Matching your style to the buyer for building a relationship

Buyer personality

If you in Sales would be able to identify or recognize the style or personality of your buyer then you stand a much better chance of communicating with and building a stronger relationship with him or her says Andy Miller.
buyer personality stylesThe better you match your style with the one from your buyer, the higher the likelihood to close a sale.

He defines and describes the styles as DISC: the Dominants, the Influencers, The Steady Relaters and the Cautious Thinkers in his blog post to which you should adapt to.

Probably, you can define a few more typical styles, personalities and types amongst your buyers or people involved in the purchase process: The Delegators, The Knowledge Cravers, The Nay-Sayers,…

Styles and personalities in purchase process

There are 4 issues with identification of styles:
- Nobody falls 100% in a category.
   Have you ever know someone fitting completely into one category?
   Most people are a bit of two or more styles.
- In different situations people do react differently.
   Depending on:
   . the importance of the decision
   . the involvement of upper management
   in a purchase process, people will react differently.
- People with the same style in a different role need to be addressed differently.
   A certain style person can be an influencer, an advocate, or a decision taker.
   Although the same style, they should be addressed accordingly and thus differently.
- Smaller companies versus large corporations.
   In smaller companies the decision and reporting lines are short, in large corporation both are long.
   People with similar styles will act and think differently than in large corporations with many decision levels.

How to act to build a relationship?

Thus even if you have nailed down the style of each of the persons involved in the purchase process, the challenge remains how to act, communicate and interact with him or her in order to build a relationship.
There is no universal or golden rule.
That is where sales ability and experience probably become important.

What is your experience with different styles and personality of people in different environments or organisations?

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Evaluating 21 Free Press Release syndication web services

About a month ago (December 9th 2008) we submitted a press release “LEADSExplorer Listed on ‘Post-Click Marketing Analytics’ Vendors Overview” to several free Press Release for syndication in order to find out how effective they were.

Remark: before submitting any press release: use a spelling checker and the Press Release Grader from Hubspot.

The results:

The results are grouped by findability by or speediness of appearance in Google search or specific benefits.
PR indicates the PageRank of the website. The higher the number, the better for your website.

THE BEST:
The Open Press PR4
Great several inserts:
- Google news
- Digg
Links: not working
Advertising: None

PRZoom PR5
Difficult to retrieve on Google
Advertising: several
Links: Not working
However linked to Newswire Today which syndicates to several other aggregation websites: BtoB.us
PRZoom is strictly for businesses, whereas Newswire Today is generic distribution network.

PRLog PR5 Press release
Links: work
Advertising: a few PDF document for download

Free Press Releases PR5
Difficult to retrieve
Advertising: several – however the print view is without
Links: not working

PR.com PR5
Press releases get aggregated by others: Newstin PR4
Advertising: several
Links: not working

PR USA PR5
Links: not working
Advertising : several

THE GOOD:
1888 Press Release PR5
Advertising: quite a lot
Links: not working

PR Inside PR4
Advertising: several
Links: work

Pitch Engine PR5
Advertising : None
Links: not work

Press Box UK PR5
Advertising: several
Links: not work

I-Newswire PR3
Advertising: Minimal presence
No longer found by Google search
Links: work

THE OK
Free Press Releases (UK) PR0
Retrieval: difficult
Advertising: several
Links: work

BusinessPortal24.com PR0
Advertising: No
Links: not work

THE DISAPPEARING PRESS RELEASES:
These websites had our press release on their website, but now the page has disappeared.

Click Press PR5
Press Method PR4
24-7 Press Release PR4
PRFree PR4

THE EVALUATORS
Only if your PR is good or interesting enough, then it will be published (ours wasn’t):
NPR PR9
Beta News PR7
Seen the high PageRankings of these websites, you have all the good reasons to get published on them.

THE NOT PUBLISHED:
For an unclear reason, the press release didn’t got published on these websites.
OpenPR PR5
Freshnews PR5

The evaluation:

In total the effort generated about 164 to172 links on Google, a slight decrease from about 195 in mid-December.

The story wasn’t picked up by any real blog or journalist as it wasn’t that important.
Still it appeared on several news aggregation sites.
Getting on Google Reader and Digg is a major plus thanks to The Open Press.

