Direct Marketing - Brand Identity Guru Tips

If your company doesn’t have a direct marketing program in place, a direct marketing agency can create one for you. A direct marketing company provides small to very large customizable ranges of business-to-business and business-to-consumer direct marketing options sure to fit your needs. From database creation and maintenance to data analysis and creative program execution, a direct marketing company can take any existing direct marketing program, or a lack of one, and develop a highly efficient direct sales machine for your company.
A good direct marketing company employs experts in each aspect of direct marketing who have proven time and time again they have what it takes to create a successful direct mail campaign and turn your existing unorganized data into a powerful computer-readable customer database.
The goal of any successful direct marketing program is ultimately a positive effect on your bottom line. Good direct marketing programs are proven performers that will give you an edge over your competition. The direct marketing expertise and capabilities that a good direct marketing company offers will turn your direct marketing expenditures into successful investments.
Look for a company that has years of target market research experience ready to work for you. They will uncover who your best customers are and develop a direct marketing campaign that will get them to respond.
They should know how to impact behavior, get results and form the basis for long-term relationships with your customers and prospects.
Direct marketing abilities should include:
- Direct response advertising- Customer relation’s management- Data management services and data analysis- Media planning, media buying and complete direct marketing campaign management
Seven HUGE Tips to Direct Marketing that gets results
Successful direct marketing takes planning and strategic thought…
1. Know your goal: What do you want your direct marketing to accomplish? What kind of impression do you wish to leave? Do you wish to inform your prospects about your product or just make them aware? Recently, Brand Identity Guru was asked by a client to expand its direct marketing efforts, so we created a direct marketing piece to showcase our client’s most attractive points. That direct marketing piece now accounts for 30 percent of the client’s new business.
2. Research: Don’t just have a list. Learn something about your customers so you can speak to them better. Discover their hot buttons, so you can push them.
3. Plan properly: The best direct marketing campaigns work along with PR, traditional advertising, brand strategy and efforts by your sales force. Ultimately, each piece is part of a larger total company campaign and should work together.
4. Be relevant: Direct marketing efforts should offer something your clients might want to buy.
5. Be conscious of details: Find the name of your primary contacts, and make sure you spell them right in the items you send to them. Even the best direct marketing piece is useless in the trash.
6. Be consistent: Use a series of pieces that speak to your customer’s needs. Don’t know what they are? Ask. Usually, December is not a good time because mailboxes are already overcrowded. Brand Identity Guru suggests waiting until February or another month.
7. Follow up: If you don’t follow up, the results of your direct marketing efforts could crash to a halt. Initiate a conversation with people on your list. A phone call a week or two after your mailing is a great idea.
Direct marketing is a powerful tool to capture your prospects’ attention and orders. If your direct marketing includes an attractive offer, imagine what the results will be. Throw in a brand-centric foundation and you have a direct marketing effort even more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm in Boston, MA.
Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.
This Article may be freely copied as long as it is not modified and this resource box accompanies the article, together with working hyperlinks.
Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Warning Signs That Your Process May No Longer Be Effective

