Well, I guess the current political environment has done one positive thing for consumers and industrial buyers.  The joke about how do you know when a politician is lying….  when his/her mouth is moving, can now be said about Marketers. A webinar I attended and a recent survey stated that 70 -75% of buyers don’t [...]

Are you considering using some form of social media like internet forums, blogs, micro blogging, podcasts, or social networking?  If the answer is YES, which it should be, then this post will give you the foundation for the first step in entering in the social media era. The first step is critical and will have [...]

  With the changing of the selling model to where the customer is in control; I contend that the old sales strategy of promising the world and getting the order no longer works.  Instead, I would suggest a different approach of under-promising and over-delivering. Let me give a few examples to support my hypothesis. The [...]

Still looking to reduce your operating budget?   Here is a suggestion where you can make great inroads- cut or eliminate all Marketing activities.  If you follow these five steps, I will make you a money back guarantee. 1-      Give your sales force and or resellers that key compelling feature for your product or service that [...]

Last week I talked about why small businesses need Marketing. I started down this path by asking small business owners.  “Do you do any Marketing?”  Most small business responded by saying “I have referrals, thus marketing is not needed at all!” I then listed five reasons why small businesses should have marketing: referrals will not [...]

  Do you do any Marketing? Most small business owner’s response is “I have referrals thus marketing is not needed at all!” Well let’s look at this position a little closer. First, some background about small businesses. There are about 24 million small businesses * (with less than 500 employees) in the United States and [...]

Are you getting the best “bang” for your Marketing bucks? Today’s environment has created challenges for all marketing organizations.  First, the economy is probably having a negative impact on your business, which is being reflected in your marketing budget, personnel and flexibility. All of this with increasing requests to generate additional leads (sales). The other [...]

As I stated in my last posting, Contact Centers are your face to the customer.  I discussed the important functions required of a contact center in meeting customer needs and the requirements that must be present for it to be best-in-class. From an enterprise point of view, Contact Centers are measured by performance metrics regarding [...]

I don’t know about you, but if I call one more 800 number and get a robotic voice asking me to express my need or press one for whatever, I am going to just hang up and cancel that account. Now I realize that 800 numbers (one channel into a contact center) is a cost [...]

Some people believe that there is a major difference between a product and a service from a marketing point of view.  This assumption is one of the farthest things from the truth! From a marketing point of view. service is a product.  As I always like to say, the receipt is the same but the [...]