A startup veteran notes: "For the first few years, we were totally in a survival mode. We were very, very lean in terms of money and time. We didn't begin with clearly defined aspirations that in four years we'd achieve X and Y. It was more like, 'Let's do something and see what happens.' We went to the try-a-lot-of-stuff-and-see-what-works school. We had a business plan at the beginning but only because we needed one to get a line of credit. We didn't know much about running a business. We figured to learn what we needed as we went along. We went where the market took us.”
As Abraham Lincoln noted, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” Start-ups and turnarounds are very similar. You don't have much cash or much time. You have to make good decisions and make things happen quickly. Be prepared to skate fast over thin ice. Be prepared to move forward without the right answers. Concentrate on areas where you’re in control. Don’t worry about things that aren’t in your control. Work to develop an instinctive understanding of your target customers. Everyone in your organization needs to develop a proprietary, emotional relationship with the customer, continually striving to understand and respond to their needs.
To nurture start-ups toward maturity quickly, it helps if they belong to a group of interdependent yet nominally independent companies, all built around a core base of knowledge. Idealab strives to help its member companies, not by showering them with cash, but by leveraging shared creative and technical know-how. "We really don't think of ourselves as venture capital," says founder Bill Gross. "We're creative capital. The money we bring is incidental."
Idealab is a business incubator. Like a traditional VC firm, it provides seed money and takes a minority equity stake in the companies it adopts. Like a think tank, it brainstorms technology applications that could form the basis for new products. And like a parent company, it takes a substantial role in overseeing the operations of its subsidiaries. In a fast moving market, one or two months can be the difference between success or failure. The shared knowledge at Idealab enables a start-up to avoid many mistakes so that it can do in four-and-a-half months what would take another start-up nine months to do. Much of the time saved stems from the fact that Idealab companies don't have to build everything from scratch. Since they share office space and administrative services, startup teams are free to just concentrate on those factors that are uniquely related to their businesses.
Idealab is trying to harness both the power of a big company and the nimbleness of a small one. It aims to add value through shared knowledge and creativity and in that way build better companies. The CEOs of the individual businesses have complete freedom to shape their companies while determining which of Idealab’s suggestions seem most relevant and possible to their situations. Idealab uses its experience to systematize the generation of new business ideas. Among its learnings:
- You need to be incredibly highly focused to succeed.
- Even if you have a wonderful product, if you can't clearly communicate to the customers where the product's benefit is, it's not going to do you any good.
Venture Catalysts such as Artemis Ventures and Guy Kawasaki’s Garage Technology Ventures act as hybrid VC, headhunting and management consulting firms, helping startups in every way imaginable. Incubators can help by removing the need to pay attention to routine issues. "The first few months of a start-up are analogous to the first few nanoseconds in the birth of a star," says Steve Glenn, the founder of PeopleLink, which raised $35 million from GE, AT&T and Goldman Sachs and became a leading provider of online community software. "Whatever happens during that short period will determine your permanent trajectory. So if you're freed up from the administrative stuff, you can focus on aiming that trajectory as high as possible."
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
How to attract and keep customers.
Entrepreneurs survive by being enthusiastic about their ventures and by being committed to unceasing promotion of their their concepts. It seems unnatural for such people to equate "being silent" with actively promoting their venture. Yet, they’re not selling when they’re talking; rather, they’re selling when their targeted prospect is talking. Provide interesting information to your prospects and then listen to what they say. Let them "teach" you exactly what the hot-buttons are that can lead you to sales success. No one understands the targeted customer’s needs as intimately as the prospective customer does. If you listen closely enough, your customers will explain your business to you.
Selling is helping people make business decisions that are good for them. It’s finding a need and filling it. Learn how to offer solutions beyond price - because you know your customer’s business as well or better than they do. List the features of your product or service but sell the benefits.
Once you get a customer, keep selling to them. Customers are so difficult and so expensive to get, you don’t ever want to lose them. Sell them upgrades, maintenance, new products, new services. Aim to create a recurring revenue model. Continually refresh your memory of the reasons the customer did business with you in the first place.
The four main reasons why people buy are - Pride, Pleasure, Profit and Protection. What matters in sales is Continuity, Commitment and Content, and the last is the least important. All things being equal, the person with the best sales presence will get the order. To quote Aristotle, “People are convinced more by the depth of your conviction than by all the facts at your disposal.”
