China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that beginning on August 30, Guangdong government has launched a 4-month on-line sales campaign to promote made-in-Guangdong products.

The government, for the promotion, has opened an official website www.ghwsx.gov.cn, wishing to push forward e-commerce.

Hundreds of companies will take part in this campaign, mainly providing high-tech electronics, smart home appliances and brands with a long-standing history, said Vice director of Guangdong’s Economic and Information Commission Qi Zhenli.

China Watch Blog reports that many of us have the desire and hope to live and lead a better life? Most of us do. However, all too often our choices are rushed and relationships are strained by not improving the four areas of our life.

Eric Papp believes that leadership is a choice – a free decision everyone can make to see themselves as leaders, role models and people of positive influence.

Receiving rave reviews, Eric’s new book Leadership by Choice-Increasing Influence and Effectiveness through Self-Management (John Wiley and Sons), is a practical, entertaining, and fun book that is loaded with actionable strategies and compelling ideas that act as a road map for anyone wanting to live and lead a richer life.

Featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and many other publications, Eric was voted in the top one-percent of management trainers in 2010. He is a recognized expert who has a desire for improving personal and organizational leadership.

We are all responsible for our own productivity. To be an effective leader, our challenge is to find creative ways to get more done in less time and have a clear understanding of our priorities. In Leadership by Choice, author Eric Papp looks at new strategies for leaders to excel, not just through smarts but connecting with others and establishing effective communication skills. The best leaders lead with passion and touch everyone they encounter.

Eric Papp develops leaders in organizations through keynote speaking, management training and consulting. He has delivered more than 400 professional training programs to corporate and private clients.

China Watch Blog wishes to report that there will be a 1-day “Brandwashed” Symposium co-organized by HBC and HKIM. It will take place at the Grand Ballroom of Hyatt Regency Hong Kong on 30th August 2012, and at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on 10th September. Martin Lindstrom, a Brand Guru of 6 best-selling books on branding, including “Brand Sense” and “Buyology”. His latest book: “Brandwashed” hit all bestseller lists in 2011.

Martin’s presentation is highly engaging, informative, interactive and enjoyable. Most importantly, they are very practical and hands-on, arming delegates with tools and practical advice to impact their business strategies, daily marketing and brand implementations in a positive way. He understood the wisdom of the net before most of us, now he’s sharing his best wisdom with you….

Martin reveals:
• Shocking findings on how consumers will soon become better marketeers than the professional ones, and to be prepared for the next big thing – social branding
• How the consumer’s ability to influence others is fast becoming a sizable trend that will soon affect your brand
• What a 3-month long guerrilla marketing experiment will tell us about the most powerful hidden persuader of them all. And more..
There is a short video clip of Martin’s presentation in our website, you may take a look at http://www.hbc.hk/event2012a/intro.html

Martin will provide one on one critique of delegates’ work if you want to bring your commercials or print advertisement, he can do it during the symposium.

China Watch Blog has learnt that Online marketing and small business experts, Ajax Union, best known for helping small businesses increase their web presence via online marketing, are giving companies a huge boost to not only keep them viable but make them successful in the lagging US economy.

To help companies stand out from the crowd they are devoting November 26, calling it Small Business Saturday, to helping small businesses increase sales and take full advantage of one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

Ajax Union, founded by Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman, is proof that companies can thrive in a down economy. One of the few businesses actually hiring these days. They provide companies with methods for increasing their web presence and brand marketing. Their success record is undeniable. They have helped troubled companies not just survive but actually thrive in our current poor economy.

Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman, co-founders of Ajax, were recently featured on FOX News, discussing how small businesses can benefit from targeted online marketing and advertising. In fact, they are offering their proven, effective advice to small business owners on November 26, as a way to help them increase their web traffic and take full advantage of one of the busiest weekends of the year.

This dynamic duo’s expertise includes methods for effectively increasing and utilizing Search Engine Anatomy, Search Engine Optimization Basics (SEO), and Google Places Listing and Optimization.

