Pay-as-you-go for basic services too!

As Michael O’Leary has claimed Ryanair will charge for the toilets as soon as it can,
this has spurred imagination:

Is charging for a basic need a new form of Freemium?
You pay for the basic service (the transport) and for every additional service another payment is required.

Services you took for granted as inclusive are no longer free.

Would your customers pay for every additional basic service?

Publicity stunt in order to Go Viral?

Or is this just another publicity stunt from Michael O’Leary in order to get attention from the media?

Just like Sir Richard Branson was dressed like a drag queen in order to get attention for the inauguration of the transatlantic route to Boston.
Both events received plenty of media attention.

Much cheaper than advertising (they are both operating on a small budget) and probably longer lasting too.

Moreover this blog post adds to their media attention too! (They should pay us)

Thus should we dress up as Darth Father, Yoda, Chewbacca and R2D2 making bold statements (“Let the Lead Force be with You”) in order to get any attention for our lead generation and customer retention service?

Change is the only constant in life. All things change all of the time. Especially during and after a recession changes happen fast in life and business.
Thus also in the methods of selling and the reasons for buying are changing.

Selling the perceived benefits

Since ever you have been selling the tangible and intangible benefits successfully.
Every decision from your customer comes with a risk.

In times of prosperity people like to take risks in order to gamble on the good outcome. They are eager to get the gains.
These are the perceived benefits.

Selling the perceived risk avoidance

In times of recession or depression people want to avoid all possible risks.
Risk avoidance is the key for selling during a recession.
Thus instead of selling benefits, you need to sell:
- The risk avoidance that your product or solutions have.
- The losses that could incur when not buying your product or services.
These are the perceived risk that can be avoided.

The decision obstacle: doing nothing

The biggest obstacle to overcome in a recession is the non-decision.
People just avoid taking any decision as they can be held responsible for taking the risk (and get fired).

Thus you need to make sure to present the possible risks threatening enough to make them decide to decide. The risks have to be high enough in favor of your products or solutions.

As Erica Jong said:
~ And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. ~

What are the risk avoidances that your products or solutions inherently bring?
In our LEADSExplorer case: missing the most lead opportunities as you don’t know the companies visiting your website.

What are the losses that could incur when they don’t buy your product?
In our case: Higher lead generation and cold calling costs as your leads are already on your website.

How good are your products, services or solutions for avoiding risks?

The quote is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which can be translated as “In the limitation the master shows” or “Less is more”.

Recession matches with “Less is more”

In these times of economic crisis and recession (depression), we all will need to do with less: both as a consumer as in business.
Thus less consumption, less purchasing, less marketing, less cash, less credit.
Less expenses, less products, less services, less sales support, less commissions, lower margins.

However all will require more effort as you will need to bring the same performance in sales and marketing with less support.
Less support like: advertising, trade shows, leaflets, presentations, web seminars.
Same performance: keep the sales coming.
Everything is on a shoestring, except your sales quotas.

As you have to adapt to the change created by the change in both sales and marketing, you should show your “Mastership” for generating leads and sales by using your best capabilities:
- The most cost effective marketing methods.
- The best sales techniques – your best sales skills

Therefore you will need to be inventive and innovative:

In Marketing:

Instead of expensive advertising or emailing campaigns and expensive trade shows or conferences, you will have to use the assets that the company has available at a marginal increase of costs:
like using the website for lead generation more effectively.

In Sales:

Instead of pursuing all possible leads, you should qualify your leads even better as following up leads costs money. The more efficient your lead qualification, the lower the costs of your sales process.

Although lead generation is very opportunistic, improving on your customer retention could be more effective for generating more sales.

Sales and Marketing are all under a tight budget, thus you need to be inventive or innovative by embracing new solutions.

Will you be able to perform the same in Sales and Marketing with less (on a shoestring)?
This is when and where your Mastership will show in both your skills and your innovation.

Timeline of Information Systems

If IBM mainframes were the Stone Age of computing: centralized processing, stored and controlled data
Then:
- Microsoft PC software was The Dark Ages: the personal computer with installed software.
- Google is the (near) Past: Internet search of what has happened: the history – what has been registered.
- Twitter is the Current: micro blogging – real-time reporting what’s happening right now.
- The Semantic Web should know what you want.

Timeline of Marketing

Marketing has always used the available technologies for lead generation and customer acquisition.

In the Stone Age of computing:
- Mass marketing campaigns:
   Advertising was using print and broadcast media. The channels were under control.
- Leads were generated by letter or telephone when Supply Chain Management ruled.