When you're selling, the ten most important "power words" that get the customer’s attention are:
- money
- save
- you
- new
- free
- proven
- guaranteed
- results
- health
- love
These words were identified by researchers in the Psychology Department at Yale University as having extraordinary persuasive power and are listed here in order of importance. Use these words early in your sales presentation and I guarantee that you'll get your client's attention.
Selling is helping people make business decisions that are good for them. It’s finding a need and filling it. Learn how to offer solutions beyond price - because you know your customer’s business as well or better than they do. List the features of your product or service but sell the benefits.
Once you get a customer, keep selling to them. Customers are so difficult and so expensive to get, you don’t ever want to lose them. Sell them upgrades, maintenance, new products, new services. Aim to create a recurring revenue model. Continually refresh your memory of the reasons the customer did business with you in the first place.
The four main reasons why people buy are - Pride, Pleasure, Profit and Protection. What matters in sales is Continuity, Commitment and Content, and the last is the least important. All things being equal, the person with the best sales presence will get the order. To quote Aristotle, “People are convinced more by the depth of your conviction than by all the facts at your disposal.”
When you're selling, the ten most important "power words" that get the customer’s attention are:
- money
- save
- you
- new
- free
- proven
- guaranteed
- results
- health
- love
These words were identified by researchers in the Psychology Department at Yale University as having extraordinary persuasive power and are listed here in order of importance. Use these words early in your sales presentation and I guarantee that you'll get your client's attention.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Ten ways to attract new business.
1. Be a walking example/demonstration of how effective your product or service is. Being congruent (when people sense that you believe and live what you speak about) is the number one way to establish credibility.
2. Do your homework and discover what your "typical" customer's biggest problem is. Pretend it's your own problem. Now solve the problem. Take the solution to the customer, packaged around your own product/service. If you’re a solution provider, the barrier to entry is harder for a competitor than if you’re a product provider.
3. Polish your product knowledge and presentation techniques until they’re razor sharp. Your stories, examples, jokes, facts, comparisons and closes are your "tools of the trade." Spend a minimum of four hours a week polishing your tools.
4. Make a notebook of your best stories, best examples, most effective closes, funniest relevant jokes and the rebuttals to the biggest objections you face. Have the rest of the sales team do the same. Compare notes, then compile a "best of the best" file of the best stories, examples, closes, etc. Continually expand and add to your notebook each month.
5. Improve your communication skills so that people want to be around you. Learn rapport skills through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) training, for example. Learn to identify different personality types and communications styles and know how to respond to each. Hone your listening and questioning skills. Polish your speaking and languaging skills until your presentations are very effective.
6. Add value to your current customers by making sure they're maximizing the use of the product/service. Show the customer how they’re saving money by using your product. Be willing to take as much time as necessary to educate and support them, especially after the sale.
7. Turn your customers into your company's R&D department. Get lots of feedback from them. Be so "in tune" with their needs and desires that you can anticipate what your customers will want even before they ask.
8. Ask your best customers for a letter of recommendation or a testimonial letter (on their letterhead). Three or four sincere testimonials can raise your average close ratio by 30-50%. An easy method is to interview your best customers over the phone, take notes (quotes), then email the notes to them. They can easily edit and print them out on their own letterhead, and mail the letter to you. Show the letters to all new prospects - this is more effective than the slickest brochure!
9. Strengthen your personal foundation/reserve levels so that you act like you don't need the money anymore. Then your motivation is based more on creating value, solving the customer's problems and genuinely helping them get what they want or need. This is a much more attractive sell.
10. Master the following six-step selling process until it’s second nature:
- Establish rapport.
- Ask questions to understand the customer and to find their real need.
- Based on the need, determine exactly where the real value is for the customer.
- Link their need to the value provided by your product/service using concise, persuasive communication (don't over-present).
- Assume the sale and conditionally close. If there’s a green light, then close the sale officially.
- If there are any objections, handle them by cycling back to previous steps (find the real need, link it to your product, etc).
2. Do your homework and discover what your "typical" customer's biggest problem is. Pretend it's your own problem. Now solve the problem. Take the solution to the customer, packaged around your own product/service. If you’re a solution provider, the barrier to entry is harder for a competitor than if you’re a product provider.
3. Polish your product knowledge and presentation techniques until they’re razor sharp. Your stories, examples, jokes, facts, comparisons and closes are your "tools of the trade." Spend a minimum of four hours a week polishing your tools.
4. Make a notebook of your best stories, best examples, most effective closes, funniest relevant jokes and the rebuttals to the biggest objections you face. Have the rest of the sales team do the same. Compare notes, then compile a "best of the best" file of the best stories, examples, closes, etc. Continually expand and add to your notebook each month.
