October 21st, 2007
by John Spence
I recently had a student email me with some questions about how to be an outstanding marketer. Here was my response:
Here are some things off the top of my head:
- Do you truly understand exactly who your target customer is in great detail? You have to have a very clear and detailed picture of specifically who you are trying to entice. Age, race, attitude, income, hobbies, TV and reading preferences, where do they get their info, which media do they trust, how do they make their buying decisions… everything you can possibly understand.
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September 12th, 2007
by John Spence
Now, let’s get clear at the start, I am not the world’s leading expert on sales nor do I claim to be. However, I will admit I did spend about 10 years where the main focus of my career was delivering very high-level sales training to Fortune 500 companies around the world and I have also read well over 200 books on sales, have listened to hundreds of hours of sales training CDs and attended dozens of sales training seminars — as well as having been the main sales person in my own company for more than 15 years. But there is still much to be learned!
So with all of that said, I wanted to send you along some comments and ideas… some things to think about, as you start your sales career.
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September 9th, 2007
by John Spence
Here is a copy of a recent note I sent to a CEO I am coaching. He is a fantastic guy, really, really smart and does a superior job with his company. He knows all of the things in this memo well (as you likely do too!) it is simply that he needed to be reminded of it – and more importantly, pushed hard to do a better job of executing these key ideas in a consistent way throughout his organization.
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May 25th, 2007
by Dr. Brian Higley
I talk a lot with our clients about SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic, and Time-bound steps toward fulfilling their strategic plans. I do this so frequently because my experience is that the best way to facilitate (and track) progress of strategic plans in meaningful and consistent ways is to develop SMART goals. Most people agree with me – and a few even attempt to set SMART goals once in awhile – but most of the time I find that people struggle with SMART goal development (even those who truly believe in their value and actually spend time attempting to set them).
For example, I recently had someone put forth the following as a SMART goal in one of our sessions: “treat every customer with respect – starting today.” I explained that although this is a very good idea (I certainly will never argue with treating all customers in a respectful way), it is an example of a very poor SMART goal. That is because it is neither Specific (“respect” could mean a firm handshake to me, but it might mean offering someone coffee every time they come into the office to you) nor Measurable (I can’t measure “respect” – on the other hand, I can measure, for example, how often someone shakes a hand or offers coffee).
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May 5th, 2007
by Dr. Brian Higley
A big question on many people’s minds is how to balance planning with getting the plan done. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
It’s been my experience that successful leaders tend to lay down their strategy 1-4 times a year to avoid making teammates’ heads spin as they change directions every couple of weeks. They then spend about 2-4 hours every 2-4 weeks on clarifying that strategy to their people and identifying any major barriers to executing the tactics necessary to fulfilling their strategic aims.
My experience is that, if this process is done well, there is a lot of time left to focus on assisting key team members with executing their strategies. Unfortunately, it’s also been my experience that this process is NOT often done very well (probably about 10% of the leaders my team knows does it at a consistently high level).”
