Product

Be clear about what your business offers and what products/services it sells. Conduct market research to establish if there are enough potential customers in your market for your goods or services. How will you find these customers? Why will they buy from you? How will you keep selling more to those customers? Market research can help you answer these questions.

You can carry our research yourself, employ others to do it for you or consider seeing what business organisations like Business Link, Chamber of Commerce and Professional Institutions can offer.

It is also a good idea to identify your competition and establish why they have grown and been successful.

The founder of 1on1 Sales once worked for a hotel that could not work out why its sales were not growing. The basic problem was that the owners did not appreciate what the expectations of their market really were and so were not able to meet them. By carrying out some simple and effective research (and some other changes) their sales grew 40%. If you are a larger business then contact specialist marketing companies as they employ analysts who will know the vertical market you are in very well. Alternatively you might consider the big Consultancy firms as they have Partners who specialise in global trends and markets. Consider some basic questions which you could ask potential customers:

? Are they looking for your product offering?

? Do they like the product or service you're going to offer?

? How much will they pay for your product?

? Are there any concerns they have

? Over what timeframes will they buy the product

? How many do they buy or will they buy

? What improvements could they suggest which will make it more attractive?

So the product must give the value and benefits that your customers want and in general not what you think they should have. You might like to read about the product life cycle as products go through phases of development, growth, maturity, saturation and decline. Numerous articles are on the Internet for this subject.

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Price

Getting your price right should not be an issue if you have really understood youre offer, how it is perceived in the market and thought about structuring pricing packages or tiered pricing which might give more appeal to a wider audience. Consider buying a golf club that has the latest technology, looks great, feels great and is readily available from stock at 20% more than most other similar clubs. You try it out and the ball goes 10 yards further in a pretty straight line. You are going to buy it even though it?s expensive.

Price is not usually the issue for many businesses its about the experience, value for money and the benefits delivered over time. Both personal and business buyers tend to see price as a quality indicator. A specialist oil company failed to sell its oil as its price was too low. It re-packaged the offering to make it a special formula and raised the priced. It sold much better.

A product will only be worth what someone pays for it. Your price must return a profit and the price you set will determine to a large extent the quality expectations. You should note that existing customers are generally less price sensitive than new customers. Don?t get carried away with price though as if you ask an economist about price they may say: Demand will fall as price increases Supply will rise as price increases

Having said the above there is a key question to consider about price. What are you trying to achieve for your business in the next 6, 12, 24 and 36 months because it may be you want to sell the business and this is a subject of its own when it comes to price. Make sure you get advice on pricing if you are not sure. Clearly you need to make a profit but you also might need to grow market share and possible enter new markets. There are just too many variables to consider in a general way so pricing should be structured around your business and your markets along with making a profit and achieving your short, medium and longer term objectives.

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Place

There are two important questions: 1/ Is it vital to deal direct with the customer? 2/ If not what is the best method of providing the product or services at a place where the customer wants to buy it?

If you are dealing directly then do not rule out the options of gaining business through other channels. Let?s go back to a hotel example. Some years ago the individual hotel would do all its own marketing to ensure its rooms were full. Today it still makes sense to do specific marketing but not to utilise the many Internet options would be limiting the options. The trick is not to fall into the swim of the thousands of other hotels also listed on the Internet and get lost in the woods for the trees. It is also important to carry out your own marketing otherwise all objective contact will be lost. If you are a civil engineering company building hydro electric power stations then it would make sense to deal direct with your client. If you are selling clothes, chocolate or pens then selling indirectly would probably make sense. If you use a middleperson (agents, wholesalers etc.) then make sure you look at the distribution system across the chain. It could be complex and constantly changing. The present channels are not necessarily the ones to use for tomorrow so be on the lookout for changing situations.

You will need to choose your place to sell by considering the size and character of your market, the type of product, where it will be made and the capability of the producer, what channels to use and how the distribution, packaging and other costs relate to you. Some other methods are via retail outlets, through one-to-one meetings between sales staff and customers, or by mail order, direct mail and the internet. You can also sell wholesale to other retailers, or via exhibitions and fairs. Which options you pick will depend on the nature and price of your product, and the number and profile of your customers. Direct methods tend to produce greater profits, as they don't have to be shared with intermediaries in the distribution chain but products can establish credibility more quickly by retailing through well-known outlets.

It is best to get a balance between the distribution method most suited to your product or service, the resources you have available and what your competitors do. How you get your product or service to your customer can be your chance to innovate. Companies that make it big often do so by introducing a new method of selling or delivering a product or service so it will pay to consider this aspect of your marketing strategy carefully. You may like to think of a computer company that decided not to sell via existing channels but only to sell direct to end users and they have not done too badly.

There are many studies that show that the delivery performance and ease of purchase is a key factor when choosing to buy. The product must be in the right place but this alone will not maximise your sales.

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Promotion

This is all about making potential customers aware of your product in the most effective and cost-efficient manner possible. Here are some options:

? Indirect approaches, such as Public Relations can be a better way of making an impact than blind advertising. Coverage in the kinds of publications your customers read is worth a great deal, so why not approach journals, newspapers and magazines. Most of these are keen to hear good stories if you make it easy for them by supplying as much good quality and relevant materials like good copy, photographs, testimonials within a press release. Don't underestimate the effectiveness of small-scale advertising in local papers, bulletin boards, and directories such as the Yellow Pages. Also consider direct mail, telesales and the internet to win new customers.

