“Something you know about your customer may be more important than anything you know about your product”.

Isn’t the trouble with most ‘selling messages’ simply that they are ‘selling messages’?
People like you and me can recognise a selling message from ten feet even without our glasses.
But what is the problem with that? Unless you are able to recognise that you have the money (can afford it), you have the authority (can make the decision), and you can see the need (usually a problem you can identify that the product or service offering solves) you wouldn’t commit to buy would you? Just one of these three: ‘money, authority, need’ should be absent and you are not in the buying game no matter how powerful the selling message. This is usually reduced to an acronym ‘MAN’ – it really isn’t sexist, just a simple memory aid for defining a prospect.
So you may be the ‘MAN’ but what would make you or me move forward and actually buy or consider buying? Maybe not any one thing contained in a ‘selling message’ would have that effect on you or me but the more we can identify with the offering or perhaps more importantly, the more it identifies with us the more inclined we are to view it positively.

This is called ‘targeting’. Even something dull and unimaginative like “As a teacher” when writing to teachers is likely to get them reading.

Advertising and marketing professionals will tell you that they have seen exactly those words increase response by several hundred percent in a mailing to sell apposite products. Yet this is the most basic form of target identification.
In simple terms, increasing the power of your selling messages requires accruing or buying ‘defining’ data-bases and ensuring the right message reaches the right people, in the right way….. enough times. Repetition is good.

Well that seems very simple doesn’t it? Just use database knowledge intelligently.

The trouble with selling, marketing and advertising is that people think it is easy and therefore anyone can do it – then sadly, that ‘anyone’ does. Invariably, it is then done badly. But everyone can learn. The easiest teacher is their experience of normal (i.e. non-commercial life). Most of us will not challenge things we can agree with. Therefore, you must ensure that your offering begins with something that identifies that this offering is aimed particularly at them. Then say something they can agree with. Then keep on phrasing the offer in ways they can continue to agree with.
Once you’ve got someone to agree to one thing you can then say something else hard to disagree with – and so on until you ask for a reply – i.e. a ‘call to action’.

Having agreed to everything else, why should they now say “no”?

“The perfect advertisement is one of which the reader can say, ‘This is for me, and me alone’.”
Pete Drucker

The database you use and buy or compile is often the key. This is not an area for economy – get the best you can afford. The target your message at a particular group and ask each member of that group a question they can agree with or make a statement they must agree with. The more agreements they make the more inclined they are to say yes to any call to action you make.

It works for us at UK Vending Ltd – it will work for you. Remember, ‘sell smart’.

Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon or Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.

 
UK Vending Ltd

A wise man once told me “The only alternative to perseverance is failure”

A wise man once told me “The only alternative to perseverance is failure”
 
Although we may know things, far too often we don’t do them.

So here’s something we do at my company UK Vending Ltd. We send out volumes of straightforward e-mails week after week after week.

Let me guess what you’re thinking. Is it something like this?

“Isn’t that far too often?” Or, “If you took your time and sent out a variety of more imaginative ones you’d do much better”.

Well, we do what we do for two reasons:

1. Because it works. And it works because we never know when prospects will buy, so we have to keep plugging away.

2. Because it’s better than doing nothing. In fact it is a lot better. Like many in business we are so busy, despite our careful planning, fighting fires each day and attending meetings (some more valuable than others) and all the other things successful business management requires that we would probably send out nothing if we weren’t careful about sticking to this not very imaginative plan.

We have all constantly met other business people who spend weeks, even months, squandering priceless days and weeks over small details that will make little or no difference – when they should just get on with it.

Things have not changed since Voltaire said a couple centuries ago: “The best is the enemy of the good”.
 
We communicate more than our competitors. Once we have a prospect we keep relentlessly at the prospect. For how long? Usually until they give in.
 
Hold on you say:” Isn’t that “pressure selling?” Think of it this way: we actually believe that we are really good at what we do. We love our business. We give excellent service. Our products are truly great and the prices eminently affordable. We want everyone to know about us and what we do. We want them to see just what we could do for them in solving their hot-drinks, water and day to day vending needs. We are always amazed, not just me but everyone in my company, when we can’t get someone to see the obvious: we are really, really good at what we do and we could benefit them. So when should stop telling them what we believe. We believe….  never.
 
We don’t sit around wasting hot air on whether something will work out; we just get on with it.
 
 
 
Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon and Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.

