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Consumer Buying Habits Still Challenge Retailers

12/15/2015 By Jayme Soulati

Consumer buying habits remain a mystery to retailers, apparently.

Yesterday, I was at a holiday party with my tennis groupies in an affluent home with several Christmas trees and many lovely decorations admired by all. The conversation launched into the fact that there were no more cool ornaments in stores, and the selection of holiday decorating accessories is limited.

We talked about Target and Pier One as places to go on the hunt while others preferred to wait until after Christmas for the deals. Wait! We all agreed there are no more after-Christmas deals for decorating goodies; if you see them before Christmas, you have to snap them up. That is so sad. We used to be able to get really cool ornaments and now retailers are not stocking shelves. Who wants to buy ornaments online, anyway? You have to touch them already.
The fact that retailers began to limit holiday selections is not new. I noticed this trend about 2009-2010 during the last recession when no one was buying that stuff. [Read more…]

7 Selling Factors And Relationship Building (Babolat)

10/31/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Selling. Relationship building, and the deal.

What do you think is the most important when someone is trying to make the sale? The deal may be the lowest and best one; yet, there’s something more to earning the sale than just the numbers.

As a professional blogger and public relations professional of three decades, I am pitched every day by sales people trying to lure me in. The tools of my trade are expensive especially for any solo business, and I know I must make an investment in many of them in order to service my clients well and efficiently.

Each year at this time, it becomes a battle between the two largest media vendors and others wanting a piece of the action vying for my business. Each year I weigh the deal to determine the best approach for my clients. But, this year was different.

7 Selling Factors to Earn the Business

The Deal.

When you’re a solo business and every expense penny counts, the total of the expenditure matters. How much is the very first answer I want to hear.

Sales Team.

Sadly, one of the vendors has a revolving door of sales staff. They email and call me frequently, they fight over territory, and I never know who my sales rep is should I need to call. The trust in the infrastructure of an organization is absolutely akin to the stability of the sales team. On the other side of the street, I just heard from the same sales rep I had last year; this business is tough…having the same face and name selling me over two years says something.

Service.

How about the service side? Will they be there to support the customer? Will they be knowledgeable and will there also be videos or Q&A and live chat features to help me should I have an issue? I’m not one to call in for help; it’s a time suck. I want to find the answer myself or better yet, make the product usability intuitive.

Salesmanship.

The young woman with whom I spoke yesterday told me she wasn’t going to hard sell me because that wasn’t her style. I appreciate that. When someone slips me the slime, I run. When you’re authentic and genuine with me, that’s when I listen and exchange helpful selling tips in return.

The Product.

There’s no question you get what you pay for. Because I have used both these products extensively during the long tenure of my career, I’m familiar with the product and each has selling points while one has more failures, in my opinion. Usability, as mentioned above, needs to be intuitive. I don’t want to have to guess where to find something; that’s frustrating, annoying and a time suck.

Closing The Deal.

When someone tells me they are coming back to me as they need to speak with their boss about the features of the package I need and they don’t for more than four days, then I seriously consider what happened. Turns out illness put my sales woman on her back, and I fell through the cracks. Understood; yet the deadline for my deal to close is today and that means I’m in conversations with a variety of vendors to seal it.

Relationship Building.

I’ve saved the best for last. There are so many, many ways to build relationships to earn a sale. I’m going to tell you what impresses me the most.
1. Visit my blog and make a comment. There is content galore in this site, and archives from the last four years. There’s got to be a way to impress me.

2. Know who I am as a customer and professional. When you take a moment to read my bio or remark on something I shared or wrote on the Interwebz, that means you’re really getting to know me and my needs.

3. Acknowledge the fact the sales team is a revolving door, but you’re going to work hard to earn my trust in selling to me.

4. Instead of selling me, educate me and tell me how your product has improved, especially if I tell you I don’t care for it.

5. Engage with me on social media. Let me tell you a story about tennis racquets.

Babolat Tennis And Earning the Sale

Happy Halloweenie #Tennis! via soulati

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a tennis freak. In the fall and winter, when I can reclaim an evening as my own (kidlet has every night for her extracurriculars), I play about six hours a week. I’ve been demoing new racquets, and tweeting about my demos with Babolat.

My friend Brian Vickery plays extensively too, and his family of four are all Babolat users. I’ve been a Prince loyalist until I began my quest to find the best racquet.

I’ve now demoed about five or six Babolats, and I’m still not certain which one to invest in (tennis racquets average $200 each, and you need two of the same).

