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.
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.
Build and nurture customer relationships.
When the sale is complete, put all details in writing.
Follow through with the implementation product or service post-sale.
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.
If the customer voices concerns or has an issue with a product or service, address it immediately.
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?
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 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.
Brands use Marketing to increase sales, and revenue, and to beat the competition. While this is a great strategy, a brand is only as good as its talent. Yes, brands compete to get and keep customers; but they are also competing to get and keep great talent. For brands to grow, they need great talent in every function of the business.
According to LinkedIn, “the number of global members who changed their jobs on LinkedIn was up 54% year over year. For context, those numbers typically hover between 0 and 5%. “
For brands to be able to attract top talent, they need to be a desired place to work. To be a desired place to work, they need to understand what motivates their employees. While this will vary by industry and company size there are similar things that many employees seek. These include:
1. Feeling valued for their contributions
2. Freedom to do interesting work and solve intriguing problems
3. Fair and competitive compensation including incentive and performance pay, perks, and other employer benefits
4. A fun place to work with activities to bond with co-workers
5. Training and advancement opportunities
6. Work-Life Balance
7. Flexible-working conditions ie work from home, remote work, hybrid work, or onsite for those who want to be in the office
If these things listed above are in place, brands are on the right track to building a great talented brand provided their product offerings are solid.
Getting employees excited about coming to work each day will increase the talent pool by generating word of mouth. When people have something good they tell their friends.
Beyond the offline word of mouth, Brands need to own their identity online by in-sourcing their online and offline assets. This starts with their websites, digital properties, and the collateral used to sell their offerings. With talent branding and employer branding, brands are selling prospective employees the idea of applying and working for their company. This is similar to marketing their commercial offerings to potential customers.
Brands will need to conduct market research to understand who their competitors are and where they stack up in the talent market. Compensation, company culture, intelligence from applicants.
Information from this research can be used to develop a positioning strategy that can be applied to the talent brand and employer brand.
Every brand should have a career page on its website because this will reduce recruiting costs. This page should include the following:
Pictures of employees from each function with a short bio and why they chose to work at the brand
Employer Benefits and Perks offered
Authentic Stories on Company Culture
An application that is easy to fill out. i.e greenhouse.io or a form with a file for a cover letter and resume Greenhouse can be linked with LinkedIn
Social Sharing buttons for job postings
Company LinkedIn pages
In addition to sales, product, and content marketing, brands should use their LinkedIn page for talent and employer branding. Some companies’ talent and employer branding strategy are to post jobs on LinkedIn hoping candidates will apply. This is a missed opportunity to sell active and passive candidates on why they should work for your company. Today, candidates have many places they can work.
Things to include in a LinkedIn page
Pictures of employees from each function with a short bio and why they chose to work at the brand
Employer Benefits and Perks offered
Stories on company culture
An application that is easy to fill out. i.e greenhouse.io Indeed, Glassdoor, or a form with a file for a cover letter and resume Greenhouse can be linked with LinkedIn.
Social Sharing buttons for job postings
Creating Engaging Job descriptions
The function head, Marketing, and HR need to collaborate to write job descriptions that convince applicants to apply, similar to copy-writing for commercial offerings.
Creating a Great Candidate Experience
Providing candidates with a great recruiting experience is key. Everything should be transparent to candidates. At the end of the recruiting process, it is important to solicit candidate feedback to refine and hone your recruiting process.
New Hire Onboarding and Reducing Turnover
Make sure new hires feel welcome and are trained properly coordinating with the managers and functional heads of each department because roles had different needs and requirements for success.
Empowering and providing incentives to employees
Encourage employees to share company content and jobs on LinkedIn. Also, encourage employee referrals with incentives for referrals that are hired.
If you are not happy with the amounts of applications post the jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed to widen the applicant pools. Niche site may work as well.
This is how to use Marketing to build a great Talent Brand.
Who is hiring?
I surveyed my audience of Recruiters and Hiring Managers to which roles are they hiring.
Based on the answers Sales is the highest at 50 %.
Specific data on top jobs in demand can be found here.
How have you used marketing to build your talent and employer brand?
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.
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.
Brands use Marketing to increase sales, and revenue, and to beat the competition. While this is a great strategy, a brand is only as good as its talent. Yes, brands compete to get and keep customers; but they are also competing to get and keep great talent. For brands to grow, they need great talent in every function of the business.
