Sales and Marketing for the Newly Self-Employed

According to a recent survey published by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills 13% of the workforce is now classified as self-employed and in America between 2008 and 2012 there was a 431,000 increase in the number of people working on their own. Many self-employed people work in industries that have traditionally used a lot of freelance workers, such as IT and construction but self-employment is increasing across most industries and statistics show that in the period March 2011 to March 2013 64% of the newly self-employed are managers or professionals.

Some of the newly self-employed have little need for sales and marketing skills, for example a builder who consistently works for the same main contractor hopefully has as much work issued as they require, however for a lot of newly self-employed people learning the basics of sales and marketing will make the difference between just surviving and positively thriving.

This article is designed to help the newly self-employed gain the basics of the sales and marketing skills and knowledge they need, and if they cannot find the time to develop those skills themselves show them where to access the professional help they need.

It covers

• The difference between sales and marketing

• What is an integrated marketing message

• Online and traditional media

• Precision Guided Marketing – targeting the right prospects

• Using prospect appropriate language

• Sell benefits not features

• Find something unique about you and your offering

Sales and marketing, what is the difference? This is nice and simple and really they should be in the other order, because chronologically marketing comes first. Marketing is simply anything you do to find prospects to try to sell to. The sales process then attempts to turn those prospects in to customers. It is only at the end, when a transaction has taken place that the sales and marketing process is complete. Marketing encompasses all forms of advertising and promotion, the trick is finding the method that is most appropriate for you, whether it is advertising in papers and magazines, via a website, running a stand at a trade exhibition or sending out promotional material by mail. Any of these can work in the right context, the skill comes in ensuring that you choose the most cost-effective method to achieve your desired results and so keeping accurate records of your marketing spend and the results you get is essential. The easiest way to choose an appropriate marketing method is to observe what the best of your competitors is doing, and try to improve on that. The sales process that follows can be face to face, as in a retail environment, via telephone in a telesales environment, or increasingly online via an ecommerce site.

What is an integrated marketing message? An integrated marketing message is one that features in all your different forms of advertising and across all different media. Even if your business operates in a retail environment it is still crucial that you have an online presence, whether that is a simple website operating like an online brochure, or an ecommerce site that allows you to sell your products to a much wider geographical market. You should ensure that your business and its offering is consistent, so logos, products and any offers should be the same across all formats, so they compliment rather than undermine each other.

Online and Traditional Media

Of course there is still a place for traditional media marketing, newspapers, magazines and the like. Depending on the products and services you offer some local newspapers allow good, cost-effective coverage and specialist industry magazines can be excellent, if sometimes expensive to advertise in. The drawback with traditional publications is their shelf life, how long does your target audience retain the publication and establishing a presence in a local newspaper for example requires consistent advertising over a long period that can end up costly. Online marketing has grown exponentially and will continue to do so, so it really is essential that you embrace this. It is relatively simple and inexpensive to establish a website, although of course the more time and money you invest in it, the better the results you are likely to get. It is important to co-ordinate the initial website design with search engine optimization. You need to take the time to ensure that your website scores highly with the search engines for the most appropriate keywords and phrases by investing the time in research. There are online tools that can help you with this, alternatively you may need to engage the services of a website design and SEO company, if you do not have the time and skills to do this for yourself.

Precision Guided Marketing, involves targeting the right prospects. It may by an unpleasant analogy, but just as the air force no longer simply carpet bombs an area, in the hope that a few of its bombs land in roughly the target area, but instead uses precision guided munitions, to home in on a precise target, so the marketing industry has evolved to use carefully targeted marketing. If you know your target market, by geographical location, lifestyle, income range, ethnicity even, there are now available marketing solutions to ensure you do not waste your marketing message and budget on the wrong targets.

Using prospect appropriate language means that you should tailor the wording and tone of your sales and marketing message to your target audience. If you are selling a very technical product or service then it is reasonable to assume a certain level of knowledge in your prospects and your marketing literature can be worded appropriately. However most marketing messages could benefit from increased simplicity, and you also need to remember that the public’s attention span is getting shorter. I have also noticed a real trend towards more conversational style language in successful marketing, as the increased use of social media takes its effect.

Sell benefits not features, means that most people do not actually want your product or service, they want the benefits that it brings. Given that you are likely to know your product in much greater detail than your prospect, it is easy to slip in to the habit of just listing the features of your product or service, if nothing else you need to remember the simple phrase “which means that”. If you say this after the listing the feature then it gets you in to the habit of then stressing the benefit of that particular feature. If you cannot think of a relevant benefit, then the feature itself lacks relevance to that particular prospect.

Find something unique about you and your offering. People who are new to sales and lack confidence often struggle with this one, but it really is the most simple. It is highly likely that your product or service does contain at least one unique feature that sets it apart from the competition, that you can use the “which means that” phrase to link it to a benefit that is just not available anywhere else. If that is not possible then you do have one absolutely unique feature to offer, and that is yourself. If you prospect invests with someone else they are going to miss out on you, and all that you bring to the table. This should be your number one benefit, and the one you believe in above all others.

Sales and marketing really is not difficult, practice and analyse your results, use feedback from your prospects and hopefully clients, positive and otherwise, as lessons to improve your performance and you can master the process. If you struggle to find the time, given the other tasks you have to perform for your business, or find you really do not enjoy it you may have to consider engaging the services of a specialist sales and marketing company to help you. If you have at least a basic understanding of the sales and marketing process it will help you choose the right company to help you.