On the website we retrieved a minimal number of visitors that had clicked on the links in the press release on the syndicating websites.
However LEADSExplorer had a slight increase in visitors using ‘Direct Hits’: entering www.LEADSExplorer.com directly into their browser. Of course we can’t prove the source of their action.

The questions are:
- How much better does a paid Press Release syndication score?
- Will any journalist pay attention to these free Press Releases?
- Do journalists and bloggers only pick up stories from paid syndications?

What is your experience with paid Press Release syndications?

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The world has become a village thanks to Twitter – News power change

Towers for news

TowerCenturies ago in Europe merchants build towers to lookout for ships to arrive on the river to the harbor. Upon this knowledge they could prepare and act.
The number of people informed was limited.
The communication model was 1 tot 1.

Newspapers

Two centuries ago newspapers could spread the news with a delay of a day.
The number of people informed was relatively large: those who could read and afford a newspaper.
The communication model was from a limited number of sources to a large audience: thus very controllable and censurable.

Telex

A century ago the telex could bring you news instantly to your office.
Having this knowledge they could speculate or arrange before others could.
As telex was expensive, the number of informed people was small, but they had the advantage of immediate information delivery over long distances.
Again the communication model was 1 to 1 as there was a high price to pay for the high speed, which has an economic value.

Telephone

Then telephone could bring the news even quicker as there was no need for coding and decoding the message, decreasing the cost of news delivery and no knowledge to operate (make a call).
The communication model was 1 to 1. Due to the popularity the operating cost decreased significantly.

Broadcasting

News
First there was radio and later TV, both broadcasting to millions of people instantly.
Thus the competitive advantage of other information carriers was lost: newspapers needed to rethink their business.
Still the number of sources was limited and the distribution of information was still expensive, but was affordable by the large audience and was sponsored by advertising.
The number of sources was rather limited, but audience was massive (millions).

The Internet

The Internet allowed access to a wide range of sources of information and news almost without boundaries.
At first the established news agencies started to distribute their content over the Internet.
A few years into the Internet age as both the cost of access and the cost of publishing on the internet decreased, individual bloggers started to distribute news, information and their views too.
This changed the information from a limited number of sources into multiple sources distributing information to different smaller audiences.
The established news agencies couldn’t compete or control anymore.

Mobile phones

Nowadays everyone in business has a mobile telephone allowing staying updated everywhere.
Thus people can stay up-to-date anywhere in the world with news from anywhere.
Again this is a 1 to 1 communication model with the advantage that both parties don’t need to be in a fixed location.
A smart phone is even better as it can receive the news from a range of selected sources thus not limited to a 1 to 1 communication model.

Mobile Micro Blogging

Micro bloggingMobile micro blogging has changed the distribution of information: anyone can send out a message by texting (sms) or from the Internet to a central aggregator (like Twitter, Plurk or Jaiku), which can be followed by many from anywhere.
This has become a system of multiple sources aggregated and distributed to multiple sources. Operating at a fairly low and affordable price or even free!

That is why this Mobile Micro Blogging is so unique and very disruptive.
Example: the Twitter messages about the terrorist attack in Mumbai

The world has become a village

As around 80% of the world population is covered by mobile networks and about 4 billion mobile phones are in use, the majority of people have access to mobile phones.
Most of these mobile phones (75%) can send an SMS (texting) allowing sending a message to an aggregator.
Hence the world has become a village where anyone can distribute information to the masses at a low cost: the cost of sending a sms (texting).

This fast mobile one-person-to-many broadcast communication has become a problem for companies, leaders and governments as there are no more barriers.

Let’s hope the connection between all people and cultures brings peace and will keep peace in the world as it will be very difficult to keep anything secret or not being broadcasted.

Everybody can own and know the news and it is no longer a priviledge for a selective group of people.
The power of news has changed definitely.
Will you be able to use it for your business?

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The 15 Industries you could sell to in the 2009 recession year

The recession is bad for most BtoB businesses, however some industries will prosper thanks to the recession: Yin Yang. These are the industries you should favor to sell to.Yin Yang
If you can generate leads from these recession proof industries, it is more likely to close sales and to have customers that actually will pay your invoices.

