The Role of Sales in Every Business Function

How many of us consider ourselves to be in a sales role? The reality is, most professionals don’t see “sales” as part of their job description. Whether you work in IT, finance, operations, or customer support, you may believe that sales is the responsibility of a dedicated team. However, if you interact with people daily—whether […]

Advertising. Do I include it in my marketing plan?

There are a lot of pros to including advertising as part of your overall marketing strategy, but, over and above the anticipated image building advertising can achieve, it also gets your company noticed and generates leads. (It can also rattle your competition, but that’s not really a reason for including it……..is it?!) There are some […]

The Purpose of Marketing: Creating a Process

Marketing’s ultimate goal is to establish a process that converts a suspect into a prospect and, eventually, into a client. While there are countless ways to execute effective marketing, securing that initial meeting should be a core objective. The Crucial Decision: Flying Solo or Bringing a Team? Once you’ve secured a meeting with a prospect, […]

It is not downtime it is time to try some more marketing.

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes your marketing wont hit the levels you’re after. I know I always write about successes and success rates; about how to overcome answerphones or how to get the best from key marketing initiatives, but don’t panic. Marketing is not all about sales. It’s about making sure that when your prospects […]

Keeping in touch with your clients

This really is far more difficult than you think and I will come clean and say that we are not as good at this as we should be, but remaining in contact with existing clients is vital. I’m not talking about calling up a client and saying, “hello, it’s me. Got any new work for […]

How to get the best from Direct Mail

I was asked again recently about Direct Mail and its uses when it comes to marketing, but I think it is imperative that we clarify exactly what direct mail actually means. There are lots of so-called definitions, but to me direct mail is the sending of printed marketing material to named prospects via the post. […]

Marketing. What do I need?

Let’s not sugar-coat it: marketing is vast. Not just in terms of the number of agencies, freelancers, or platforms out there — but also in terms of the sheer volume of disciplines that sit under the marketing umbrella. From branding and websites to social media, SEO, PR, advertising, events, webinars, content creation and everything in […]

The new business pitch

In my time I’ve been involved with many “beauty parades” vs other agencies and I can safely say that they are incredibly time consuming and can tie an agency up in knots as well as drain resources. So, if you’re asked to pitch for some business, the only acceptable outcome is winning. There really is […]

Marketing Momentum: Practical Ideas to Kickstart Your Strategy

Let’s be honest — the moment the calendar flips to a new year, the sales emails start rolling in. Promises to “boost your SEO rankings,” “revamp your website,” or “increase your sales by 300%” fill our inboxes faster than we can delete them. And while many of these come from companies playing the numbers game […]

Marketing. Sales. Planning

Marketing involves a lot more than selling alone and I would always advocate having some sort of plan of action. This will mean that the entire function of marketing not only has a direction, but is committed to and taken seriously by your organisation. Without the right level of commitment, marketing can quickly become tiresome […]