The Competitive Advantage

June 5, 2013

‘Start at the End’… a Book Review

I recently bought and read the book, Start at the End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster by Reversing their Business Plan, written by Dave Lavinsky.  On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 7 – pretty good.

The premise is all about crafting a business plan… but doing so by starting at end.  So, for example, rather than asking, “We’re a $2 million company now… what level can we grow to next year… and the year after that… and the year after that?,” it pushes us to ask, “What will my company look like in 10 years?  Now, how do I get there?”

February 6, 2013

6 Simple Marketing & Sales Ideas that almost Never get implemented

In trying to build our businesses, we often get so wrapped up in working on the bigger marketing & sales initiatives (e.g. social media strategy, advertising campaigns, etc.) that sometimes, the simple little things just pass us by.  So, to help with that, here are six simple marketing & sales ideas to get you thinking in that direction:

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.

November 27, 2012

Get prepared… part 4 of a 5-part series on how to create your marketing & sales plan for 2013

So, how’s your 2013 marketing & sales plan coming along?  Have you been following the steps in our process?

Have you done your homework and analysis (Phase 1)?  Did you establish the strategies to help drive your business (Phase 2)?  Have you crafted your plan with all the details (Phase 3)?  Great!

OK, now it’s time to execute and manage that plan (Phase 4).  And here are some guidelines for doing it…

November 20, 2012

Get prepared… part 3 of a 5-part series on how to create your marketing & sales plan for 2013

In last two weeks, we discussed the first two phases of the marketing & sales plan process:  Phase 1 – Conducting your Background Review & Analysis; the results of which lead to Phase 2 – Developing your Marketing Strategies.

Phase 3 is about Creating the Marketing & Sales Plan.  It starts with determining which tactics are the best ones to support the strategies. This is where all of the details are spelled out for your action plan – the what, who, when, how many, how much, how often and so on.   Yes, there is a lot of detail to manage here… but without it, you’ll be flyin’ by the seat of your pants.

November 13, 2012

Get prepared… part 2 of a 5-part series on how to create your marketing & sales plan for 2013

In last week’s post, we discussed Phase 1 of the marketing & sales plan process – Conducting your Background Review & Analysis.  This week, we’ll look at Phase 2 – Developing your Marketing Strategies.

‘Strategies’ are broad directional statements that define WHAT you will do to achieve your goals.  Don’t confuse these with ‘tactics’ – which are the HOW you’ll do it.  For example, a strategy might be to ‘position our CEO as an expert on the topic of mobile research.’  A tactic that might help you support that strategy could be ‘to have him write an ebook on mobile research.’

In this phase of the process, you will take what was learned during Phase 1 and use it as the basis for developing your strategies. This is the most critical step in developing your marketing & sales plan.  Here are several things to think about:

October 16, 2012

Go team go! Integrate your marketing & sales for maximum impact.

Two heads are better than one.  And three or four are even better than that.  The fact is, putting together teams to tackle your big issues or your big projects is simply smart business.  The team gets together, discusses options and tackles the assignments as a single unit.  Good stuff.

The same concept applies to your marketing & sales… and not just having your people working as a team, but to have elements of your marketing & sales initiative also working together as a unified group.  When you do this, the effects are additive, each one building on the other in the minds of your clients and prospects.  It’s called “integrated marketing.”

July 18, 2012

Exhibiting at a conference this fall? Get your event marketing plan in place!

You’ve committed thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of dollars and several days of several people’s time to exhibit at a conference this fall.  The worst thing you can do is just show up and hope it goes well.  As the popular business book is titled, “Hope is not a strategy!”