According to LinkedIn, “the number of global members who changed their jobs on LinkedIn was up 54% year over year. For context, those numbers typically hover between 0 and 5%. “
For brands to be able to attract top talent, they need to be a desired place to work. To be a desired place to work, they need to understand what motivates their employees. While this will vary by industry and company size there are similar things that many employees seek. These include:
1. Feeling valued for their contributions
2. Freedom to do interesting work and solve intriguing problems
3. Fair and competitive compensation including incentive and performance pay, perks, and other employer benefits
4. A fun place to work with activities to bond with co-workers
5. Training and advancement opportunities
6. Work-Life Balance
7. Flexible-working conditions ie work from home, remote work, hybrid work, or onsite for those who want to be in the office.
If these things listed above are in place, brands are on the right track to building a great talented brand provided their product offerings are solid.
Getting employees excited about coming to work each day will increase the talent pool by generating word of mouth. When people have something good they tell their friends.
Beyond the offline word of mouth, Brands need to own their identity online by in-sourcing their online and offline assets. This starts with their websites, digital properties, and the collateral used to sell their offerings. With talent branding and employer branding, brands are selling prospective employees the idea of applying and working for their company. This is similar to marketing their commercial offerings to potential customers.
Brands will need to conduct market research to understand who their competitors are and where they stack up in the talent market. Compensation, company culture, intelligence from applicants.
Information from this research can be used to develop a positioning strategy that can be applied to the talent brand and employer brand.
Every brand should have a career page on its website because this will reduce recruiting costs. This page should include the following:
Pictures of employees from each function with a short bio and why they chose to work at the brand
Employer Benefits and Perks offered
Authentic Stories on Company Culture
An application that is easy to fill out. i.e greenhouse.io or a form with a file for a cover letter and resume Greenhouse can be linked with LinkedIn.
Social Sharing buttons for job postings
Company LinkedIn pages
In addition to sales, product, and content marketing, brands should use their LinkedIn page for talent and employer branding. Some companies’ talent and employer branding strategy are to post jobs on LinkedIn hoping candidates will apply. This is a missed opportunity to sell active and passive candidates on why they should work for your company. Today, candidates have many places they can work.
Things to include in a LinkedIn page
Pictures of employees from each function with a short bio and why they chose to work at the brand
Employer Benefits and Perks offered
Stories on company culture
An application that is easy to fill out. i.e greenhouse.io Indeed, Glassdoor, or a form with a file for a cover letter and resume Greenhouse can be linked with LinkedIn.
Social Sharing buttons for job postings
Creating Engaging Job descriptions
The function head, Marketing, and HR need to collaborate to write job descriptions that convince applicants to apply, similar to copy-writing for commercial offerings.
Creating a Great Candidate Experience
Providing candidates with a great recruiting experience is key. Everything should be transparent to candidates. At the end of the recruiting process, it is important to solicit candidate feedback to refine and hone your recruiting process.
New Hire Onboarding and Reducing Turnover.
Make sure new hires feel welcome and are trained properly coordinating with the managers and functional heads of each department because roles had different needs and requirements for success.
Empowering and providing incentives to employees
Encourage employees to share company content and jobs on LinkedIn. Also, encourage employee referrals with incentives for referrals that are hired.
If you are not happy with the amounts of applications post the jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed to widen the applicant pools. Niche site may work as well.
This is how to use Marketing to build a great Talent Brand.
Who is hiring?
I surveyed my audience of Recruiters and Hiring Managers to which roles are they hiring.
Based on the answers Sales is the highest at 50 %.
Specific data on top jobs in demand can be found here.
How have you used marketing to build your talent and employer brand?
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.
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 134 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.
I covered the Digital Marketing World Forum in New York this past week.
There were great discussions on Digital and Social Marketing. The topics ranged from the customer journey, customer experience, customer retention, personalization, using data, and privacy legislation.
My key insights were:
1. To improve customer retention, brands need to understand their customers to personalize their experiences across all touchpoints. Marketers from different verticals shared how they were able to improve customer loyalty and retention by personalizing and creating customer experiences across all touchpoints.
2. Many times, customer data tells a story that contradicts preconceived hunches and opinions. Marketers from T-Moblie and Decoded found this out when they marketed Cell Phone plans to the 55+ community.
3. Marketers have the tools to better understand their customers and to track the results of their efforts faster than ever before. These tools empower marketers to improve the customer journey and experience. With this power comes the obligation to better serve their customers and to quickly pivot when their tactics and strategies are not effective. Marketers with different products and services shared their stories and strategies.
4. Companies that are going to use Chatbots to serve customers need to train Chatbots to handle complex requests from customers. Chatbots should not be used to answer questions like the hours of a store or simple information that can be obtained from a website.
5. Privacy Legislation similar to GDPR is coming to the United States. Laws in California and Nevada are being enacted in 2020. OneTrust shared how Marketers can prepare and comply with the Californa Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).