This is a discussion I had with a client, paraphrased, that I just had to share. It went something like this… I’m signed up here but I have to tell ya, I really don’t like marketing and I have a lot of issues with it. I hate being “marketed” to. I screen all telemarketing calls and never call them back. …
I have emphatically stated and long taught the importance of FREQUENT and MEANINGFUL communication with your clients as well as key strategic partners and centers of influence (association directors, sponsors, referral partners, etc.). Practically every business I know fails to do this effectively, some more than others. The best way to communicate, I believe, is a well-written MONTHLY newsletter that …
Here’s a question I received from a client that I get some version of FREQUENTLY: “Once I get the contact on the phone, say the CEO, he or she will usually say, ‘Yes, I got your information and passed it on to my IT department.’ For me this is like being placed in the Bermuda Triangle, because the IT person …
One of the most productive and useful things you can do to work on your marketing and sales for your IT business is NEGATIVE PREPARATION: think of every reason a prospect won’t buy – every obstacle, concern and issue that causes anxiety – then go to work in preparing your process to address it EARLY and, ultimately, address it, minimize …
John Edwards, the psychic medium known for talking to people’s dead relatives, makes millions selling tickets to two-hour events all over the world where he performs (key word: PERFORMS) his psychic feat to people wanting to believe in the afterlife, the ability to connect with lost family members and who have an intense curiosity to discover if he’s the real …
When you want to show how filthy rich and successful you are, details matter. That’s why you need to have gold-plated staples, sold in packs of 24 for $175. Or how about a Tiffany tennis-ball-canister … for $1,500? And if you really want to show off on the courts, you can hydrate yourself with a $60,000 bottle of Icelandic glacier …
One night in 1936, Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma, sat in his office trying to figure out how to get customers to buy more groceries. Observing clients as they shopped, he noticed that many of them were struggling to carry the normal shopping basket provided, particularly the moms with kids. Once they got to …
I WISH I could show you the marketing example I’m about to tell you about, but I must have accidentally thrown it out. It was an EXCELLENT example of why you need to be meticulous about cleaning and validating your lists BEFORE you send any kind of direct mail campaign to it. It was a rather elaborate (expensive) mailer sent …
At every Rapid Implementation Workshop (www.RapidImplementationWorkshop.com), I take attendees through an exercise of secret shopping each other’s businesses. The scenario we give them is this: You are the Operations Manager of a company with 26 employees. Your server keeps rebooting, and your current IT company can’t come out to fix it until Tuesday of next week (three days from now). …
Email marketing during the 1990’s was a gold mine. Fifty to sixty percent response rates were common (compared to an industry benchmark of 20% today). Every email campaign I sent out got a flood of email responses. Today it’s an art form rather than a free-for-all. While email marketing shouldn’t be the only tool in your arsenal, it’s still incredibly …
