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- The elevator speech is that tightly scripted, 30-second introduction that should pack as much information about a person as possible in an engaging, persuasive, and interesting way, right? Unfortunately, even the "best" elevator speech can be an express trip to oblivion instead of a shining personal marketing moment. more
- Your initial contact with a prospective customer leaves little margin for error. The first conversation is the most critical and least forgiving point of the entire sales process. Within the first 20 seconds you must simultaneously establish relevance and credibility—or you will be dismissed as just more marketing noise in ... more
- To design marketing plans that are effective in attracting and selling to more women, you have to know where you are today. In other words: To get the right answers, you must start with the correct questions. As your company focuses on developing appropriate strategies, here are some questions you ... more
- Make no mistake: Online, your success in converting interest into acquisition depends on your ability to connect with prospects precisely where they are in the buying process. B2B and B2C buyers go through similar stages in that process as they consider their purchasing decision: needs assessment, requirements analysis, evaluation, purchasing. Using ... more
- Traditional TV tends to deliver measurable advertising results only for true mass-market products—in part because you need about $15 million to begin even the smallest mainstream TV campaign. Cable TV, on the other hand, is a powerfully viable alternative, delivering much higher ROI on much lower budgets in a national campaign. ... more
- One way to delight users is with the guy-in-the-unexpected-context phenomenon. Any company with way-over-the-top customer service is giving its users an unexpected, delightful surprise. Something to remember. Something to talk about. But even the subtle out-of-context surprise can trigger some neurons and brain chemistry. A reference to one movie slipped ... more
- Increasingly there's a new priority emerging for marketers, and that is sales acceleration: Finding disciplined and repeatable ways to move existing customers as well as prospects from "why?" to "buy"—more rapidly. Here are tips on how marketers can prove their value and work together with sales to accelerate the sales cycle. more
- At a recent marketing association event about landing big company clients, one of the participants asked the speaker, "How do we find the watering holes where the decision makers meet?" The room burst into discussion. Some people said golf courses. Some said nonprofit boards. But I couldn't help thinking of a ... more
- The Web analytics space is hot, customers are engaged, consultants busy, vendors optimistic. There's no question this is a healthy "industry." But intense competition among the top vendors has somewhat killed product innovation. Unfortunately, that's happening at a time when the next generation of the Internet—what some call Web 2.0—needs a ... more
- The role of the Chief Marketing Officer, a title almost unheard of 10 years ago, will continue to expand in the next decade. Marketing is evolving from an art into a science—and it's about time. As CMOs begin to embrace their new-found stature, are they tuned into what really makes them ... more
- Vendors are in ferocious competition to engage customer C-level executives who can assure prospective peers that "this" purchase decision is the right one. One such way of engaging executives is the Executive Sponsor Program, a standard "sales tool" since companies like IBM and Xerox pioneered relationship-based sales models many moons ... more
- We've all read about Web 2.0 and the impact it will have on businesses. Some find the principles life-altering, others say it's pure hype. Whichever camp you are in, you can't ignore the fact that business is changing—especially online. Here are five categories that managers need to consider now to keep ... more
- Mixing business and fiction invariably involves a trade-off. Most business fables by business authors make up in insights what they lack in literary style. And most works of popular fiction sacrifice business verisimilitude for the sake of "art." But finally, business readers, you can read popular fiction propelled by a ... more