The Competitive Advantage

May 6, 2014

Get out from behind your desk!

As I write this, I’m flying home from several days in Southern California, after working with a couple of clients. In both cases, there were just a few people sitting around a table, collaborating and working toward a common goal.  We did some planning, talked strategy, bounced ideas off of each other and, in the end, left with To-Do’s for each of us as we move forward together.

But more importantly… we also shared a meal, laughed, talked about families and discussed summer vacations. It was real human-to-human interaction.

April 9, 2014

Is “giving away” work a good idea?

I’ve been nurturing a relationship with a particular sales prospect for a little while now and he recently asked me to give him my comments on a press release he had written.  I reviewed it, rewrote some of it… and I did not charge him for my time.

There are many who say to NEVER give away any work – that doing so diminishes the value of what you do.

I’m in the other camp… I believe that there are times (not all the time, of course) when building some good will by giving away a small project might lead to bigger things down the road.  Here’s my rationale…

March 19, 2014

If you build it, will they come? Not necessarily!

As I write this, I’m sitting in a coffeeshop that opened about 3 weeks ago.  It’s in a fairly busy shopping center along a well-traveled road, has the latest barista tools and they even roasts their own beans in the back of the store.

And I’m the only one sitting here.  OK, it’s Sunday morning at 8am, but even when I’ve driven by at “normal hours,” I’ve never seen more than one table full.  Good location… good product… even a unique POD (Point of Differentiation) – the roaster.  So, why is that?

February 19, 2014

Advertising works… and I was in Las Vegas last week to prove it!

I was in Las Vegas last week to speak at and attend the annual joint conference of the Southwest and Northwest chapters of the MRA.  Nancy Hernon and Rommell Montenegro and all of their colleagues put on a really nice event – good sessions, good food and some really great people.

It was the first time I’d been to Vegas in a while that I really had the chance to get out of the hotel and “experience” the city.  My wife, Lisa, was with me and after a few days there said, “You can’t describe Las Vegas, you have to see it!”

And what I saw more of than anything was advertising. Dazzling outside signs 5 stories tall, ads in the hotels and on the hotels, on buses and cabs, at the airport, on permanent and drivable billboards, in those special hotel guest magazines… even being handed out on the street corner.  It was everywhere!

February 13, 2014

Google Consumer Surveys Ramps Up Product and Marketing… Are You Ready?

I haven’t heard much from or about Google Consumer Surveys in the past couple of months, then all of the sudden, I received an email from them last week.  It looks like they’re expanding the capabilities of their service… with longer surveys and mobile respondents (by the way, no change in pricing).  A tough competitor just got tougher.

February 5, 2014

Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret… It’s Not an Exact Science!

Here are the kinds of questions I regularly hear from my clients…

• “What email open rate should I expect?”
• “How many downloads will my new white paper get?”
• “What’s the average bid conversion rate?”
• “What are the ‘right’ steps for the lead nurturing process?”

The correct answer for all of the above is… “It depends!”  Sorry… wish I had a better answer.

January 29, 2014

Just starting (or re-starting) your marketing & sales efforts? Follow these 4 important guidelines.

I had coffee last week with the principals from a small, local firm.  Been around several years, reasonably successful… and doing virtually nothing to grow their business.

What their inactivity boiled down to – and it applies to pretty much all small firms – is that everyone there wears a bunch of hats, most of which have to do with taking care of clients.  I get it.  And it’s not that they don’t want to grow their business, the problem is that no one is dedicated to marketing & sales and no one allocates much (if any) time to the firm’s growth.  Consequently, not much growth is going on.

Sound familiar?

January 22, 2014

Are your clients ALWAYS right?

When I first got started in business, I used to say that “the client is always right.”

Once I got a little time under my belt, that morphed into “the client is always right, but they aren’t always correct.”

Now, after three decades in business, it’s “the client is often right, but when they aren’t… it’s time to talk.”

Here are the 3 times when you must have a “direct” conversation with your clients…