No, you don’t want to of course, but how many of these four things are you doing already?
When sales are sluggish you push harder. And then things happen. Some of these things are the desirable outcomes you seek, like new leads and closed deals. And some are the unintended consequences you didn’t foresee. Here are four specific activities that you might be employing today, each of which puts downward pressure on the perceived value of your offering.
We all understand the idea of a target market. Hopefully, you have a formalized understanding of what or who your target market is. But you might be better off thinking about the target and the market as two different things.
An excerpt from my brand new book…
The world needs more of expert you. Let’s explore both sides of the expert salesperson.
“A man, sitting in his house, attending the way, will be heard a hundred miles distant. Work done truly and conscientiously, in isolation, calls unknown friends.”
Just as the interest on money compounds over time, the interest on knowledge compounds similarly, under the right conditions.
We all understand the idea of a target market. Hopefully, you have a formalized understanding of what or who your target market is. But you might be better off thinking about the target and the market as two different things.
Blair and David discuss the seven most common mistakes firms make when positioning themselves.
Business is a game with hidden levels. By succeeding at one level, you get invited to play the next. The common mistake is to bring those first-level tools to the next level. Not only do they not work here, but they also work against you. Many of the habits you learned you will now have to unlearn. Accepting this inevitable obsolescence of tools is the key to obtaining all the advanced levels of success.
I imagined that there is a line among design-based businesses that separates those who see themselves as in the business of design from those who see design as just one of the tools they use, in the service of whatever business they are really in. I wondered if this line was moving, squeezing out the traditional design firm.
Blair and David analyze and then look beyond the requests for reassurance potential clients make during the late stage of a sale to address their underlying motivations.
David disagrees with Blair’s model for growing existing accounts in the post-AOR era and then offers his list of 6 ideas on the topic.
Blair offers seven mindsets that any seller of expertise needs to master so that they can behave like the expert in the sales cycle.
Blair and David come up with descriptive words that help clarify each of the four parts of what David calls the “pantheon” for new business: positioning, lead generation, sales, and pricing.
I’m fond of saying that pricing is a prison cell in your mind, of your own making. You see yourself trapped within a narrow band of what you can charge. Your competitors are similarly trapped, but the band or cell they are trapped in is different from yours. Some of your competitors are charging significantly more than you, and some significantly less, yet everyone feels restricted, confined by the idea of an elastic demand that will drop with the slightest price increase.
Your two main levers of profit are to lower your expenses and to raise your revenue. (Profound opening, I know. Stay with me.)
The more I get to know procurement professionals through my pet project that is 20% – The Marketing Procurement Podcast, the more I am struck by how bad we in the creative professions are at negotiating.
I’ve written for years on the impact that three-option proposals can have on your closing ratio and your average selected price. Providing your clients with three or four different ways to engage you—at different price points—might be the simplest and fastest path to improving profit.
When sales are sluggish you push harder. And then things happen. Some of these things are the desirable outcomes you seek, like new leads and closed deals. And some are the unintended consequences you didn’t foresee. Here are four specific activities that you might be employing today, each of which puts downward pressure on the perceived value of your offering.
If you “do strategy” or price strategy as a line item it’s time to stop and look at your own business strategy instead. How will you become, and remain, unique, especially in the era of offshore labor and AI? What urgent and expensive problem will you help your clients solve?
Almost every leader of a business of expertise has a moment when they realize their delivery team could be a source of instant scale to their sales efforts.
Something is in the air in Agencyland. After a long, cold and seemingly endless winter, something is finally in the air. Free pitching, the addictive and destructive opioid of both client and agency is disappearing like the White Witch’s endless winter. It may not yet be summer, but spring is most definitely here.
I’m of two minds when it comes to referrals as a lead source. On one hand, I’m jaded by the people who claim their number one source of clients is “word of mouth and referrals,” when they really mean, “I have no idea and no plan.” On the other hand, I know people and businesses that have absolutely mastered the art of referrals, driving all their growth through this one channel.
Is there any way to do outbound lead generation without giving up the expert high ground, or does any solicitation taint you with the stench of a needy, powerless vendor?
David disagrees with Blair’s model for growing existing accounts in the post-AOR era and then offers his list of 6 ideas on the topic.
When I think of the firms that drive numerous inbound leads they all have one very clear thing they do. Their lead generation efforts are as focused as their positioning. They’ve resisted diluting their efforts across numerous channels, avoiding Warren Buffet’s admonishment that “Diversification is for people who don’t know what they are doing.”
Blair gets David to admit that he was kind of wrong about open book management being just a fad when he originally wrote about it almost two decades ago, and David offers ways that it can actually improve relationships with both employees and clients when used appropriately.
Blair and David analyze and then look beyond the requests for reassurance potential clients make during the late stage of a sale to address their underlying motivations.
David disagrees with Blair’s model for growing existing accounts in the post-AOR era and then offers his list of 6 ideas on the topic.
Blair remembers what it was like when he was an account person himself, and David shares five ways firms can treat their account people better.
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