The Competitive Advantage

January 8, 2013

Under-promise and over-deliver for a competitive advantage

My son, Alex, a college sophomore, leaves this week for a semester abroad in London – 8 weeks of classes followed by 8 weeks of an internship (which will then be followed by a couple weeks with a backpack!).  What a great opportunity!

Over coffee last weekend, I tried to give him a little “fatherly” advice – particularly about his internship.  I counseled him to:

January 1, 2013

2013 Marketing & Sales Resolutions

At this time of year, we start thinking about how we can improve our lives for the coming year.  We start making our annual resolutions like “I need to lose weight,” “…stop smoking,” or “…pay more attention to my spouse.”

But most of those “goals” never happen.  Why?  Simple… because they are not action-oriented.  You can’t just “lose weight,” but you can go to the gym 3 times a week.  You can’t just “stop smoking,” but you can start chewing nicotine gum whenever you have a craving.  And you can’t just “pay more attention to your spouse,” but you can make sure every Friday night is “date night.”

See the difference?

Now let’s look at your 2013 Business Resolutions, from a marketing & sales perspective and see what you can come up with…

December 26, 2012

Solve a problem to grow your business.

A “strategy” is a broad statement that helps to define the direction of your firm’s marketing & sales efforts.  Setting strategy is the most difficult of the phases in developing a marketing & sales plan (because it requires real thinking) and also the most important (because if you go off in the wrong direction, you cannot be successful).

One of the best ways to develop a strategy for your firm is to be the first to solve a problem… whether it’s within your firm, one that is plaguing your clients or within the industries you serve.  Here’s a brief case study from my past that might help explain how this works…

December 20, 2012

Learning to play the game: What football can teach us about marketing

I was watching my Tennessee Titans play this past weekend with a couple of friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in a while. In addition to cheering on our team, we were also getting caught up on each other’s lives. I told him I had started a marketing consulting firm earlier this year. He’s an operations guy for his company and doesn’t quite understand marketing. He thinks it complicated – always changing, hard to measure, etc. I tried explaining it to him with standard sorts of comments but it just wasn’t sticking.

Then I remembered where we where and what we were doing and realized that for him to get it, I would need to put it in terms he would understand. So I decided to explain what marketing is and its role in an organization through the eyes of a football fan.

December 18, 2012

Getting rather than giving gifts for the holidays?

Many firms give gifts to their clients at this time of year as a “thank you for your business” gesture.  I do, too, in fact.

But how many of you receive gifts from your clients?

December 13, 2012

Differentiating your firm in a crowded marketplace

When I was doing my ‘due diligence’ before starting Harpeth Marketing, I spoke with scores of research firms across the US to understand their perception and use of marketing and sales inside their organizations.

One of the questions I asked during that process was, “How do you differentiate your firm?”

Almost to a man (or woman), the response was something like, “We do great work… we have great people… and we really take care of our clients.”

Sound familiar?!  Is that how you would respond to that question?  And if everyone is saying that – then no one is really different!  Which, for the most part, is the case.

December 11, 2012

It really is all about the customer ‘experience’: A 10-point checklist for providing memorable service.

Twice in the last two months, I have had really lousy experiences at retail specialty stores.  Yeah, I know you’re not a retailer… but bear with me – the same ideas (and ideals) apply.

I went into these stores with every intention of buying (one was a bike shop, the other a computer store – so they were pretty good-sized purchases).  In both instances, I literally stood in the aisle near the products that interested me for 15 minutes waiting for some help to be able to ask some questions and make my purchasing decisions.  In both cases, it was the middle of a weekday and there were store employees just walking or standing around, not busy and simply ignoring me.

I left both stores frustrated and took my business elsewhere.

But those experiences got me to thinking about our industry… are we being proactive and responsive to our clients so they don’t “walk way” frustrated? To help you review your client interaction processes, here’s a 10-point checklist that can help:

December 5, 2012

Get prepared… part 5 of a 5-part series on how to create your marketing & sales plan for 2013

One of the key parts of crafting your plan (Phase 3) is building in the mechanisms for measuring each of your marketing & sales tactics (which you execute in Phase 4).  If you’ve been disciplined about measuring and testing your tactics, in Phase 5, you will go through the results and decide what worked / what didn’t / and what needs to be tweaked.