mind set that your organisation is a sales and marketing organisation.
And an important asset for any sales and marketing organisation is to have a comprehensive marketing kit. A marketing kit is a dynamic document that changes frequently.
Excellent information that could be used to increase membership and sales is lost because nobody is looking for it. An important event is lost because its value to marketing is not recognised.
One difficulty some organisations face is that they are much more than one business. For a club, for example, it is close to impossible to design one marketing kit that will do everything - help sell more conferences, increase membership, build up dining room sales and get more golfers to participate in special events is too broad a target for one kit.
This gets back to the first step in the John Jantsch recommended process – narrow your focus. You cannot effectively market everything in one sales kit. Start with one focus and when you are ready introduce another one. What will give your organisation the best leverage from your efforts? Would it be an increase club membership? Or would you prefer to focus on building your conferences? Or some other part of the business?
If it were to increase club membership, do you have a good idea of all the reasons your members chose to join your club? Do you have stacks of quotes by members along the lines of “I joined this club because….” Other quotes could be in the form “I enjoy being a member of this club because…” Eventually your marketing kit will feature authentic testimonials from your members and customers.
After a conference it is not unusual for the convenor to comment positively. That is an opportunity not to be missed. Ask for permission to use the reference at some future time.
Encourage staff to collect as much useful information as possible Do you have a system for collecting this information from your staff?
An effective marketing kit will be sharply focused on one part of the business, and will help those interested in that part of the business to trust you. It will include:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Interesting stories – staff, customers, products, partners etc
- Information about the processes used to guarantee customers that they get even more than what they wanted
- Lists of happy customers
All of this information is found internally by asking questions and by observation. The final product might be improved by experts but the quality of their work will depend on the information in your files.
Previous 2 Minute Tips and Blog Posts
Roger Cowan
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