Ajax Union is a Brooklyn, New York-based search engine agency offering a diverse array of services created to suit the needs of small businesses. Since 2007, they have been serving their clients with an effective blend of industry-tested internet advertising services, plus a little something extra.

The result has been a unique search engine marketing strategy for every campaign – no nonsense, no budget-breaking expenses, and no work that you can only assume is getting done.

Ajax Union presents a better business marketing model that offers 100% transparency, 100% flexibility and zero contracts. In other words, a better kind of online marketing designed for small businesses.

Their approach is simple – they become experts in each business. They study the company, the industry, the goals and the competition and if any of those factors change, they adjust each campaign to match. This approach has enabled them to realize measurable results in improved search engine rankings, greater traffic to websites, and targeted social networking to connect each business to its key demographics.

Joe Apfelbaum and Zevi Friedman are the co-founders, and CEO and President respectively of Ajax Union. They possess years of experience in online marketing and by combining their entrepreneurial talents and hands-on approach with those of their hand-picked team, they are able to develop innovative business strategies that are tailored to the individual needs of their small and medium-sized business clients, ensuring them of maximum success online.

China Watch Blog has learnt that digital marketers can leverage the buying cycle and achieve greater results, according to a White Paper which discusses the various stages and channels utilised by the customer in the buying cycle and how businesses can garner this opportunity by optimising each stage and channel.

The new white paper by Software-as-a-Service marketing technology provider, Hydra highlights how digital marketing specialists can better leverage all stages of the buying cycle.

Titled “Optimising the Buying Cycle”, the white paper discusses how a consistent presence across all digital channels that helps to sway a prospect’s decision in their favour is something that online marketers aspire to achieve. However, budget constraints and fierce competition combine, creating an obstacle that is difficult to overcome.

By understanding the stages of the buying cycle, the channels that are more suitable and the phrases most commonly used for each of these stages and chan­nel combinations, online marketers can now easily determine the most suitable cross-channel spend and tactics to help them achieve their goals.

The paper looks at the five main stages that a customer goes through in the online buying cycle looking at the conversation that the customer has about products and brands and the combination of channels to meet their needs at each stage.

Each of the five stages: Adoption, Intention, Persuasion, Conversion and Retention, demands a different balance of influence exerted by others, and self-determination by the customer. The marketer’s challenge is to get this balance right and leverage it.

The One platform from Hydra can assist in the process of identifying the language that is being used by prospects at each stage of the buying cycle allowing for effective communication. Its live data reports also uncover the most important search terms and trends to deliver enhanced opportunities to users.

China Watch Blog presents medical products industry veteran sales executive John R. Treace’s “Five Common Afflictions of Sales Teams”.

Treace, who has been 30 years in the industry, says he has been a part of many sales teams in my career, and over and over he had noticed five common afflictions that affect them, each of which reduces morale and sales performance. They can be found to some degree in most almost every organization. Smart management teams are aware of these afflictions and work to avoid their potentially destructive impact. Any one occurrence of these problems will not necessary hurt the sales effort, but if allowed to progress to extremes, or if multiple conditions exist at once, they can be extremely harmful.

Affliction 1: Wasting sales representatives’ time

One of the prime afflictions of sales teams is forcing them to spend time on non-sales tasks, for example making accounts receivable collections, managing product recalls, or filling out reports that do not directly relate to the sales process. Non-sales management often requests that reps perform these tasks, but great care should be taken before delegating them to valuable salespeople. If you, for instance, divert five percent of a sales team’s time to managing customer collections, you effectively reduce the number of feet on the ground by the same amount—and the reverse is true as well. Sometimes it’s necessary to assign non-sales tasks to salespeople, but before this is done it’s worthwhile to audit a company’s sales process to determine whether they could be assigned elsewhere. Finding as many ways as possible to remove unnecessary tasks from the sales team’s shoulders will result in sales increases that will more than pay for the adjustments in duties.

