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BrandingWire: Why are we losing business?

October 8, 2007

This month’s BrandingWire offering asks an interesting question. A B2B consultancy that works primarily with high-tech and health care clients is losing market share. What should they do?

Here’s their current situation:

They are losing contracts to lower pricing and bigger firms.
They’ve stopped growing.
If they do land a client, they usually only buy one project and don’t return.

Here’s how they describe their client profile:

Revenues: $1 million to $25 million
Employees: 150 or fewer
Verticals: High-tech and health care
Location: North America

Sometimes the best advice we need to offer a prospect or client is — you shouldn’t market anything right now. To jump into marketing tactics at this stage with this particular client would be putting lipstick on a pig.

There are questions that need asking long before we pull the trigger on any attempt to help them attract new clients. They have problems that marketing cannot fix. And it would be irresponsible of us to encourage them to spend money that’s just going to perpetuate the problem.

This is a classic mistake many businesses make. They’re struggling so they throw more marketing dollars at the problem. But what if the problem has little to do with marketing? Here are some harsh realities that this client needs to face before they launch any new marketing initiatives.

Your target market is too big

The range between $1 million and $25 million is huge. Companies on each side of that size spectrum behave completely differently. My guess is that our client needs to drastically narrow that range to find their sweet spot. Right now, they are aiming at much too wide a target.

You don’t know how you are perceived

We need to have some in-depth conversations with past clients, current clients and those clients who opted for a competitor. We need to understand, from their perspective, how this company is coming across.

The biggie: You can’t sustain business

But, without a doubt the most glaring problem we need to solve is the company’s inability to keep current clients happy and coming back for more.

If you can’t earn a current client’s trust and more business, then you are destined to fail. No business can be profitable with a revolving door or clients. The costs of acquisition is just too high.

Bottom line:

This year’s marketing budget is going to be dedicated to identifying and fixing the problems that have gotten our client into this situation. We can’t market them out of the hole they’ve dug.

As is the BrandingWire tradition, there will be several other marketing pros who will weigh in on this scenario. Check out their posts as well!

Olivier Blanchard
Becky Carroll
Derrick Daye
Kevin Dugan
Lewis Green
Gavin Heaton
Martin Jelsema
Valeria Maltoni
Drew McLellan
Patrick Schaber
Steve Woodruff

Win Jill Konrath’s book: Selling to Big Companies

October 5, 2007

Boy, this is a sweet deal.

Jill Konrath e-mailed me right around the time we were celebrating the blog’s first anniversary and generously offered to give me a copy of her book as a giveaway during the anniversary hoopla. But, I just couldn’t pull it all together so she graciously let me wait a week or so. Here we are.

I just finished it and it is excellent! I found some take aways that I know are going to make MMG more successful.

In the comments section — leave a sales tip, horror story, lesson learned or struggle. That’s your "entry fee" for being put in the drawing. If you’re too shy to comment, e-mail me.

Here’s a little about the book:

Stop struggling to get into big companies. Learn practical strategies to crack into corporate accounts, shrink your sales cycle and close more business in Jill Konrath’s new book.

In Selling to Big Companies, you’ll discover how to:

Target accounts where you can succeed.
Find the names of corporate decision makers.
Create breakthrough value propositions.
Develop effective account entry campaigns.
Craft enticing voicemail messages.
Overcome obstacles to getting in.
Have powerful initial sales meetings.
Differentiate yourself from other sellers.

Don’t forget that Jill is also throwing the sales conference that’s a not to be missed for women who want to take their sales skills to the next level. Minneapolis. November 5-6. You’ll learn enough within the first hour to cover the investment and more.

So come on….share your sales savvy or angst. Either way, you can be the big winner!

Have you seen the branding periodic table?

October 4, 2007

So….I get an e-mail from Tanya, an intern at the Kolbrener agency in Pittsburgh. She loves my blog and wanted to share something her employers created – the branding periodic table.

Note: It’s cool, I am not knocking that at all. Very inventive and visually appealing. See….

