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| Volume 8, Issue 9 |
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In This Issue:
 Starbucks' lessons for premium brands
 Solve your biggest marketing presentation problem
Presenting smart: Are you the victim of sales typecasting?
Nine points to a motivated sales force
Fuel your sales—Even when gas prices are high
 If you’re open to growth, you tend to grow
Advertising: The vampires are coming, but only after months of warnings
 The definitive guide to business-to-business marketing in a recession
Spinning your way to email marketing success
"Dash" to more effective marketing
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Starbucks' lessons for premium brands
Starbucks' announcement that it will close 600 stores in the United States is a long-overdue admission that there are limits to growth.
In February 2007, a leaked internal memo written by founder Howard Schultz showed that he recognized the problem that his own growth strategy had created: "Stores no longer have the soul of the past and reflect a chain of stores vs. the warm feeling of a
neighborhood store." Starbucks tried to add value through innovation, offering wi-fi service and creating and selling its own music. More recently, Starbucks attempted to put the focus back on coffee, revitalizing the quality of its standard beverages. But
none of these moves addressed the fundamental problem: Starbucks is a mass brand attempting to command a premium price for an experience that is no longer special. Either you have to cut price (and that implies a commensurate cut in the cost
structure) or you have to cut distribution to restore the exclusivity of the brand. Expect the 600 store closings to be the first of a series of downsizing announcements. Sometimes, in the world of marketing, less is more...
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Solve your biggest marketing presentation problem
Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500 corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform the overloaded text slides they currently use into persuasive visuals that sell ideas, products and services effectively to decision
makers. He is the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two "Guide to PowerPoint" books from Prentice Hall. His ideas have been published in The Wall
Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, BusinessWorld India and many other publications around the world.
Four steps to solving the biggest problem with most presentations produced by the Marketing department.
You know the drill: A prospect from a company that is an ideal customer for your product or service has a specific problem that they are losing sleep over. They see one of your generic ads in an industry trade publication and it interests them enough
to visit your Web site. At the Web site, they read more detailed generic information; it looks promising, so they contact a sales rep. The sales rep meets with the prospect to find out specifics on the problem. The rep leaves behind a generic brochure. The
prospect heard enough promising information from the rep that they decide to invite the rep to present to a larger audience of key decision-makers. What is the marketing department going to provide the rep for this important presentation? Too often, the
answer is a generic set of slides. And that's going to be a problem—for the rep and for the decision-makers at this key prospect company. The sales rep knows he needs a customized presentation to meet the specific needs of the situation. So he'll do one
of two things. Either he'll use the generic presentation and fumble through it as he skips the parts he doesn't need. Or he'll create his own set of slides and present poorly designed slides that don't match the important branding that the marketing
department has worked hard to create. Neither approach results in a successful presentation and neither give the sales rep a good chance of securing the order.
Consistently Customized for Success
The solution is to create...
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Presenting smart: Are you the victim of sales typecasting?
Back when I was a budding actor, my fellow performing hopefuls and I hated being typecast. We wanted to be recognized for our talent, not how we looked, sounded or dressed. But we rarely escaped typecasting's grip—how you looked, moved and sounded
was critical in 98% of the auditions, even down to hair color and height. You could gauge your chances of getting the job based on how close your looks were to the sketches on the storyboards.
Now, though, as I view things from a persuasion perspective, typecasting makes perfect sense. We are ALL hardwired to make snap judgments about someone from a single glance—especially when it comes to sales and making decisions about where to spend our money. So think about that: You're about to make a presentation or a sales call—or go ahead with that press release or marketing campaign—and the people you want to reach are going to decide...
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Nine points to a motivated sales force
Don't be fooled, experts say. Money isn't the only motivator in the workplace. To find out what gets your sales team going, you must first understand how each person views and experiences his or her job. What you learn just might surprise you.
Imagine keeping your sales force—each and every individual—motivated and performing at peak performance. Sound too good to be true? According to Theresa Gale and Mary Anne Wampler, authors of Wake Up and Sell and founders of Transform, Inc., a specialized
training and consulting firm based in Laurel, Maryland, this fantasy can become a reality. They firmly believe that understanding how each of your sales people view and experience selling, what motivates them toward peak performance, and how you, as sales
manager, can tap into this knowledge is your starting point for success. "We know from experience that all sales people don’t see selling situations the same," explains Mary Anne Wampler. "What motivates one person may not even begin to entice another. That
old-fashioned notion that money is the only motivator for sales people just simply isn't true." So what is true?...
