The Underrated Connection Between Service and Sales
Issue #2221
- WEALTHY: What will be the market’s savior? (Andrew Gordon)
- HEALTHY: Shrink your waistline and protect your brain by doing one thing (Dr. Jonny Bowden)
- WISE: Estee Lauder on selling
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- A giant but invisible mistake most businesses make (Michael Masterson)
- To produce killer marketing copy, you need a map (Clayton Makepeace)
- It’s Good to Know… about Google Trends
- Add "mercurial" to your vocabulary
Give Yourself a Nice Pay Raise – And A Three Day Weekend, Every Weekend
By the end of this week, you can give yourself a pay raise. How does an extra $20/hr sound… and schedule a few days’ vacation while you’re at it!
After a month or two, how about another raise… to $2,000 a week.
It’s happening everywhere. Ordinary people – including folks who never finished school — starting their own businesses… and making side incomes in the neighborhood of $40,000… $60,000… even $100,000 or more a year.
They’re living the American Dream. Now it’s time for you to start living it too. Click here to continue…
- Patrick Coffey
Is China "Fed" Up?
Step right up and place your bets, Ladies and Gentleman. Behind door number one, we have the U.S. government agency that’s charged with protecting employment and stopping inflation. It sees economic pitfalls everywhere: "Markets could relapse" or "Current tighter credit conditions could… restrain household and business spending."
Behind door number two, we have a giant Asian country whose voracious appetite for minerals and technology is propping up prices across a dozen sectors around the world, including the U.S.
Ladies and Gentlemen. Listen very carefully. I can tell you this only once. You are about to choose the market’s savior…
The Fed can give the market a strong boost by lowering rates. And the only thing stopping it from doing that over and over is the threat of inflation or a strong employment picture.
Will the Fed be your chosen market savior, Ladies and Gentleman, or will it be the candidate behind door two? Take a bow, China, you deserve it. Without your 11-percent-plus growth rate, where would we be? Can you keep it up without overheating?
So, what will it be, Ladies and Gentlemen? The Fed lowering rates… or China sustaining its tremendous growth spurt? Step right up and place your bets.
And for those of you who think whatever the Fed does will be for naught if China’s growth loses momentum… and for those of you who think that China will be unable to keep its growth up if the U.S. market dries up… turn around right now and head for the exits. Actually, you should run.
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR's Investment Director, is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard."
Estee Lauder
The Underrated Connection Between Service and Sales
Last week, I met with a travel agency. The owners have been struggling to bring their fledgling business into profitability. In the period of time I’ve worked with this agency as a consultant, they’ve made a great deal of progress. They analyzed their cash flow and determined which sales were most profitable… and restructured staffing to focus on those. They implemented a website to inform and entice new and occasional customers. And they established a follow-up program to cross-sell and resell their best customers.
But when we talked last week, we discovered they weren’t doing the one thing that would probably make the biggest difference. They were making a mistake that, in one way or another, most businesses are guilty of.
I won’t give you a dissertation on the travel business. But you should know that in today’s market you can’t make any money booking conventional airfares. The commission for those airfares doesn’t cover the time and effort it takes to do the bookings, make all the changes, do all the handholding, etc. And let’s say you do a lot of volume and get your commissions up by a few percentage points. You’re still running a breakeven business. The profit today is in packaged tours, cruises, and specialized travel.
This agency has been developing the profitable components of its business. But its top two salesmen have been spending 90 percent of their time handling inbound phone calls and booking conventional airfares. In other words, doing the least-profitable work.
Worse, the hundreds and hundreds of bookings they were making, comprising thousands of prime customer contacts, were handled as customer service activities. Not as sales opportunities.
What is going on here?
A Giant but Invisible Mistake Most Businesses Make
Actually, this is much more common than you might imagine. Most businesses divide their work in half. On the one side, is sales and marketing. On the other side, is fulfillment and customer service. Often these activities are separated physically. And they have separate management, separate work philosophies, and separate personnel.
In the case of our little travel agency, the same people were doing both types of work. But they handled the work in two completely different ways. When booking airfares for call-in customers, the top two performers acted like customer service reps, providing courteous, efficient service. When it came time to get on the phone and sell, they did only that. And never the twain did meet.
