Liars make us believe

Few days back I read a book which intrigued me a lot. It was titled "All Marketers are Liars" by Seth Godin. There was an example given in the book rather a myth which even I believed. It's known that the taste of the wine is dependent on the shape or curvature of the glass in which it is held. So whether it is s $5 wine or worth $500 it will taste great only if its in the right glass. Can you believe that? Mind you every wine expert/taster believes this. But its been proven scientifically that its a myth. People fail in blind tests but not with their eyes open. So is making the customer "Believe" in your marketing proposition, a necessary and sufficient condition of a successful sales pitch? So are we liars? The author tells that key to marketing is to tell a story that people can believe and you will sell your product.

What if the prospect doesn't know what he needs? Would it be wise to tell him that he doesn't know? Worse what if your competitor is catering to the "idea" that he needs it, rather than the need itself or rightly not needing it? But isn't it, how compelling is the story or marketing folklore you tell to your client about your previous clients? Is it the differentiating factor? How your story is more compelling than your competitor's? I have even experienced myself that many times my customers are buying products they don't need at all. So what is it they are buying? Just the story or the experience of buying it?

Marketing is about letting people know about you and a percentage will buy without needing personal interaction. Some products and services need personal selling to ensure needs are well matched. Direct personal sales is an active way of meeting needs and is suitable for specific product and service evolutions. I can agree that Marketers are Liars when their team fails to deliver what is promised by good intentioned sales and marketing people - The best marketing and sales people don't let this happen.

A successful Marketing Proposition is a good start point but having a bad sales organisation can ruin it. Here is a quote that I love and illustrates the point. "If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday," that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. If the town's citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that's sales. - Unknown"

TRADITIONAL SALES MODEL

Today when we talk about sales, a very first idea come into the mind of individuals is “ITS BAD”, “NOT MY CUP OF TEA & “MONOTONOUS”. Let me ask you all a question- when you go buying something, what comes into your mind first?

Ans: Why should I buy this stuff, while in impulsive buying period too.

Let’s think this issue other way around.

A salesman or executive who is there in malls, shops, door-to-door sales for selling his/her product to you, feels difficult, tricky for him to identify a prospective customer, his/her requirement and tactics to convince him for his product?

I accept that in most of cases we find that sales people didn’t went for deep analysis of customer’s demand discrepancy (gap between his present state of mind and willingness to buy) and they simply believe in traditional sales fundamentals- pushing pushing & pushing their product.

If we look at traditional sales model, firstly sales executives give full presentation about the features and functions of product, service & solution then hoping the buying influence sees a fit.

In graphical form traditional sales model process looks like this.

Mosthe common mistakes committed by sales executives according to traditional sales models:

• Sales executives treat their customers as target.
• Follow unilateral selling concept means they do not try to understand customer’s need.

• Poor listening skills

• Sales executives believe that all potential buyers can use their product

• Showing and telling about product is always appreciated by customers and they rush to buy from us (sales executives).

Now the pattern of selling is slowing changing from our traditional mindset of sales fundamental to No-sell selling concept. It’s an innovative way or methodology to push your product and make your customers happy.

People love to buy, but they hate to feel that they’ve been ‘sold’.

ASSET OF A SALES ORGANISATION contd..

The Enthusiastic Personality

Enthusiastic personalities are the most flamboyant and emotional types. As the name implies, they are happiest and most productive when they can embrace their jobs with passion and excitement. They are not averse to being in the spotlight and enjoy contact with others. Enthusiastic personalities tend to exhibit the following traits:

• Relationship-oriented
• Open and direct
• Creative
• Crave attention and enjoy being in the spotlight and desire support from others
• Often make quick decisions and are risk-takers and dream-chasers
• Not time-conscious
• Tend to generalize and exaggerate
• Often respond emotionally rather than logically

The office of an enthusiastic person: Tends to be cluttered and disorganized. The walls are often covered with inspiring posters expressing motivational slogans. The arrangement will probably be open and friendly with seating arranged so that people can talk easily.