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Fuel your sales—Even when gas prices are high
We're all affected by high fuel prices. Every time a car rolls up to the pump, the new economic reality takes an even bigger bite out of our collective wallets. The ripple effect has some buyers thinking long and hard before making buying decisions.
In turn, many companies and independent sellers are ringing alarm bells instead of ringing up sales. Fear-based thoughts—such as declining profits and potential
downsizing—dominate these sellers' every move. Regrettably, many professionals don't recognize that they're in the driver's seat. The ability to be successful is within their control...
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If you’re open to growth, you tend to grow
WHY do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don’t?
After three decades of painstaking research, the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck believes that the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re ever
going to have approach life with what she calls a “fixed mind-set.” Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a “growth mind-set.”Guess which ones prove to be most innovative over time.“Society is obsessed
with the idea of talent and genius and people who are ‘naturals’ with innate ability,” says Ms. Dweck, who is known for research that crosses the boundaries of personal, social and developmental psychology.“People who believe in the power of talent tend
not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”In this case,
nurture wins out over nature just about every time. While some managers apply these principles every day, too many others instead believe that hiring the best and the
brightest from top-flight schools guarantees corporate success. The problem is that...
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Advertising: The vampires are coming, but only after months of warnings
HBO’s new vampire series from Alan Ball, the Oscar-winning writer behind “American Beauty” and the hit series “Six Feet Under,” will not start until September. But for a select group of horror film enthusiasts, the story has been under way for weeks.
On May 21, HBO and Campfire, a small independent agency founded by two of the creators of the 1999 film “The Blair Witch Project,” began sending cryptic letters in black envelopes sealed with red wax to people who might generously be described as pillars
of the goth community: horror film bloggers, subscribers to the horror movie magazine Fangoria and the like. The letters were written in dead languages like Babylonian and
Ugaritic, but — to no one’s surprise — the recipients duly pitched in to translate them. The group effort, carried out on blogs and message boards, led to a macabre Web site guarded by a beautiful vampire, where visitors could view short prequel episodes
to HBO’s new series and learn about a product called Tru Blood that obviates the need for vampires to feast on humans. The campaign for the show, “True Blood,” based on a series of vampire books by Charlaine Harris, is shaping up to be the most extensive
that HBO has ever undertaken. By the time the program begins, the promotional effort will be four months old, having required...
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The definitive guide to business-to-business marketing in a recession
Does an economic slowdown necessarily mean that business-to-business marketers have to find even more ways to do more with less? Or can a downturn create opportunity for smart marketers to grow and thrive?
In this guide to B2B marketing during a recession, I answer these questions and share specific strategies you can use to shine when times are dark...
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Spinning your way to email marketing success
When I take my weekly spin class at the local gym, the instructor is constantly reminding the class to breathe. So often we go as fast as we can, with all our effort expended toward rapid short-term gains, when instead we should relax, stay focused, and breathe.
Yet, despite its importance, the launch process is often mishandled or assigned inadequate resources. Many of the mistakes that companies make are basic—yet frighteningly frequent and consistent across various types of businesses and
industries. Here are six common fault lines in the launch process that very company should look out for:...
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"Dash" to more effective marketing
Using a dashboard approach to monitor collateral and fulfillment performance
Marketing ROI and profitability rank at or near the top of most executives' agendas in today's competitive business environment. With this ever-growing emphasis on
accountability and measurement, marketers increasingly are turning to information dashboards to help them track their departments' opportunities, successes and shortcomings.
But launching an effective marketing dashboard involves a range of formidable tasks, not the least of which is defining meaningful metrics or key performance indicators. Even while debating appropriate measures and implementation strategy for the overall
marketing function, CMOs—in partnership with their fulfillment vendors—could be developing dashboards to improve collateral and fulfillment performance. Their fulfillment metrics will not only help them track and refine the effectiveness of
their collateral and its distribution, but also will support broader program metrics. Dashboard Overview...
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