A few months back I bought some wine from Waitrose via the web. It was my first time using their delivery service, run by a company called Ocado. I bought this wine because I have visited the maker in France, it’s good, inexpensive, Waitrose were offering 20% off first time on-line orders and Ocado were offering another £15 off as well. It was too good to miss.

But I didn’t make a second online purchase. Why? Well, we already get a lot of supermarket stuff online from another well known outfit. Plus, I don’t mind going to the supermarket. Sometimes I find it quite inspiring…

But I was on Waitrose’s radar. They started to email me. They made me offer upon offer to make that second purchase. Money off this, money off that. To get me over the energy barrier that exists in switching from one supplier to another. I quite like Waitrose, I am predisposed to them. But the shop is a 15 minute drive and life’s too short. I didn’t buy for the second time. That elusive repeat purchase. I reckon they emailed me 3 times a week for 4 months. I didn’t unsubscribe. Because I was interested. I was an “A” prospect. So they persevered with their emails until they got me. Email number 39 turned me into a repeat customer. Now I buy half my stuff from them, and that proportion is growing.

What finally got me was their offer of unlimited deliveries for a year for £40. I bit their hand off. That’s about 100 deliveries. That’s 40p per delivery. Now that may not have turned your head. But that’s not the point. Some other offer would probably have worked for you, eventually.

Interestingly, one of my mentors was talking just the other day about a 40 email follow-up sequence….

What has all this (re)taught me?

• When you have an “A” prospect, someone who has expressed a strong interest in what you do or has bought from you already, market to them ceaselessly until they buy or ask you to stop communicating with them.
• It can take some time. So, don’t give up.
• Don’t feel embarrassed about the constant contact– they are prospects and some of them will gladly become customers if presented with a compelling enough reason to do so. If the email “unsubscribes” you get from your CRM system upset you, don’t read them.
• Don’t be afraid of irritating some prospects. That means they’re probably not “A” prospects.
• Make many different offers. One will be right. Even if you have only one product, you can slice it up and repackage it in different ways for different people.
• Email marketing is cheap. Someone in Waitrose wrote a 40-odd email follow-up sequence. Maybe it’s more, who knows? That’s a fair bit of work but it’s a damn site cheaper than a TV or newspaper advert. And in time Waitrose will learn which emails convert the most effectively, allowing them to shorten their lead time to conversion, and thereby sell more stuff more quickly.
• Not all prospects are equal. One of my friends also gets the emails but has not been offered the deal I was offered. A year’s worth of deliveries for £40 will cost Waitrose a fair bit of money. So this deal isn’t offered to everyone. Maybe it’s only offered to people who are interested enough to open dozens of emails. Waitrose will be aware of these statistics and can act accordingly.

Email marketing…simple, effective, cheap. Great stuff.

Hello,

I’m taking a few days off with the family as it’s half-term, but wanted to get you something anyway.

I’m picking up new readers everyday for this blog through Twitter and I almost never tweet!

I have set a goal to understand and test Twitter for it’s ability to help me market my business.

I found a great video from the wonderful people at Hubspot that has helped me enormously.

I thought you might like to see it too. Go to the link at the bottom of this post.

Normal service will be resumed next week.

Mark

get the video HERE

This week’s Pearl of Leadership Wisdom is on…

Process

You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of achieving anything in any organisation unless you have systematised everything you can.

When I was a young boy…

…I travelled across the Pennines to work in north Manchester at ICI, Purchasing and Supply. My first commercial job. This department was ISO registered. There was a procedure for everything. I didn’t know the first thing about purchasing and I wasn’t going to ask anyone. Oh no! Not me.

I worked every day and then, in the evening, when everyone had gone home, I read the procedures – 2 hrs a night. After 2 months, I knew how purchasing and supply worked. It did nothing for my negotiating skills, or commercial brain. But that’s not what procedures are for.

It takes two…

The skills part lies parallel to the procedure. One is not a substitute for the other.

Without skills, flexibility, experience and creativity: the procedure is a hollow shell.

Without procedure: skills and experience remain largely untapped.

My background has…

…largely been in manufacturing. It’s highly regulated. We had procedures for most things – manufacturing, health and safety, HR, how to walk to your office with a hot drink…

…except sales and marketing.

Except sales and marketing. Oh yes. Sales people are creative, dynamic. They have the gift of the gab, they are flight of foot. They are supreme; saviours of the business. You cannot tether this sort of mercuric talent with procedures. Procedures are for the little people. The office-bound dullards, with their chit-chat about last night’s telly.

This is, of course, crap!

I have a dirty secret…

It’s staggering that so many sales and marketing people have managed to largely get away with not being proceduralised; not using a systematic process. I was one of them. Here’s a dirty secret – sales and marketing is a process. Sales people and marketing people are not born. You don’t need special talents. You don’t need the gift of the gab unless you’re selling from a market stall. You’re not doing that, are you?

Today’s winners…

…don’t allow the critical functions of sales and marketing to be anarchic. They understand it is one of the business’ core processes; the key word being process.

In marketing…

…they understand their Target Market Segments, their Ideal Customer Profile, and how to get to them. They understand their Value Proposition and their Unique Selling Proposition. And they act accordingly. They don’t spend a penny piece on any form of marketing communications unless the return-on-investment can be rapidly calculated. They do marketing experiments – cheap and quick. If it works; do more. If it doesn’t; stop. It’s a process.

If you run your own business and you do not have systematised marketing (i.e. getting those who are interested in what you do to come to you without you hunting them down, one-by-one; your life will be a misery.)

In sales…

…they know how to prospect (and why); how to sell; how to close; how to deliver; how to resell; how to ask for referrals. And when and why all these things should be done. It is not left to chance. They do them all, all the time. It’s not left to what the sales rep feels like doing today. It’s a process.

Of course skill and flair and all that other stuff are important; and with all else being equal they will win the day. But I’d rather have six solid guys following a process, than six prima-donnas who don’t know what day of the week it is, but they’re great guys you know…customers love ‘em.

Too many people…

…spend most of their time unfocussed, unguided, goalless, on autopilot, distracted, anxious, fearful and doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons at the wrong times. OK I exaggerate a wee bit, but not so much.

They certainly spend most of their time doing the one thing they think is important that they are comfortable doing. This is not enough. It really isn’t enough. It isn’t good enough. Not for their organisation. Not for them.

I have seen the light…

People can achieve great things. They have the potential. Challenge your colleagues, bosses and subordinates to develop processes for what they do. Because it’s the foundation that allows their brilliance to shine every day, not just on the occasional day when the chaos allows it.
Mark