5. Improve your communication skills so that people want to be around you. Learn rapport skills through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) training, for example. Learn to identify different personality types and communications styles and know how to respond to each. Hone your listening and questioning skills. Polish your speaking and languaging skills until your presentations are very effective.
6. Add value to your current customers by making sure they're maximizing the use of the product/service. Show the customer how they’re saving money by using your product. Be willing to take as much time as necessary to educate and support them, especially after the sale.
7. Turn your customers into your company's R&D department. Get lots of feedback from them. Be so "in tune" with their needs and desires that you can anticipate what your customers will want even before they ask.
8. Ask your best customers for a letter of recommendation or a testimonial letter (on their letterhead). Three or four sincere testimonials can raise your average close ratio by 30-50%. An easy method is to interview your best customers over the phone, take notes (quotes), then email the notes to them. They can easily edit and print them out on their own letterhead, and mail the letter to you. Show the letters to all new prospects - this is more effective than the slickest brochure!
9. Strengthen your personal foundation/reserve levels so that you act like you don't need the money anymore. Then your motivation is based more on creating value, solving the customer's problems and genuinely helping them get what they want or need. This is a much more attractive sell.
10. Master the following six-step selling process until it’s second nature:
- Establish rapport.
- Ask questions to understand the customer and to find their real need.
- Based on the need, determine exactly where the real value is for the customer.
- Link their need to the value provided by your product/service using concise, persuasive communication (don't over-present).
- Assume the sale and conditionally close. If there’s a green light, then close the sale officially.
- If there are any objections, handle them by cycling back to previous steps (find the real need, link it to your product, etc).
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Hung Wu Vase, a poem by Robert Graves.
Robert Graves (July 1895 – December 1985) was an English poet, translator and novelist. He was educated at Charterhouse School and St. John's College, Oxford. He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both of his novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God.
Graves fathered eight children with a variety of partners and had a fairly turbulent love life, as the following poem illustrates. Of course, love wasn't the only intensely-felt experience in his long life, but it was the one which helped him to make poetic sense of the rest. He once commented that, "Poetry cannot be separated from the state of being in love." He and his last love, Beryl Hodge, are buried in the small churchyard on the hill in Deia, on the northwest coast of Majorca, looking out over the sea.
The Hung Wu Vase by Robert Graves.
With women like Marie no holds are barred.
How do they get the gall? How can they do it?
She stormed out, slamming the hall door so hard
That a vase on a gilt shelf above - you knew it,
Loot from the Summer Palace at Pekin
And worth the entire contents of my flat -
Toppled and fell ...
I poured myself a straight gin,
Downing it at a gulp. 'So that was that!'
The bell once more ... Marie walked calmly in,
Observed broken red porcelain on the mat,
Looked up, looked down again with condescension,
Then, gliding past me to retrieve a glove
(Her poor excuse for this improper call),
Muttered: 'And one thing I forgot to mention:
Your Hung Wu vase was a phony, like your love!'
How can they do it? Where do they get the gall?
I'll be off next week, and back on December 29th.
My Christmas wish for all of you is:
May you always be blessed
With walls for the wind,
A roof for the rain,
A warm cup of tea by the fire
Laughter to cheer you,
Those you love near you,
And all that your heart might desire.
Graves fathered eight children with a variety of partners and had a fairly turbulent love life, as the following poem illustrates. Of course, love wasn't the only intensely-felt experience in his long life, but it was the one which helped him to make poetic sense of the rest. He once commented that, "Poetry cannot be separated from the state of being in love." He and his last love, Beryl Hodge, are buried in the small churchyard on the hill in Deia, on the northwest coast of Majorca, looking out over the sea.
The Hung Wu Vase by Robert Graves.
With women like Marie no holds are barred.
How do they get the gall? How can they do it?
She stormed out, slamming the hall door so hard
That a vase on a gilt shelf above - you knew it,
Loot from the Summer Palace at Pekin
And worth the entire contents of my flat -
Toppled and fell ...
I poured myself a straight gin,
Downing it at a gulp. 'So that was that!'
The bell once more ... Marie walked calmly in,
Observed broken red porcelain on the mat,
Looked up, looked down again with condescension,
Then, gliding past me to retrieve a glove
(Her poor excuse for this improper call),
Muttered: 'And one thing I forgot to mention:
Your Hung Wu vase was a phony, like your love!'
How can they do it? Where do they get the gall?
I'll be off next week, and back on December 29th.
