Archive for November, 2008
Building trust in professional services selling and marketing
Over the past few months, we’ve spoken to dozens of managing partners in professional services firms about ways they find new business. Every person interviewed said that a vast majority of new business was generated via their “networks and trusted relationships.”
Trust is a shared belief that you can depend on one another to achieve [...]
Automating Transactional Email
Email newsletters are common method of selling and communicating with customers.
But often overlooked is the idea of using rules-based automation inside the traditional and transactional email exchanges common to the sales process.
Sales people and the marketers that support them can creatively use rules-based email automation to put simple events such as customer birthdays and event [...]
fix your own damn computer!
Scott Adams does it better than anyone.
http://i36.tinypic.com/11jq5nm.jpg
Send to Facebook
Stealing liberally from 6 sigma, scrum and xtreme
Way back when we started working with a Six Sigma ninja to understand our own processes. How can we apply lessons from Six Sigma as a formalized process for engaging with customers on multiple levels. Can we look at the client engagement process under the lense of Six Sigma?
The first question…when and why do client [...]
Marketing project failure
Want to reduce marketing and sales costs? Start thinking about improving the way you manage your marketing projects.
So why do marketing projects fail?
Poor definition of project goals, role of marketing
Overly complicated marketing objectives
Marketing objectives not clearly defined and difficult or impossible to measure results
Little-to-no accountability for results
Not enough momentum
What this means, is that marketing projects [...]
Scrum-tastic
SCRUM is a rugby term for a process for quickly getting an out of play ball back into play. It is also a lightweight and agile software project management methodology. Scrum is explained at a website called ControlChaos.com.
I believe SCRUM ideas should be embraced by marketers for project management.
In ControlChaos, they talk about a concept [...]
CIO as marketer
I just read a fantastic article from a newly discovered blog.
Mike Schaffner writes that…
It is generally accepted that CIOs need to “market” information technology inside a corporation to get other executives and employees to think of it as a strategic area of operations and not just a cost center.
What concerns me is that these marketing [...]
Using Social Media to Enhance Your Sales Effort
The great minds at the CMO Council published a nice piece on the role of social media in the sales effort.
It is a worthwhile read. This article quotes the Aberdeen Group - one of their latest research reports, called Sales 2.0 — Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration, discusses how social media solutions [...]
Another Silicon Prairie Social in December!
XNet will be hosting yet another Silicon Prairie Social! This time around it’s especially exciting.
First, some changes…
this time around, it is a cash-bar.
it will be held at Mullen’s in Lisle again but this time the event will be a bit smaller (target attendance 100-120) and much more informal.
It’s a free event and there [...]
Does anyone know this joke?
A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The Chicken looks at the pig and says “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says “Good idea, what do you want to call it?”
The chicken thinks about it and says “Why don’t we call it [...]
