MARKETING and SELLING. Customer Success 360: How To Win Customers, How To Create Cusomers, How To Retain Customers

Marketing is not a battle of products, it's a battle of perceptions; and sometimes it's better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

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10 Commandments for Building a Growing Business

The Customer is King. Define the business of the enterprise in terms of what is to be bought, precisely by whom, and why. Avoid disaster by testing the market prior to development of a product... More

Venture Planning Checklist

Customer Assessment

Is your venture based on a true marketplace need, not an idea from your family and friends? Do people really want this or do you think they need it? Want wins over need... More

How To Become an Irresistible Sales Communicator

Top 7 Principles

The Power of Emotional State Mastery
The Power of Personal Congruence & Integrity
The Power of Instant Rapport & Trust..

New Product Development (NPD)

Shift To New Approaches: 7 Reasons

It's about customer wants, not heeds. Technological revolution provides customers with real power in the market. Today, the question of the utmost importance for brands is how to satisfy people who have an almost endless choice reinforced by instant access to global market.

Your Business is Ruled by the Marketplace

"You don't decide what business you are in; the marketplace decides that for you... People will only buy what they want to buy, or are afraid not to buy, at a given moment in time."¹

Tailoring your business plan to what the market will buy is always a better, more successful strategy than developing a new product or service without knowing precisely the customers for it and hoping that people would buy it because it's good.

Many things are good, and people need many things. But the "need" is not enough. "Nobody buys what they need. Before people will buy something they "need", two things have to happen:

They have to recognize and accept that they need it.
They must act upon that recognition and acceptance...

Before people know they need something, you often have to spend lots of money educating them about why they need it."¹ While preparing your business and marketing plan, anticipate also the curveballs that the marketplace will throw at you and may cause you to change direction.

Marketing is positioning. You need to learn to position your product or service in the mind of the prospect. Remember also that test marketing of your product or service is a very important component of your entrepreneurial success.

Customer Value Proposition

Your company should deliver a particular customer value proposition to a definable market in order to exist. The delivery of the customer value proposition relies on a business design, which uses key business processes to harness the distinctive capabilities, competences and resources of your firm to deliver superior value to relevant markets. Customer value propositions and business designs compete and collaborate for customers, resources, infrastructures and skills on strategic landscapes.⁴... More

System Approach To Marketing and Selling

Source: "Agenda", Michael Hammer

Selling, in the old days, was largely and act of personal heroism. The key to successful selling was knowing the products and the customers. The effective sales rep would present his or her product or service in the best possible light, forge a bond with the buyer, and triumph over the competition.

This approach has little to do with the way sales are made in today's real world. Today's customers don't want products; they demand solutions, and solutions don't come in a box. They must be designed, fashioned to meet the customer's specific needs.

Making such sales takes a lot more than personal charisma. Today's selling is system selling, solution selling, consultative selling; it entails analyzing customer needs, designing alternative solutions, scrutinizing costs, developing and implementing systems, and more. This is not the work of a heroic individual sales rep. Modern selling is a team sport, and a complex one at that. Winning at it takes discipline and structure. Making it up as you go along is a recipe for disaster.

Leveraging Your Service-Profit Chain

The service-profit chain is a powerful phenomenon that stresses the importance of people - both employees and customers – and how linking them can leverage corporate performance. The service-profit chain is an equation that establishes the relationship between corporate policies, employee satisfaction, value creation, customer loyalty, and profitability... More

Market Leadership Strategies

The market leader is dominant in its industry and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must be the industry leader in developing new business models and new products or services. You must be on the cutting edge of new technologies and innovative business processes. Your customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a customers' problem, and your product must be well differentiated... More

Customers for Life

By: Brian Tracy

The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. If a business successfully creates and keeps customers in a cost-effective way, it will make a profit while continuing to survive and thrive. If, for any reason, a business fails to attract or sustain a sufficient number of customers, it will experience losses. Too many losses will lead to the demise of the enterprise.

According to Dun and Bradstreet, the single, most important reason for the failure of businesses in America is lack of sales. And, of course, this refers to resales as well as initial sales. So your company’s job is to create and keep a customer, and your job is exactly the same. Remember, no matter what your official title is, you are a salesperson for yourself and your company.