My Christmas wish for all of you is:
May you always be blessed
With walls for the wind,
A roof for the rain,
A warm cup of tea by the fire
Laughter to cheer you,
Those you love near you,
And all that your heart might desire.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Five steps to great marketing.
Looking at marketing as an investment rather than an expense, Craig Palubiak offers five marketing guidelines to help you maintain your edge over the competition:
1. Think mission before commission.
It's critical to have a well-defined corporate mission, and to keep that mission in the minds of employees. Understand that your mission is a vital part of your company's culture that can lead your organization to prosper. It's also important to learn the missions of your customers, prospects and partners to see if they fit with yours.
2. Learn to read the need.
Develop mechanisms that allow you to stay in touch with the marketplace, so you stay a step ahead as the market changes. When asked what made him a great hockey player, Wayne Gretzky responded, “Most players go where the puck is. I go where it will be.” The same is true for businesses. Go where the market is going. A good customer survey can prove invaluable in this endeavor. A "good" survey means one that, in addition to measuring your performance with customers, also measures how important your performance is to them and what it costs you to deliver that performance. You'll have a better picture of where you're wasting time and resources on business that doesn't really matter to the customer, and where you're doing well.
3. Move from feature to teacher.
In the days before the new economy, companies could get by merely selling a product's features. Today, however, you have to be a knowledge source for your customers. Sixty-five percent of customers defect because of service indifference. And while 96% of unhappy customers never complain, they'll tell an average of nine other people about your poor service. Welcoming complaints, seeking them out, improves your odds of keeping good customers and gaining new ones. To avoid the complacency that leads to lost customers, find out what your customers' three primary needs are and what they'll be in the future.
4. Master "customerization."
Not all customers are the same. Some are good, and some are lousy. Great marketing consists of discriminating between the two. Get rid of the lousy ones, or find a way to turn them into good ones. When you look for good customers, pay attention to margin as well as volume. You might have low-volume, high-margin customers who are well worth pursuing. See where your true opportunity is, and make a decision about where you want to go with each customer. Short-term customers often are undervalued. While long-term customers may be your company's lifeblood, certain types of short-term customers can benefit your business. Treat them separately and differently, but make sure they don't interfere with your ability to service your long-term clients.
5. Pay attention to the competition.
Nothing pushes you to new levels of performance more than competition. Just make sure the competition pushes and doesn't guide. To harness that drive, you have to know where they are and what they're doing. Talk to your customers and suppliers, and develop some clear competitive intelligence. Get out of your office and visit them. Find out who the top three competitors are, why they’re successful, what you can learn from them, and what you need to do differently.
The main purpose of marketing is to identify the appropriate markets for your products and services and then open up a conversation with prospects in those markets. This involves both attraction and seduction. Attracting customers requires that you become relevant in their world and they feel relevant in yours. Seduction entices people to do business with you by demonstrating that you understand and care about their needs like no one else, and demonstrate this by making relevant offers and suggestions. Selling is the major component in marketing that makes a product wanted.
1. Think mission before commission.
It's critical to have a well-defined corporate mission, and to keep that mission in the minds of employees. Understand that your mission is a vital part of your company's culture that can lead your organization to prosper. It's also important to learn the missions of your customers, prospects and partners to see if they fit with yours.
2. Learn to read the need.
Develop mechanisms that allow you to stay in touch with the marketplace, so you stay a step ahead as the market changes. When asked what made him a great hockey player, Wayne Gretzky responded, “Most players go where the puck is. I go where it will be.” The same is true for businesses. Go where the market is going. A good customer survey can prove invaluable in this endeavor. A "good" survey means one that, in addition to measuring your performance with customers, also measures how important your performance is to them and what it costs you to deliver that performance. You'll have a better picture of where you're wasting time and resources on business that doesn't really matter to the customer, and where you're doing well.
3. Move from feature to teacher.
In the days before the new economy, companies could get by merely selling a product's features. Today, however, you have to be a knowledge source for your customers. Sixty-five percent of customers defect because of service indifference. And while 96% of unhappy customers never complain, they'll tell an average of nine other people about your poor service. Welcoming complaints, seeking them out, improves your odds of keeping good customers and gaining new ones. To avoid the complacency that leads to lost customers, find out what your customers' three primary needs are and what they'll be in the future.
