Welcome to the Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog. Today's post, "Top Secret Keys to Success," reviews business strategies across various organizational sizes linking the criteria that represent the most prominent keys to their successes. Sometimes we all get bogged down in data minutia, especially when there is an overwhelming amount of data to be collected, analyzed, sorted, and purged. Nevertheless, we must trudge onward and upward, refining, and improving how we execute sales and marketing strategies. In 2020, it will be more important to isolate which keys open the doors to success.
Our Quote of the Day: "Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts." - Winston Churchill
Imagine this. Among all of the various forms of sales and marketing tools available, sales and customer service top the list, and are the primary keys for success.
Customer Acquisition and Retention
Nearly all sales departments measure their success against new business contracts versus churn. What is churn? Customer churn represents a percentage of customers that decline to use your company's product or service over a particular period. Most sales managers recommend reviewing your sales churn numbers throughout the year, ideally monthly, quarterly, and annually.
The art of churn numbers is twofold. First, customer retention strategies play a huge role in diminishing churn. Most organizations will agree that it is more efficient to retain customers versus having to gain a new client for each one lost. More effort is required to bring in new business, and that amounts to time, resources, and revenue that is usually over and above customer retention strategy budgets.
Second, focusing on new business sales strategies that are efficient to incorporate should put a southward dent in the churn numbers. Long-term sales strategies also apply here. Sales strategies can consist of short term sales activation tactics, as well as a long-term sales strategy, of which organizations can choose to pursue both tactics simultaneously.
Global Economic Drivers
Taken from the Salesforce "Third Edition Small and Medium Business Trends Report," Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) around the world are significant drivers of today's economic growth, representing over 90% of the business population, 60%–70% of employment, and 55% of GDP in developed economies. Their leaders are hard-working, passionate entrepreneurs who face unique challenges, which change and evolve as their businesses grow." Note: This report was based on 2,000+ small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners to understand what works for them.
Most Critical Success Factors
Revisiting the 2,000 plus SMB owners, you see a roadmap that lays out what they perceive to be the most critical elements that they ascribe as reasons for their successes. They include:
23% - Sales
22% - Customer Service
14% - Operations
12% - Marketing
8% - Product Development
6% - Finance
6% - Human Resources
5% - IT
3% - None of the Above
The Leading KPI is Sales
The art of selling in a highly fractured niche market can be very challenging, and to a degree, the fourth-place marketing trend plays a significant role. That said, marketing can only grab attention if and when executed correctly, and thereby ensures that the sales message arrives at the right time for the right targets.
However, before getting to the marketing piece, the sales strategy leads the way. The art of sales has become labor-intensive for several reasons. Sales rely on several aspects of the business model and can range from product competitiveness, competitive pricing models, competitive marketshare identification, inventory, speed of delivery, financing, trustworthiness, and extended customer service models.
In addition, data capture that includes demographics and psychographics, followed by sorting and list creation, is a huge step that can better serve the sales department objectives in that targets and niches can be clearly defined. It's like putting the sales presentations on-demand with a simple copy, paste, and out the door routine. Now add the fact that with all the preliminary legwork done upfront, the data lends itself to personalization. Without the personalization factor, the overall effectiveness of engaging targets would be lost, and achieving the number of slated responses could be significantly reduced or missed entirely.
Customer Service Ranks Second
Brands that take the initiative to go above and beyond with excellent customer service win the account more times than not. Further, a great customer service model also reduces churn and allows you to allocate more resources for customer acquisition.
Reducing churn also has hidden benefits for the brand or products that you sell. For one, you can increase the investment levels for customer acquisition. A lower churn rate also may mean that those loyal customers can become brand influencers, which is an ideal and efficient way to market to likely targets. In all honesty, there is no better way to persuade a new prospect to try the brand, product, or service, than a real review or recommendation from a current and loyal customer. It is also noteworthy to understand that some prospects will buy based on customer service and product support alone, notwithstanding that the product or service is a competitive alternative with other brands.
The Net-Net
Now you have the two most critical secret keys to success, sales, and customer service. The question then becomes, "How can I achieve ultimate success by focusing on these two keys? We suggest allocating the task of data capture to an internal database team. By freeing up this task, you can dedicate resources to create a customer service mindset for all employees to follow. Remember, customer service came in at 22%, just one point below sales. Therefore, sales and customer service work in tandem and in conjunction with the overall goal of increasing revenue. Hopefully, you have found this post relevant to growing your business. Thanks for reading "The Secret Keys to Success!"
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