Risk reduction is something that takes place right the way through the buying process.  Sales people who learn to help customers reduce risk and mitigate the perception of risk are more successful than their competitors.

Before a buyer decides who to meet with, they will have researched potential vendors.  For this reason it is important that they can easily find references and recommendations in the form of testimonials and case studies.  These need to be available on your website, from your blog, and from your social and business network profiles.

As the sale progresses the customer will want to confirm their initial assessment of your capabilities as a supplier by looking to add more information and detail to the information that they already have. They will want to reduce the risk further by talking with existing clients – those in your case studies or additional references.

Finally, in order for you to close the deal, customers may seek to reduce risks further in the form of guarantees or indemnities.

Not all referrals or recommendations are equal.  Customers typically place more reliance on people that are closer to them. They tend to trust, in descending order :

1. Personal experience.  If suppliers have performed well in the past they become a known factor which means the risk of working with them is reduced
2. Recommendations from colleagues. A vendor who has worked with other people in the same organisation represents a lower risk
3. Approved supplier lists.  Risk is shared if buyers use suppliers that have been approved by other people in their organisation
4. References provided by existing customers.  Working with suppliers that have previously worked with other people in your field provides evidence of experience and quality
5. Public opinion. While reputation is very rarely a reason to select a supplier it can be enough to make sure that they are put on to the shortlist
6. Guarantees and indemnities.  While these help to ensure the risk is shared between the buyer and supplier, they are indications that the perception of risk still exists.

Technorati Tags: Sales process, Buying process, mitigation, reduction, Salespeople, Risk, perception, assessment
Windows Live Tags: Sales process, Buying process, mitigation, reduction, Salespeople, Risk, perception,

Really good cartoon from www.xkcd.com about being an entrepreneur.

Well, it made me smile!

The reality is, if you didn’t know about the RFP (request for proposal) or RFQ (request for quotation) before it was written, you are entering a game that you have little chance of winning. So, should you play or not?

The RFP or RFQ will not have come out of the blue!

Very few customers draft and issue an RFP or RFQ without first talking either to potential suppliers or retaining consultants (who will also have talked to potential suppliers).

This means that the information requested is based on a vision of the solution that has been created by one or more of your competitors.

Unless you were one of the people involved in the pre-issue discussions, you don’t fully understand the customer’s vision. This means that you don’t know where the value lies, you can’t engineer your solution to match their vision and you have no sponsor inside the organisation.

Given that you cannot compete effectively in this game, you must try to change the objective of the game.

The problem is that the customer will have spent a large number of man-hours and invested politically and emotionally in getting to the point at which they believe that they have the right solution vision. There will be a huge resistance to change.

Can the RFP or RFQ be changed by you?

Your first task is to work out if you can change the RFP or RFQ.

This means very carefully evaluating the request and determining a) what unique defining competence (UDC) you could add that the customer has not asked for, b) under what circumstances they might need it and c) whether the value is significant enough for them to feel compelled to change their RFP or RFQ.

If you can see an opportunity then you must approach the customer before you do any more work on your response.

Persuading your customer to change the RFP or RFQ first is vital

Remember that all RFP or RFQ documents are designed to do one of two things:

• To get the lowest possible overall cost if it is a commodity purchase or
• To get the preferred bidder(s) through to the next stage if it’s a complex purchase

At this point, the customer has no idea that there is value that they need in your UDC. If there was they’d have it in their RFP or RFQ. So you cannot be a preferred bidder.

This means that in the box-ticking, point scoring exercise that follows the responses to the RFQ or RFP your significantly valuable UDC actually has:

• No box to sit in – other than the “additional information or benefits” section where it will only be evaluated in the unlikely event that all other elements are equal
• No points value – as the customer has not recognised the value or significance

If you simply build your UDC into your response without first selling it to your customer, it will probably have no impact at all.

Beginning to change the RFP or RFQ

Once the RFP or RFQ has been issued, some organisations – especially government bodies, have a policy of not talking to responders.

Unless you can arrange a meeting with all the key players; you cannot begin to make the changes you need. So don’t be put off by the policies.

This is one of those situations when you have to call high in the organisation; that is the only place where there will be enough power to force those meetings to happen.

When you make these phone calls you need to use the significant value that you have potentially uncovered in order to secure the meeting. That is all you are aiming for at this point – a meeting to discuss additional significant value to your customer.

The chances are that the initial meeting, and certainly any subsequent meetings, will be attended by the people who drafted the RFP or RFQ. So, it is crucial that the meeting is 100% positive; that you position yourself clearly as an honest broker who has discovered a way to create additional value for the customer.

