What kind of image do you present when marketing your products? Are you professional and well organized or does your store/site/whatever scream, “sloppy!,” to those who matter the most: your customers? Let’s see how one leading retailer is winning the sales war, but losing an important battle: store organization.

WalMart is dominant in so many categories with the various products that they sell. In 50 years the company has gone from a local player to a world powerhouse and is on track to expand throughout the land of the largest consumer market in the world, China.

As much as WalMart is conquering new horizons and dominating the American landscape, one problem is arising: their stores are a mess. Visit your local WalMart store at any given time and you will find throngs of shoppers but few workers. Most workers are busy at the front end of the store ringing up sales, while others are scattered throughout the store putting up stock.

Why is this a problem? Quite frankly, WalMart is a victim of its own success. Stock turns over so fast, that the store must replenish during peak store hours in order to keep everything on hand. A good problem to have, right? Not if you are a customer who wants something and you cannot navigate aisles to find what you need as boxes of stock partially block you out.

WalMart’s chief competitor, Target, seems to have gotten it right. Their stores are neat; the signs to help you find various sections are big, bold, and color coordinated; and stock replenishment does not take over the aisles. On the other hand, KMart was once an industry powerhouse and many of their stores are old and disheveled. More importantly, KMart is now an “also ran” as other retailers — including WalMart — have presented a better place to shop for customers.

As much as price is a driving factor in winning the sales war, store organization and cleanliness can eventually undermine sales as customers are turned off by a messy environment and choose to go to your competitor.

While many customers will accept a lower level of customer service [less floor help available, for example], clutter will drive them away faster than low prices will pull them in. You can tout, “Always low prices, always” in your motto, but your customers will flee if they find your store to be disorganized. Competitors wait in the wings to grab what you will lose: can you afford the loss of sales?

Win themes are too often neglected in many proposals. Frequently, both new and established companies forget that any proposal should instil confidence in the potential buyer, highlight your competitive advantage and show exactly why you are best suited for the job. Written proposals with an effective win theme almost always ensure you, the provider, a winning contract.

What is a win theme? A win theme can be defined as a concept presented in your proposal that is designed to persuade the buyer of your unique suitability to deliver the project. Find a single aspect that marks you as uniquely suited for a given project and present this to the buyer.

Creating compelling reasons to buy is why you land contracts. This is even more important if you are conducting business primarily over the Internet. Face to face interactions naturally work much better when it comes to creating lasting relationships. Online, you need to work harder to make yourself stand out. Distinguish yourself from competitors in every way possible.

Merely listing your qualifications won’t get you far. It won’t hurt, but you will need to do much more than this to consistently win jobs. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that your experience alone will speak for what you can do - when a proposal is tailored specifically to a contract and shows exactly how and why you will meet the customer’s needs, you will be much more likely to gain his business.

Defining win strategies and how they relate to you is not an easy task. They frequently vary considerably from proposal to proposal. Pick the competitive advantages you have that are important to the client. Emphasize your value. Competitive advantages are those experiences you offer that are obviously superior to what your competitor offers. Are you more experienced? More creative? More in touch with the direct issues a project applies to? Find whatever aspect distinguishes you from the herd and focus on how this feature can improve the end product for the client.

Use a tool such as the Learn to Write Proposals Bid Capture Plan to help you define you proposal win themes and strategy

Focus on developing distinct win themes that will ensure that, at the very least, you are always strongly considered for any given contract. Businesses hire the company or individual they feel will deliver the best results. Granted, price is often a strong concern, but more important is the ability to instil confidence in those who consider hiring you. Play to your strengths and emphasize your distinct value to the client. No one can advise you exactly on how to do this, but knowing your strengths allows you to easily understand how you can fulfil a contract.

You must always emphasize your value to the client. Hundreds of businesses are vying for the same opportunities. Guarantee your success by offering something specific. The Bid Capture Plan helps you define the factors that help present to the client the perception that you are unique amongst potential suppliers in being able to win this contract.

You won’t win every piece of work you pitch for; it’s just not possible…and very time you lose a contract it’s going to a competitor. However, you can help prevent this from happening by analysing the competition.

Why analyse competition? How does this help? It allows you to understand why your competitor looked like a more appropriate fit for your perspective clients needs as well as what they are doing that you aren’t. To get contracts, you need to understand how you lose them.

You need to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. How are they better than you? Do they have more experience? Do they have existing relationships with the client? Figure exactly out their strengths and then do two things.

Firstly, figure out how to turn their strength into a weakness - find a way to twist a positive aspect into a negative one. For example, are they an older company with more experience? Then emphasize that you are more creative, free-thinking and adaptive.

