Promotional marketing is at its best when it empowers a client’s brand, meets his or her objectives and fits within a specified budget. It is at this point that the focus shifts from offering options to providing solutions, which goes hand in hand with solving a client's problems—some of which they might not even know they have.
Matt Kaspari
They don't call it a sales CYCLE for nothing.
No matter what industry you are in, everyone is selling something, and at the foundation of every company is a hard-working sales team.
Having a meaningful rather than demeaning conversation with your customers is the key to a successful brand, product or campaign. A meaningful conversation is relatable/relevant, it is engaging, and as marketers we must know our role in this conversation.
Empowering is the act of giving away your power to those around you so you can elevate the group as a whole. At the birth of marketing, empowering was the antithesis of a successful marketing campaign.
Education is the foundation of an empowered brand with a loyal following of customers. An empowered brand with loyal customers becomes in turn a loyal client, but how do you develop a client, their brand, and their customers into empowered ones?
Educating is helping your staff, clients, and colleagues realize their true potential. It is for this reason that I love educating and mentoring. By asking powerful and thought-provoking questions I empower people to realize their own depth or the depth of their brand.
Every other week here on Big Picture Promo we take a macro look at specific components of this industry such as marketing, branding, sales, networking and relationship-building. In taking a macro approach to these topics, we come to understand the fundamental principles at work and can then apply them on a micro level.
Well it's Valentine's Day and there is no escaping it, so Happy Valentine's Day! While I am not the best one to ask for romantic advice, I do have a few tips when it come to building relationships with your clients.
A common misnomer in the world of sales is "Always Be Closing." This may be true if you are working from an options-based sales cycle, but in a solutions-based sales cycle the ABCs are "Always Be Connecting."
Solutions-based selling empowers your clients and, in turn, empowers your brand. Here's how to do it, in four steps.
The value of authority and why it belongs with your customers.
For the past four weeks we have taken an in-depth look at the promotional industry from a marketing perspective. Today I am going to shift gears a bit and make all of this marketing mammer-jammer applicable to the selling function.
Whether you are working with large companies that have entire departments devoted to the marketing of their brand identity, or a small business with one department for every business function, defining the identity of their brand is of the same importance.
Let’s look at it from the employee’s point of view. They come into work everyday in snow, rain, sunshine or even hurricanes. They work diligently on making customers happy and carrying out tasks that keep everything moving. In the beginning of their career they were excited to work for you, and connected to the work you were doing as a company. As time went on, your employees forgot the real mission and got lost in the details of day-to-day tasks and meetings. They have stopped communicating the "why" of your brand and are now more focused on their job title.