In the Dark Ages of (personal) computing:
- Marketing becomes more personal:
   People were able to produce their own printed marketing documents enabling direct mailings.
- Leads came by fax, telephone or call centers: outbound marketing using a SFA system.

In the (near) Past of the Internet:
- Personalized or segmented mass marketing
   Contextual online advertising
- Leads were generated using email: automated outbound marketing with a CRM.

In the Current of real-time messaging:
- Marketing is no longer in complete control
   Advertising has become less effective as people on social networks become the influencers.
- Leads should be generated from website: Behavioral targeting.

In the Future of always connected:
- Marketing: the future is unpredictable
   Will there still be advertising?
- Leads by Vendor Relationship Management instead of using a CRM?

The future is not Google-able.
The future will surpass the real-time reporting of the current Twitter.
The future will have you connected all the time.
The future will be the semantic web.

Inbound Marketing for the current lead generation and customer acquisition

In the current era of Twitter:
Marketing, advertising and lead generation need to adapt to the real-time events that people expect.

Inbound marketing:
People will find and visit your website from all sources as they require on demand information.
Knowing who visits your website in order to present the most appropriate offering for better lead generation and customer acquisition.

Reaching decision makers in companies

The decision makers of companies in some market niches are difficult to reach.
As an example: small conventional businesses that have been in business since long.
They have:
- Their ongoing business since long.
- No direct or immediate reason for change.

As long as there are no new entrants in their market that challenges them, it will be difficult to create interest for your new products or solutions.

Trusted party

Instead of addressing these entrepreneurs and founders directly, it might be easier to use their trusted parties.

a) The accountant
All these smaller businesses have an external (chartered) accountant for keeping the books and to make the year-end financial statement. This is their trusted party.
The accountant will warn for dangers or problems ahead: from financial, to tax to financial problems.
The advice of the accountant is trustworthy.
Thus influencing the accountant could be the key in your marketing.

b) The computer dealer
The same trusted party label could apply for the local computer dealer that installs and maintains the network and remote access for small businesses. These people have certainly influence on their customers as they too deliver an important service for the businessman.

If you can reach out to their trusted party and create interest you stand a chance of generating interest for your products or solutions.
The trusted party will offer advice to their customers if they see a benefit for themselves or feel they need to help the entrepreneur-client with the survival or growth of the company. In both cases: a direct benefit for the trusted party.

Convincing the trusted party

Now the problem has moved to addressing and influencing the trusted party:
- The best is if one of his customers actually uses your products or solutions and sees the benefit.
- In case the legislation changes, informing the accountants or computer dealers that your solutions will solve the problems created by the changes.
- Sell the revenue or profit benefit for the trusted party involved.
- In all other cases, you need to come up with a compelling reason to get the attention from the trusted party.

Have you been selling using a trusted party of your customer?
Who was their trusted party?

Online presentation reasons

Normally you create a presentation with the sole purpose to inform you customers or leads about your solutions.
However the purpose of having a presentation on the Internet is multiple:
- On the company website:
   a) Informative for the potential customer.
   b) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as visual media enhances the search results.

- On document aggregators:
   a) To attract people from a different source
   b) SEO: additional references of company or product names.

There are several document aggregators that allow you to present your presentations or pdf files online:
- Slideshare
- Scribd
- Authorstream

Although the market leader is Scribd, it doesn’t hurt to have the same presentation on the other sites too, as different people can find your presentation on these sites, which can generate interest in your offering.
Thus presentations on document aggregators are low cost lead generation tools.

Online presentations for SEO

Apparently the search engines seem to rate an embedded presentation on your company website higher than plain text.

The main interest of having a presentation on these presentation websites has several benefits for SEO:
- The title and tags get indexed quite fast by the search engines
- The links appear high in the search results: high SERP (Search Engine Result Page)

Tricks for improving SEO

- Register as username your company name or product name: this creates additional references on the Internet.
- The file name of the presentation should consist of your company or product name and the relevant keywords.
- Make sure the url generated contains the product name and the keywords – if not: delete and redo.
- If the presentation is present in different pages of your website use different sources to embed from in order to avoid duplicate content.

Presentation content

A few words: As you are addressing many different people, you need to have a presentation that explains in a few words your product or solution.
Almost minimalist: no details – sell the concept.
Short: people don’t want to spend too much time on something they don’t know.
Important: the presentation needs to contain a link to your company or product website.
Download: disable download for multiple reasons (competitors)

LEADSExplorer Lead Generation Customer Retention

What are your experiences with on-line presentations?