How are they planning to beat you and other competitors? Ghost their strengths in your proposal and try and downplay their importance to the client, instead emphasising the importance of your unique selling points. Where your competitor is weak emphasise what you can do in those areas. Make sure you explain how you excel above what is normally expected.

The internet makes doing competitor research remarkably easy. You can browse a corporate website or, if using an outsourcing site, you may be able to view previous contract history. If they do any type of advertising, weather offline or on, you can review and research the marketing information they use. It’s not hard to find out something about how they position themselves, any legitimate business will do some sort of self promotion that you can find. This knowledge is invaluable to helping you grow and achieve better contracts.

With the Learn to Write Proposals (.learntowriteproposals.co.uk) Bid Management Toolkit you will find the Competitor Evaluation Matrix to help perform and document your competitive analysis as part of your bid preparation.

Another great idea is to get feedback from previous opportunities you have lost. Quite often, companies will be more than happy to discuss why you ultimately lost out. These opportunities are one of the best ways to understand what the bidder liked in the winners bid and the weaknesses in yours.

Ever wonder what makes a millionaire different from your average Joe? Why is it some are “meant” for riches while others are “meant” for poverty? Well, it is simply a choice.

When you realize that to have success is to simply choose success is when you will see results in your life. Now you’re probably wondering how does somebody choose success? If you were to go back and study all of the successful entrepreneurs, for example Ford, Edison, Gates, they all had one thing in common: The Mindset For Success.

It’s not just luck or by chance that people are successful nor does someone happen to just make a million dollars. The elite realize that there are exercises, daily practices, and knowledge that can get anyone to the top and this knowledge is accessible to anyone who truly desires wealth in their life.

Now, how does someone jump over the gap from being an employee to becoming a successful entrepreneur and living a lifestyle of absolute freedom and abundance? Well, without the right training, without daily mental preparation, this task would seem insurmountable. However, with the right people mentoring you and with the knowledge that can get you basically anything you desire, YOU CAN’T FAIL! The only x-factor is you; do you really believe that you weren’t meant to have success and wealth in your life, but that wealth and success were meant for others? Ask yourself, are you truly ready to leap from mediocrity to excellence?

You Now Have a Choice…

WEBconferences are just like normal meetings but they are conducted virtually over the Internet. Presenters can give PowerPoint presentations, consult documents, use interactive on-screen graphics and even vote or display the results of collaborative efforts.

This eco-logic axis, is a new challenger on the WEBconference industry, Tele-efficiency, who supports it. Their service, better known as Conferenceware, is registered in the technological ecosystem. It integrates with Outlook in order to plan a meeting and to invite contacts and with Skype a voice over IP worldwide network. It includes a free audioconference service, in which the participants just make a long distance call, with accesses in North America and Europe, even better, free, with Skype.

According to the Forrester consulting firm, the WEBconference market has had a 28% annual increase in the last 5 years and this progression should continue until 2011, going from 700 million to 2,8 billions a year. Better know for its applications on the public WEBinar, the eMeeting applications should experience in themselves the strongest increase mainly among the multisite companies, those regarding knowledge as well as associations.

The cost of WEBconference services is usually based on per-minute and per-participant rates and, therefore, these services are very expensive. However, Conferenceware offers a free 30-day trial period followed by a fixed-rate quarterly or annual service contract that includes an unlimited number of meetings. Companies that use WEBconferences can reduce their traveling costs and improve the synergy of their meetings, since the latter can be held at any time, anywhere and even at a moment’s notice.

Conferenceware has been launched simultaneously in three languages; French, English and Spanis, in 15 countries on all 5 continents. The address of its international English portal is .tele-efficiency.net. With an interface available in several languages and that can be personalized with a company’s image and logo, Conferenceware fosters cultural exchanges and international cooperation. An on-line demonstration is available at .demo.conferenceware.info. It should be borne in mind that the prospect of events such as an avian flu epidemic could lead companies to adopt WEBconferences as part of their continuity strategy.

Problems

Of course, the users have to read the training material; understandably, the reading can be monotonous. However, producing step-by-step videos for the purpose of instructing does not make economic sense. This is especially difficult if the user seeking assistance is extremely ill-informed.

Solution

An after-sales service team puts together technical demonstration online to explore and explain the problem. A panic button on the WEB site connects the client to a meeting room from where the presentation is made, simultaneously, by an agent. The agent might ask the client to go to a specific page of a knowledge database; for example, the one that describes step by step all the steps required to complete anoperation. Also, the usual questions, the FAQ (Frequently Ask Questions), are put together on prerecorded help clips that the clients can consult, as free service, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Results

The audio-visual is without doubt the most powerful of all media. The television and cinema are proof enough for this. The level of comprehension is manifestly superior as is the level of satisfaction of the clientele. By converting part of the technical assistance requests to self-service, the cost per client can be lowered, thus enabling more resources to be available for the more difficult cases. Thus, with us, long distance technical support, in telework, is available just a click away.