But here’s my observation. ~~Tanya likes many marketing blogs~~. (An update — I had a conversation with Brandon Fritz of Kolbrener and he assured me Tanya only e-mailed a handful of bloggers she really does like. She likes me! She really likes me!) And like Pavlov’s dog — we all jumped up when she rang the bell. And then we each told ten friends, who told ten friends…

Have we contributed to the pollution of sameness in the blogosphere? Do we as blog authors have a responsibility to try to differentiate our copy if we’re going to jump on someone’s bandwagon and all write about the same thing? (Which some did)

Or is it a "no harm, no foul" deal. Who cares if a bunch of blogs all point at the same thing in relatively the same way?

What do you think?

Here are some of this week’s links to the interactive table:

Peep the Technique
Doug Karr
Orbit Now
Ryan Moede
Techy News Blog
Passionate Manager
Clever Think
Bloggermacha
Debbie Millman
The Branding Blog
Uwe’s blog
James & Joe
BrandUnited
Brand Autopsy

What is the most powerful selling tool?

October 3, 2007

This just in from the folks at Nielsen. No great shock (I don’t think) to see word of mouth topping the chart, in terms of effective selling tools. The power of a recommendation from a known/trusted source has long been the gold standard.

But what’s pretty interesting, and a big change from a few years ago, is the third highest item on the list. Opinions posted online.

So, what do you think? What does this say about blogging? Sites like epinion.com?

If you’re on the company side — what do you think it means for you and where you spend your resources? If you’re a consultant or agency-side pro — what do you think it means for you and for your clients?

By the way…this was an international survey. It covers 47 Markets: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Thailand, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom, US and Vietnam.

How well do you listen to your marketplace?

October 3, 2007

We’ve all heard the quote from the Greek philosopher Epictetus, "we were born with two ears and one mouth, so we can listen twice as much as we speak."

I doubt Epictetus was a marketing consultant, but it is not a stretch to apply his wisdom to our efforts. Marketers have a tendency to "talk" a lot. After all, we have a lot to say. We have features to point out. Benefits to reference. Special pricing to announce. Nothing wrong with any of that.

But we also need to listen.

How do we listen to our marketplace? Try some of these on for size:

Client satisfaction survey
Client needs assessments
Attend industry trade shows
Monitor blogs for mentions of your company and your competitors
Read trade publications
The old-fashioned suggestion box
Google yourself/company

Along with those effective methods, there are also more direct and immediate ways to actively listen. After you’ve completed a project or delivered your product, why not just pick up the phone and call? Ask for their impressions. Find out if you surprised them in any way (good or bad) and what they expected the experience or product usage to be like. Imagine how you would feel if you received that kind of call. Appreciated? Special? Is that the kind of call you’re likely to talk about? You bet.

A word of caution. Do not try to sell anything during this call. This is about listening, remember?

If you commit to listening more, you will glean insights that change the way you do business and you’ll see a spike in sales as a result. Guaranteed.

How are you going to improve your listening this month?

Recent posts:

~ Are you really listening?
~ Listen and respond (Marketing Lesson from Walt)
~ Listen up

Join us for breakfast and some branding tomorrow?

October 2, 2007

As you know, we MMGers are passionate about branding. So much so that we want to share it with the business world. That’s why two years ago, we started hosting our monthly Branding Breakfast.

October’s Branding Breakfast is tomorrow. Other than the fact that it’s at the crack of dawn — it’s a good time. You can enjoy a hot breakfast and a lively discussion about branding and how it could be applied to your business.

Here are the particulars:

Wednesday, October 3rd (7:30 am – 8:30 am)
Workforce Development Office
430 East Grand
Downtown Des Moines

We hope you can join in the fun!

Marketing isn’t about shortcuts

October 1, 2007

Remember that one essay test you took in school. You meant to study. But for some reason you just didn’t have the time. Truth be told, you didn’t really read the book. But you skimmed over the Cliff Notes. And you did repent in the end — cramming the night before the test.

Sure, sure…you should have started cramming a few days earlier or at the very least, not so late that night. With the radio on.

Do you remember what you got on that test? I’ll bet you weren’t happy with the grade.

Shortcuts didn’t work in school and they don’t work in marketing either. I have yet to see a marketing department or agency that had a drive-up window.

I get why it happens. There’s an almost constant demand on CMOs and marketing directors to produce results. And no agency worth their salt doesn’t want that too.

But there are some pretty important aspects of your business and products/services that need to be understood before we just whip up a brochure or direct mail series.