Your strategy for changing the RFP or RFQ

If you can persuade the RFP or RFQ team to begin to explore the additional value you need to decide what your overall strategy is:

• Re-engineer the RFP or RFQ so that you have significant advantage and can take the whole deal
• Divide the purchase so that your offering is separated from the main purchase and budget

Declining to respond to an RFP or RFQ

It may be that:

• Your evaluation of the RFP or RFQ shows no significant advantage or
• The customer doesn’t agree with your assessment or
• You cannot arrange the meetings that you need

In all of these cases, there is simply no point in investing time, money and resources in creating a response. You need to decline gracefully with a reply that keeps the door open and positions some additional benefits (even if you can’t see that they need them at the moment). Something along the lines of:

‘Thank you for your request to propose a solution (or quote). Having evaluated your document, we have concluded that you are not currently looking for a solution that includes:

• UDC benefit statement 1
• UDC benefit statement 2
• UDC benefit statement 3 …

Therefore we have decide not to propose a solution (or quote) this time, but would like to remain in contact with you as your requirements change.”

The bluebird RFP or RFQ – last thoughts

The next time an unexpected RFP or RFQ presents itself, give this process a try. While I can’t guarantee that following this process will work every time, I know, from experience, that it does work more times than simply responding with no attempt to talk to the customer.

Technorati Tags: quotation, quote, pricing, product management, sales, RFP, RFQ, request, response
Windows Live Tags: quotation, quote, pricing, product management, sales, RFP, RFQ, request, response

• Groups are intended to be used by people who share a common interest; for example, the members of a Sunday League football club, a group of rock climbers or people who work at a particular branch of a bank
• Pages are intended to be used by organisations or entities which people may follow; for example, a Premier League football club or an indoor climbing wall or a bank

The key differences are as follows:

• Messages sent from page show up on the users’ homepage and in their Facebook Inbox
• A page has a higher visibility on the user’s profile
• Every tab in your page is searchable and visible. Since you can have more tabs in a page than in a group you can create more searchable information
• Page administrators are anonymous. Updates they make or messages they send come from the page not the person.
• There is no limit to the applications you can have on a page – this gives you much more flexibility
• You can integrate social media applications and blog posts with pages
• Pages can have reviews
• You can setup discussion forums rather than just walls

Groups make sense for organisations if you want to create a community amongst some or all of your users. Good examples are user delivered advice or support, customer meet-ups, or specific products that you want to focus on.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network
Windows Live Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network
WordPress Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network

Yesterday, I clicked on an interesting link in an email from a company that develops sales and marketing 2.0 software and spent some time browsing their site.

Today I received an email from them.

I’m very impressed that they tracked me from the email through my activity and click-path and worked out that I have done enough to warrant an email.

But read the email:

When I registered on their site I put “Self-employed” in the ‘Company:’ field on their form.

Do I believe that the salesperson has researched me and can “see several vital process in which [they] can help qualify more leads for [my] sales team”?

The problem with using auto-response email as part of any web 2.0 process is that you can’t predict every combination of variables that will need to be responded to.

By all means automate the drafting of the email; but make sure an attentive person sanity-checks it before it is sent.

Technorati Tags: Sales 2.0, email, responder, automation, process, sales, technology, response, auto
Windows Live Tags: Sales 2.0, email, responder, automation, process,sales, technology, response, auto
WordPress Tags: Sales 2.0, email, responder, automation, process, sales, technology, response, auto

Pages are free to setup but do require time and commitment to maintain them.

To start visit www.facebook.com/pages/create.php (you will need to be logged in to create a page) and fill in he information under the “Official Page” section.

Under the section entitled “Create a page for a:” you’ll need to choose the most appropriate category.

If your business is entirely local, select ‘Local business’ as this will make it easier for your pages to be found in searches for local businesses. Otherwise, select ‘Brand, product or organisation’.

Once you’ve clicked on the ‘Create official Page’ button you’ll be taken to the “Get Started” tab for your new page.

The page has a numbered list of things to do. Ignore the sequence shown or you’ll end up telling people about the page before you are ready. As you work through this page the list gets shorter until finally this tab disappears.

Your first task is to upload your company logo or a product picture by clicking on “upload an Image”. This can be up to 4Mb in size.

The next task is to enter some information about the product or your company. Click the ‘Edit page’ button under “Provide some basic information”. Fill in as much information as you want here. This will appear in the “Info” tab of your page.

Click on the ‘Post update’ button to get some information on your Page Wall for visitors to look at. This will allow you to make your first status update:

Finally you should import contacts; this can be done by uploading a contact list or by giving Facebook temporary access to your email account(s). As ever, be sure to only allow the invitation to be sent to people you are sure won’t object to receiving it.

