The old saying; “Nobody sells something until someone buys something.” Early identification of opportunities—lead generation—is a primary and ongoing responsibility of inside sales teams to meet the desired end result that is the reason the sales department of most of the companies work nearby the marketing department. For framing updated prospects database and qualifying leads you need feedback from both pre-sales and after sales to track different activities through both sales and marketing perspectives. To optimize ongoing sales performance you need a good CRM system to stay with the current technology and also a winning sales team as your buyers need information- rich environment combined with excellent service and support to sustain longer with your product of service. In the atmosphere when the buyer and sellers both research and spending hours for information and watching the competitors move and activities, you need to have colloborate through online demos and facilitate them with intranet system, webinars and involve your team members between them. All too often we lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with human beings. Both the customers and the Sales reps, they need to be managed or coached regularly as such applications are being resisted some time by few of them those probably less tech savvy or they dont find its handy. You need to empower your sales team to make decisions and how to accommodate customers and to train them how to respond a high demanding customer with intelligent reply rather than formulaic answers and making exceptions that create long-term win-win situations. Also this is the time to research and study other companies- how they are leveraging people, process, technology and knowledge to optimize the way they market.
Archive for September, 2006
Strategic Alliance- The Cocktail Party
As the digital technologies continue to drive industries together, it is the time to realize the potentials and identify the great value and opportunity inherent in others and to find the way to build significantly a special relationship that meaningfully strengthen both partners in terms of growth and enabling both to participate in joint future success. Warner’s & Youtube, Google INC & AOL are few good example, Such alliance with leading companies provide you inner & outer strength, enhance your international market presence, global advertisement, networking, build credibility, brand awareness and giving opportunities to focus on your core competencies. It strengthens each organization’s commitment to the common goal by making a wonderful cocktail party to achieve a common objective by bringing together complementary skills and assets, accessing knowledge and expertise beyond the boarder line’.
Legal point of view; As per Legal expert IVAN HOFFMAN- there is simply no legal relationship called a “strategic alliance.” The terms of the agreement must cover the specifics of the respective rights and obligations of the parties within that relationship.
Perception Really Matter for Differentiation
Most of the companies are struggling on how companies can use differentiation in line up with product quality, advertising, price, but does it have good differentiation? Answer is No; the good ones are attributes and leadership, the product uniqueness. It is something that enables you to really say we are different from our competitors. For example, take attribute of BMW the ultimate driving machine, Its is drivability and it roll over its whole brand around that particular attribute, Nokia- Connecting People built around the attribute of the power of particular attribute, of the power of connection worldwide, Hewlett-packard ( hp) building attribute of the computer is personal again, here personal is an attribute, Visa-credit card in the world is built around the attribute of everywhere. Everywhere you want to be, and it built a big program around it. Marlboro did it with cowboys on horses and then kind of screwed up with too many variations non-cowboy products.
Most of the companies overlook the leadership, they need to prove that they indeed are a terrific brand because people tend to buy what other people buy or recommend. People know that you are the number one brand, and you are running strong and it gives you a chance to tell your stories as to how you got to be the leader, so you need to buy ad and make brand stories, people enjoy to be part of that story and start sharing it to others. So strategy is virtually the cornerstone hence it is important to recognize that perception – perception really matter.
Add Brand Story
Brand marketers are storming into content ( videotaping, podcasting, blogging ) as a way to get around the advertising weary consumer-It’s fashionable & everybody wants to talk about it. But here’s the problem with putting your product into a video or whatever as a product placement- what’s missing is the brand story. All you do is see the pictures, see the product, but nobody think about Why should I buy the product? Just because it is presented there? Well,that’s never going to replace
your ability to tell your story in the marketplace. In other words, for example, I want to be able to tell the Zune story, I want to put the story but the (brand) story isn’t there . Just putting it in without the story is a major problem thats why your message is incomplete, All you get with placement is visibility, but no (brand) story.
Targeting Young consumers-Add Music In Content
To gain far more coverage, the younger consumers easily attach with a brand and engage the audience through making social commentary about particular brand. Knowingly or unknowingly they generate good content and they become the part of the content by sharing it to others, the reason is that the youngers absorb content in their everyday interaction easily. To gain their confidence we may consider to give them opportunity to roll over the brand. Today Kids are smart, they know their way around, they have large group of friends, they always test interest and often bring new technology. They love music, music is the source of fun and creativity- add music with content and let the rhythm to move the content to modern time. Cheers!