Tips To Succeed In A Home Based Business

If you have decided to work from home then the best way to make money from home is to start a home based business. You may work from home on various jobs and on contractual assignments but those may not make you rich. A home based business, if run well, can make you rich and financially independent. To secure a sound financial future, you should start a home based business and you should endeavor to succeed in it.Here are a few tips to succeed in a home based business.Do Not Buy The HypeEverything that is hyped is not bad but most hype is exaggerated. When you decide to start a home based business, venture into a domain that you specialize in. There may be a lot of hullaballoo about affiliate marketing but if you do not know how to create a network, how to market and sell products then such a program or idea would be futile for you, irrespective of how promising the idea may be. Do what you can do and do it in your own way. When you let your belief take the lead and you are driven by self confidence, you will succeed, the only difference would be whether it is sooner or later.Create A Niche Out Of Your ForteYou may be a good chef and might want to start a home based business of catering. You can work from home and you will make money from home with a catering business if you are a good chef but there are many good chefs in any major neighborhood, town or city. What is your specialty? Whether you are a chef or a programmer, you will have a certain forte, something or some facet of the skill that you are excellent with. You should make this forte a niche of its own. When your unique selling point or USP is something that others cannot match or beat, you would witness exponential growth of your home based business.Be Organized Right From The StartYou may work from home and make money from home with your home based business but you should always treat your venture as any traditional business. You must take care of all the registrations, licenses and insurances, should have the accounts organized and deal with every facet of the business professionally. You never know when you may need a loan from a bank or you would crack a big deal when your entire past profile would have to be presented.

Small Business ERP – Be Aware of These Things

Finding the right Small Business ERP for your company
Small Business ERP is a unique category of enterprise software. It typically needs to have all the functionality of large corporate ERP software, but it needs to have as few clicks and screens as possible to ensure that the users are not overburdened with a lot of time spent entering data. The size of the business does not necessarily change the functionality required in the software. Rather, the small company often has a need for higher efficiency since they cannot afford the manpower to maintain the system.When you look at ERP software, there are three tiers of applications. Tier 1 is large multi-national software solutions, such as Oracle, SAP, and JD Edwards. Tier 2 is the mid-market level. These applications are suitable to businesses in the range of 50M to 250M. This is the sweet spot of the market. Like any bell curve, the mid-market has both the most customers, as well as the most product offerings. The last tier is the Tier 3 offerings which is the small business ERP category. These are systems suitable for 1 person start-ups to about the $50M level, although some of these products become inefficient if they have more than 20 users on the system. So while they claim to be Small Business ERP offerings, they are for the smallest of companies.Things to look for in Small Business ERP
When evaluating small business ERP solutions, it is important that you properly screen the potential software candidates to ensure you get a software that fits your business. If you don’t you will run into many different issues. Here are some tips:1. Make sure that the small business ERP software you are looking at fits into your niche.
2. Make sure that the data entry is simple and efficient
3. Make sure that the database platform can be managed by you or your staff
4. Look at the support offerings of the small business ERP provider to ensure that it is tailored to your needs
5. Determine that the small business ERP reseller provides enough training to properly get your staff up and runningLet’s discuss these points. First you need to make sure that the software you are looking at fits within the business model or industry that you work within. A retail store should not use a software designed for distributor. See what other customers that the software provider has worked with in the past and ask for specific examples of companies in your industry.You need to make sure that the users do not become slaves to the system. Make sure that the data entry screens are simple, efficient and do not require a lot of bouncing around to other screens to input simple things such as invoices or purchase orders.The heart of the system is the database. You need to make sure that the database does not require a full-time system admin to maintain it. It should be designed to be self maintaining and easily managed. Learn a little bit of the technical requirements from the Small Business ERP solution provider. You do not want to be in the situation where you need to bring in a specialized database administrator if later something goes wrong.Small Business ERP should have support designed for you the small business owner. You should easily be able to call in and immediately speak to a rep for support. You don’t want to have to wait for days to get answers. Be careful of small systems with small support staffs. Especially be wary where the system is developed and maintained by one or two people. Yes, they are also a small business, but it will be a big problem when they are not available to assist you.Lastly, you and your staff need to have enough training to properly operate the application. Do not skimp on this point. You need more training than you think. In fact, it would be good to plan on training to go live and at least one other training session a month after go-live to answer any questions and resolve any problems from a lack of knowledge. You won’t become experts on the system in a day, so plan on future training sessions.The future of Small Business ERP
The future of Small Business ERP seems to be one of two paths. There are those systems that will continue to be operating on a small network of computers and do quite well on them, such as QuickBooks or DBA Software. The other path is that of small business ERP companies such as NetSuite, who are leading the charge to bring small business ERP to the cloud. This means that you will have access to the application through a browser and no installed software will exist on your site. You are licensing access to a system that stores your data remotely and operates via an internet connection.People often are concerned with this model as your data lives somewhere else. The fact of the matter is it is probably safer there than on a computer sitting in your back room. The data center security policies and the high-levels of authentication that are enforced by cloud computing providers truly lock down your data and its accessibility. Whereas your server in your back room is often open to anyone who happens to wonder by. This seems to be riskier. Nonetheless, whichever path you choose, you can be assured that the small business ERP industry is continuing to grow and develop.