Thus knowing what industries or businesses will flourish and grow, and thus have demands and needs, is interesting to know for you in Sales.
Spending more time and focus on these industries will eventually bring more revenue and profit for you and your company.

1. Law firms
Many companies will file for Chapter 11, thus in order to work out all these bankruptcies law firms will have more work and revenue.

As the shares prices on the stock market are many times lower than one year ago, the decreased market capitalizations of many companies have made them attractive to be acquired. Thus many acquisitions are to be expected, which all need due diligence providing work for law firms.

2. Repair and maintenance companies
As companies will be investing less in new equipment and appliances, the need to repair and maintain appliances in the offices and on the work floor will increase.
Thus repair and maintenance enterprises will increase their business.

3. Software as a service – web services – cloud computing companies
Instead of investing in software and setting up a server to run the software, most solutions for businesses are now available on the Internet as a web service, which is also called cloud computing.
The advantages are:
- The lack of any investment
- The pay as you go pricing
- The possibility to stop the service at any one time.
Here is a list of 270+ tools for running a business online in order to give you an idea.

4. Alternative energy companies
Alternative energy businesses will get more interest as there is a tendency from governments to increase the alternative energy solutions by subsidizing the research and development as well as the investments for installing these alternative energies in homes and factories.

5. Infrastructure and major building companies
In order to keep people at work, governments will spend money on large infrastructures, public buildings and other public works.
These companies will employ many people and thus will have demands.

6. The equipment suppliers for infrastructure and major building companies
In order to build and construct infrastructures and public buildings equipment is required.
The companies supplying the tools, machines and appliances for these works will have good revenue.

7. Internet infrastructure companies
President Obama has the ambitious plan to improve the Internet infrastructure in the US.
This will increase sales for companies in markets like broadband chips, broadband appliances, optical fibers, Wifi, …

8. Market research
When the economy is growing, developing, marketing and selling a product or solution that fails will not be life threatening for the company.
In case of a recession, developing and marketing a product or solution that fails, the company will be hit harder.
Thus the increased need to have a market research, before starting the development investments.
There should be an increase in market research in these uncertain times as companies don’t want to launch the wrong product on the market.

9. Consulting companies
As always when markets go down, business goes down too, then companies will call upon consultants to solve their problems.
Even though the board of directors, upper management and middle management all know the solution or remedy, it is easier to have a third party to paint the picture and tell the bad story.
That’s where consultants fit in. Hence the expected rise of revenue for the consulting companies.

10. Internet advertising companies
The most efficient marketing tools are using the Internet for advertising and branding.
Thus companies providing services and systems related to Internet advertising will generate more business.

11. Web design and website development
As companies will be spending less on travel, lodging for visiting trade shows and conferences, companies will still require finding leads and new customers.
The Internet presence of a company will become even more important.

12. Home entertainment companies
In all previous recessions people have been spending even more on entertainment.
As travel and lodging will be expensive, going theaters or cinemas will cost too much and a gambling trip to Las Vegas even more, thus the entertainment will be at home.
Like video games and other home entertainment, in most cases using an online connection.
Even online lotteries and gaming could benefit from the recession.

13. Discount retailers
People will care less about brands but more about pricing: getting the most at the least price.
Hence discount retailers are likely to increase their revenue and their demand for products and services.

14. Incasso – Debt collectors
Many companies and traders will be delaying their payments, while at the same time the suppliers and vendors will be in need for money.
Incasso and debt collector agencies will emerge again.

15. Virtual server remote disaster recovery/backup services
The trend for servers is towards virtualization.
Once the company has switched over to virtualization, it becomes much easier to move or sync your servers to an off-site datacenter.

A business proposition for lead generation and selling to these industries

In order for you to sell better, try to picture how companies in these industries could use or benefit from your products, solutions or services.
Write a business proposition with the benefits and advantages or draft a business plan for every industry that could benefit from your offerings.
Generate leads by addressing companies in these recession proof industries in order to become yourself successful during this recession.

Help completing the list

As it is difficult to predict the real magnitude and the effect of a recession, thus there will be probably other industries not on this list, that will see their revenue and profit grow.
Please do make suggestions if you know other industries that will benefit from this recession.

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Engago Technologies provides a B2B web service for marketing and sales.
 

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