Motivating people: in practice in the workplace – fifty years in business here at UK Vending Ltd has taught us a few things about motivation

Motivating people: in practice in the workplace – fifty years in business here at UK Vending Ltd has taught us a few things about motivation

Each day all we managers have to get on with the business of managing towards a conclusion – i.e. a goal. A wise man used to say to me: “If you don’t know where you are going then how are you going to get there?”. We need a plan and we need skills and in many cases it would be so much easier if it was only ourselves we had to manage. There are no born managers as there are no born drivers. Occasionally we come across an exceptional leader but they are few and far between. Management means we must show leadership and just as management is a learned skill, to a degree leadership too can be learned. Part of management and all of leadership is about motivation. I learned the theory(ies) years ago and note them for readers below – putting them into practise is the thing. We learn to drive but some are better drivers than others. Being the best motivator of your staff that you can be is vital to business success – the divide between being ‘motivational’ and ‘demotivational’ is very small. This is a vital skill to learn and below is a theory to learn and apply and some tips.

Clearly, all of these theories (below) are valid, although they each have their own approach and emphasise some factors more or less than others. Nevertheless, you and I have the responsibility of translating such theory into practice, and actually motivating those around us in the work environment. Thus, we need to contemplate the practicalities of:

1. being a good leader
2. working as a team
3. improving jobs
4. developing people
5. paying staff
6. providing a safe and healthy workplace.

Being a good leader

People and the relationships between them are probably the biggest influence upon motivation, for better or worse. You can almost certainly have a hugely positive impact here, simply by being a good leader. If not one already, you can improve by understanding your personal, departmental and organisational goals, leading by example and then motivating others to follow your lead by involving them in everything you do that is relevant to them and within the capacity of their increasing work skills.

Working as a team

Likewise, teamwork has an absolutely vital role to play in motivating people. As a leader of what you hope will prove to be a successful team, you must be able to identify the characteristics of a winning team so that you all have something to aim for. You should also recognise team members as individuals with differing wants and needs and treat them as such. Strong teams are made of strong individuals. Build on the individual and encourage their co-operation and trust of their colleagues. Drawing on this knowledge, you will need to employ various teambuilding tactics in order to create and subsequently maintain a cohesive and effective team. These are learnable.

Improving jobs

If employees are affected by the people who work alongside them, then they will obviously be influenced as much by the jobs that they are doing for the firm. Again, you may be in a position to exert a positive influence in this area. Accordingly, you need to appreciate the importance of job enjoyment of people, and be capable of appraising employees and their employment to see how well-suited they are. If they are ill matched and not fully satisfied and demotivated as a result you will wish to rearrange their workload to improve matters. Having the wrong person in the job is bad for all the other people they work with and inhibits success across the board.

Developing people

Everyone wants to feel fulfilled at work, and that they are making the most of their talents and abilities and are progressing as far as they can. To achieve this, you must think self-development among your team, helping them to set their own standards and targets to work within and towards. Staff need to be trained to give them the skills and knowledge necessary to do their present and future jobs properly. You should assess employees regularly too so you can see how they are developing and if – or hopefully when – they are ready to be transferred or promoted to more demanding, high status jobs.

Paying staff

Pay ad other financial benefits can inspire people to work harder and better or demotivate them if they are seen as unacceptable. Although you may not have much influence here, you should consider pay levels within your business to judge if they are satisfactory; think about the different pay systems which operate and their respective pros and cons; and contemplate the overall pay package being provided, taking account of such benefits as sick pay, health insurance and pension scheme.

Providing a safe and healthy workplace

Similarly, the work environment can even make people feel good or demotivate them if it is not utterly satisfactory so far as they’re concerned. Hopefully, you will be in a position to ensure safe working conditions and build a healthy environment. At the same time, you may find useful to know something about the law in this field make certain that your firm is meeting its legal obligations to employes.

 

Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon and Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.

UK Vending Ltd

Incentives work when made into sensible offers for sensible people

Incentives work when made into sensible offers for sensible people – this has worked for UK Vending Ltd for the past fifty profitable years in business

It is astounding how so few people realize two things:

1. Incentives pay, when used wisely.
2. If you use them all the time you cheapen your brand.

Why do they pay? Because generally you get all the people you would have got anyway – plus a few you wouldn’t have and the extra ones convert into customers at much the same rate as the others.

Victor Ross, Chairman of Reader’s Digest once said: “I have never seen a relevant incentive fail to pay for itself.”

If you’re not trying incentives, do.

If you are, test alternatives (it may make a huge difference).

The first question is obvious but often ignored: why do incentives work?
There are three reasons.

1. They overcome fear – of being sold something the prospect doesn’t need or can’t afford.

2. They overcome laziness.

3. They give an excuse for trying you.

For all these reasons they should be prominent.

