Aaron Hoos

The Question:

Nawal Kumar Roongta asked: “What innovative ideas, offers and sales techniques for selling diamonds and jewelry using Internet?”

[Visit Nawal Kumar Roongta's LinkedIn profile here]

Aaron’s Answer:
I worked with a client on exactly this problem just a couple of years ago. We found that lots of diamond/jewelry sites just showed the product. That’s okay but it can be hard to really experience what it was like to purchase and enjoy the jewelry.

To me, this seemed like a features vs. benefits issue and I thought about how to focus on the benefits (the enjoyment of the jewelry) instead of the features.

So I recommended that we create stories of people who enjoyed purchasing the jewelry. My client wanted to highlight the jewelry as a gifting idea so most of our stories centered around that, almost as if they were diary entries of people who had received the diamond or jewelry as a gift.

This gave us the following advantages:

• We could discuss the features but bring it back to the benefits (i.e., declaration of love, etc.)
• We could “recommend” gift-giving occasions that buyers might or might not have considered
• We could create short but compelling stories which are more likely to be read than marketing content

[Visit my LinkedIn profile]

The Question:

Andrew asked “What Social Networks Work Best For You?

What Social Networks Work Best For You?

1. What social media (your own blogs, forums, wiki’s, etc) or social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Ecademy, Plaxo, Twitter, YouTube, etc) do you use for business purposes?

2. Out of all the available networks and media which ones do you value as the best for you? Explain.

3. Have you generated new paying customers, increased revenue from existing customer or strategic alliances as a result of your social media activities? Please explain.”

[Visit Andrew's LinkedIn profile]
Aaron’s Answer:
1. I use LinkedIn, Twitter, and my own blog as the primary social media/social marketing channels (although I try to stay stay on top of the other popular ones for clients who prefer to use those).

2. Of the 3 I’ve mentioned, I value each one equally, but for different reasons:
* On LinkedIn, I’ve been able to connect with other professionals. I use LinkedIn for strategic alliances, to cement my relationship with new and existing clients, and as my “go-to” place for expertise in specific areas of business.
* On Twitter, I tend to use it less as a microblog (although I do use it as such), but prefer to use Twitter Search as a real time crowd-sourced search engine; as well, I use the Twitter-based networking platform Business Lunch Club (http://businesslunchclub.com), which turns Twitter into a place where professionals can network while they’re at their desks.
* And my blog is my primary business site.

3. I have indeed generated new paying customers, increased revenue from existing customers, AND strategic alliances because of social media. But what I’ve found is that none of my marketing efforts exist in a vacuum — people find me through one marketing channel, look me up on Twitter, then read my blog, then maybe find me on LinkedIn. And these places then help me to keep in contact with prospects/clients/partners over the course of our professional relationship.

-Aaron
http://aaronhoos.com

[Visit my LinkedIn profile]

The Question:

Wilame Lima asked: “Why is it so hard to follow a strategy? While some companies don’t have prepared professionals or sectors to effectively plan their activities, others do not have this kind of problem. However, even for those, strategic planning becomes ineffective, this because of internal culture, lack of acceptation of the directors or lack of preparation of managers and employees. In your opinion, how to surpass (or to minimize) the impact of the “human factor” in the implementation of the strategic planning of the company/sectors? Can a good plan to surpass a problematic organizational culture?”
[Visit Wilame Lima's LinkedIn profile]

Aaron’s Answer:

There have been some really good answers so far. I would echo a lot of the ideas, especially regarding the importance of focus.

In my experience, there a few ways to help implement strategy effectively:

* Get early stage buy-in from people. Don’t just tell them that the strategy has changed. This is the “top-down” approach and employees feel like it’s being rammed down their throats. They might also feel like their jobs are in jeopardy. Instead, tell them much earlier that you’re exploring changes to help them (i.e, help them do their jobs better or help them make more money, etc.). Implementing strategy is essentially a sales job: You need to sell it to your people in the same way you’d sell a product to a customer: Focus on the benefits to the employee first and then to the company second.

* Communicate often. Walk people through the process. Employees often resist change because there’s the unspoken threat that their jobs are in danger or the predictability of their work will vanish. Keep them informed. Offer lots of training. Get a champion in each department to spearhead the change. Keep the communication positive. I’ve seen lots of strategy changes that were implemented for negative reasons and it seemed like bosses were “turning the screws” on the employees.

* If the strategy is important to the company, tie incentives and pay structure to it. Obviously a strategy like “we’re going to use instant messaging instead of email for internal communications” isn’t what I’m talking about. Instead, I mean something like “We’re going to increase our insurance-industry business so any employee who can bring in an insurance lead will get a bonus, and if that company signs with us, our employee will get a larger bonus”, etc.
Good luck!

-Aaron Hoos
http://aaronhoos.com

[Visit my LinkedIn profile]

The Question:

Alex Badinici, an AdSense Account Manager at Google Ireland asked a question on LinkedIn: “Do you have any interesting materials/experiences on “Consultative Sales” to share with me?”

[Visit Alex Badinici's LinkedIn profile]

Aaron’s Answer:

Alex,

Based on some of my experiences, I would recommend the following:

* Become an expert in the industry you’re serving. Read widely from that industry and reference relevant articles from credible sources. With every clients, I subscribe to a set of RSS feeds relevant to them to automatically generate reading material.

* Join industry associations that your clients participate in. This gives you a common point to talk about with them and you get your face in front of their peers. I haven’t done this lately (for a number of reasons) but it has worked well in the past.

* Consultative sales isn’t about “pitching” a product or service in response to a perceived need. It’s about making recommendations. There is a difference!

All the best,

Aaron Hoos
http://aaronhoos.com

[Visit my LinkedIn profile]