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Jennifer Foster Marketing

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“I’ve got leads, now what?”

As you kick off your 2021 sales initiatives your prospecting activity probably looks a lot different than it did a year ago.

COVID sent us online for connection like never before. We attended classes, seminars, meetings and likely even a couple happy hours. A lot of sales professionals who had tremendous success with more traditional methods of meeting and even direct mail were forced into a new world of outreach because no one was meeting in person and very few were even in their office to receive the phone calls and mail.

  • Dedicated time can help you connect!

Enter Online Networking.

LinkedIn and other digital mediums became the main way to connect with sales prospects. And there are literally dozens of lead generation tools hitting the market every day. So you’ve got leads, you’ve made connections. Now what?

  1. Stop the social spiral but keep your consistency We all know social media is a time suck personally, so it seems logical that it can quickly become a time suck professionally. I suggest setting aside 30-45 mins per day to keep you within your limits. Set a timer, create your post, interact with your followers, comment on and share posts you follow, and when the timer goes off – you’re done for the day.
  2. Automate your marketing messages but only where it makes sense.
    Marketing automation allows you to communicate, evaluate and accelerate your leads through your sales funnel. Email and printed communications help reach your audiences with customized, relevant information, triggered by THEIR behaviors. As a general rule I do not suggest automating your social media, its just not authentic and more importantly the algorithms will generally deprioritize them.
  3. Qualify the connections and identify which are viable leads.
    You will have far more connections than will ever become worthwhile prospects. It’s the nature of the beast. So if you don’t qualify them you’re going to be out of the social spiral and into the outreach one. Bucket your leads by a few key criteria such as titles, region or whether or not you have spoken with them. The more you know about your leads, the more personalized your automated messaging and nurturing can be.
  4. Augment what you know about your lead.
    If you don’t have a lot of information about your qualified leads you can easily find more. An email address is the perfect place to start. You can then create additional content to get more information from them or simply reach out to them via email and start a conversation.

Finally, it will take both your patience and your persistence to effectively following-up with your new connections. It is a near certainty that it will take several calls and emails — research says up to 12! — at different times of the day to finally reach your prospect. A structured lead follow-up system will prepare and aid you to connect more effectively with those hard-to-reach leads that suddenly drop off the ether the moment they hit your sales funnel.

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Easy Steps to increasing the value of your business BEFORE you sell it.

For the past several years I’ve had a hypothesis that companies are leaving a lot of valuation on the table as they look for their exit.  The last couple of months I put this hypothesis to the test by meeting with people who are actually helping companies through this process. Most of the CPA’s and lawyers I’ve talked to seem to agree that when it comes time for a company to sell, they often take their foot off of the accelerator.

The most likely cause is that leadership is half way out the door and has already starting looking toward their next chapter, be it retirement or a new career opportunity. It could also be happening because the company is running out of funds and they simply are trying to conserve resources to make the bottom line as good as it can for the impending financial audits.

Increasing the valuation is a major challenge for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Most of them are already doing less with more. They are often wearing multiple hats and trying to get the most out of every dollar — that’s their normal state. Throw the stress of maximize the value of the business they’ve put so much effort and time into building and it’s enough to break most small businesses.

Here are a few easy ways to keep the valuation high and the stress low(er).

1. Seek advice

Hire an experienced outside advisor who can help you. Preparing your business for sale needs to include having an expert valuation conducted. Selling your business is one of the most important moments in your life as an entrepreneur. Professional advice will help ensure you get it right.

2. Work to boost your profits

Don’t expect high offers if you’re only breaking even. This can be a great time to do an audit of your processes and cut the excess. This has to be done carefully because the last thing you want to create is an air of panic within your walls or in the minds of your potential buyers. But nearly every business can find a way to operate more efficiently.

3. Continue to invest and improve

Keep as much momentum as you can. As mentioned above of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to take their foot off the accelerator before they cross the finish line. The moment you stop investing in your people, new equipment, maintenance and process improvements is the moment you start reducing the value of your company.

4. Create a strategic plan

Clearly document your vision – independent of the sale. Even if a sale is your only viable option, you should create a formal marketing and business plan. These documents help investors see the potential in your business. And  presenting measurable goals and milestones for the coming years will give your business credibility as a growing concern with long-term potential.

5. Empower your people

Your people are still you best asset. I’ve lead a lot of teams through mergers and acquisitions, and no matter the environment training and empowering people never fails to pay off. Pay particular attention to the management team and keep turnover low. Retention bonuses can work well here. When your buyers walk the halls, they will notice the vibe of your employees and it’s your responsibility to foster a positive environment.