Yesterday, I tweeted Brian and mentioned I didn’t think Babolat was on Twitter as I had mentioned its name and it racquets by name a variety of times and crickets. Lo, I got several immediate tweets and a phone call from Babolat sales!! How freaking exciting is that??

Tickled, I tweeted back and made the phone call.What ensued was the most amazing conversation I’ve ever had with someone in sales who wasn’t selling; he was educating.

We talked about racquet stiffness and weighting, body wear and tear, and strings. We talked strings every which way from Sunday (don’t you love that expression?), and I was the happiest camper in the world because Babolat was treating me as if I was on the ATP circuit. As merely a 3.5/4.0 USTA player, I have a ways to go before I join the professionals and beat the crap out of them (heh). BUT, here’s the point…Daniel of Babolat didn’t treat me like a low life; he put me on the top of his pedestal as the most important tennis player in the world.

He built a relationship with me, he treated me respectfully, and guess what else he shared?

Brand Engagement On Twitter

Babolat had seen my tweets with Brian over time; they saw that I was only mentioning the brand in my posts and not addressing the tweets to Babolat.

The sales team wasn’t sure whether to intercede on the conversation; they didn’t want to interfere as it looked like we were not asking for help.

I assured Daniel of Babolat to absolutely toss out a tweet saying “Hey, we noticed your tweets about our racquets, is there anything we can do to help your decision?”

Having that kind of “we’re here to help” tweet from a trusted brand is what jazzes consumers. I’m not one to hit the forums or Facebook and sift through line after line of content that doesn’t concern me. If I want something, I will post it on Twitter and wait for the brand’s response.
In this case, I was tentative as a consumer thinking I was too much a small fry for Babolat’s attention, and Babolat the brand was tentative thinking they shouldn’t jump in with a “hey, we’re here” tweet.

Relationship Building Fuels Brand Loyalty

And, now, after that story? Where do you think my loyalty lies? I’m going to become a Babolat user for the first time. I’m going to invest in the Babolat Drive Max, a lighter weight racquet, RED (yay!), and get it weighted. Then I’m going to put more expensive softer strings on it to protect my arm and get the controlled power (at least that’s what I think Daniel told me). And, before I do all of that, I’m going to call Daniel or tweet him again because he invited me to do that whenever I wanted to. He gave me his cell phone and I programmed him into speed dial! (Just kidding, but that’s how he made me feel.)

Brand loyalty has so much more to do with product and service selection, and all the factors I listed above are critical; yet relationship building is by far the most. The Babolat story happened yesterday, and it jazzed my brand loyalty as a first-time customer for the long-term.

How about you, can you relate?

Tennis Balls And Twitter Peeps!

08/06/2013 By Jayme Soulati

A Tennis ball Author: User:Fcb981 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Along the top of Brian Vickery’s blog’s navigation menu is a list of clickable links to blog posts about sports. For all but one, I have a quick note:

In high school, I was probably the worst basketball player ever.
I played in the all-star co-ed 12″ softball game and ripped the webbing between pointer and ring man on my right hand playing second base.
I currently play USTA 4.0 tennis.
I just got my yellow belt in taekwondo (watch for my reaction to that evening in an upcoming Happy Friday Series post).
I played flag football in Chicago rec leagues and LOVED the adrenaline rush.
I coached kidlet’s rec soccer for five seasons.
I work out, but should do more.

What’s that all got to do with anything?

The cool part is it gives me seven good reasons why I can write for Brian Vickery and belong…besides the fact that he made one of the first guest appearances for my Soulati Media On The Street series, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting him IRL twice.

Far-Fetched Sports Analogy

Whew, now that we have our bonding straight, let’s dive in and cover off on one really far-fetched sports analogy with social media.

As I play tennis about six hours weekly, I also pick up several hundred tennis balls using a hopper, that metal ball picker upper. If you try to jam three balls in between the grooves, you struggle. If you grab two balls at a time, there’s no problem. If there are oodles of balls collected in the corner, you kneel and use your hands; it’s faster.

There are so many was to pick up tennis balls:

Do you first grab the errant singles spread around the service line?
Do you start in the corner of the court by the tarp and work toward the center?
Do you find the half-way mark and move right or left toward the corner?
Do you pick up the fewest balls and leave the most to others?

You absolutely get my drift. I wrote about tennis balls and business strategy once, but today, I’m just writing about tennis balls and social media. There is no right way to pick up tennis balls; they all get picked up regardless, but it’s sure fun thinking about it (work with me).

