Business Development
What we do:
Marketing strategy and sales plan
We will look in detail at your business including, identifying and examining your core competencies, assessing your products and services, profiling your existing client base, examining your position in the market place and taking a close look at how your business compares with your competition.
We will undertake fact-finding interviews with a number of your customers in order to probe market information and find out the real reasons why your customers buy your products and services.
It is our experience that these reasons are rarely the ones your company believes them to be! This information together with desk research will help determine the marketing and creative strategy - and the way forward will be detailed in a Marketing Programme together with a suggested budget detail.
Our ICE Marketing specialists have expertise across the whole media field from public relations, advertising to e-marketing.
We employ a technique called Commend Marketing based on word of mouth testimonials from your happy customers.
It is proven to be four times more powerful than conventional advertising and has delivered good results for many of our clients.
Ivan Misner, an acknowledged expert on the subject, says:-
“Assuming repeat business from existing customers there are only four ways to increase your business; Advertising, Public Relations, Cold-Calling and Word of Mouth. Practically everyone knows how important word of mouth is, yet few people know how to develop it effectively. If you offer the same products or services through the same means to the same targets as your competitors it’s difficult to gain the edge”
Once we understand all these things we will work with you to identify where opportunities for growth will lay – everything from developing existing clients, new products and services through to new clients and most importantly how to best access these opportunities.
Once we have developed the strategy we will determine how it will be achieved – the sales plan. We will develop a road map for each member of your sales team with actions, targets and key performance indicators so you are able to monitor progress over time.
Above all, we are business-focussed and fully understand that a marketing plan should be an integral and performance-related component of the overall business plan and that marketing spend has to generate tangible returns for your business in improved sales and profits.
Developing sales and sales management skills
We work with you to a assess the skills and capabilities of your sales team and sales managers, identify the gaps that may exist and develop appropriate bespoke in house or identify appropriate external development programmes that will improve the capability and performance of your team.
Our experienced sales specialists will work with your staff to build their capability in all aspects of the sales process from planning appointments and building relationships through to negotiation, up selling, and closing the sale.
We can develop individual coaching as well as team improvement programmes.
Lead generation and relationship management
Many companies do not manage their customer relations in a structured and consistent manner.
Time and again when we analyse the client’s customer database we find ‘cobwebs’ in it which indicate that the sales management are not contacting past clients, keeping contact information up to date and keeping the customer informed on developments in their business.
Our CRM and Lead Generation specialist will work with you to clean up your data base, identify buying patterns, set up contact programmes and work with you to raise your company’s profile through a range of proven methods that ensure appropriate frequency of contact and levels of information.
We will also work with you to develop new business opportunities by carrying out market research programmes and developing contact programmes to open the doors for your sales team.