4. Master "customerization."
Not all customers are the same. Some are good, and some are lousy. Great marketing consists of discriminating between the two. Get rid of the lousy ones, or find a way to turn them into good ones. When you look for good customers, pay attention to margin as well as volume. You might have low-volume, high-margin customers who are well worth pursuing. See where your true opportunity is, and make a decision about where you want to go with each customer. Short-term customers often are undervalued. While long-term customers may be your company's lifeblood, certain types of short-term customers can benefit your business. Treat them separately and differently, but make sure they don't interfere with your ability to service your long-term clients.
5. Pay attention to the competition.
Nothing pushes you to new levels of performance more than competition. Just make sure the competition pushes and doesn't guide. To harness that drive, you have to know where they are and what they're doing. Talk to your customers and suppliers, and develop some clear competitive intelligence. Get out of your office and visit them. Find out who the top three competitors are, why they’re successful, what you can learn from them, and what you need to do differently.
The main purpose of marketing is to identify the appropriate markets for your products and services and then open up a conversation with prospects in those markets. This involves both attraction and seduction. Attracting customers requires that you become relevant in their world and they feel relevant in yours. Seduction entices people to do business with you by demonstrating that you understand and care about their needs like no one else, and demonstrate this by making relevant offers and suggestions. Selling is the major component in marketing that makes a product wanted.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Marketing on the Web.
In the past, “viral marketing” meant relying on word of mouth to get your product known. But like so many other concepts, it’s been reinvented by the Internet. There are three levels of viral marketing on the Web.
The first is to embed your advertising message so deeply in your product or service that your customers hardly realize they’re passing it on. Hotmail, for example, was one of the first to provide free email. Each outgoing email message had the tagline, “Get Your Private, Free Email from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.” Today, Hotmail has more than 260 million users.
The second level involves making the content of your Web site so compelling that viewers want to share it with others. As comic strips, video clips and other attention grabbers are forwarded to friends, the marketing messages go along for the ride. The culinary site, Epicurious.com, allows visitors to email recipes from its database. The first few lines of the recipe provide a link to to the Epicorious site, describing the recipe database and offering information about ordering cooking supplier from one of its partners, Williams-Sonoma.com.
The third level offers viewers an incentive to hand over the email addresses of friends, family members and coworkers. Onvia.com, a B2B news and information site for entrepreneurs once offered a chance to win an Audi coupe just for sending in five email addresses. The benefits of viral marketing are increased recognition among a targeted audience for far less money than traditional marketing efforts. One of the pitfalls is that you lose control over the message and its distribution, but selectivity and proper targeting can minimize this.
For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers. (See an excellent WSJ article by Parise, Guinan and Weinberg in The Journal Report, Monday, Dec 15th, 2008). Web 2.0 encompasses a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. That includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, and virtual worlds. A growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion.
For example, a leading greeting-card and gift company set up an online community - a site where it can talk to consumers and the consumers can talk to each other. The company solicits opinions on various aspects of greeting-card design and on ideas for gifts and their pricing. It also asks the consumers to talk about their lifestyles and to upload photos of themselves, so that it can better understand its market. A marketing manager at the company says that, as a way to obtain consumer feedback and ideas for product development, the online community is much faster and cheaper than the traditional focus groups and surveys used in the past. The conversations consumers have with each other result in many new and interesting insights, including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.
Consumers have to have some incentive to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences. One way is to make sure they can use the online community to network among themselves on topics of their own choosing. That way, the site isn't all about the company, it's also about them. For instance, a toy company that created a community of hundreds of mothers to solicit their opinions and ideas on toys also enabled them to write their own blogs on the site, a feature that many used to discuss family issues.
The first is to embed your advertising message so deeply in your product or service that your customers hardly realize they’re passing it on. Hotmail, for example, was one of the first to provide free email. Each outgoing email message had the tagline, “Get Your Private, Free Email from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.” Today, Hotmail has more than 260 million users.
The second level involves making the content of your Web site so compelling that viewers want to share it with others. As comic strips, video clips and other attention grabbers are forwarded to friends, the marketing messages go along for the ride. The culinary site, Epicurious.com, allows visitors to email recipes from its database. The first few lines of the recipe provide a link to to the Epicorious site, describing the recipe database and offering information about ordering cooking supplier from one of its partners, Williams-Sonoma.com.
The third level offers viewers an incentive to hand over the email addresses of friends, family members and coworkers. Onvia.com, a B2B news and information site for entrepreneurs once offered a chance to win an Audi coupe just for sending in five email addresses. The benefits of viral marketing are increased recognition among a targeted audience for far less money than traditional marketing efforts. One of the pitfalls is that you lose control over the message and its distribution, but selectivity and proper targeting can minimize this.