Twitter Peeps Are Tennis Balls

Now, think of each person you interact with on Twitter as a tennis ball. I’ll give you a minute to visualize all the peeps who tweet as a tennis ball.

They could be Wilson, Prince or Dunlop. They could have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 numbers. They could be Pro balls, training balls with dots or different colors.

All those balls in the corners, collecting? That’s your live stream of all the followers tweeting all day long. On occasion, you take a look and pick through a few for a good retweet; just like picking out the best balls to serve with.

How about the balls that are your favorite brand? I always liked playing with Dunlop best, perhaps it’s because it makes tires. Wilson balls always stink; they seem to lose their bounce fastest. Prince balls are decent, reliable; no complaints.

In your Twitter stream are there Dunlops you’ve favorited into a list to track what they say? How about the Wilsons who seem to be less bouncy with little energy? Do you unfollow or ignore? And, I love those Princes who aren’t really royalty, but they’re certainly loyal.

We’re not going into racquets for this piece, as this tennis ball analogy is as far fetched and grasping at straws as I can get. Eh, Brian?

So, the next time you hit your HootSuite dashboard and see the left-most column of hundreds and hundreds of tweets streaming in, take a peek in that corner to find the best ball and serve it up to your stream as a courtesy.

When you see a peep having a downer day, and perhaps he’s a Wilson, give him a volley with a bit of snap to share some energy for a healthy rally.

For those Princes you rely on as your doubles partner? Keep their feet moving with fancy content so the team wins the match.

But, remember this…every ball, regardless of whether it’s flat or bouncy finds its way into the hopper. That goes the same for your stream of peeps, too…treat each like a tennis ball and everyone gets picked up.

This post originally appeared July 1, 2013 on Brian Vickery’s Social Media Sports Analogies Blog

Tennis Balls And Business Strategy

10/29/2012 By Jayme Soulati

I play tennis about four times weekly in leagues, clinics and hitting. In clinics, tennis balls are all over, and that means you need a ball hopper to pick up balls and dump back into the coach’s wheeled cart.

The balls are scattered; like stars in a galaxy. There’s no rhyme or reason how to pick up tennis balls efficiently. As I gaze around the courts, I deduce the best strategy to get the most balls in the least amount of time so I can resume drills.

Stay with me here…

1. If a single ball has landed all alone off to the side, I ignore it. I see some players use their racquet to flick all the balls into the general vicinity of other balls grouped in back corners. I’d rather head to the area of highest concentration to pick up the most balls in a grouping. If I flick all the balls toward a corner from other areas of the court, it’s like playing marbles — there’s no guarantee the ball rolls nicely to land next to its cousin. And, why waste my energy flicking balls with my racquet? That’s expended fuel I need for playing time!

2. If some balls are off to the right and some are off to the left at the back of the court, I select a logical division point and pick up one ball and proceed towards the grouping with most balls together. As I play with a variety of ages of women, some don’t have enough arm muscle to carry a heavy ball hopper, or turtle speed is preferred when picking up balls because they just don’t like it.

3. The ball hopper is steel with open gaps in the bottom. When you push the handles of the hopper down on top of a ball, it squeezes into the hopper and pops up into the bottom. Here’s the rub…I’ve tried to pick up three balls at a time with the hopper, but invariably something goes awry. Three just isn’t efficient because I add an extra step to capture the ball that squeezed away. Picking up two at a time is perfect; goes smoothly, and I can get into a rhythm and be done faster.

Tennis Balls and Your Business

When you read the items above, did you begin to see a correlation with tennis balls and your business? Let me help:

1. When you try to rush through an exercise without methodical planning and execution, something will become chaotic or a crisis which sets you down an unplanned path.

Do use thoughtful strategy when planning a campaign or growth goals.

2. Is your team handpicked with high energy? Do they contribute to your business with the same level of knowledge and expertise so you can realize your growth goals?

Do examine your human assets and ensure they’re right for your business longterm.

3. How frequently do you permit yourself or your team to get pulled off track to an interesting tangent that looks juicy until you dive in?

Don’t waste time on programs that take you off goal. Stay the course and only add additional programs/tasks when they directly benefit your opportunity.

4. Think about how you approach a problem; better yet, think about the solution you execute to solve that problem. If the balls are scattered in all directions (like so many balls in the air), think carefully how you will approach each ball to address it independently or as a grouped situation.

If one situation, person or ball is screaming loudly, step back and assess the situation and see how best to manage it in a streamlined fashion.

Business owners, whether startups or 10-year-old companies, need to remember that how you pick up a tennis ball provides a thoughtful look at how to grow a business. Can you see that analogy?

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