You have a prospective customer make contact and enquire about your services or products and they go away with all the detail you can supply them with.  Let them take the information but don’t forget to follow up.  A report by Sales and Marketing magazine suggests that 80% of  people who request information progress to purchasing the product or services within the year, but not from the company where they initially enquired.

Many people like to go away for a time and continue with a little research, to see things from another point of view, another customer’s experience; consider the costs and reliability or productivity. Perhaps their enquiry was for a future purchase and although the sale wasn’t achieved in the first instance , contact at a later date may result in a sale. Don’t be afraid to follow up enquiries, to see if there are any questions that have arisen from their research and see if there are any ways you can help them decide on their purchase. In general, surveys suggest at least five contacts with a prospect can take place before they commit to a purchase.

People buy from people they trust, so nurture and build a relationship with them so you are uppermost in their minds when they make the decision to invest. Show that you are a valuable resource and and expert in your field, remind them of what you do and follow up in different ways. There is no need to bombard with sales pitch but build a relationship that answers all their questions and keeps you uppermost in their minds. Emphasise different aspects of your product or service, supplying other advantages of investing in your product/service.

Let them know of events that may help with issues they may have that are delaying their decision to buy.  If you are speaking at an event, a sponsor or organiser invite them to the occasion.

If you discover articles that have been written about your product or service, email them the item or send a link. Likewise, if you have written an article about it, send this and a link too.

New things happening in your industry? – send them the announcement about the development. If you produce a blog or newsletter, send them copy and ask them to subscribe so they are kept up-to-date.

If you have a video of helpful tips, how to use your product, or client success stories send a link for them to review. If you have a free tele-class or webinar about your product or service invite them along.

Be consistent in your follow up and your marketing activities will produce results. Contact those that have send ‘no’ in the past, you will be surprised at the response.

Again, it’s making sure your name is the one that springs to mind when they next consider buying.

Using a sales matrix with your existing customers buying history may help you identify where you can increase your sales. Don’t forget that the customers you have had in the past, know your products and may not realise all of the products or services that you can supply.  As existing  customers, they know the value of your product or service having bought from you before. Trust has been established by supplying a superlative product or service.

Create your own sales matrix by simply placing you products or services in columns then place your customers in the rows. Tick products sold and to whom, (tick or colour cell) you can then easily see what your customers have bought and which others in the range you can sell to them. The blank cells are your  opportunities to sell more and increase your profits.

For more information, email us, or telephone Tamara on 0203 4688594.

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Engaging your audience is a large part of staging a virtual event.

Let your audience determine your content. Make your content interesting and cover popular topics. Find out what your audience likes to do both on and off line. Produce your event so that the content is familiar and comfortable to them.

Promotion

Once everything is in place, event planned, sponsors on board, your twelve week time line gives you plenty of time to publicise your event.

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Your plan needs to consist of everything you want to happen within your virtual event:

Although they are not so time consuming as their physical counterparts, you will still need time to put together the tools and technology to produce a professional virtual event. Research providers and communicate your requirements, working closely with them to ensure correct amounts of resources are available, so that things run smoothly.

With larger productions, you may need to hire a consultant to examine and advise on the look and feel of your presentation to ensure your information is transmitted effectively.

Check out previous events, ones that have worked and maybe ones that haven’t so you can avoid their shortcomings and modify to your advantage.

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Over the next six weeks, the blog posts will be about virtual events, how they compare with physical events and the advantages of going virtual. The expense of hosting a real time event can now be reduced by using the varied media now available on line. Not only are costs reduced but all the media used can be archived and re-purposed.

Although the events still require time to organise, 12 weeks (as proposed by ON24), it can be far less time consuming than organising a physical event. Removing the need to travel (and accommodation) your audiences expenses will be less. They will be ‘fresh’ for your virtual event and ready to utilise the knowledge acquired the instant the event has finished. Sales staff can immediately implement all the latest information about your products.

If you still have the need for a physical event the ability to integrate some virtual aspects into it can be a benefit, creating a hybrid event. The combination of both types opens the event to a world wide audience, one that is not constrained by distance or time.

Success is dependent on good planning and the following blogs give you some tips on how to plan, ideas for content and which is the right event for you and your audience, whether they are customers, employees or for training programmes. Going virtual provides an easily used medium for all of these needs. The collection of genuine customer/audience data (emails,names and locality)properly managed in a CRM, allows you to continue marketing to them and target future events/product launch.

In the next few blogs, I hope that you find a few items that help you decide about virtual events or offer you a few ideas that you hadn’t realised were possible.

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Get over the myth that you have no time for blogging. Make time for the things that matter and as blogging is a marketing tool for your business, making the time for blogging matters.

A business blog is the best tool for increasing your internet visibility and can be used in conjunction with other social media platforms to disseminate your words. Once your content is online you can leverage it in many ways to work for you 24 hours a day and on multiple platforms.

Create a calendar:

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