Is it marketing or is it sales?

We tend to try to label everything. In business marketing and sales are frequently artificially separated. In reality, it's all about moving future customers to current customers. Awareness and demand creating activities typically are categorized as marketing while matching specific prospects to specific products or services is called sales.
Regardless of the titles and the segregation of activities, your business growth needs to focus on the seamless process of identifying potential customers, packaging your product/service offering to exceed their expectations, confirming your working relationship (closing), and maintaining their business (nurture). Whether you call it marketing or sales, the three basics steps to business growth are 1) target your audience, 2) value proposition, and 3) customer service.

Roadmap to Experience

It is said that failure to plan is a plan to fail. With all of life's distractions, it is easy to become distracted from your business and personal goals. Planning starts with identifying your objectives and then building the steps to achieve them. This roadmap guides your activities and daily priorities.

As with any journey, prepare to be flexible and anticipate detours. Rarely does a plan (or a road trip) unfold without an unanticipated interruption. Handling these course adjustments and achieving your goal is what we commonly refer to as "Experience". How you handle these issues is what defines "Leadership".

Are You the Best?

Standing out from the crowd means being the best at something. What does your business do that is better than everyone else? If you can answer this question, you have successfully carved a niche in your market and differentiated your product and service. This becomes the anchor of your marketing message and the thread for word-of-mouth referral business.

Being the best, unfortunately, does not come from simply writing it down. It requires constant focus, refinement, measurement, and customer feedback. All of your efforts and day-to-day operations need to be in support of being the best.

Can you name a business that you consider the best at what they do? Do others consider your business the best?

One Customer at a Time

People do business with your company because they trust you and your product to perform to expectations. They have worked out the value proposition, formally or in their head, to be equal or greater to the price they will pay. Building this trust means not overstating your performance, establishing a realistic, if not conservative, expectation, addressing the individual concerns of your customer, and finally, following-up to make sure they have received the value they anticipated.

Treat every customer as they are your first customer. Building your business one customer at a time will lead to a satisfied customer based that will become your best marketing engine. Referrals and life long customers are the growth vehicles that advertising cannot buy.

What is more important to your business than your customer?

Is there value in exhibiting at a trade show?

World of Concrete is one of the largest trade events for the construction industry held in Las Vegas each year occupying all three halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the exterior demonstration area. For flooring professionals this show has developed into the trade show to attend for all concrete finishes. Most coating manufacturers exhibit along with companies promoting stamped concrete, stained concrete, and polished concrete.
This year the attendance appeared to be lower and a few exhibitors were notable by the absence. This is undoubtedly due to the depressed state of the construction industry, but maybe there is another reason. As always companies use this event to introduce their new products and demonstrate new techniques and applications. Having said that, it was hard to identify any revolutionary introductions with all of the "noise".
What is the future of trade shows? Do participants attend exhibits to learn about new products or is this information readily available on the web? A few vendors who did not exhibit this year, attended the show to meet with their customers without the associated cost of exhibiting and commitment to the booth.
The true value of a trade show has become the relationship. Selling products at a show where all of your competitors show their products is not memorable or an efficient way to gain commitment from your customers. Maybe the future of the trade show combines the information availability of the internet with a industry social function that focuses on personal interactions. Marketing is creating awareness and differentiating your company and your product, how can you accomplish this in a sea of sameness.

Growth Opportunities

How do you grow your business? Do you wait for customers come to you and hope they will spread the word to increase your traffic? Great if this works for you. Most businesses on the other hand need to create awareness with well thought out marketing strategies and follow that up with great customer care generating referral business. Poor economic climates present great grow opportunities. Rather than cutting back on demand creation activities, these times require businesses to be MORE aggressive in capturing the available business. This may mean expanding your sales and marketing resources. Focus on activities where you can measure their direct impact on sales growth. When business is slow vendors tend to be more flexible with their terms and generous with services. Skilled talent may be available in the work force that will help to bring your business to a new level. Seeking out these opportunities requires a mind set and strategy that you are positioning your business to grow and not cost cutting to increase profits. Don't play prevent defense when you are presented with scoring opportunities.

Customer Driven Product Development

On occasion your prospective customer may feel that your product or service does not fully meet their needs or does not stack up to your competitor. This is an ideal situation to learn more about what your customer needs. In some cases they may not fully understand the features and benefits of your offering. Listen to what the they want from your product or service. Having your target audience explain to you what they truly do want or need, puts your product development on the right track. One reason they may share this information with you is because they cannot find these features elsewhere in the market. Take these ideas discuss with other customers and mold it into a product or service offering that leapfrogs any competitive alternative.