Technorati Tags: social media,marcomms,Marketing,Facebook,Pages
Windows Live Tags: social media,marcomms,Marketing,Facebook,Pages
WordPress Tags: social media,marcomms,Marketing,Facebook,Pages

Signing-up is a simple process. Visit http://www.twitter.com and click the “Join the conversation!”button. That will link you to a page titled “Create a free Twitter account”.

On this page you select your username and password. Be aware that the username is your Twitter Handle and it will appear next to your Tweets on other peoples Twitter feeds.

Company or Personal Handle?

When you create a Twitter account you need to decide if it is to be a company or personal one.

1. If you are creating a company account to be used for corporate communications then you’ll want to use the company name; e.g. ACME. That’ll make it easier for your organisation to be found on Twitter.
2. If you are creating one for yourself or other people in your company to use as a business account, or you may want to consider combining your organisations name and their name; e.g. ACMEJaneRoberts. This can make it easier for people to find your colleagues on Twitter.
3. If you work alone under your own name you may want to use your name as your Handle. Bear in mind that if your company grows you may want to change your Handle, so it may be easier to start as you mean to go on.

Choosing Handles

Given the scale of Twitter, your name or your company name may already have been taken by people or organisations that you share it with. If you find they have been you’ll need to find someway of creating a unique Handle.

• Try a variation – shortening, initials or common abbreviations or a combination; e.g. JRoberts or JaneR
• Try adding your industry or occupation; e.g. JaneRobertsVet – or combining with the above; e.g. JaneRVet
• Try adding your niche or a unique feature from your service or product; e.g. JaneRHorseVet or if you are a local business your region; e.g. JaneRSurreyVet
• It used to be the case that using an underscore e.g. Jane_Roberts, would be avoided as being out of the norm, but as it becomes harder to create unique Handles it’s becoming more accepted.

Avoid using, if at all possible:

• Random names or nicknames as they have no association with your business
• Combining your name and numbers e.g. JaneRoberts123 as it just looks like you haven’t put in enough thought

If you are setting up a company Handle, keep a careful note of the password and setup an email address such as twitter@acme.com

If you are creating personal Handles for company use again keep a careful note of the password and fill in the users work email address. This allows you to change the password if that person leaves the company.

Checking your Email Contacts

Once you have completed the rest of the signup form and clicked on “Create my account” you’ll be asked if you want to check if any of your current email contacts use Twitter.

If you use GMail (GoogleMail), Hotmail or YahooMail this can be a good way of finding people to follow.

If you don’t want to do this just press skip. If you do want to do this you’ll also get a message asking if you want to invite all of your contacts to Twitter.

Think carefully before doing this as it will send an email to all these people. If you decide not to just press skip.

Make your Profile your own

Once you have completed the signup you’ll need to personalise your profile page. This stage is important as:

• Most spammers don’t personalise their profile. Personalising yours adds a little credibility
• People check your profile before deciding to follow you. The more information you have the greater the likelihood that will happen

On the menu at the top right of the page, click settings. This will open your profile page with the account tab active. We’ll ignore the account settings for now. Click on the profile tab.

Picture: People like to see the human side of an organisation so you should upload a photograph of yourself or the user. As you have up to 700k there is no excuse for some awful mobile phone head and shoulders snapshot. Try to use a photograph that represents the way you want to be seen. If you are creating a corporate profile; upload your logo.

Name: Fill in your real name; e.g. Jane Roberts, since this is what you use when doing business. If you are setting up personal handles for company use, enter the users real name.

Location: Use this to connect with people in your locale. Use the convention for postal addresses in your country. E.g. in the UK it would be Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom while in the US it might be Seattle, WA, United States of America. The more local your business the more address information you would put in.

Web: The address of your website, your blog or your LinkedIn profile. Any online resource where people can find out more about you. If you are creating a personal profile for company use, you will need a ‘no change’ policy here.

One Line Bio: This is space for a max 160-character elevator pitch. This is your chance to persuade people to follow you, so spend time crafting it. Focus on your unique defining competence.

Click the ‘Save’ button then click the ‘Account’ button

Name: This automatically comes across from your profile settings.

Username: This is your handle automatically filled in. Below this you will see what your Twitter URL is. You can change it here if you wish but be aware of all the promotional items out there with your Twitter ID or URL on them.

Email: Again automatically filled in. You can change this if you wish (it’s used to retrieve forgotten password or Handles). If you are creating personal accounts for company use you should forbid changes. Check the “Let others find me by my email address” as this will help people to search for your Twitter Handle.

