It's very easy to see why people hire marketing specialists to help build their aesthetic business. After all, successful marketing gets attention, generates interest, builds brand-awareness and 'hopefully' then generates enquiries.
Marketing noun
'the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising'
Perfect! Hire a flashy and expensive Business Consultant with extensive marketing experience to work with your clinic or plan and host your event and you're laughing all the way to the bank, right? Not necessarily. The aim of getting enquiries is to convert them to new consultations if you're a clinic or practitioner or new meetings and demos if you are a Device or Skincare/Product Company. That's where the real work begins and unless you have the skills to recognise buying signals and are able to negotiate and close the sale, it will all be for nothing. Or more to the point, unless your Business Consultant has the skills to ensure you know this and can carry it out, it will all be for nothing. All you will have is a spreadsheet of enquiries that came to nothing and a bill for your Business Consultant.
How do you get around this? Firstly, remember that you are not selling treatments, devices, skincare or whatever it is you offer over the phone or by email. Once that enquiry drops the first stage is to book them in to meet with you as you need to carry out a personalised consultation. If at this enquiry stage you start trying to sell to them before you even meet them you risk losing them. Ensure the enquiry is 'qualified'. What is it they want? Find out their timescale and if possible their budget and then you know that there is potential to sell when you meet them. You'd be surprised at how many people enquire very early on in the process and are not in a position to spend money (we can talk about how to deal with these enquiries in another post) or how many of those enquiries that came via the flashy marketing campaign didn't fully-understand what was involved or the cost.
Once they are booked in you need to identify who in your team, if anyone, is naturally good at selling. It's not just enough to know 'sales techniques' as they can come across as fake and that's when people start talking about the 'double glazing sales/used-car sales' approach.
Who in your team has genuine passion about products or services, techniques or technologies? Who is selling well? Who can read the customer and recognise when a genuine discussion means they are ready to commit to buying? This is the person who needs to be involved in the appointment otherwise you may find that appointment or meeting leads to nothing and was a waste of time for everyone.
What do you do if nobody stands out? Then consider working with a multi-skilled Business Consultant who can visit your clinic or office, meet with your team and work on their sales skills. Everyone has a different style of selling and it is quite a natural thing to do when you want to genuinely help someone. What The Aesthetic Consultant can do is identify and enhance these styles in each and every one of your team which will ensure that the enquiries that stem from marketing actually convert to sales. Marketing success does NOT necessarily lead to sales success! You need to be able to close those sales.
Not only can The Aesthetic Consultant give you marketing advice and guidance, I can also come to site and work with your team to identify their natural selling style, enhance it, develop sales incentives for them and ensure that the enquiries are converted into sales. With a very successful track record in sales I can coach your team and help you generate revenue. For example, one of my clients sold an extra £99,000 of treatments in just 10 weeks after working with me. Another client sold £350,000 of equipment after one event.
So invest in picking the right Business Consultant who can help generate enquiries and teach you to close the sales and you'll soon find that revenue growing.