6. Use your marketing to stand out

Don’t underestimate the value of your marketing dollars. In many ways, selling your company is a time to ramp up your marketing. The adage “fake it till you make it” is widely underrated. Marketing can help you look successful even if you’re struggling and that’s half the battle. Just like selling a house — a little curb appeal goes a very long way when your buyers are doing their “drive by” assessments. Your social media should be current. Your advertising should be active and your plan should be operating at full speed.  You can even add some flare by asking for testimonials explaining what keeps them coming back to your company vs. shopping their business elsewhere.

If you think having a strategic mindset applies only to businesses considerably larger than yours, I can help you see why that’s not the case. Small business owners actually face a much better return on their investment by working to  increase your values drivers.

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Marketing Process Improvement: More Cake, Less Icing

Marketing process can be a lot like icing a cake. You start with a solid foundation and then add a few layers of icing and maybe even some added toppings.

A few years ago there was a commercial that showed a man lovingly bumbling his way through the process of frosting a cake. Every time he’d mess up the cake he’d plop more icing on it and continue to try to smooth it out. He was admittedly quite endearing and even he seemed to find the humor in the process. But make no mistake, more icing did NOT fix the cake.

When it comes to marketing, you can’t always plop and smooth icing onto bad processes either. (Else you might end up like this dad in an unrelated but adorable video). Absolutely, there are times where service goes poorly and you need to refund, correct or comp something, but if you find this is happening more and more regularly, it may be time to get under the hood of your processes to see what’s really going on.

I hope to be well-known for the fact that because I focus on marketing process improvement I’m always interested in what is not working more so than I am with what is working great. Fixing the broken things in a marketing process provides much more opportunity than polishing things that are already working well.

Not too long ago, I was introduced to the client of a client at a meeting here in Dallas. After explaining that I was a marketing strategy consultant, the company representative listed some of the marketing endeavors she was hoping to employ. The longer we talked, the more I understood that their challenges really related much more to employee turnover than to marketing. They were looking for marketing solutions that would keep their employees happy. The employees they’d entrusted to provide care for patients simply didn’t stay long, which caused downstream patient disruption and ultimately loss of business.

Throwing marketing money at this wasn’t going bring much resolution. 

Your marketing needs to be more cake and less icing.

To really make headway in a very competitive market, this agency needed to discover why employees were leaving. I replayed and analyzed the conversation and I found myself formulating a plan of what I would do if I was consulting for them:

  • Perhaps it was a training problem. In a home health care setting, its easy to understand the challenges in caring for sick and aging people. One of the first things I would look at is if the company is putting the caregivers into a situation they didn’t expect. Maybe the job was more complicated than they expected.  Or too emotional.
  • Maybe it was a hiring problem. Most of these people who were hired were being brought in from Craig’s List job listings. Nothing against Craig’s list… okay well maybe something about their job listings. We can likely agree it is likely not the place to find professional and dedicated employees. Paying for a listing on a respected site or a professional recruiter could yield investment returns for years to come.
  • What if it was a payroll problem? The most commonly cited reason for leaving was for higher pay. Maybe a couple extra dollars per hour would encourage people to stay. One of the things I learned very early on in my corporate career was that hiring staff is EXPENSIVE. Hiring the wrong people costs even more. It costs a lot of time to find them, hire them, and train them. If they leave quickly, you have to start all over again. Do this over and over and you’re likely investing thousands of MORE than it would cost to simply increase pay.

Spend your dollars wisely!

Concluding, your marketing leaders should be as interested in the cake as they are the icing! Marketing dollars may actually be better spent on process improvement!

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You can’t be all things to all people: How a feasibility study can set your young business on the right course

The most common challenge I see young businesses face is the lack of an understanding of where their product fits in the marketplace. We are such an instant gratification society that we have an idea for a company and we quickly build a web site, grab some social media handles and 1-2-3 LAUNCH!

That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works as a recent commercial reminds us.

There is definitely a growing constituency that says, follow your passion and the money will follow.  I wish it were that easy. The problem is that passion alone can often lack direction. It can be flighty and it will easily lead you astray when you quickly find yourself trying to be all things all people.

I recently wrapped up a client who really understood this. He contacted me after purchasing a building in a mid-size southern city. He had a very clear vision (passion) for the business he wanted to put into the space and he asked me to conduct a detailed analysis that would help him determine if putting a gym in the building would be successful.

Here are the steps I followed — you will likely notice some inherent overlap.