Time Zone: Select your time-zone from the dropdown. This helps ensure that Tweets are shown in the right order on the recipients device and so maintains the flow of conversations.

Tweet Location: If you wish you can set the location from which you have sent the Tweet. This may be useful if you are at an event such as an exhibition, seminar or show.

Tweet Media: This determines what you see not what you Tweet. Whether you check this or not has no marketing relevance.

Tweet Privacy: Leave the “Protect my Tweets” box unchecked. Checking it slows down how quickly your network grows as it prevents people from finding you via the Twitter service. If you really need to restrict who can see your Tweets, set up a seperate non-marketing Twitter handle.

Design it

Lastly go to the design tab. Here you can add change the theme and background to your Twitter page and modify your colours to represent your brand colours. This will control what visitors to your Twitter page see.

Technorati Tags: brand, web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter
Windows Live Tags: brand, web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter
WordPress Tags: brand, web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter

That’s fine. I understand that the site I am subscribed to is entitled to make money.

But the service they are promoting is, as far as I am concerned, providing spam data.

And even worse, if I click the button in the email, my email address is revealed to the spammer.

It is a company that gets data by trawling the web for names, phone numbers, addresses and emails. Then sells it as a mailing list.

I know it’s spam because I am on it and I have never given them my data. I know its spam because the info they hold on me is 30-months out of date. I know it’s spam because I have never consented to them having my data.

That disappoints me. It lessens the esteem I have for the website I am subscribed to. It devalues their brand.

Moral. If you are allowing a piggyback campaign check out the company you are allowing to piggyback. Limit strictly what they are allowed to do. And even if the offer is via a trusted provider; check before you buy.

P.s. The offer is from Zoominfo – don’t touch it with a bargepole.

2 – Edit your profile. On the home page you’ll see a placeholder picture of you. Click on “Edit My Profile” next to this.

Bear in mind that you can control who sees what on your Facebook profile. Read the post on privacy settings for more information.

This will take you to the Basic Info page where you can add information as you wish. As with all the pages in your profile the information is optional. Remember that the information you enter here is personal information (the work info will come when you setup a Page").

3 – Update your Information. Work down the menu on the left of the page.

You’ll definitely want to upload a profile picture as people want to see who they are communicating with.

It’s also worth adding information into the education and works page; this helps with networking and to the Likes and Information page.

Finally you’ll want to add your contact details.

4 – Join networks. If you have valid email addresses for university or college (alumni associations) or workplaces, the next step is to join some networks. Click on the arrow next to the “Account” menu option on the top right of the page and then select “Account Settings”.

On the following page select the “Network” tab. Then fill in the Network Name. The remaining boxes will change depending on the type of network you are joining.

5 – Find Friends. Communication within Facebook is based on Friendships. So you’ll need to find people you know that you can connect with.

Click “Home” on the top right menu, then click “Friends” underneath your picture.

This takes you to a page where you can use a number of tools to find people who are already on Facebook.

The first seven options allow you to use search your email or your instant messaging account to see if any of the addresses you have emailed are registered in profiles on Facebook. The last option allows you to import a contact list.

If you do get hits, you will be prompted to send Friend requests to these people; you can of course deselect the ones you do not want to send to. Facebook will also offer to invite people you email who are not found to join Facebook.

As always, be very careful who you send these requests to; they should be people with whom you genuinely have a relationship.

Since ‘friending’ is a mutual process – they have to accept your request – it may take some time for people to start appearing in your Friends list.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network
Windows Live Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network
WordPress Tags: Social media, Communications, Marketing, marcomms, business, profile, personal, Facebook, Network

That effect can either be to do something or to remember you.

Whichever you want the customer to do, your tweet must be (as I explained a couple of weeks ago) compelling.

The secret is to put yourself in the customers shoes. Ask yourself; “if I were the customer, will I see value when I read this?”

You can create compelling content from:

• Something that captures your attention that your audience will also find captivating.
• Something you have in common to which you can bring advice or insight.
• A relevant hot-topic from their industry, market, customers or the wider economy.
• One or two sentence thought provokers. “Have you blogged a series of posts that could make an eBook? All you need is DTP software and Adobe Acrobat to revive old content.”
• Events from your promotional calendar. Or even other peoples events that are relevant.
• Re-tweet messages that you receive that are worth passing on.
• Links to your opinion pieces, white papers, podcasts, webinars etc.
• Interesting online articles, book reviews and other peoples blogs
• Questions. Ask them to get feedback or content for your next blog post.

Just remember to focus on intrinsic value for the recipient.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter
Windows Live Tags: web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter
WordPress Tags: web 2.0, marcomms, communications, Marketing, Twitter