Affliction 2: Poor sales meetings

Another affliction of sales teams is poor or boring sales meetings. The objective of any sales meeting should be to increase sales—period. Every high-performing salesperson who attends a meeting will be thinking, “Is this meeting making me money, or is my time being wasted?” Powerful salespeople are self-motivated, and they intuitively know if their time is being wasted. If it is, management is hurting sales and morale. Wasteful or unnecessary meetings also send a clear message that management doesn’t know what needs to be accomplished to increase sales—and no good salesperson will have confidence in that type of leadership. The simple way to ensure effective sales meetings is to develop a statement of strategic intent that includes clear success metrics. This statement will define in specific terms what needs to be accomplished and the metrics needed to determine whether the goals set in the meeting were accomplished. It takes a deep understanding of the business, the market, and the competition to write an effective statement of strategic intent, and managers who can’t write them need a better understanding of the business. The bottom line is that powerful sales meetings produce sales and keep morale high.

Affliction 3: Poor strategy

Ineffective marketing or sales strategies will always negatively impact the sales team, and this is especially true for teams selling commodity products or services. A player with small market share who enters a commodity market without a well-defined and well-implemented strategy can be assured of certain death. These types of companies usually say, “It’s a huge market, and we can grab some of it,” but it’s not that simple. The sales team will recognize ineffective strategy and will lose faith in the managers who developed it. If the players on a sports team lose faith in the coaching, the path to winning will be difficult, if not impossible; the same is true with sales teams. Don’t let lackluster or nonexistent strategy cause this lack of faith.

To compound the error, companies often try special promotions to save sagging sales on products that are ill-conceived or supported by poor strategy. Special promotions can be very effective, but managers should never call for a pointless charge of the light brigade. Sending the sales team on a promotion in support of a poor product or service is a severe tactical error. A successful sales effort hinges on good strategy, and companies that fail in this regard severely handicap their sales teams.

Affliction 4: Capping or reducing income

Powerful companies have managers who do not get envious when large paychecks go to the sales force. Managers who are resentful of this often respond to rising sales income by reducing commissions, capping earnings, reducing territories, or removing products. These are all practices to be avoided, as they destroy morale, which hurts sales. When it is absolutely necessary to cap or reduce reps’ earnings, it must be done carefully. If it’s done carelessly, management will send the message that future earnings for the sales team have been limited. Powerful salespeople want to leverage today’s efforts into greater sales and income for tomorrow. If their commissions are reduced, earnings capped, or territory removed, they will feel like that ability has been taken away, and the high performers will quickly look for employment elsewhere.

Affliction 5: Favoritism

We all have favorites in life and that’s normal, but playing favorites with individuals on a sales team is very destructive. Salespeople want to work for companies that keep the playing field level for all. If select salespeople are given extra incentives, special attention, benefits, or favors not afforded others, management is sending a clear message that there is a privileged class within the team. This is one of the best ways to lessen team spirit, as reps will spend their time trying to move into that special class and not trying to close sales. Managers can’t buy the loyalty of a team by strengthening a small political power base within a company. Playing favorites within a sales team causes problems for all team members (even the favored ones), but keeping the playing field level will pay big dividends.

Wasting time, poor sales meetings, poor strategy, capping income, and playing favorites are, with few exceptions, situations to be avoided. They are destructive to morale and they lead to poor performance. Effective managers will be careful to avoid these situations, and astute salespeople will bring these practices to the attention of management for correction.

John R. Treace has spent over 10 years specializing in the restructuring of sales departments of companies that were either bankrupt or failing. Investor groups and venture capital firms hired him to manage turnarounds of pre-IPO companies. In 2010 he founded JR Treace & Associates, a sales management consulting business. He is a member of the National Speakers Association and earned a BS in Psychology from the University of Memphis. Treace is the author of the new book, Nuts & Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization.

China Watch Blog has learnt that Mark Ryski, founder and CEO of HeadCount, a leading analytics firm specializing in store traffic and conversion serving retailers across North America, has outlined five ways to drive customer conversion rates in your stores.

There are only three ways you can drive sales in your stores:
(1) encourage more prospects to visit your store;
(2) increase your average ticket, and,
(3) increase your conversion rate –that is, sell to more of the prospects already visiting your stores. These are the folks who visit your store but don’t buy.