Relating with the enthusiastic personality:

Enthusiastic people love the opportunity to talk and perform. Don’t bore them with the processes and detailed facts and figures. They don’t want to hear it. If you are selling to an enthusiastic person, make your presentation even more fun than usual and involve the customer.

To find such personality traits just look around yourself especially marketing professionals (sales manger, brand manager, HR manager, any lawyer & actor/actress)

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Personality test

Determinant personality

INSTINCTIVE PERSONALITY

Visionary Personality

FESTIVE MARKETING: OPPORTUNITY OR MYTH

Festive season in India is started from October/ dusehhra to diwali. In this period of time companies launch number of product offers with various schemes and entertainment industry i.e bollywood also wait for this point of time every year and launch various various mega budget movies with the expectation of huge returns.

According to various experts, it’s a right to lift shopping spirits of customers with various creative offerings. Companies i.e. FMCG, auto, liquor, apparel and even services - are rolling out the strategies that they have been planning for months in advance, to get a share of the consumers wallet.

These days with emerging mall concept anytime we can see discount offers in almost every product or service offerings either its garments, mobiles, movies (malls-weekdays offers). Consumers are lapping up the smells and sounds of the festivities and willing to pay for shopping due to customs, trend etc , companies have already gone into overdrive with their marketing blitzkrieg.

According to one analysis, Till a couple of years back almost 40% of the annual sales of many companies used to come from the festive season. But not anymore. Today the festive season contributes only 20-25% of the total sales of most companies.

Today we Indians are start celebrating number of festivals like mother’s day, father’s day, friendship day, valentine day etc and we Indian customers now concentrating more on western festival than our typical festivals like”EID”, “DIWALI”, “DURGA PUJA”, ”CHRISTMAS” etc, so companies are now concentrating on proportionate sales throughout year.

Trend of buying behavior of individuals is changing with the purchasing power and nuclearism. Initially few years back we were mainly concentrating on our traditional festivals and went for shopping for whole family but now everyday is shopping.

Trends:

• Various festive offers i.e. mother’s day, father’s day, friendship day, valentine day and with these our traditional festivals i.e. ”EID”, “DIWALI”, “DURGA PUJA”,”CHRISTMAS”.
• New offerings and assured gifts instead of banking on the concept of giving discounts on their products or holding lucky draws during this particular season.
• Personal gifting.

Marketing Director at Diageo India, Santosh Kanekar, attributes it to changing gifting patterns of the consumer. He says, “True to the elegance of brands such as Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff we have pushed the scope of gifting a few notches higher. For instance, we have introduced the Johnnie Walker Red Label Vodafone F1 festive pack, the Black Label comes with a vintage wooden twin pack, and brands such as Smirnoff Black and Captain Morgan are coming with shakers and chocolates respectively.”

Trend is changing even though some marketing managers believe that traditional festive time is very good for companies to launch its new products and increase its market penetration.

Motorola Inc, Whirlpool, Lenovo, Hyundai Electronics, Maharaja Whiteline and Sony India are going ahead with their festive plans. Hyundai Electronics has earmarked a budget of Rs 5 cr; Sony has set aside $10m for the season, Maharaja Whiteline would be spending 60% of its promotional budget during this period. Sukhpreet Singh, General Manager, brand marketing, Whirlpool Of India sums it up aptly. Mr Singh says, “Though we have sales coming in throughout the year, the festival season spike is very much a reality.”

Automobile companies like Maruti Udyog, Hyundai Motors India and Honda Siel Cars India are also running marketing campaigns that offer discounts, loyalty bonuses and gift cheques.

Even retailers also believe that it’s a right time to promote and push your product and brand. Subhiksha a big brand name spending huge on marketing and advertising. Company have special offers on crackers, fruits and new range of mobile phones.

various web portals and Internet services offered diwali bonanza offers on chatting, voice chat etc.

