Network Marketing of a Small-sized Enterprise—When a Marketing Master Starts a Business
In How to Get Orders in Traditional Industries Using the Internet, I have mentioned in the preface that a real network marketing master should be an in-house technical expert of a certain industry rather than some expert in some network marketing company. Leo, who had just founded his company for one year, proved it again.
Leo was the name of an ERP expert who looked very like me. I didn’t decide to write down his success story because he had reached outstanding performance within just one year. It was because of an anecdote about him I overheard from a mutual customer. Shanghai Techsonic Information Technology Co., Ltd. was an important partner of SAP (the world’s leading ERP company in Germany). As I had been the network marketing consultant of Shanghai Xway for many years, I got to know the customer of Xway, who was an IT director of a large factory. Once over a chitchat, he told me, “Do you know why I finally chose Xway as the ERP software provider of my company? Because once in SAP Sapphire (the top summit in the ERP industry) when I was walking along with Leo, people kept coming up to us, greeting Leo and calling him ‘master’. But when I am with technical director of other companies, this is rarely the case. Therefore, I’m convinced that Xway must be more professional in technology than others.”
At the end of 2014, Leo decided to start his own business, and his old firm Xway was supportive, because his new company was a subordinate agency of Xway. What’s more, it imitated the network marketing strategy of SAP (see another article of mine, Caution! This Is how Big Companies Carry out Network Marketing) which was to support Leo in network marketing work. Consequently, I became Leo’s network marketing consultant.
Leo’s website was launched in 2015. At that time, the problem he met was the little differentiation between his company and dozens of similar rival companies on the Internet. Therefore, he played to his strength in software development, focusing on the business of “ERP software development” and “secondary development of SAP system”, while his counterparts, including his old firm Xway, mostly centered on simple consulting about SAP system and its sales.
It was the right timing for Leo. After one to two months of basic network marketing work—learning basic concepts of network marketing, optimizing and improving the website—the Chinese New Year had just passed, and the peak season of the ERP industry had come. During the season, he could receive several business inquiries every day. Like most owners of micro and small businesses who just got down to network marketing, he was in a state of delight and excitement out of success.
What I admired about Leo was that he personally took any inquiry on the Internet, whether it was a small order of a few thousand yuan or a big one of tens of thousands of, hundreds of thousands of, or even millions of yuan. This was very different from most micro and small businesses. Many bosses of these enterprises either considered network marketing too esoteric or didn’t pay attention to it, thinking that it should be done by subordinates. They left the job to some person experienced in neither technology nor profession and let them make initial communication with potential customers. No wonder there was a world of difference in conversion rate between them.
I questioned him once, “Leo, why you pick every business call personally? You often get harassing calls, won’t it bother you? And is it worth the time that you take every business seriously, no matter it is a big order, a small order, or even irrelevant business?”
He said, “It is true that the inquiries I received every day are often accompanied by sales calls, advertising calls and other harassing calls. It’s like when you open the window for fresh air, flies and mosquitoes will also come inside. But compared to the rewards, it’s nothing. Besides, most of my competitors in the ERP industry only keep eyes on their areas of expertise, as someone specializes in the food industry, and someone focuses on foreign trade or the electronics industry. As for irrelevant business or particularly small orders, they tend to ignore them. I, on the other hand, treat every business of all industries as a serious matter. Because I’m fairly proficient in business, I can handle all kinds of inquiries, thus realizing a relatively high conversion rate. When the other companies could obtain one customer out of ten through online consulting, I could get 2 or 3 customers. As for the orders that I’m really not good at or I don’t want to take, I will also transfer them to others promptly. The proceeds from the transfer could more or less cover my expenses in network marketing. This is called ‘feed marketing with information.”
What a “feed marketing with information”! Other might think he’s bragging, but I knew he wasn’t. Because he started ERP development work very early, many of his previous colleagues (salesmen, consultants, and technicians) had become bosses in cities around the country. He was very aware of what kind of business these people wanted, and could always provide the most needed information for them.
I had a belief in network marketing the more branches and offices a company had around the country, the greater the possibility of closing deals on the Internet was. Leo took my opinion, and listed the companies his ex-colleagues across the country possessed in the name of his company. In so doing, you could find a dozen branches in the contact information of his corporate website (see www.sapway.cn and the figure below). Once there were new customers from a distance, he would also ask these friends to help negotiate. Some of these ex-colleagues were also customers of mine. So I could see phenomena like the following one from time to time: the business that should have been received by his old colleagues was grabbed by him and then transferred to those people.
They exclaimed over Leo’s good luck. They had started their businesses years earlier, but they couldn’t beat a newly-established company. Leo always joked that it was because of his excellent moral character, but I knew very clearly that it was because he had grasped the essence of network marketing, hereby showing professionalism in its every link (ad word s→ website → website structure → website content → telephone consulation → door-to-door communication).
Last month, Leo broke another record. It only took him one day from receiving an inquiry call to closing the deal (normally required at least three months in the ERP industry, and half a year or even over two years at worst). Here’s the thing: On a weekday at the end of August, Leo got a phone call. Before he could say anything, the person on the other end of the line said, “There’s another phone call coming. I’ll contact you later.” Noticing that the phone number was from Lianyuangang, Leo checked the customer’s access information from the statistical backstage on Baidu out of habit, and found out that this person entered the website by searching for “toys ERP”. He realized that the customer might be a toy factory owner. In addition, he searched directly for the contact information after a quick scan through two pages. It was possibly because he had seen the address of the Lianyungang branch that he decided to make the inquiry call. From the characteristics of him looking at few pages for a short time, Leo determined that the customer was an impetuous person who preferred oral communication to text reading. But Leo was in no hurry to call back. Instead, he did some research. There was no material on the toy industry on his website, but he knew who had it. One of his old colleagues in Guangdong had taken several orders of ERP for toy factories, so he could learn something from the website of his colleague. Only after all was done did he call back to the customer. Having learnt that his counterparts in Guangdong also purchased ERP system from Leo’s company—this was not a lie, as those providers of ERP system were all agents of Xway, and the orders in Guangdong was taken by the Guangzhou branch of Xway— the customer readily agreed to have a face-to-face meeting the next day in Lianyungang. On the second day, Leo assigned one of his salesmen to negotiate business in the customer’s factory and directly closed a deal.
An old colleague of Leo’s, who was also a member of marketing department in Shanghai Xway, muttered behind Leo’s back, “What a sod. When he was in Xway, he always declined to write technical articles for our website with all kinds of excuses. Now he’s running his own business, and he becomes so active in writing things for his own website.” If I were him, I might have done the same thing. The impact of advertorials made by technicians on network marketing was often neglected by the management of the company. Few companies could succeed in pushing technical staff into providing website material actively. But the lack of original content was the Achilles’ heel of the majority of corporate websites, resulting in a halved effect of network marketing.
I often heard such complaints from owners of micro and small businesses that there was no effect at all after carrying out network marketing. I would like to tell them that you should be the master of network marketing. You won’t be replaced by anyone else because they are not as professional and committed than you. As long as you know of some basic concepts and knowledge about network marketing, you can make your business prosper like Leo and Director Zhu I mentioned in my book.