All those lost sales opportunities! Why? Because the agency didn’t want to "sell" people when they wanted "service."
I could talk about this fallacy at length. But I’ll boil it down to this: If the product or service you offer is worthwhile, selling it IS a service.
Some people understand this instinctively. But most of us have been trained to think that selling is fundamentally wrong. It is pushy. It is inconsiderate. It is not helpful.
A Secret of Success: Understanding the Virtue of Selling
I’d like to replace that idea – which is partly right but mostly wrong – with another one.
As businesspeople, it is our job to provide more and better products and services to our customers, to help them solve their problems and achieve their ambitions. And we should do so enthusiastically, assertively, and without reservation.
"When someone calls you to book a flight," I told my client, "you have two opportunities to make his life better. The first is to give him the right flight at the right price. The second is to send him on a trip he will appreciate for the rest of his life."
"If you take advantage of one opportunity but neglect the other," I told him, "you are not providing the best possible service. I assure you that every person who calls to book a business or personal trip is planning, or is dreaming about, an exotic vacation. And here you are with a basket full of exotic vacations that give you the profit margin you need to run a profitable business… and you are not doing anything."
I’m serious about this. Taking an order and fulfilling it… without finding out how else you can help your client… is a major customer service failure.
When You Don’t Sell, Your Customer Suffers
A business relationship is based on the expectation of mutual benefit. If you limit the benefit you provide to that which – and only that which – your customer specifically requests, you are much less valuable to him in the long run.
So here’s what we are doing now in this travel agency. We are creating a personalized customer service database. Every time we book a flight for a customer, we are going to find out a little more about him. When and how much he travels. When and how often he goes on vacations. Which destinations he likes and which he abhors. Whether he travels alone or with family or friends.
Then, based on that information, we are going to make sure that every time we speak to him we make him aware of other services we can provide. If we ask the right questions and give him the treatment he deserves, he will be happy to do more business with us.
When we ran the numbers, we realized that if only one in 100 future phone calls results in the sale of a packaged tour or cruise, the agency will double its profits. One in 100! My guess is that the number will be much closer to one in 10. And eventually even better than that.
Grow Your Business by Treating Each Service Call as a Sales Opportunity
The additional sales will create a much larger base from which to expand the business. This means the agency’s top two salespeople will be able to gradually free themselves to focus on higher-volume customers, while newer employees handle the others.
This process, combined with ever-increasing commissions (due to larger volumes), will turn a million-dollar business netting five percent into a five-million-dollar business netting 10 percent in about three years ( if my numbers are right). And all this is based on making a single change: a commitment to make every customer contact part of the selling process.
Think about how you can do this with your business or the business you are planning to start. You must develop your business in such a way that you can provide more and better products/services on an ongoing basis. And you must train yourself and your people to think about the selling process as good, not bad… helpful, not selfish.
[Ed. Note: Get Michael Masterson's insights into becoming successful in your business and personal life, achieving financial independence, and accomplishing all your goals on his new website. You'll find updates on all of Michael's books, news on upcoming ETR events, Michael's blog, and room to send in your comments and questions. Check it out today.]
The Greatest Medical Discovery of the Century
Scientists have discovered a remarkable substance that has the power to prevent diabetes, stop heart disease before it starts, and kill cancer cells on contact. In fact, this substance has been shown to prevent and treat more than 20 major diseases in all!
However, more than 85% of the population is deficient in this disease-killer at least part of the year. And believe it or not, medical professionals and health authorities actually advise people to avoid the single greatest source of this vital substance.
Click here to learn why you probably haven’t heard about this revolutionary discovery.
Reader Feedback: "Thanks to ETR, my life has changed for the better."
"I am regular reader of ETR for the past 3 years. I work as an in-house legal counsel in Mumbai, India. We do not celebrate Thanksgiving in India. (I note from the article in the Thanksgiving day issue of ETR that you are also in India. Welcome to India!) But I would like to express my gratitude to ETR. Thanks to ETR, my life has changed for the better.