To a great extent retail sales has been a two-trick pony: drive more prospect traffic and increase average ticket. Driving more prospects into your stores usually requires an advertising or promotional investment of some kind, and increasing average ticket, well let’s just say that most retailers have been and continue to focus on this one – but what about conversion rate?

Driving conversion rate is the third trick every retailer needs to learn – it’s another source of sales opportunity that most retailers today completely overlook.

“Before I get into the ways you can drive conversion, I need to confirm that you actually track traffic and calculate conversion rate in your stores. First, you need to actually track prospect traffic. This is not the same as transaction counts,” Ryski says.

“Lots of retailers are confused about this. Transaction counts represent the number of people who made a purchase; traffic counts represent the total number of people who came to the store including buyers and non-buyers.

“Conversion rate is simply calculated by dividing sales transactions by gross traffic counts. For example, if you logged 500 traffic counts in your store and there were 200 sales transactions for the day, your conversion rate would be 40% (i.e. 200/500),” he says.

“As you can see, without traffic counts, you can’t actually calculate conversion rate,” he adds. “The fact is, if you don’t track traffic in your stores, you can’t calculate conversion rate. If you can’t calculate conversion rate, well, you can’t improve it.

“So for the roughly 35% of retailers who actually track traffic and conversion rates, here are five ways you can improve conversion rates in your stores,” Ryski says.

The five ways include:

1. Understand why people don’t buy: one of the most important things a retailer can do to improve conversion rates is to understand why people don’t buy. Long till line ups, can’t find sales help, out-of-stocks, poor merchandising, the list goes on. There are reasons why people visit your store and don’t buy and you need to understand it. Every store manager should spend some time observing visitors in his/her store. Resist the temptation to help; just observe the behaviors. Watch customers as they move through your store, and it won’t take long for you to identify some actions you can take to turn more visitors into buyers.

2. Align your staff to traffic not transactions: Sounds simple enough, but one many retailers overlook. Staff scheduling is tricky at the best of times, but aligning your staff resources to when prospects are in your store will help you maximize your chances of converting more of them into buyers. Pay particular attention to lunch time, when store traffic can be way up, but staff lunch breaks can seriously drag down conversion rates. Associates need to eat, but customers need to be served. Matching staff schedules to traffic volume and timing in your store will help improve your chances of converting more.

3. Look for conversion leaks and plug the holes: Traffic volume and conversion rates tend to be inversely related. That is, when traffic is high, conversion tends to go down or sag. When traffic levels are low, conversion rates tend to go up. It’s not hard to understand why this happens. When the store is busy, till lines are longer and it’s harder to get help from an associate. The opposite is true when the store isn’t as busy. So, if you want to improve conversion rates, look at the traffic and conversion patterns in your store by day of week and by hour to look for when conversion rates are sagging – these sags represent the times when sales are being lost.

4. Set conversion targets by store: having goals and targets are important if you want to improve results. If you don’t have a conversion target for your store, you need to set one. It’s important to remember that every store is unique and conversion targets should be set uniquely by store. One store might be doing well with a 15% conversion rate while another may be underperforming even though it has a 30% conversion rate. The trick is to move your own conversion rate up relative to your store’s performance.

5. Make conversion a team sport: it takes the collective effort of all staff to help turn prospects into buyers. From the cashiers and sales associates to the merchandisers – everyone in the store plays a role. So don’t think of conversion as merely some business metric, but rather a simple measure of how well the whole store is doing at helping people buy. A good way to help improve conversion is to ensure all your staff understands what conversion is and that each of them helps influence it. Ask your staff about why they think people don’t buy and what the store can do to improve conversion rate. Discuss targets, get them to buy-in and share results. Get them excited about moving the conversion needle and you will significantly improve your chances of actually doing it.

Everyday prospects visit your stores with the intent to buy, but leave without making a purchase. Getting your store to capture even a few more of these lost sales can have a significant impact on overall sales results. Improving your in-store conversion rate is not hard to do, but it does take focus and attention – the suggestions above will help you drive conversion in your stores.