Always describe your incentive, and say what it’s worth. If it costs nothing, it’s worth nothing. The more desirable it sounds, the more replies you’ll get. The more it’s worth or the greater the perceivable value, the more people want it.

Try more than one incentive. You can have one for replying, one for replying within 14 days, one for buying two or buying the luxury version, trying another product or service or recommending a friend.

Try a few things people might lose – a threat, if you like. It may work even better. In fact studies suggest it does based on the ‘bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush’ principle or ‘fear of loss is greater than desire to gain’.
• They have to buy by a certain date, or on a certain day.
• There are only so many left.
• It’s a limited edition.
• It’s restricted to certain privileged customers.
People are cynical. They think the cost comes out of the product. Always say why you’re being so nice.
• As a reward for doing something.
• To encourage them to try.
• Because “we find it’s the cheapest way to get new customers”.
• Because it’s our centenary.
What makes a good incentive?
• The Golden Rule: add value, rather than cheapening the brand.
• A free gift adds value; repeated discounts cheapen your brand.
• Discounts are better for acquiring customers, or rewarding them.
• Use them sparingly.

Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon or Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.

ukvending.co.uk

“Good advertising is just salesmanship in print” – Just one of the reasons we have been so successful in business for fifty years

“Good advertising is just salesmanship in print” – Just one of the reasons we have been so successful in business for fifty years

Famously said by a very great advertising man and by and large the promotional motto of my company UK Vending Ltd – although, we now also include every other form of media as well as print.

We are Britain’s longest serving vending company (just another way of saying we are the oldest). We’ve been around for some fifty years as a family business and we’ve been a private limited company since 1969.In our fifty or so years we have seen quite literally thousands of other vending companies come and go and probably tens of thousands of other types of business. So why are we still here and relentlessly growing year after year and even through a recession as we did through the last recession? Why do we attract new customers daily yet keep customers in some cases for forty or so years? The answer is not simple and includes of course good customer service, excellent products, affordable and reasonable pricing, sound IT systems. But what we learned half a century ago is not to keep our proverbial light hidden under a bushel. We go to market every day. We take our message out to our prospective customers and our existing customers each and every day. We know we are good so we want to tell our prospective world all about what we do and how we do it for people and businesses just like them. Our existing customers we never, ever take for granted and our offers extend to them too and are not just used to attract tomorrow’s customers.

We ask ourselves the same question of every advert or promotional item we create: “Does it at least do what a professionally trained salesperson would do”

Yes of course we are selling. We are salespeople and proud of it. When did you last hear of a good idea that didn’t need selling? Never right? Why? Because otherwise you just would not have heard of it. For most of us existing in the real business world without the financial resources of international car makers, banks or canned drinks companies we seek the biggest bang for our buck we can get. What works? A sound clear message delivered regularly. Whilst others are still contemplating whether to use a leopard or a tiger as the principle image or a serif or non-serif font, we have already arrived on our prospects desktop. Our salespeople speak a common tongue peppered with words like ‘value for money’, ‘excellent customer service’ and our other standards.

Have you noticed just how many adverts aren’t actually ‘selling’ in anything they say or do? One well known marketing man calls these sorts of adverts “promotional masturbation” designed to please the advertising designer and not achieve much by way of message delivery to prospects or any motivational selling.

Years ago it was called the ‘singer not the song’ stratagem and by and large it has never really worked. No matter how good the voice is, if the song is actually crap then it becomes somewhat pointless and unrememberable.  The big advertising agencies seek to show the differences however small between them as they pursue the same corporate clients. This means they have endlessly to come up with new differences in the same way tooth-paste adverts annually include another unpronounceable additive to make it ‘new’ and ‘improved’ and improve for a time at least its market share. So they add ever more esoteric imagery in the same way that some clothes designers march models up and down catwalks wearing creations no-one in their right mind will ever actually wear.

Sadly, what the advertisers with the biggest budget do is muddy the waters for the rest of us. A sleek and loping tiger in a forest may attract attention in an advert just before an already famous car marque comes on the screen. We already know about the car marque and the pre-imagery is there to reinforce our irrational interpretation of the marque. But how does that help the rest of us in business who don’t have the same product identity or budget? It doesn’t; in fact it hinders us because it gets in the way of our clear thinking. It makes us all aspire to this form of presentation – sleek, gimmicky and full of imagery – because we feel this is now what our public expects through their day to day conditioning and exposure. Anyone other than me remember the old mnemonic ‘KISS’ (Keep it simple stoooopid!).

 

 

Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon and Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.

www.ukvending.co.uk