  1. Assess the Market –  The foundation of the feasibility study needed to demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the demographics of the downtown. There were multiple buildings being converted into apartments and condominiums which likely would result in an influx of people looking to live-work downtown. Presumably the residents will be young, single and relatively affluent. I needed to confirm that.
  2. Gauge the Profitability — My client’s initial goal was to open a gym. As a consultant my start up costs were essentially an LLC license, an unlimited data plan for my phone and a new laptop. Pretty minimal to get started.The startup costs for a gym shocked me. (The number of them that failed was also quite suprising.) So much upfront investment becomes very hard to overcome in a quick amount of time. My client planned a full remodel regardless of the type of business that went in, but in order to have a good gym you needed newer, well-maintained equipment which was expensive. Multiple shifts must to be hired, trained and staffed because gyms need to be open very early in the morning, stay open until late in the evening and are open on weekends: far beyond a typical 8 hour day.I created a profitability model for the feasibility study — how many members did need to make a profit?  It might be easy to get 30-40 members but what if I needed 75 to break even? What if it was 175?
  3. Scope the Competition — How many other solutions are already there? There are always options for your customers, including doing nothing. Do your research on who is competing for your customer’ attention. You should consider complimentary and competing products as well. Maybe a there is already a gym on the block so maybe the recommendation is to open a coffee or juice bar?
  4. Plan your Partnerships — I’m in a couple different social media groups where I often see small business owners ask the hive mind “how do I find customers.” When I see questions like that I tend to believe that this is a young solopreneur. She is likely a year or two into her business, has likely been running on adrenaline in development/launch mode. She has likely racked up at least a couple thousand dollars in debt and isn’t paying her self a dime because there isn’t enough money coming in yet. Maybe the launch a success, but then her site traffic dwindled and, even worse, social media player changes the rules making it harder for customers to find the product they once loved.Now our new small business has no long term solution for finding customer. They may not even know who their customers even are. (I wrote a blog in 2016 that talks about how to value your customer.
    Along those lines BE REALISTIC — not everyone is going to get onto Shark Tank or get included in the Self Magazine annual beauty section. And if you do — it should be the icing on the cake not the bread and butter.
  5.  Who You Are. Who You are Not.  A well-rounded feasibility study sets the stage for you to create a branding plan. It’s easy to get distracted every time the phone rings with an opportunity. They all sound so good. Generally, there are going to be sales people trying to pitch marketing tools that are guaranteed to work (until you try to cash in on the guarantee). There are going to be other entrepreneurs who try to collaborate with you (or rather take advantage of you.) Having a clear document can remind you of your vision and give you a much needed “out” when you have to say no.

In the end my client did not launch a gym. Instead, we launched a co-working space called THE OFFICE HUB. It is in Shreveport, LA, and believe me when I say that it is beautiful. I’d love to tell you that it’s a raging success. Bottom line is that it’s been open a week, so we have yet to know how successful it will be. However, we are confident that because of our feasibility study we are on a solid foundation. Thanks to the study, we were able to learn about all the fabulous things happening in downtown Shreveport. And that a space like ours will ultimately be a valuable addition.

Some primary and secondary research helped us find and connect with the Downtown Development Authority, (@CoolDowntown). The DDA then helped us connect with every local television stations! They all came to our grand opening and did on camera interviews with our Executive Director. 100 or so of the Shreveport movers and shakers were also there for the Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting! We created a business that Shreveport is hungry for — and we knew it thanks to the investment in the research.

So if you’re considering launching a small business (or have recently done so) take some time and find a partner, preferably one who is independent and objective, to put together a feasibility study.

Jennifer

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Every Dollar Has a Job: Making Your Marketing Budgets Work

Started my morning off in usual fashion by walking the dogs and listening to my favorite Monday Morning Mojo podcast, Being Boss*. About two-thirds of the way through the podcast, I heard on of the hostesses say “every dollar has a job.” They were not discussing marketing budgets per se, but I immediately thought:

What are The Top 3 Jobs that Marketing Dollars Should Have? 

Parting with marketing dollars should not be easy. Even people who focus on marketing can and should be stingy here. I mean let’s be honest, every business dollar needs to be spent in a hundred different ways. Once you decide to spend money on a marketing initiative, you want it to be a worthwhile endeavor.

  1. Job #1. Invest in your marketing talent.

    More sophisticated marketing talent can pay off ten-fold, maybe more, over the next months and years. Budget dollars should be allocated to making the people that execute your marketing as skilled, innovative and efficient as possible. This can be done by hiring a professional or up-training your existing talent.