If you don’t track traffic or measure conversion rate in all your stores today, simply put, you are missing out on an entirely new way to drive sales. You can’t improve conversion if you don’t measure it. The retailers who are focused on driving conversion rate have a significant advantage over those who do not.

Mark Ryski is the author of Conversion: The Last Great Retail Metric. For more information, visit www.headcount.com.

China Watch Blog has picked up a white paper by Software-as-a-Service marketing technology provider, Hydra which warns digital marketing channel specialists, who continue to work in silos, that they are taking a risky approach.

Titled “Natural Search Specialist, should Paid Search matter to you?”, the white paper highlights why it is in the natural search specialist’s best interest – be they in-house or agency-based, to plan and execute campaigns with other disciplines in mind, as opposed to working in isolation.

“Today, it is simply unacceptable for Natural Search specialists to plan budget optimisation without considering Paid Search”, says Ruth Zohrer, solutions consultant at Hydra. “If Natural Search specialists want to be successful in improving returns, it is imperative they move away from looking at Natural Search metrics alone and start looking at the big picture.”

The white paper focuses on five key points from keyword research, competitor benchmarking to budget optimisation, two of which include:

Omitting to consider the Paid Search competitor landscape in natural search competitor analysis is a mistake

Few channels are driven by competitor activity as much as Natural Search*. A competitor’s overhaul of their pages or back-link profile can lead to dramatic changes in the composition of search engine results pages (SERPs) and cause movements up or down the web rankings for other sites.

Hence competitor research is an integral part to successful Natural Search campaign management. By regularly monitoring competitors, Natural Search specialists assess the success of their strategies, identify new methods and benchmark performance fluctuations.

Few Natural Search specialists, however, consider the Paid Search** competitor landscape in their Natural Search competitor analysis and therefore only get a fraction of the overall picture that they must consider. Zohrer points out strong brands are increasingly running campaigns on both channels, and historically, most brands have used Paid Search to substitute for Natural Search performance when not in the Top 10 SERPs.

“Natural Search specialists should supplement their competitor list with cross-channel key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify true leaders in their industry, as well as uncover weaknesses of vulnerable competitors,” says Zohrer. “This information is particularly useful in choosing which battles to fight: if a site is considerably difficult to outperform in Natural Search, resources could be allocated to another keyword instead of wasting them in pursuing a rank that is not realistic.”

In Natural Search, sudden drops in performance can often be puzzling. Are competitors boosting their pages to outperform rival sites? Or might this drop in performance have resulted from recent changes implemented? Has the search engine released another update to the algorithm? Is this caused by other issues like industry-wide trends? Without the appropriate frame of reference, Natural Search specialists can spend a lot of time trying to answer the unknown. In worst case scenarios, misleading evidence can result in corrective measures that worsen performance further, another aspect the white paper raises for adding Paid Search into the equation.

Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit when evaluating performance

Natural Search specialists should take a step back and analyse Natural Search performance in conjunction with Paid Search performance. According to Hydra’s Zohrer, this will help pinpoint if any sudden drops might be a channel-specific issue or a wider phenomenon affecting performance such as seasonal variations or industry-wide trends. Additionally, since search is experienced as one channel by users (Natural Search + Paid Search), a sharp performance improvement in Paid Search paired to a sharp decrease in Natural Search performance may also hint at potential strategy cannibalisation between channels.

“None of the above alternatives can be properly considered without incorporating Paid Search into the analysis, which is why Natural Search specialists should make the evaluation of both Natural and Paid Search data a permanent habit when evaluating performance.”

Hydra undertook a survey*** of over 300 UK-based digital marketers focussing on how digital marketing teams currently operate, based on collaboration, use of technologies and competitor analysis. A resounding 90% said they would see an advantage in using a common reporting and campaign implementation platform, indicative of an innate need for greater collaboration between these disciplines within digital marketing teams. The survey also highlighted that those firms with multiple digital marketing disciplines whose teams interacted regularly, displayed greater confidence in their success.