"In October 2004, when I first started reading ETR, my annual income was around US$ 18,000. Today, my annual income is around US$ 100,000. In the last 3 years, I have also knocked off 10 kgs of fat (thanks to Dr. Al Sears and Jon Herring), started a part-time consultancy business, and made some good investments. (The booming stock market in India has helped.)
"This has been possible due to the wisdom gathered from reading the daily ETR, and from the Goal Setting Program, Automatic Wealth, Seven Years to Seven Figures, and Confessions of a Self Made Millionaire. In fact, I consider Confessions of a Self Made Millionaire as the best book on personal development I have ever read. I also read Daily Reckoning, Investor’s Daily Edge, Investment U, Money Morning, and Total Health Breakthroughs (all recommended by ETR).
"Once again, thank you Michael, thank you ETR."
- Raju Ananthanarayanan
Mumbai, India
[Ed. Note: How has reading ETR helped you - maybe even changed your life? Send your comments to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown... and we may print your e-mail in a future issue.]
A Marketer’s Cure for Muddled Vision
The other day, I critiqued a marketing package that promised one thing and delivered another. It began by offering a health benefit – but right after the headline, launched into a five-page tirade against drug companies.
Prospective customers who chose to read because of the headline and lead copy would have immediately felt deceived. Ripped off. Flim-flammed. We fixed it post-haste.
More often, I see marketing copy that takes so many side trips, you wind up wondering what in the heck the copywriter is smoking.
My advice: Have a roadmap before you get in the car with your prospect. Know where you’re starting from and where you’re going. Then map out the quickest, most direct way to get the prospect from Point A to Point B.
Create an unbreakable, irrefutable chain of logic – beginning with a proposition that the prospect already believes. That gets you on common ground. Then introduce each new idea with ample proof elements to keep his head nodding.
Bring him with you every step of the way. Never make him wonder where you’re headed. Never make him feel disoriented or lost. Never make him work to figure out where this is going.
[Ed. Note: Clayton Makepeace has spent the last 35 years creating direct-mail, Internet, and print promotions that have sold well over $1 billion worth of products. He publishes the highly acclaimed e-zine, The Total Package to help business owners and copywriters accelerate their sales and profits. ]
Strengthen Your Body and Supercharge Your Mind
Stress does more than make you prone to road rage – it also shrinks your brain. But by following a simple exercise program you may be able to undo some of the damage – or, better yet, prevent it from happening in the first place.
Exercise reduces levels of a brain-robbing stress hormone called cortisol. Elevated levels of cortisol actually shrink an important part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and learning. Studies show that exercise may help prevent Alzheimer’s or dementia – or, at the very least, significantly delay its onset.
Exercise also releases chemicals that ramp up production of an important brain compound called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) that has been called "Miracle Gro for the Brain." And recent research at the University of Illinois shows that healthy but sedentary folks (ages 60 to 80) who did moderate aerobic exercise for only 45 to 60 minutes three days a week actually grew bigger brains. Both the white matter and the grey matter increased in volume.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He's a board certified nutritionist with a master's degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. To read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's natural health e-letter, click here.]
It’s Good to Know: Google Trends
With Google Trends (google.com/trends), you can find out how often certain subjects have been searched. You can enter up to five topics at a time, separated by commas. For example, entering Christmas, Christmas shopping, and after Thanksgiving sales in the search bar will show you that searches for those terms peak in the fourth quarter of every year. You’ll also see recent news stories on your search topic and be able to pinpoint the geographic origins of most of the searches.
(Source: Lifehacker; Google Trends)
The Internet Money-Making Secret of a Desperate Housewife.
More bills than money. Dave, bless his heart, was trying, but he just couldn’t keep their heads above water.
Vicky and her husband Dave were caught between a rock and a hard place.
Vicky couldn’t stand to see the pain on Dave’s face.
That night fate intervened… Vicky got her hands on something very special.
What she saw changed her life… forever!
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Mercurial
"Mercurial" (mur-KYUR-ee-ul) means changeable in temperament or mood. The word is derived from Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and the messenger of the gods.
Example (as used by Dan Balz and Ronald Brownstein in Storming the Gates): "The bulky, white-thatched Georgia congressman was a mercurial, impulsive personality; a brilliant visionary one moment, a petulant, uncontrollable four-year-old the next."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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