For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers. (See an excellent WSJ article by Parise, Guinan and Weinberg in The Journal Report, Monday, Dec 15th, 2008). Web 2.0 encompasses a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. That includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, and virtual worlds. A growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion.
For example, a leading greeting-card and gift company set up an online community - a site where it can talk to consumers and the consumers can talk to each other. The company solicits opinions on various aspects of greeting-card design and on ideas for gifts and their pricing. It also asks the consumers to talk about their lifestyles and to upload photos of themselves, so that it can better understand its market. A marketing manager at the company says that, as a way to obtain consumer feedback and ideas for product development, the online community is much faster and cheaper than the traditional focus groups and surveys used in the past. The conversations consumers have with each other result in many new and interesting insights, including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.
Consumers have to have some incentive to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences. One way is to make sure they can use the online community to network among themselves on topics of their own choosing. That way, the site isn't all about the company, it's also about them. For instance, a toy company that created a community of hundreds of mothers to solicit their opinions and ideas on toys also enabled them to write their own blogs on the site, a feature that many used to discuss family issues.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Crafting marketing messages.
Marketing isn’t about today - it’s all about tomorrow. It's about getting to know your audience and planing your future. Start by putting out messages to industry analysts about where you want to go. Get their feedback and advice (and pick up great inside information as well). You want them to believe they’re creating an industry so they can then become the experts in that space. But you’ve got to pay them in the interim by buying their research because that’s how they make a living.
“Pull" marketing is based on giving the prospect something of value before you ask them to buy. It’s a way of establishing the basis for a relationship that takes place before you offer them the opportunity to become a customer. "Push" marketing is asking for an order without having established a relationship and is a totally non-selective process. Anyone who wants to buy can become your customer. If your business proposition is based on having a customer for a long time, “pull” is the only way to insure that both parties are interested in a long-term relationship. A “stay-in-touch” program is a low-cost way of building top-of-the-mind awareness with existing customers and with prospects who haven’t yet found compelling value in the sales message.
Many entrepreneurs are so technology and product driven that they never recognize that marketing is important. They don’t recognize that prospects and customers don’t care directly about the functionality of products. Prospects and customers care about benefits and, more specifically, the value of those benefits in their own lives. "What's In It For Me?" is the central question that any prospect or customer is dealing with (whether consciously or unconsciously) while receiving your company's marketing message. The entrepreneur must address this question while, at the same time, providing a marketing message that:
(1) helps inappropriate prospects take themselves out of consideration (because dealing with inappropriate prospects costs money and wastes valuable time).
(2) prepares true prospects to be receptive to the sales message they’ll eventually get from you.
(3) leads them directly into the selling cycle.
Product packaging is a great way to activate the consumer’s impulse to buy. It's the loudest possible advertising vehicle you have - it’s right in the store when customers are standing there with their money. Yet, go down the cereal or pasta isles in any supermarket and you’ll see that very few companies really try to market with their packaging. Frito Lay is an exception - it’s always updating its packaging.
“Pull" marketing is based on giving the prospect something of value before you ask them to buy. It’s a way of establishing the basis for a relationship that takes place before you offer them the opportunity to become a customer. "Push" marketing is asking for an order without having established a relationship and is a totally non-selective process. Anyone who wants to buy can become your customer. If your business proposition is based on having a customer for a long time, “pull” is the only way to insure that both parties are interested in a long-term relationship. A “stay-in-touch” program is a low-cost way of building top-of-the-mind awareness with existing customers and with prospects who haven’t yet found compelling value in the sales message.
Many entrepreneurs are so technology and product driven that they never recognize that marketing is important. They don’t recognize that prospects and customers don’t care directly about the functionality of products. Prospects and customers care about benefits and, more specifically, the value of those benefits in their own lives. "What's In It For Me?" is the central question that any prospect or customer is dealing with (whether consciously or unconsciously) while receiving your company's marketing message. The entrepreneur must address this question while, at the same time, providing a marketing message that:
(1) helps inappropriate prospects take themselves out of consideration (because dealing with inappropriate prospects costs money and wastes valuable time).
(2) prepares true prospects to be receptive to the sales message they’ll eventually get from you.
(3) leads them directly into the selling cycle.
Product packaging is a great way to activate the consumer’s impulse to buy. It's the loudest possible advertising vehicle you have - it’s right in the store when customers are standing there with their money. Yet, go down the cereal or pasta isles in any supermarket and you’ll see that very few companies really try to market with their packaging. Frito Lay is an exception - it’s always updating its packaging.
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