We aren’t doing the strategic thinking and planning just to get our jollies. We have a responsibility. We owe it to you. Because you’re about to spend a lot of money. We want to make sure you spend it right.

This applies if you’re doing your own marketing too.

Getting ready to produce something. Are you sure you’re not taking a shortcut?

If you can’t describe how you are genuinely and relevantly different from your competitors, stop.
If you can’t describe your ideal customer, stop.
If you don’t have a broad brand/marketing plan so that you aren’t operating in a vacuum, stop.
If you haven’t defined how you are visually going to communicate your company’s offerings, stop.
If you don’t know how you’re going to follow up on the leads the new marketing tactci generates, stop.

Whether you’re working with your internal team or with your agency — don’t short change the process. If you do some strategic thinking up front and make some of those key decisions, the tactics and tools actually get produced much faster and much more cost effectively.

Shortcuts are never going to yield the results you want. Better to do it right than do it again. Just ask your former teacher who gave you the C.

How do you ensure that you’re not taking a shortcut?

Come mix and mingle

September 30, 2007

One of the things I love about big cocktail parties is the mixing and mingling. It's a smorgasbord of conversations and you can drift in and out, sampling a little bit of each one.

So, imagine all the Age of Conversation authors standing around, drink in hand, chatting. Wouldn't it be fun to flit from group to group, engaging with each author?

Well, until we can make that happen, David Brazeal of JournaMarketing (and an AoC author) is doing the next best thing. He's vowed to create a podcast with each author and share them with all of us.

He's got three done and you can check them out on his site.

Gavin Heaton
Me
Becky Carroll

This will be a series worth watching for. Thanks to David for putting the spotlight on each author!

Blog makeover?

September 30, 2007

I recently got tagged by Josh Spaulding for the Blog Improvement Meme. The timing is perfect because there are a few things I've been meaning to do for awhile. Hopefully by putting it into writing, I'll actually carve out the time to get these done.

If you recall, we did a complete blog re-design early in '07. So I've already gone through this exercise in the macro sense. I'm happy with the look and feel of the blog. But there are definitely some tweaks I'd like to do.

New/Better head shot: I took the current head shot myself and it shows! For a few months, I've been meaning to make an appointment with one of the photographers we work with, but I just haven't found the time. Now is the time!

Sidebar spacing: I really like the one sidebar design we decided on. But, as I have added things — I haven't spaced everything as evenly as I would like. (When my blog coach helps — it's fine, but I'm not as good when doing it solo.) I just added the BlogRush piece and need to go back in and scootch it down a little.

Greatest Hits: I decided on the 5-6 greatest hits posts in about December, based on 3 months of posts. Now that I have 12+ months, I want to go back and freshen those up. I've written several series (Marketing advice from my Italian Grandma, etc.) that I need to highlight.

How about you — how would you like to improve the experience of your blog readers?

Perspective

September 29, 2007

Today, in terms of milestones, is a big day at our house. It's our daughter's first homecoming dance. So we've been a blur of appointments — nails, hair and make-up. Each and every decision has been painstakingly made.

Since she is going with a gaggle of girl friends, I thought it would be nice for her to have a corsage, even if it is from her dad. So while she was having her hair done, I slipped out to pick up the corsage of three white rosebuds I had ordered.

A family (a dad about my age and 5 kids ranging from wobbly toddler to teenager) absentmindedly cut in front of me at the florist counter. I'm not even sure they saw me there. While a second clerk came up to find my order, I heard the original clerk ask the man if she could help him. He said, "We need to order some flowers for a funeral." The clerk asked, "Who is the funeral for?" and he replied in a very muted voice, "my wife."

One of his children, a little girl around 10, tugged on his sleeve just as the clerk was holding out my daughter's corsage for my approval. The white rosebuds were perfect and I nodded but my heart and attention were still on the family to my right. The dad leaned over to find out why his daughter was tugging on his sleeve and she softly told him, "I want to get mom some white roses."

My only goal at that point was to get out of the store without tearing up.

As I help our daughter with her corsage of white roses tonight, I am going to say a little prayer of thanks for our fun-filled milestone and for the family who bought white roses for an all-together different reason.

And if I tear up it won't just be because my little girl is growing up.

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