There is no question that for most sales organizations, the market has shifted dramatically over the last 6 to 12 months. Many are, as they say, "doing it really tough!" Whole industries that were in full swing a year ago are no longer buying anything. Customers that were assured of monthly sales revenues have all but shut shop and gone home. Home values are down, unemployment is up, consumers are tapped out and so are lenders. Consumer confidence hasn't been this bleak since the "recession we had to have' in the early 90's.
In economically unstable times, typically sales leaders have a tendency to over react and pressure their sales team to ramp up sales activity. Whilst this may be an effective approach if previous selling activity was somewhat lax, doing more of what may be an ineffective sales process issue, will only serve to cause frustration and burn out.
So how can one tell whether or not one's selling process is not really working?
Firstly, do you have one?
Whilst this may seem like an obvious question on the surface, in reality, the majority of selling organizations don't have one that was designed specifically for them. If they have 10 sales people; it is very likely that they could have 10 different selling processes happening within their organization. In a previous newsletter I referred to the latest research from the *CSO Insights' 2008 Sales Performance Optimization Report showing that 'process-centric' sales teams outperform non-process-centric teams for every measurable metric.
* (CSO Insights is a research firm that specializes in measuring the effectiveness of today's sales and marketing organizations. They benchmark the challenges companies are facing and assess how they are using people, process, technology and knowledge to optimize their sales performance. Each year CSO Insights survey thousands of Chief Sales Officers to learn the challenges they see as most critical. )
On the basis of those numbers, evaluating your current selling process performance would make good business sense!
Consider your current sales process - the way you currently sell.
When was it designed?
Who was it created for?
Does it deliver consistent sales results?
Was it designed to suit your organization, or was it created on behalf of the customers you serve?
Does your current selling process focus on the selling of your products/services, or is it focused on the way your prospects and customers buy your products/services?
How different would your existing sales process look if it had been designed by your customers, as opposed to your Sales and Marketing Department?
In his terrific book, "What the Customer Wants to Know", bestselling author Ram Charan lists nine warning signs that indicate your sales process has broken down and is no longer working effectively. To this list I have added a further 12 to look out for.
1. Your sales force interacts solely with your customer's purchasing department, never meeting genuine decision makers.
2. Most of your sales discussions revolve around price.
3. You use conventional sales training, which is solely technique based and doesn't really address the disconnect between the customer and you, the supplier.
4. Top management keep fiddling with the incentives for the sales force in the hope that it will drive better profit margins.
5. You keep reorganizing the sales team, allowing the salespeople to spend more time with the customer, yet you are still achieving similar results.
6. Salespeople are never included in discussions about the design of product offerings, despite the fact that they spend the most time face-to-face with the customer.
7. Little thought is given to your customer's customer, and you never get to know how your product fits into your customer's offering to their customers.
8. Your salespeople are internally focused, spending a significant portion of their work day on administration and paperwork.
9. The sales management team assume they are doing a good job, without any real awareness of larger issues that are occurring.
Here are some additional warning signs:
10. Your sales process is designed with sales outputs in mind, rather than from the customer's viewpoint.
11. If you have ten salespeople working for you, you have ten different sales processes happening.
12. Your sales process may not be designed to allow for multiple visits to win new business.
13. Your sales process may only include "bottom up" strategies, and not "top down." In other words, your salespeople may only be working at a user level, in the hope that these users will sell your solutions further up the chain.
14. Your sales process may be too heavily focused on working your existing customer base, without sufficient focus on bringing in "new blood," or vice versa.
15. Your salespeople are all using different tools and sales messages in their communication with customers.
16. Your process doesn't have an easily measurable output at the end of each phase allowing you to identify exactly where along the sales pathway they are at any one time.
17. Your current sales process is too> convoluted and complicated. There are too many steps, too many forms, and it's too hard to manage.
18. Your salespeople don't have the knowledge, tools or skills to drive the selling system effectively.
19. The landscape you sell in has changed, yet you are still selling the same old way.
20. Your sales process looks good on paper but lack the flexibility or practicality to be of value in the current markets you operate in.
21. Your sales process doesn't really help to close sales!
If more than 5 of the above 21 issues listed resonate with you, then it might very well be time for you to consider reengineering your current selling process.
I will say this though, the exercise is not for the faint-hearted. It may be advisable that you bring in professional expertise to ensure the greatest success. You may just be too close to your own current sales methodology to see the gaps or dysfunction.
As one of Australia's leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.



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How to Hire the Best Sales Training Consultant

Is the sales training consultant able to sell himself well to you? That will give a clue as to how good a sales man he himself is in the first place. The next step in that direction would be to check whether your sales trainer is a good speaker talking about sales or is he a good seller trying to speak about sales. There are many good speakers who have very little practical sales experience. Their knowledge is sourced from books, journals, periodicals, and is mostly theoretical. They are good at - lecture and the meaning of the term lecture hasn't changed at all. You don't need them. You need a good seller speaking about sales. Of course good speaking skill is essential, but good selling experience precedes it.
The real are the ones that have solid sales experience behind them. They themselves have achieved excellence and recognition in their industry for their sales skills. They are the masters that combine the theory with the practice. Master sales trainers don't just keep giving lectures. They actively participate in their client's sales process and help in achieving tangible results. They love sales action and their resumes are full of them.
Ask your sales training consultant what areas does he cover? The fewer the areas covered the better is the depth. Novices are more likely to cover all the areas. Listening and viewing to a small demo tape of sales training workshop done by your sales trainer would give a clear picture of his energy levels, teaching skills, and the knack of getting along with the participants. Make sure that they are not done in a studio and are real. Your sales training consultants should be handing out training material to refer. He also should be willing to prepare questionnaires and work sheets pertaining to the training and the participants' real jobs.
Pose your most pressing sales concern to the sales trainer and see how is planning to handle it. Good sales trainers spend a few days with the company sales force, studying their methods of operation, and finding out rooms for development. They also study in depth about the company, the industry it is in, its annual reports, and related literature. Your sales training consultant should be asking you for these things if you are considering hiring him. You should expect your sales training consultant to do preparatory work of 3/4 hours for every hour of workshop/training time.
Top sales trainers charge a fee of $5000 per day and upwards. To make sure that they are worth the money, ask your sales trainer whether he is an authority in the field with articles or books published in the area of expertise. A sales trainer with excellent speaking capacities should be a member of the National Speakers Association (NPA). If your sales trainer has all these qualifications then make the final confirmation after consulting a few clients that he has trained in the past. Their sales results should convince you to hire the sales trainer.