Problems

Nevertheless, reviewing a proposition with the client will actually save time for everybody as compared to just emailing or using rapid delivery services. Coordinating the responses to bids that involve many different resources within the company (but which are not always available) in conjunction with the deadlines that approach rapidly is, without doubt, a Herculean task. Our services give you the edge here, with the added advantage that the sales team will not be the last to know if a competitor makes a borderline maneuver.

Solution

In some cases, it is more appropriate to conduct a virtual meeting with a prospect, a client, a distributor, or a partner. Through web conference, a PowerPoint presentation, a software demonstration, or consultation of a document may be done online. Also, it is a great way to review and reinforce a proposition already sent to a client by email. Thanks to the presence indicator of the voice over IP software, Skype, other colleagues can be reunited, according to their availability, in order to produce a bid offer. Finally, an alert on the competition allows the exchange of all information related to, and needed for, the sales force.

Results

Reducing the traveling time of representatives proportionally increases their sales time, thus allowing them to focus better on the task. The level of stress that goes with answering a bid diminishes with better coordination, resulting in the improved quality of a proposal, which may be evident even to the client’s eyes. Sharing of experiences among the sales team members, regarding the competition, better equips them to neutralize arguments and to go ahead successfully.

Problems

In such a situation, a training method that is a continuing formation adapted to the ever-changing needs of the firms would be illusory; also, efforts to manage all the information within an organization as back-up data would be unrealistic. Often, consultation with employees is usually nonexistent, too. Hence, it can be safely concluded that the research result which says that clients’ loyalty is directly proportional to employees’ motivation is true.

Solution

Pedagogical methodology has profoundly evolved during the last ten years. Virtual classrooms have appeared, with long-distance training. Closer to us, “coaching” has become a common practice. Both these methodologies can make use of the web conferencing technology. By constantly recording the training sessions as well as the meetings, information can be made widely available to everybody. Usually, these concern better practices or strategic visions that can be shared. Also, thanks to the polls and votes during a web conference, the management gets to know the personnel’s opinions which they can actively implicate.

Results

First of all, optimizing training to integrate new employees shortens the time needed for them to fully develop their capacities and to perform better. Profit targets are met faster as costs get reduced, as well. Moreover, the organization’s efficiency in the developing of exchanges and the sharing of best practices improves, too. This has a considerable impact on profits. The higher the individual motivations pyramid, the more the people will feel the need to belong, to be appreciated, and to accomplish something. In short, the key is bidirectionality.

Problem

The key people are committed to organizing brainstorming sessions and focus groups, and in conceiving and validating concepts. Press conferences, sometimes lasting several weeks, are also held during product launches. For the fruition of these efforts, the prospects have to be carefully identified as qualified. Otherwise, these efforts will be futile, and the team will have to begin again without being able to capitalize their exchanges and use them repeatedly.

Solution

The marketing team announces on their WEB site the online presentations (WEBinar), for which the visitors have to register in advance. The brainstorming sessions among colleagues, the focus groups, press conferences, and product launching are done long distance during webconferences. In addition, these events are completely recorded, both voice and images, and then copied by different means and placed on the WEB site, the local network, and on CD or DVD in order to be reused or replayed for new prospects, employees, and partners.

Results

The added advantage of WEBinars is that the participants are identified as qualified beforehand. It’s only later on that they are considered as prospects for the sales team - this produces better “closing” performance from the team. The time devoted to events is significantly reduced. The response rate of the prospects is faster. The audio-visual archives integrated through the years represent priceless collateral material that can support sales. In addition, we have the power of multimedia to the performance of polymedia, on different kinds of supports, regardless of the time.

Problems

Moreover, the absence of a management representative at a meeting (albeit due to an important situation such as negotiating an important contract) is not uncommon. Consulting your colleagues helps you to take better decisions for the company. To conveniently hold meetings anytime and anywhere (also in small groups), make use of Tele-efficiency’s superior service.

Solution

The statutory meetings that are planned by the president are automatically scheduled in his Outlook calendar, after which he asks the participants to confirm their availability. During the meeting, he introduces the other presenter who gives a PowerPoint presentation and submits a document on the screen, which is also transmitted to his coworkers. If there is

an absentee, the meeting is integrally recorded, both voice and images, and emailed to the absentee, along with the hyperlink and password so that it can be replayed. The voice over Internet software, Skype, along with the instant messaging presence indicator, allows the members of the management team to know, at a given moment, their coworkers’ status, i.e., if they are with a “connected,” “no show,” “not available,” or “do not disturb” signal.

Results

If some of the management personnel are frequently traveling, they can participate in the meetings via the Internet from their hotel room, airport, or an Internet caf