I personally believe that its good that we are following new trends and culture but still we markerters believe that these festive season really matters in sales and revenue of companies.

To check out various offers from different companies click on below links:

VIDEOCON offer in Hyderabad

LG offer for Internal customers i.e. channel partners

Offers from CAR manufacturers

Asset of a sales Organization contd......(Part-2)

The Visionary Personality

The visionary personality is focused on detail and is concerned with the analytical process. This individual tends to concentrate more on the means rather than on the end means they mainly concentrate on process and way of doing things instead of work done. He/she is very logical and very thorough. Other common characteristics of the visionary include:

• Slower to make decisions

• Introvert

• Good at problem solving and working at solitary tasks

• Learns best by reading

• Hates to be wrong (perfectionist)

• Risk Averse

• Logical and methodical

Office of a visionary person: A desk covered with neat piles of charts and graphs.

Do not expect to find much in the way of personal expression.

Clothing and belongings: Ultra-conservative; pocket protectors are a sure sign.

Caution: This type of personality is task oriented and focused on work, not entertaining visitors to the office. Sometimes it happens that they (visionary individuals) will not treat you well but don’t be disheartened because this personality people are very clear in their thoughts if they have decided something, its very hard to change their mindset but here our (sales individuals) determination, patience, tactics etc work as weapon to close the deal.

Tactics to deal with visionary personality:

They require a great deal of information with statistics to accept a claim.

The visionary hears you better when you use terms such as precise, classified, quantified, qualified, logical, reasoned, facts, specific, figures, trials, tested, and proven.

If you have any doubt about this type personality, Go and try to find such traits in your "MATHEMATICS faculty or any researcher"

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Determined Personality

PERSONALITY TEST

Asset of a Sales Organisation

When we meet an individual for first time how do we start our conversation with him have you thought over this point ever? Hopefully not…

But in the back of our mind these calculations are going on when meet new individual that what type of person he/she is, in just 2-4 minutes we try to evaluate his/her traits and as per his/her traits we start talking with him/her.

Most of time we commit mistake due to wrong evaluation of an individual and face lot of embarrassment and difficulty. In Sales, personality test or evaluation is extremely important otherwise you cannot sustain in this market and never move up on success ladder. Personality evaluation really help anyone to target right individual at right time and on basis of his/her (customer/client) personality traits we present our self (sales managers/sales executives).

There are four type of customer personalities:

Determined personality

Visionary personality

Instinctive personality

Enthusiastic personality

In sales, broadly we divide customers into two major category: (1) retail customer & (2) corporate customers. To evaluate customer’s overall personality three things about him always keep in mind:

• Individual’s characteristics

• Office layout

• Individual’s Clothing

Determined personality

The determined individual likes to be in charge. The determined personality tends to exhibit the following characteristics:

•Cool, impersonal, and in control

• Readily discloses expectations

• Result-oriented—bottom-line focused

• Risk-taking, competitive, and goal-oriented

• Time-conscious, gets things done, and makes things happen

• Poor listening skills

• Impatient

• Opinionated

Office layout of a determined person: Decor suggests power.

Large planning calendars

Awards and honors are often displayed.

Well structured and perfectly organized room.

Clothing and belongings: Dominant and striking, well dressed.

Tricks to interact with determined personality individuals:

Get to the point as quickly as possible. Don’t try to disguise them with jargons or flowery language.

Offer concise explanations, and focus on outcome rather than the process.

Normally this type of personality individuals ask you following questions: “How is this going to benefit me?” “What’s it going to cost me?” “How much money will we make or save?” “When will this project be completed?”

When you are looking for ways to reach the determined customer, consider promoting speedy service, bottom-line savings.

These qualities are not restricted to the customers or marketing professionals, at any point of time these traits will help us in identifying individuals.

Rest three personality type will discuss in next posts, So lets try to find out such personality traits of determinant type among your friends, family members.

May be I have missed some attributes of such personality. If you find other attributes please let me know.

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