What is a Logo and Why is it Important?

The image of a company should be its most important affair. Companies have Public Relations departments andexperts working for their image. They help project the company's goals to the community and to potential consumers. The logo must do the same but in a very small package. A logo is a graphic representation of a business or product. It is usually the first thing a person sees. The importance of a logo is monumental. It's the logo's job to communicate the mood and type of business behind the service or product. However, this importance is usually underestimated and even neglected by the client. My experience is that the clients don't understand the significance of their logo and must be educated in all that a logo entices.
As a representation of a company, all of the elements used to create a logo must be carefully selected. From font to color, all must play an intricate part. Briefing with the designer is very important. The Graphic Designer must understand how the company sees itself and how they want to project themselves to the potential consumer. Desire a logo that is unique and memorable, something that will be engraved in a person's memory. What logos can you remember off the top of your head? Are they simple yet powerful? Do they have many colors? These are considerations to have the moment you sit down with the graphic designer and discuss your logo ideas. Nothing is unimportant at this stage.
After briefing the designer will commence in the very arduous labor of creating a logo. Logo creation is not easy. There is no easy or fast way to creating a logo. Ideas must be explored; revisions made and critical editing must occur. There are many programs that claim they can create a logo for you in a matter of minutes. Think about it, is your company's identity a thing you want to resolve in minutes? No program will ever have the insight, experience and creativity of a human being. Designers are professionals, and as such they will offer your company all the importance that it deserves.

Management Guru Solutions - Are They Useful in Real Organizations?

We've all seen them in airport departure lounges and bookshops - colourful books with even more colourful titles that promise easy solutions to all manner of management problems. And since managers are busy people with huge demands on their time these books sell like 'hot cakes,' becoming overnight best sellers and giving their authors 'guru status' in the world of management consulting.
But beware, there's bad news: quick and simple solutions are often wrong because they fail to take into account the complexity of the organization system, the people involved and situation. As Einstein said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Behaviour in organizations is complex because human beings are complex. Our ability to make predictions about the way different people will respond in different situations is limited. Generalizations are exactly that - generalizations. Organizations that attempt to apply simple solutions to complex issues are more likely than not destined for failure. This doesn't mean that we can't make reasonably accurate predictions about behaviour but we must take into account the situation we find ourselves in. Just imagine how you yourself behave in different situations: a meal with friends compared to a meeting with your child's school teacher! What works for one organization in one situation might not be suitable for your organization.
Consider the book "In Search of Excellence" written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., first published in 1982. The two authors identified eight themes that they suggested were found in 'excellent companies'.
1. A bias for action, active decision making
2. Close to the customer
3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship
4. Productivity through people
5. Hands-on, value-driven
6. Stick to the knitting
7. Simple form, lean staff
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties
The obvious message for the reader was to "do the same". However, as Business Week pointed out, one-third of the original 42 "excellent companies" were in financial difficulties within five years of being surveyed. This doesn't mean that the themes are wrong it - and, indeed, they intuitively appear to be correct. But it does mean that an organization that simply applies the themes rather than processes the ideas behind the themes, adjusting these ideas to fit their own unique situation, will only achieve a limited benefit. And, as importantly, the themes or ideas must be reinforced over time or adapted to fit a changing environment as the surveyed companies found out.
Popular books are often fun to read but can be of little benefit. To improve your chances of gaining a benefit when reading a management help book you need to ask yourself a few basic questions. For example, has the author carried out extensive research to support his or her theories? Does a solution that produced amazing results in one company apply to your company, your industry or even your country? And so on. Following the ideas of an author may improve the chances of success in your organization but is not a recipe for success in itself. Be wary of authors that promise quick-fix solutions - you know that they may "move your cheese" but they won't necessarily solve the problem.