The One platform from Hydra aims to encourage this positive cross-pollination of ideas between the two disciplines by allowing Natural Search specialists to easily, efficiently and accurately derive insights from Paid Search campaigns. Its live data reports uncover the most important search terms and trends – from the largest keyword opportunities to the top performing companies across multiple sectors in Natural and Paid Search.

China Watch Blog releases the last and fourth piece on sales management guru John Treace’s “The 7 deadly sins of sales management”. Treace has over 30 years experience in the sales management industry

6. Poor Metrics
Metrics are the numbers that tell us where we have been and where we are headed. They should act as the radar that lets us know well in advance of impending problems. A large number of sales management teams get into trouble due to ineffective metrics—or in extreme cases I’ve seen, no metrics at all. Usually, when we find poor metrics, it is because sales management doesn’t appreciate their value or does not know the business well enough to develop them. Good metrics should allow sales management to confidently predict the quarter’s sales, identify high- and low-performing reps, and develop solutions to problems. In today’s high-velocity markets, it is imperative to have a solid dashboard of metrics to guide the sales ship and keep it out of trouble.

7. Lack of Deep Understanding of the Business
Failing to know the business at a deep level is one of the surest paths to failure. This has been a prime issue in every struggling business I have worked with. Management that does not know the business at the customer, product, or service level will have difficulty identifying solutions to problems and will lack confidence in the directions they take. At one company where I worked as a sales rep, our regional sales managers were unable to make any presentations to customers, and they didn’t bring any value to the sales process. At another, they were able to present products to customers better than most of the reps. The company with management that had a better understanding of the customer and products was much more powerful. The sales force could not use excuses for poor sales, and conversely, management understood the valid problems the sales force faced and worked to correct them without blame. The sales force was confident with this management group, but not the other. When sales are going well, the lack of deep business understanding usually does not appear as a problem, but when business is challenged by sagging sales, it is. These are the times when a thorough understanding of the company’s customers, products and services, and sales process is critical. Without it, sales reps cannot be confident in the course taken by management.

Changes in the sales process, poor metrics and award programs, ineffective management, conflicts with marketing, and a lack of business understanding are all deadly to the performance of business. In today’s tough business climate, wise management will review these topics frequently to ensure excellence in their organizations.

China Watch Blog presents sales management guru, John Treace’s tips on the third, fourth and fifth deadling sins in sales management.

3. Not Holding People Accountable
Holding people accountable for their performance is a cornerstone of powerful organizations, but you would be surprised at the number of companies that don’t consistently do this. This is especially true during trying times, when management is inclined to lighten up on performance standards. During a downturn, it is better to reduce quota requirements than look the other way on non-performance. When we don’t consistently hold people accountable for their performance shortfalls, it sends a message that management is weak and not confident in the goals it sets. This will erode morale as well as confidence in management.

4. Poor Award Programs
Award programs need to be seen as achievable and fair. Reps need to see that the playing field is level and that everyone has a shot at winning recognition. It is amazing how many companies have award programs that are slanted in favor of a few preferred individuals. This sends a morale-damaging message to all reps, including the favored ones: that some are valued over others.

5. Changes to the Sales Process
The sales process includes all the steps and procedures a company puts in place on its way to having the product delivered and invoiced. When the sales process is changed or modified, expect the sales force to need time to adjust. For example, the sales team might be required to fill out new reports or obtain price quotes from the corporate office, even if they previously had the freedom to do this themselves. During a period of adjustment to a new process, expect sales to be impacted. When the sales process is changed, all of management should expect sales as well as sales forecasting to be affected and in a direct proportion to the degree and type of change, at least for the short term.

Additionally, sales reps generally dislike change. They don’t want to spend time learning a new process; they realize that learning the new system will detract from their current efforts. If they see the change as inhibiting their sales, this will impact morale—especially if the change is a non-sales requirement. If you are faced with needing to modify the sale process, quantify the amount of time the average rep will need to spend on the new non-sales activity, calibrate this lost selling time to lost sales, and advise senior management on the anticipated impact. All management needs to be aware that changing the sales process will affect sales.