Sales Archives – Page 10 of 11

11 Aug 2009

Quick Update on Website

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:33-06:00August 11th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

We have our content management system configured now and our template 90% implemented. I haven't been blogging too much lately mainly because I am busy writing content for our website while simultaneously doing application design for a couple of other web applications.

While writing site content, I was thinking about how much fun it would be to do the entire site as a parody of the normally serious and deathly boring technical corporate website… and oh yeah, throw in some of the standards for differentiation marketing:

"Our developers have been extremely agile for years, long before agile became popular as […]

29 Jul 2009

Getting Marketing Feedback

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:46-06:00July 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

If you want unbiased feedback on your marketing material or a new product where do you go? If your answer is:

Friends,
Family, or
Employees.

You should seriously reconsider.

While friends and family may try to give you honest feedback, generally they are naturally biased… they will generally tell you what you want to hear. Why? To show their support. After all, isn't that what family is all about and why you chose your friends?

Employees are influenced by balancing showing support, not making their boss annoyed, and trying to be honest.

Besides, none of these people are likely to be representative of your customers.

So valid […]

28 Jul 2009

Choosing a Content Management System

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:25:18-06:00July 28th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Historically we have been a Microsoft .NET shop with some experience in Java. It is not that we are against other technologies, it is just that we don’t see a reason to jump all over if the tools you have do the trick.

In the case of choosing a content management system (CMS) for our corporate website, we looked at open source and low cost CMS products on the .NET platform and found them not as mature as we needed.

We have therefore chosen Joomla as our CMS. It is a well supported and widlely used CMS developed on the PHP platform […]

27 Jul 2009

Marketing Budget Allocation For Results

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-06T16:06:43-06:00July 27th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|Tags: business advice, Clients, Cold Calling, Customers, Entrepreneurship, Lead Generation, marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Budget Allocation, Marketing Strategy, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals, sales, small business, SMB|

As per the last two posts (The Value of a New Customer and Marketing Budget 101) I talked about one way of determining your marketing/sales budget.

If you want a simpler method, allocate a percentage of total revenue.

Now the question is where to spend your money for maximum effect.

There are basically four sources of future sales:

Existing customers,
Referrals (word of mouth),
Prospecting, cold calling and networking, and
New leads from marketing.

You will want to allocate funding (or effort) to […]

23 Jul 2009

Marketing Budget 101

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:10-06:00July 23rd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

Now that you know how much you are willing to spend on acquiring a new customer the next part is easy… and very hard.

How many new customers do you want?

Infinity is a good long-term goal for the highly competitive but lets bound the question a bit.

How many new customers can you handle over the next year?

Consider your ability to:

Service or supply your customers,
Your ability to grow your capacity including capital costs and time to do so, and
How big you really want to be and other factors.

Don't forget to include any customers you might lose over time in the equation.

Now […]

22 Jul 2009

The Lifetime Value of a New Customer

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-08T20:46:14-06:00July 22nd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|Tags: Lifetime Value, Lifetime Value of Client, Lifetime Value of Customer, marketing, Marketing Budget, sales|

One of things you need to do for your business is to determine the lifetime value of a customer or client. This is the lifetime income from that customer to your business and should include factors such as:

Amount spent per year (minimum, maximum and average) on your products or services,
Expected duration of relationship (min, max and average),
If you have multiple levels of products/services you will also need to consider the likelihood of moving them up the value chain.

Now determine the fixed and variable costs in delivery your product or service. Fixed costs are those that you have regardless […]

20 Jul 2009

Jumping on the “Everyone” Bandwagon

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:31-06:00July 20th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

We see it all the time.

Real estate is doing well, everyone starts buying up properties and the prices start climbing. The stories of easy money generates momentum. Then the market becomes saturated and the cycle reverses. Many caught at the end are left buying high and selling at a loss or finding tenants to cover part of their payments. There are some markets that defy logic but generally that is the way things go. The problem is, no one knows how long the rise will last.

The real (i.e. lower risk) money was in being there early.

The same happens in […]

17 Jul 2009

How Do You Make the Best Business?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:41-06:00July 17th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

I listened to a live interview of Satyen Raja, leader of WarriorSage by Andrew Barber-Starkey of ProCoach International on Wednesday evening.

Satyen presented an idea for the ideal marketing or business plan. It is not brand new, I've heard variants of it in the past but it is brilliant in its simplicity and a good reminder that things need not be overly complex so I thought I would share it.

You have an idea for a business. Go to 10 of your ideal or best potential customers and present the idea. Ask them to write an extraordinary testimonial for […]

29 Apr 2009

Door Openers – Getting The Right Foot In

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:30:03-06:00April 29th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

If your product or service offerings are fairly expensive and you are looking for new clients, one way of getting in the door is having a door opener.

Retail

In retail you see door crashers all the time. Special prices designed to get you in the door or to generate a bit of a marketing buzz.

If oranges are on for 50 cents a pound, you might go to the store and while you are there upgrade to bread and cereal. The upgrade path is clear.

If a big screen TV is regularly $1500 and they have 5 on for $400, they are […]

24 Apr 2009

Day 4 – New Website

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:30:22-06:00April 24th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

It's been challenge to work on a website this week with eyes not quite working right.

I've been looking at what we have done over the past 9 years and it seems quite impressive. Our industry experience has clearly been Human Resources, Actuarial and Financial Services. However, many of our core capabilities could easily be applied to just about any industry… web applications, modeling, complex form/surveys, data migration, integration, project management, etc.

In fact we are launching products aimed at the small and medium business market that will maximize the human capital in your business inside and outside of the traditional […]