In the old days – and by old days, I mean 10 years ago – there was a stage and an audience when marketing a product or service. It was simple: Brands took the stage, shared their message with the audience, and that audience would decide what, if any, action to take. Fast-forward to today,…
Bill Petrie
You first must accept that you’re not Amazon, and you’re never going to be Amazon. You don’t have the resources, infrastructure or financial means to compete with their e-commerce efficiencies. What you can do, however, is leverage the best practices of Amazon, which will help you take a unique approach to how you run your business...
From a very early age, the message of failure is driven into our subconscious: Failure is bad. Failure means you didn’t prepare. Failure means you didn’t study hard enough. Failure means you are lazy, or worse, weren’t smart enough to begin with. All of this teaches us that, more than anything, failure is something to…
How often do we say our decisions or policies are made for the benefit of the customer when the reality is they are self-serving? In business, one of the keys to fostering long-lasting relationships is transparency. People may not like specific policies or decisions, but they will accept them when they are carried out openly and honestly...
We often move throughout our day with neither thought nor purpose. Sadly, this same whirlybird approach is applied to the work presented to clients on a far-too-regular basis—especially as it relates to promotional products. If you want to stand out from the product pushers and grow your business, it's time to not just work with thought and purpose, but to share that with your clients...
You—your attitude, how you respond to outside forces and your work ethic—are the most critical factor in determining your success. Realizing that you are ultimately responsible for your prosperity—or demise—is the first step in creating a brand that matters to your clients...
If you choose to compete directly with the “big guys” by providing similar services and value propositions and extolling your “creativity,” your road to success is going to be bumpy at best. Instead, look internally to understand what you do better—and differently—than anyone else in the marketplace. Just like Whataburger found, the right clients are willing to pay for that...
As anyone who watches football knows, the quarterback is the person that sets the tone for not only what happens on the field but off it as well. Nothing happens on the offensive side of the ball without the quarterback, period. When I look at a business, there’s a department that’s clearly the organization’s quarterback—and it’s not one you’d expect...
Throughout life, we all have Big Mac Moments—moments where you have to decide whether to do something that’s a little uncomfortable, that allows you to grow and forces you to do something different than you always have, or to continue to do what you’ve always done and yield the same results. As the year begins, it’s a perfect time to think about your Big Mac Moments...
Distributors spend far too much time simply putting logos on merchandise and calling themselves marketers. This is an enormous problem—one that the supply chain stresses are only serving to exacerbate. However, distributors can follow five steps to create magic for their clients by thinking like an ad agency...
For the overall Formula 1 brand and its individual race teams, success comes down to a four factors: customers first, showcasing teams over drivers, highlighting the importance of quickly adapting to change, and displaying how critical it is to isolate issues swiftly. These all apply to running a successful business, too...
Much like a skilled hotel concierge, the No. 1 job of a salesperson is to help their clients get what they want with as little friction as possible. As such, the same traits that make a good concierge exceptional are the same ones that separate the extraordinary salespeople from the mediocre ones...
In the world of promotional products, many make the mistake of trying to be like Jim Beam, thinking that simply because “everyone” buys branded merchandise, everyone is a potential client. But trying to be everything to everyone is a precarious position that undermines your brand...
By carefully studying how your audience engages (or doesn’t) during a campaign, you can proactively make the efforts to brighten, enhance and, to stick with the analogy, repaint your marketing grass. This is the only way to keep your field of play looking fresh for your prospects and clients...
The word “relationship” is an article whose definition is both simple and beguiling at the same time. Unfortunately, when it comes to building business relationships, there seem to be two schools of thought with very little room for compromise. Is there a hybrid approach that works better?...
