Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

Improve Customer Retention Get Customers To Pay on Time

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Building relationships with customers and closing deals is critical for sales success. In business, customer acquisition and customer retention are crucial to generating revenue. It is cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones.

Once a sale is made, it is tempting for sales reps to move on to the next customer.

However, the sale is not complete when the customer signs the contract. Customers should pay their invoices on time to ensure the business has enough cash to operate and potentially turn a profit.

What on time means is dependent on a company payment policy. Customers can have payment terms raining from C.O.D, net 30, net 60, net 90, net 120, or longer. Some cycles can run for a year or longer. Certain companies offer financing options. Payment structures are structured based on the length of the sales cycle.

How can we make sure customers pay their invoices on time?

Here are six ways to keep customers and get them to pay their invoices on time.

  1. Build and nurture customer relationships.
  2. When the sale is complete, put all details in writing.
  3. Follow through with the implementation product or service post-sale.
  4. Check-in with your customer to make sure they are happy with their purchase. This can present an opportunity for upselling, cross-selling, repeat business, referrals, and testimonials.
  5. If the customer voices concerns or has an issue with a product or service, address it immediately.
  6. Make sure to honor any promises and warranties extended during the sales cycle.

If you follow these steps, you will get most customers to pay their invoices on time.

What do I do if a customer will not pay their invoice?

In large organizations, the accounts receivable manager will handle the customer by sending past-due notices and charging penalties. However, if Sales Reps work for a small company as I did, this will be the Sales Rep’s responsibility. Ideally, the Sales Rep should be able to handle customer issues because they have a relationship with the customer.

Sales Reps should call and  visit the customer. During the visit, Sales Reps need to try to solve the issue. Be polite. Never raise your voice or swear at a customer. The goal is to get paid while keeping the customer whenever.

As a result of implementing the strategies above, my receivables (open invoices) were the lowest in the company! This allowed me to earn more commissions, make more sales and develop great relationships with my customers.

It is important to note that Sales and Service across acquisition and retention are subdivided in larger organizations.

How have you improved customer retention and gotten your customers to pay on time?

Please share your thoughts with me.

Additional places to find my content and blog

WordPress: https://dangalante.me/

Tumblr: http://www.askdangalante.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/DanGalante

Medium https://medium.com/@DanGalante

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/trendsettingsm

Anchor https://anchor.fm/dangalante

About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference.

I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, and SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today; a blog that covers industry events and trends.

I’m seeking a full-time role in

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing,

Sales Enablement, Enablement, Sales, Account Management, Customer Success, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, and Recruitment Marketing.

Open on the title, industry, company, location, and level. Reach out on LinkedIn or at dan@dangalante.com to start a conversation.

Posted 83 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

10 Key Insights from Advertising Week 2019

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I covered Advertising Week in New York. Advertising Week is where the best minds of Marketing and Advertising meet to share and learn best practices.

Matt Scheckner Global CEO of Advertising Week shares his thoughts at the opening breakfast.

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There were great panels and workshops.

My key takeaways from Advertising Week 2019 were:

1. Brands need to better understand emotional intelligence and be able to apply it to their content creation. Other emotions besides happiness drive purchases. Spencer Gerrol the CEO of Spark Neuro shares insights from a biometrics study on how emotion in content affects brand value.

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Spencer also did a live demonstration showing how the brain responds to Ads in real-time.

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2. According to Gary Vaynerchuk, Marketing is becoming more like Sales in terms of being results-driven. Brands will eventually need to create up to 500 pieces of content per day to engage the ever-increasing buyer personas and customers’ tastes. Gary also shared the idea that LinkedIn is the best platform for organic reach.

3. Brands need to organize their organizations around the customer journey and experience. Philips SVP of Digital Marketing and E-commerce Blake Cahill shared how the company is organizing and transforming around the Customer Journey. He provided actionable steps companies can take to better serve customers.

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4. The funnel of today will look like a flywheel by 2030.

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Nikki Issac of Mircosoft shares Microsoft’s Research on Marketing and the Customer Journey. She also moderates a panel with Esteban Ribero of Performics.

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Brands need to use data and AI to better understand their customers. According to research conducted by Microsoft, only 20% of today’s marketers have a high customer experience quotient (CXQ). A high(CXQ) means that brands fully understand user intent to create their customer journey; improving their performance to increase customer engagement.

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Why should Brands be Customer-Centric? Brands that were Customer-Centric saw a 45% increase in ROI/ROAS.

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We will see the rise of the Chief Journey Officer or CJO.

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Where are you on the Journey?

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5. Brands need to understand the role of Social Media in Customer Journey and how it impacts customer buying habits and decisions.

