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New Thinking For A New Decade

2010

It’s the end of the year. It’s the end of the decade. It’s also the end of the way that your prospects have purchased your products or services up until now.

In the old days, your marketing department devised programs based on old-school methodology that generated leads that fed the sales team. Today, thanks to the internet, your prospects know more about your business value offering – and that of your competition – than you do. Your customers are trying to pigeonhole you, to commoditize you, to make their buying decisions easier.

What’s your plan to differentiate your company and its value offering in the minds of your prospective customers?

They don’t care that you’ve been in business for twenty years, have four offices and 200 staff. None of that matters to them – and why should it? It’s great that you’ve been in business for all that time. But, just as they say on all those financial services ads, past performance is no guarantee to future gain.

How are you ensuring that your messaging is communicating what they want to hear, and not what you want to say?

All they want to know is whether your product or service meets with their requirements for purchase. They are coming to you because they have a problem, and they want to know whether your value offering addresses that problem – communicated to them in words that they understand.

How are you broadcasting that value offering today? Could you do it better tomorrow?

Your customers are organized into groups of influence, or tribes. They meet and discuss their problems, give their opinions and make recommendations. They hold word-of-mouth (or maybe that should be word-of-mouse) in a higher regard than any of the messaging that you’re delivering.

Are you exploiting the communication channels and mechanisms – websites, industry forums, online video, social media, whatever – and delivering them to where your prospects are?

The old rules of attracting – and retaining – customers are as dead as the old decade. The new rules are based on an organization’s ability to instill REPUTATION, RESPECT and TRUST within its client base, using whatever toolsets – new or old – that best help achieve that goal.

Happy New Year everyone.

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