Good planning and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve should help you get the right 'promotional mix' of advertising, direct marketing and public relations. You can learn a lot from looking at how leading players handled promotion in their early days, but don't just copy other people. Being different may be the secret of your success. Today some of the most effective ways to promote the business are using the plethora of options on the Internet. This is a subject in its own right but consider using the advertising features on the major search engines along with internet adverts in community publications.

The table below is subjective but hopefully it might help give clarity to the benefits of some of the methods.

	High Merit	Quick	Expensive	Feedback
Recommendation	YES	NO	NO	NO
Personal selling	YES	NO	YES	YES
Promotions	NO	YES	NO	YES
Advertising	NO	YES	YES	NO
Public Relations	YES	NO	NO	NO
Seminars	YES	NO	NO	YES

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People

People are any business's biggest asset. Your staff's attitude to customers and the service they provide has a major impact on the way your business is perceived. Many businesses spend millions on promotional activities, such as public relations and advertising, but fail to get customer service right. Remember: it costs between three and ten times as much to replace customers who have gone to a competitor than to keep them. The best way to retain customers is to give them what they want and need in a way that is better than your competitors. It is easy to make the mistake of lowering your prices to win customers.

Most customers value personal and excellent service and are willing to pay for it. Measuring customer satisfaction levels and conducting research on an ongoing basis will help you to keep in touch with what your customers want from you and how those needs are changing. Doing this can be as simple as sending out regular questionnaires to customers, to employing polling organisations and buying sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) software systems.

Welcome complaints - record them and analyse them to see how you can make improvements. A customer making a complaint is telling you that they want to stay with you, but something is wrong. You can act on this information and keep them. Once you have put things right they will tell others about what you have done and become ambassadors for your business. But don't rely on just being reactive. Be proactive by measuring customer satisfaction and try to give yourself some early warning if things start to go wrong. You can also invest in training, development and mentoring programmes to get good advice on how to give the very best customer service. Find out more about improving performance.

If you are building a brand then the value of it is very much about how your people treat your customers. So looking at how to improve their performance and expose them to the benchmark qualities that may reflect the pinnacle in your industry may well be a good thing. This is particularly true of after sales services that you may offer as if this is flawless then you will go a long way in keeping your customers and reducing churn.

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Process

The way you execute your products and services can have an impact on the way you are perceived. Smart businesses set out processes and set themselves targets to ensure a high quality of service to customers. If you do not set targets then how will your staff know what to achieve and how will you reward them based on their own performance? Your processes should do more than make life easier for you - they must be set up to meet the needs of your customers.

Try putting yourself in the shoes of your customers or prospective customers. How would they like you to deal with them? For instance, what kind of after-sales service have you set up? If someone places an order, do you keep your customer informed of expected delivery times? Do you have procedures in place to deal with any delays? If you, or one of your staff promises to call a customer, do they always do it? Do you have set timescales for the time taken to respond to inquiries?

And, when things go wrong, are you able to deal with complaints and act on them? Often computer software and outsourcing some of your activities can help you keep on top of things - but its important to set high standards and stick to them. Remember that if you are the business figurehead then how you deal with your customers (your staff) will directly influence how they feel and think to their customers so make time for them. It should be evident that customers don?t really care too much about how or what your systems and processes are so long as it works for them. People do not like waiting or having limited information about a situation or offering and interaction in a timely manner is usually praised.

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Physical

During the 1990?s the founder of 1on1 Sales had the opportunity to meet with hundreds of Managing Directors, Chairmen and Executives from small medium and large corporate firms. Having experienced the feeling you receive when walking around the foyer, their offices, their training facilities, executive meeting rooms etc. it?s interesting that an image is built up after a few seconds of being in these rooms of the type of company you are dealing with.

The look of a reception area, leaflet, or letterhead can often be the first point of contact a prospective customer has with your business. It can also help shape their overall impression of your organisation. How your employees dress and their body and actual language all make an impression. The best employers have a policy of clear desks where paperwork, files, books and the like are not left on the floor overnight and when you are not at your desk for prolonged periods. To have documents littered all over the cabinets on the window sills etc. is not good. You can?t work this way and expect not to lose some important documents not to mention the security aspects. If a potential prospect visited your offices and saw a mess then would they be impressed?

A service (and some products) cannot be evaluated before they are delivered so naturally it helps if prospects can feel more assured about the purchase. Hence testimonials, case studies, product examples, product viewings all might help your case. So its not all about the state of the office but being supported as well to reduce the fears of the unknown.

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Summary

This document aims to have provided a simple and helpful snapshot of some of the important aspects of the marketing mix. It should be clear that just doing one thing without thought for how the overall mix should come together will not maximise your marketing and therefore your selling ability. It is important to clearly understand what the strategy is for the business and what steps to take that will realise your profits not only this year but in the future as well. Marketing and Sales are closely linked and they should be considered and planned together. Marketing and Sales are about making the future happen and it should be fun and exciting.

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