jslogan

The error is the speech took approximately two minutes, not three. Thirty minutes is about 15 times longer.

Thanks for the kind words and thoughts. I love the idea of looking at this from the customer's worldview...I wrote it form the vendor's perspective. And you're right -- customers who merely ask for a quote expecting price are shooting themselves in the foot. The presentation is what they're buying.

If you ask a company those questions and the answer you get is "we have no idea, we're innovating", wouldn't you agree that's a flag you ought to investigate? Eliminating risk in business isn't your goal as a leader or investor, but managing risk is.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

No. The most important number is the first year projection. And more importantly, the deep understanding of how it will be achieved.

<...the companies who best answered the questions above weren’t guaranteed to be successful, but the disproportionate number of companies who could answer the above questions in detail were.>

Yes! That's the clip I linked to within the post - embedding isn't allowed. And it's a great example of the bland use and commodity elements of business cards.

Joel Bauer is a character - nice way not to call him an ass :) And although his video on the business card is funny, there are a lot of truths in it. Common wisdom is to put name, rank, and serial number on your card. The problem is, no one really cares...just corporate egos worrying more about their titles than their message.

The Ginsu knife is a product most famous for the activities that were used to promote it. It was made famous through a series of long-form advertisements in the 1970s and it is claimed paved the way for the modern day infomercial with its use of quirky catchphrases, comical quips, and urgent call to action, including the phrase "how much would you pay...don't answer" and "but wait, there's more". ~via Wikipedia

The target audience understands that very well.

I wrote a lot of white papers before I thought of it. It's so obvious, but I missed it for a long time. I "discovered" it accidentally while profiling white paper readers. I wrote all the things I'd like them to do after reading. Having them give the white papers to others was in the top two - calling the author was #1. It seemed like an easy request...the rest, as they say, is history :-)

It's a good debate. And even better test. It's something marketers should test and run with what gets the best result - most likely measured by lead quality, volume, and sales.

Thanks to all for the kind words and thoughts. The calls to action are effective, more so if you really pour yourself into everything that proceeds - not writing a fluff piece, but offering something of real value. Treating the reader like they're already a customer.

I'm sure all of you already know this, but when I use the term white paper in the context of this post, it equally applies to case studies, guides, reports, etc. I use this tactic in all such doscuments I write and consistently find it effective.

Thanks Again! Jim

You can have the greatest, most feature rich offering in the world, but if your target market doesn't value the problem you solve or the opportunity you enable, you're never going to have revenue success. At best, you'll be opportunistic. And your product or service is effectively worthless.

The companies who best answer the questions in this post aren't guaranteed to be successful, but the disproportionate number of companies who answer the questions in detail are.

<..while I would like to see awesome offers with no fine print chances are I might not believe them.>

Obviously, that's my point. And where I believe opportunity lies.

Why you'd never want to foolishly leave critical caveats and limitations outside of your offers, we need to be cognizant that each element of fine print moves us closer to offering nothing more than a trick or gimmick.

Food for thought.

<surrounded by ads>

I wouldn't consider one text-link-ad as surrounding the post. Maybe others would...go figure.

The post is actually 109 words, more than a third of the Gettysburg Address - nearly half. Thank goodness Lincoln didn't post his speech here...I can imagine the comments :-)

The message is simple, no one cares about your product or service - that's the biggest shortcoming of hi-tech companies, they think their speeds-feeds-features-functionality matter. They don't. What matters is what you can do with them and what you do for your customers. In the case of selling to businesses, it's what you do to enable them to do for their customers - internal and external. Your product or service is irrelevant beyond its ability to achieve something of value worth paying for.

One man's irony is another man's prize :-) The question is...can you find the second one? The person who finds the second one first wins a prize.

There are no silver bullets to making a sale or growing revenue, but there are best practices and simple things that can make a difference. This post offers something simple and obvious that can turn a loss into a new opportunity and a win. It's happened for me more than once.

Here's the point of the post:

"As direct marketers, we are not supposed to rely on speculation, opinions, and biases. In our marketing communications discipline, it is all about actual dollar votes.

And because this is marketing communications, it pays to pay attention to the communications end. In fact, it may be the source of your greatest triumphs."

It's a good point to raise. Changing markets is sometimes a possibility. Other times a change of market is as difficult as getting a new offer.

The point I wanted to focus on in the post is companies who develop specific offers for specific markets. I work with a number of companies who have great offers, wonderful meetings, and no sales. Many times this is a result of having built something that's interesting, but isn't valued by the end user. I especially see this in the area of expert services - services designed to "fix" problems that aren't measured or monitored by the target audience.

Hate? No. Envious? Yes.

That's just a sign of being out-sold. Bravo for the PR team that leveraged an idea.

I’d add one thing: understand your sales cycle.

I’ve worked with more than one company who tripped on these questions:

How many customers do you have to win to make “that” number? What do you expect your close ratio to be? Given your close ratio and sale cycle, how many prospects do you need to be engaged with at any give time? How will you attract that many prospects in that time period?

I also think it takes more business knowledge - distribution, packaging, etc.

Reach with frequency has a good opportunity to find new customers, but the lower the frequency, the less the effect. This is where many companies fail in their lead generation campaigns - they look at the campaign as a single event.

That's pretty funny :-)

I'd still recommend the one I did in the post. But you're cleaver. Sleep tight.