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Businesses need to improve how they use Social Listening

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and Analytics tools to understand customer intent.

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A framework needs to define and address KPIs at each touch-point in the customer journey.

Why is this important?

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More Marketers believe Social Listening is important.

6. Brands need to apply design thinking to cultivating empathy for end-users, interpreting and framing problems they experience, creative solution generation, and continuous prototyping and testing. The goal is to provide creative solutions for the end-user.

7. Brands need to listen and understand the customers of tomorrow. It is not just about Gen Z but Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha will be more active on social issues and more open to challenging the status quo than Gen Z.

8. According to Samsung Ads, with the rise of the Connected TV, Brands will be able to track and measure the effectiveness of their TV ads, similar to online advertising. Targeted TV is of critical use for advertisers because TV is viewed on Mobile, Desktop, Native Smart TV and Display. Advertisers expect to be able to track customers across platforms while producing ROI/ROAS reports just like online advertising.

9. Televised sports will increase its presence in Television programming. Soon, Sports Betting will be Televised according to CEO Chris Ripley of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Eventually, gamblers will be able to view Sporting events and place bets in real-time over their Smart TV and/or connected devices. This will provide gamblers with great customer experience.

10. Any business can use technology and creativity to: build community, start and scale an eCommerce business, create content and campaigns that convert.

Facebook’s Mark D’Arcy, CCO and VP of Global Business Marketing showed how to do this using Facebook.

Mark also spoke on Facebook’s social initiative Boost with Facebook. Boost with Facebook helps break down socioeconomic barriers by offering people the chance to up-skill on everything from using Facebook to finding a job. Boost with Facebook is a combination of online learning and live workshops.

Advertising Week 2019 was a great event. I want to thank everyone that made the event possible. On a personal note, I want to thank Matt Scheckner the Global CEO of Advertising Week and the Sunshine Sachs Communications team for having me as their guest.

What did you learn from Advertising Week 2019?

Join the conversation.

Posted 264 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

The Reasons People use Marketing & The Challenges & Priorities of Marketers

I asked my LinkedIn audience If the Sales and Marketing function were merged and run by Sales, What would be your main focus? Why?

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As you can see, 68% of those surveyed said that increased lead generation and demand generation was a top priority. What this means is that people see Marketing as a vehicle to increase Sales and Revenue.

Marketing also serves as an Enablement for Sales Teams, Customer Success, support, and even employer branding. Many companies have created a dedicated enablement function. Companies sit employer branding and Recruitment Marketing in HR. However, there are still a lot of companies without dedicated enablement and employer branding functions.

Everyone looks to the marketing department. The lines between product, marketing, sales, and customer success are blurring. Marketers need to be able to serve different parts of the organization.

Marketers do traditional work of branding, advertising, market research, content creation, and enablement, but these tasks support the larger goal of increased Sales and Revenue. Marketers impact Sales by filling up the Sales pipeline, pre, and post-sale. In the end, Marketers need to make a business case to justify their existence.

Why do People use Marketing?

People use Marketing for different reasons and they have different sets of challenges concerning the Marketing they do. I conducted two surveys of my LinkedIn audience.

I asked the following:

1. What do you hope to gain from your marketing efforts?

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Based on the survey, most people want the marketing mix of brand awareness, leads, sales, and revenue in exchange for their marketing efforts.

2. What is your biggest marketing challenge? Why?

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Based on survey findings, 56 percent of people use Marketing for a mix of brand awareness, lead generation, and revenue. In terms of Marketing challenges, 70 percent said that Content Marketing was the biggest.

What should be the main priorities of Marketers? What do you hope to gain from your marketing? What is your biggest marketing challenge?

Share your thoughts.

Additional places to find my content and blog

WordPress: http://dangalante.me/

Tumblr: http://www.askdangalante.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/DanGalante

Medium https://medium.com/@DanGalante

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/trendsettingsm

Anchor https://anchor.fm/dangalante

About Me

I’m a Strategic Marketer with Field Sales, Sales Enablement, Content Creation, and, Classroom Teacher/Trainer skill-sets using Marketing to drive Sales/Growth.

As a Marketer, I’ve worked with Start-Ups, a Political Campaign, and a Digital Marketing Conference.

I’m certified in Inbound Marketing with classes in Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, SEO, SEM.

Before teaching, I was an Outside Sales and Marketing Rep. selling and marketing dental products to Dentists using consultative selling, trade show marketing, field marketing, and market research.

I publish Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today a blog covering industry events and trends.

I’m seeking a full-time role in:

Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement Enablement, Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing.

Open on title, industry, company, location, and level. Reach out on LinkedIn or at dan@dangalante.com to start a conversation.

Posted 137 weeks ago