The Buyer's Journey from a Malaysian Perspective

Today's day and age is far more advanced and informed than ever before. This is thanks to the vast amount of information available on the internet. Because of this, the balance of power has indefinitely shifted from the sales rep to the buyer in most sales scenarios. This is why guerilla sales tactics are no longer as effective as they used to be.

Instead, to be successful in sales today sales reps must adapt their mindset from sales to helping. The best way to start this process is by becoming intimately familiar with who the buyer is and what is the journey they are taking on their way to making a choice.

What is the buyer's journey?

This describes the buyer's path taken to complete a purchase. In other words, buyers go through a process to become aware of, consider, evaluate, and decision before making a purchase of any product or service.

By understanding the buyer's journey, the pains and the problems they experience along that journey, and the influencing factors that mold their thinking, sales professionals can better empathize with the buyer and position their offers along that path.

To help this process here's the basics of how a buyer's journey can be broken down for you to be able to better grasp what is going on. Here are the 3 stages that describe roughly how advance a buyer is along their path to making any purchase. 

Here's how to conceptualize each stage:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision

What's going on during the awareness stage?

The buyer is experiencing several things at the same time. There may be a problem or symptoms of pain and their goal is to alleviate it. At this stage, they may be looking for informational resources to more clearly understand, frame, and give a name to their problem.

What is the buyer doing during the consideration stage?

Having clearly defined and given a name to their problem and they are committed to researching and understanding all of the available approaches to solving the defined problem or opportunity.

What is the buyer doing during the decision stage?

The buyer has already decided on their solution. This could include a strategy, method, or approach. Now they will compile a list of available vendors and make a shortlist.

Conclusion: Tailor your sales process to the Buyer's Journey

Always remember, buyers, don't want to be prospected, or demoed, or closed when they're not ready. These steps add zero value, from their perspective when offered at the wrong time. This is where you can shine as a sales professional in Malaysia as you are well informed of the instances when buyers are looking for additional information about your product.

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Secrets of Cold Emailing That Delivers Results

Being aware of strangers is nothing but human nature. Therefore striking up a conversation with someone you don't know can be awkward regardless of the situation - especially when the conversation is likely to meet a financial end.

Cold sales outreach can be exhausting and ineffective when you don't know what you're doing - and that's not specific to active communication like face-to-face meetings or phone calls. This applies to email too.

Sending cold emails with the hope of a better conversion of results can be difficult to pull off, but not impossible. If you have some understanding of the practice and how to do it right, you would have a better chance of succeeding.

Let's review what cold emailing is, its effectiveness, some tips and compare the practice to its vocal equivalent - cold calling.

What is cold emailing?

It's a subset of email marketing where usually a sales representative sends unsolicited emails to prospects without having previously contacted them. 

You might even have a few cold emails sitting in your inbox - some of which might be unopened, gathering dust. It's fairly common practice that several companies still employ, but just how effective is Cold Emailing?

Does cold emailing work?

It definitely can because this is a core strategy for a lot of companies. Statistically however cold emails don't convert particularly well.

It's easy for the recipient to shrug off a random email from someone they've never spoken to. After all cold emailing is similar to cold calling.

If you want to get the most of your cold email efforts here are a few pointers you should consider when you write your future cold emails.

Cold Emailing Tips

Cold emails need careful consideration and thought process. If you are targeting consistently and have put enough thought into it your cold emails are more likely to consistently deliver results.

• Perfect your subject line
• Make it clear why you're reaching out to them specifically
• Use social proof and point to results
• Keep it short, simple, and written like a human
• Make sure your email is written with a clear intent
• Touch on a real pain point.

Conclusion: Differences between cold calling vs. cold emailing

Cold calls have their own place and the same with cold emailing. Neither should replace the other as both offer different benefits and suit different situations. Cold calls can be more dynamic but cold emails can be more convenient and can be easily automated, tracked, and forwarded - generally more time effective.

Ultimately, you should look at these few factors before making any allocation such as timing, content, prospect's professional level, and the decision-making authority.

The best cold emails take time, research, understanding, and personalization. If you are willing to put effort into your emailing strategy, you'll more likely be able to see the results you are aiming for.

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Beginner's Guide to Demand Planning

Demand planning helps you to make sure your shelves are stocked, but not overflowing. A way to ensure this is well managed is to manage sales planning and operational tactics to get the job done.

This is where demand planning comes into play.

What is Demand Planning?

Demand Planning is a way to anticipate the volume of upcoming sales. This forecast predicts and prepares sales to be prepared in what to expect as a way to ensure proper resources are available to successfully fulfill those sales.

Demand planning is an integral way to support the sales of physical products. Ways to do this include the fulfillment of purchase orders, extension of labor services, or ensuring adequate staffing.

Demand Planning vs. Demand Forecasting

Demand Planning and Demand Forecasting are two different scopes. Demand Forecasting is a necessary function of Demand Planning however, Demand Planning encompasses a much wider scope. Which includes a cross-functional collaboration between the forecast analysis, adjustment of inventory, and customer support requirements. 

Why is Demand Planning important?

Without Demand Planning, customers may have to wait much longer than expected for their products or wait too long to get help from your understaffed team. This is directly attributed to a poor customer experience. Which leads to customers being less likely to becoming repeat customers or avid referrers.

Other problems that you may face include overstaffing and overstocking which are very costly mistakes even in the short-term. 

The Process

Your most important step: Hire someone with forecasting experience

Demand Planning always carries uncertainty. No one is able to predict the future with 100% accuracy, but the big question is "by how much?".

Here are the 3 basic steps you can take to compensate for any experience that you may not have at your disposal:

1. Collect and analyse data
2. Define business goals
3. Collaborate across teams

1. Collect and analysis of data

Collecting data isn't difficult but collecting 'clean' data is important to support the foundation of a strong demand planning strategy, but that data can come from a variety of different sources. This is part of the process that is also known as demand forecasting.

• Historical Data
• Contextual Data
• Sales Forecasting

2. Define business goals

After analysing your data, you might come to some actionable conclusions. 

Customers will be taking more online courses this fall, and fewer in-person workshops

Historically customers have a tendency to take more classes during the winter and there are fewer in-person classes due to COVID-19. Forecasters would have already seen a drop in the in-person workshops pipeline and an increase in online sign-ups.

This would help to develop clearer business goals.

This winter, we aim to drive 90% of would-be in-person workshop attendees to our online courses.

3. Collaborate across teams.

To realistically accomplish these goals would require teamwork which requires a buy-in from leadership across multiple different departments. It's important to make sure all key stakeholders are briefed on the demands, and what their part is in meeting those demands.

Conclusion

Building for a strong sales funnel is important for any small malaysian business, but make sure you plan for your demand. Strong sales with inadequate demand planning could lead to a detrimental sales delivery.

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10 Big Steve Jobs Quotes That Will Help You Through Any Tough Spots

Regardless of whether you find Steve Jobs prophetic or poralising, Apple's late CEO had a swagger about him that not many can match. He did what not many other business leaders could. He touched many with his passion and creativity for creating beautiful and functional products. Until today his products continue to live through the legacy of Apple and the many lessons he's left the world. Here are 10 of the biggest Steve Jobs quotes that will change your life.

1. "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do"

2. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful...that’s what matters to me.”

3. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

4. “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So, it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

5. “I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

6. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

7. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

8. “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

9. “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others’ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.”

10. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.”

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