  2. Job #2. Purchase research that helps you identify and refine your target audience.

    Secondly, research is sometimes the best way to spend your early-stage marketing dollars. Who are your very best clients? Don’t you want more of them? Are your existing efforts reaching them effective? Shouldn’t you know? Before broadcasting a message, figure out who you want to talk to and what you want to say. Today’s highly targeted marketing makes outreach extremely effective. And it’s an efficient part of your marketing budgets because you only pay for what you need.

  3. Job #3. Buy access to your audience.

    Paid search and social media advertising are both great ways to buy access time in front of your prospects. Paying for sponsorship of an event might be a better one. However, you may find that it’s time to pay for a trip to meet with a customer in-person to close a deal. When it comes time to spend money on putting your product or service in front of your prospects, be sure that you qualify the audience and pay for the channels and vehicles that will do it best

In summary, you have scraped together, begged for, borrowed or earned every dollar in your marketing budgets. You worked hard to get it! It’s only fair that it work for you and carry its own weight and bring you back a return. You need to assign every dollar a job to do. Beforhand, your responsibility is to set them up to succeed.

 

*Who needs caffeine when you’ve got Kathleen and Emily? Ok, I still need some caffeine

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From the inside out: How do you truly create a market-driven company?

One of the most common goals I hear from would-be clients, is their desire to be more “market-driven.” As with most topics you can spend a lot of time and money to completely over-engineer this into a task so big and daunting that it becomes impossible to implement.

I’m sure there are complicated models you can use to prove to yourself, or your investors, that you’re successfully adopting some highly-tested principles. There are consultants who will charge you way more than I would — gotta pay for all that overthinking I guess.

I think a much more efficient approach is to find a few tricks that help good companies be great companies.

When you create good processes, your clients and customers will have good experiences, and in the end, your business will grow.

So let’s talk about a few of those things that can get you going in the right direction!

  1. Customer Service Team: Make your customer-facing employees into your best information gatherers. Whether you’re a small business with a single appointment setter or a large healthcare company with teams of dedicated customer representatives, these people interface with your customers every day. Your CSRs know what makes customers happy, and they for sure hear about what you do that drives them crazy. CSRs also know what they wish a product or service could do. Create a way for them to feed that information into the decision makers. In a small business that may just be getting the info back to you, in a larger, more complicated organization, it may require a process to synthesize and prioritize the feedback. Either way, this is FREE market research if you can harness it.
  2. Product Development: We love our products. We think they are great. We know their weaknesses. Or do we? Your product development pipeline likely includes a host of enhancements that you either can’t afford or don’t have time for. That’s the nature of product development. However, before you launch your next product enhancement, your development leaders should also be asking your marketing teams about competitive information. What are your competitors doing that you aren’t? That doesn’t mean you chase everything they do, but it may warrant some critical understanding of your longer term priorities.
  3. Finances. Everyone’s Market-driven- When you create good processes, your clients and customers will have good experiences, and in the end your business will grow.favorite topic: the money. Being a market-driven company, your finance leaders should understand the value, cost, COGS and markup on your products. One of my recent clients is currently running over budget on their print costs. Makes sense that their money guys and gals are all up in their potato chips about over-spending, right? The reality is they are over budget because the company has far exceeded their membership numbers. They’re sending more enrollment kits than they ever planned to, but that’s because they’re killing it on their enrollments. So while the budget is soaring, so is the income, and therefore the ROI should be strong. Your finance folks need to understand more than the budget’s bottom line.
  4. Sales. Your sales team is not automatically market savvy. It’s no secret that combining your sales and marketing is a recipe for disaster in my book. Generally, if you do it, you will end up with a “sales” and “sales support” team, not a marketing team. With that agreement under our virtual belts, hopefully, you’ll follow me when I say that that your sales team needs to intimately know your top competitor products. That’s a great first step. But how well versed are they on the consequence of doing nothing? Do your sales leads understand the industry well enough to know what the cost of saving the money your product costs? If not, they’re not fully market-driven — they should understand the market they’re operating in.
  5. Your marketing peeps. What do you mean all marketing people are not market-driven? No. They are not. Not even most marketing professionals are market-driven — because they don’t measure things. They likely have no idea if their activities are successful at influencing your target market or not. Marketing leaders must work cross-functionally to help their colleagues know better and perform better. Do they get to boss people around? Yes. I mean no. I’m kidding. Sorta. Marketing-driven doesn’t mean that marketing drives everything. It means that as market research and best practices become available it is shared, discussed and assessed.

Tell me some of your successes (or struggles) with being market-driven?