There’s a catch-22 for marketers when dealing with Millennials. This tricky demographic is thoroughly enmeshed with the digital revolution. It’s already been established that those between the ages of 13 to 18 are heavy users of social media – 81 percent, in fact – leading many marketers to believe that e-commerce should be their preferred avenue for purchasing. If Millennials are spending an extraordinary amount of time online, plugged into social networking sites like Facebook and increasingly Twitter, then making the leap to shopping online seems to be intuitive. The only problem is that it’s just not the case. Business leaders and marketing professionals need to understand this age group is inherently worried about visibility. That includes maintaining a highly manicured Web presence, but it’s far more important to engage in social activities, which include shopping in physical retail stores. Read the full entry
0 Comments
The age old question in business is how to get new clients and how to retain them. Below is a list of 10 ways to improve your sales approach, which will lead to landing more clients.
We’ve all seen it before. The agonizing sight of a shopping cart or basket discarded without the slightest hesitation after a customer enters and exits a retail location. What causes customers to abandon their potential purchases? First, you have to take a look at the different avenues for buying goods. On one hand, there are brick-and-mortar locations that are exceedingly convenient for customers who take a more tactile approach to shopping and want their products in their hand before they complete the purchase. However, the drawback here occurs when there are a thousand other people with a similar penchant for having first-hand knowledge of the goods or services they’re about to buy. 
Generating sales in a business climate where products are constantly being created that render others obsolete can seem a bit unstable. This may appear a little depressing, but really it should be highly motivational, especially with regard to your sales strategy. Do you remember digital cameras? At one point, they were indispensable during holidays, vacations and meaningful life events, but the market for new products is ripe for disruption as each quarter of the fiscal year unfolds. Nearly all functions of digital cameras were subsumed by smartphones. This can mean several things for those of you in the sales department. 
Here’s our super-valuable, awesome social media secret of the day: People follow you because they like you!
A visit to the Doctor’s is an unlikely place to find inspirational sales education and yet many B2B sales people could learn a great deal from the experience about consultative selling. Let me explain why. When we make an appointment to see the Doctor we are usually unwell and showing signs or symptoms of one ailment or another. As we enter the Doctor’s office there is usually a short exchange of pleasantries followed by a question…. “So how can I help?” or “What seems to be troubling you?” Let’s assume we have a chesty cough, so we reply “Doctor I’ve had a chesty cough for a few weeks now and I can’t seem to shift it!” Does the Doctor immediately reply, “Here is a prescription for antibiotics, that’ll shift it?” 
If your website could talk, would it confess: “Hi, I’m ABC.com and I’m an addict?” While there may not be a 12-step program for websites, there are addicts who need some guidance. In this case, we’re talking paid (SEM) and organic (SEO) traffic from the major search engines. Sites hooked on these “rented” sources of traffic live in perpetual fear that the lifeblood of their business model – namely, visitors – will be abruptly severed by decisions made well beyond their control. 
Your sales team is a crucial part of the organization. Often times, they provide customers with their first impression of your business and are revenue-drivers. In a 2012 study, Towers Watson found that high-performing sales managers spend 14% more time per year on selling than low-performing sales managers. Your sales team could be encountering some obstacles that defer their attention away from their core responsibility of making sales. Here are the top 4 struggles your sales team is likely encountering and steps you can take to mitigate each. 
Over the past two days, Business.com held a Sales and Performance Marketing Summit. The first of its kind here at Business.com, we wanted to bring together our sales and performance marketing teams to learn from each other by sharing internal case studies, conducting sales training, reviewing our suite of performance marketing products, and learning about new products. We’re focused on learning, from internal and external sources, and this summit provided the entire company with greater insight into success, setbacks and steps to take to move forward. 
