Marketing – Zignalytics

Posted on September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 by Kannan_Kasi — Leave a comment

America, August, Apple, Amazon – A’s & the Aces!

You must have read the news, I am sure.

Apple became the first $ 1 Trillion company in terms of market valuation in August this year, followed by Amazon, the second $ 1 Trillion company.

What makes Apple & Amazon tick?

One thing I am sure, they are focused on Customer Experience & making lives simpler for their customers.

Daniel Martins, an independent researcher says: “It’s too high of a bar to assume that they’ll succeed at everything that they do.” “But at the same time, I think Amazon is the best combination in the world of the scale of a large company and that entrepreneurial DNA with the spirit of a startup.”

So, that’s the secret.

It is reported that Apple took long to reach there whereas Amazon sprinted to get there. Amazon took 3 months to cover the last 200 billion whereas Apple took 15 months to do the same, news agencies reported.

Apple was founded in 1976 & Amazon in 1994.

Amazon generates an annual revenue of 178 Billion & in 2018 it may make a paltry sum of 8.5 Billion as profits. It employs around 550,000 people worldwide.

While there are differences between these two Trillion Dollar Giants, the common thing is this: They both know how to market and sell.

Jeff Bezos = Bill Gates + Warren E. Buffett, in terms of Net Worth.

Between Apple and Amazon, one sells at a premium whereas the other lowers prices consistently. You know who.

Some ideas to follow:

If you do Marketing right, everything will fall in place.
Create great Customer Experiences.
Create excitement – on your products & services – and for people to work with you
Have an entrepreneurial DNA.
Have the spirit of a start-up.
Be agile. Respond faster.
Make lives simpler, better & a lot easier.
Sell your dreams. Products will follow.
Create a community of believers.
Last but not the least: You can even start today. And Create. [I didn’t say “Compete”, for a good reason.]

Happy Creating!

Happy Selling!!

#sales #startup #ideas #marketing #branding

Sales at zignalytics .com for any help in Marketing / Sales / CRM.

Posted on August 31, 2018August 31, 2018 by Kannan_Kasi — Leave a comment

An Interior Designer reveals his secret!

I asked him how me manages his customer data, in the hope that I will generate interest for a CRM.

He is my friend. And it was a casual conversation. He laughed & said “we don’t have too much data to manage”.

What he said after that makes sense.

He said that he & his team complete the interior designing of a flat or a villa or an office space & hand it over to customers. We make sure that they are happy, he said. They refer customers to us & most of our business comes only through word of mouth & referral, he added.

He said, he mostly gets invited for the inauguration of the property. It is there he meets his prospective customers. Now there’s the secret sauce. Hang on for a second. He said, if those people, his customer’s friends & relatives, who come for the inaugural function, like his work, they will take his business card & call him when they have a need.

This is nothing but in-bound marketing coupled with social proof, touch & feel & non salesy approach all put together. What more can you ask for? He has all the relevant marketing strategies with right mix & proportion. It is a well oiled machinery. It will take care of itself.

He should only concentrate now on deliveries, quality, speed & customer satisfaction. Fantastic, isn’t it?

Some pointers for us, to work on:

Be where our customers are.
Be non-salesy.
Provide social proof.
Let the word of mouth spread.
Provide good customer service.
Create a community of happy customers.
Let our customers touch & feel. Test Drive, Free Trial, Freemium, Freebies, what have you?
Get referrals. No sales involved with the referred prospect. Our customers do the marketing & sales for us.
Pick up the phone. Meet face to face.
Be friendly. After all, we don’t live to sell or do business & make money. Only.

Happy Marketing!

Happy Selling!!

sales @ zignalytics .com

#marketing #inbound-marketing #wordofmouth #referral

Posted on August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 by Kannan_Kasi — Leave a comment

Cabbage Roll, a packaged solution!

I love surprises at the Dining table. Who doesn’t? My wife treated me to something called as Cabbage Roll recently. Heard it for the first time in life.

Ingredients: Cabbage [Red or Green], Chickpeas [Channa dal], Garlic, Pepper, Tomato, Coriander leaves, Small Onions, Carrots, Walnuts, Cucumber seeds. Soak Chickpeas overnight, keep it for sprouting for over 8 hours. Take the sprouts, add Garlic and Pepper and grind it to a nice paste and keep it ready. Take a cabbage leaf, apply the chickpeas paste, stuff it with Tomato, Small Onions, Carrots. Break walnut into smaller pieces and add it. Sprinkle Cucumber seeds and Coriander leaves and roll it. It is ready. You can add Pepper [crushed] if you wish, for taste.

No one likes to eat cabbage raw. [Though it is high in Anti-Oxidants and fights Free Radicals] Or for that matter raw chickpeas. When you package it nicely, it sells. Ah, it “sells”. Something that sells catches my attention. My mind starts working to understand what makes it tick. I explore its DNA then. So that I can clone it.

Here is the inference from this experience: If you package your solution well, it sells. If it is given in a form that is consumable [or bite size as they are called], it will be consumed. I can see lot of ideas mushrooming in your mind right now.

In my first job, during a road show for Desk Top Publishing [DTP] Solution at Cochin [in Kerala, India], I remember a customer walking in and asking for the solution. What’s strange in that, you may ask. But here’s what he asked, in Malayalam: “Kuppy evade?” In English: “Where’s the bottle?”. He is a hard core Printer and he was expecting the Solution in a bottle. 🙂

Happy Packaging!

Happy Selling!

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Kannan_Kasi — Leave a comment

Why do Customers buy what they buy?

Have you ever asked your best customers why they bought from you. This is essential to position your product or service.

Some of the reasons why customers buy what they do:

They perceive a value in the product or service.
To improve their productivity.
To increase ease of doing business.
To improve their profits.
To build their brand image in the market.
To beat competition.
To be ahead in technology adoption.
To streamline business processes.
To improve employee satisfaction and morale.
To satisfy the investors.

Happy Selling!!

Contact: kannan@zignalytics.com for any help in #Sales #Marketing #CRM

Posted on February 25, 2018 by Kannan_Kasi — Leave a comment

Lead Generation Tips

Lead Generation and Prospecting are two very important activities for any Organization. These can make or break an Enterprise. In some Organizations, it is the Marketing team that does the lead generation and passes the Marketing Qualified Leads [MQL] over to the Sales team. And sales qualifies these leads before taking it further.

And Sales also does Prospecting. From making cold calls, running a survey, conducting a customer satisfaction audit, asking for customer references, engaging existing clients to warming up prospects who had expressed interest in the past, targeting named accounts, Sales does everything to generate prospects.

Let us take a look at some ways to generate leads:

LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator: You should use it extensively to research, target and find prospects.
Use your website to generate leads – by implementing SEO, Website optimization, Call to Action forms, giving free Ebooks, useful and educational blogs [like this one]. Just do everything under Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing.
Webinar Attendees.
Roadshow – visitors to your stall.
Power Breakfast meeting attendees.
Promotional campaign respondents.
Customer referrals.
Podcast Attendees.
Customer Satisfaction Audits.
Existing Clients.

Happy Selling!!