Improving Sales Performance - Where to Begin?

How Well Do You Know Your Salespeople?
Given the state of the economy and market conditions presently I've no doubt many organisations and small business operators are reappraising and evaluating their strategies in an effort to safeguard and protect their business interests.
Cutting costs and/or improving performance are the order of the day and those in the front line of business acquisition are under particular scrutiny at this time. Sales targets and expectations are rarely adjusted downwards instead the focus is on how to achieve identified sales objectives, compete and survive in an increasingly volatile and competitive marketplace.
There are many sales and business development managers who are left to reflect on their own and their team's performance some accepting that their team is performing far below potential. At times like these it is easy to take comfort in the assumption that 'everybody else is in the same boat' and sure all we can do is keep our heads down and battle away. This thought process will result in inertia and usually the inevitable when downsizing becomes an imposed, if not, necessary option. Your desire to avoid this scenario at all costs is understandable, so what are you doing about it? An important aspect of sales management is periodical evaluation of performance and there is no better time than the present that is, RIGHT NOW!
The task of performance evaluation and improvement is not an easy one for the sales manager and before you stop reading this, believing the topic best left to your HR department, it most certainly is not. You may indeed claim that when it comes to performance evaluation the easiest and most accurate measure is to reflect on the results achieved by each individual member of your team. Statistics don't lie "a representative can either bring in the business or they can't and the ones that can't do not remain on my team". I would challenge this attitude as being flawed and dangerous and one that can create a lot of problems for salespeople.
I have witnessed many otherwise good potential salespeople end their selling careers not because they lacked the resources to perform but because of the manner in which they were managed or more accurately mismanaged. Many managers themselves lack the expertise required to nurture and develop selling capability and misguidedly do themselves a great disservice by loosing very talented people.
I accept the job of selling is not an exact science and appreciate this makes that task of setting benchmark s for the job very difficult but it does not make it impossible and I will illustrate this in further articles. For the moment, lets take stock of who you might have among your team. I don't want to be disingenuous towards salespeople by labelling them but for descriptive purposes you might find it easier to recognise the following:

Finding the Ideal US Office Space For Rent

Office space rental is about good decision making and balancing. Obviously you want office space that many people visit or go by on a daily basis, but there are downturns to that as well. With a commercial property that is used as space to rent quite often the building itself may not be in peak condition. So when looking at commercial property for lease you have to look at how busy a street is and how much commerce you get next to how dependable the building is. You certainly don't want to end up spending a majority of your capital and profits on office repair.
Office space should be roomy. If you have to move in a copier, scanner and larger printer for example to do your work you may not have enough room depending upon how many other people you are working with. If you are a person that has trouble working in tight quarters make sure the office space you are being leased has plenty of room to move and walk around in.
Ball State University ranked the state of Missouri as the best state to own a commercial property in. This is due to the fact that the property tax rate in Missouri is comparatively low in the Show Me State. Missouri does level quite a luxury tax on the items that would be sold out of your office space for rent, but the buildings having caring owners. The owners care about their commercial properties in Missouri because the low tax rate reassures them that their investment very well could be successful. The city of St. Louis where you have passionate Cardinals baseball fans looking for things to do and companies like Scottrade who deal with a lot of wealthy investors would be an ideal place for a commercial property for rent given all that commerce.
It really does depend upon where your commercial property for lease is located and what the purpose of the office space for rent is as to whether it will be a successful venture or not. You've got a lot of building being rented out for office space during the political campaign season. The state of Minnesota has always had a high voter turnaround and a devout population of political junkies in the larger portions of the state in particular. So if you were to launch a statewide political campaign in Minnesota I would purpose finding several commercial properties for rent in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for example.
If you are looking to involved in government and want to set up a lobbying for example, finding office space to rent in Washington D.C. is fairly easy for this purpose. Office space to rent in the District of Columbia is very expensive, but if you have enough clients to lobby for, you will welcome such an idea. Using your commercial property for office space purposes to a charity or other non-profit organization brings a lot of goodwill to whatever your cause is. Such moves would help with networking in large cities like Washington D.C. Also just because you are using your office space rental for a brief time now to set up a lobbying firm for example doesn't mean the business won't become more lucrative later and you might be able to buy the commercial property yourself.