Comments on: What CEO’s wish they knew

By: Mark William Schaefer

Mark William Schaefer — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:54:21 +0000

Dean, this is so good ... I wish I had written it!

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said last week that this is not a recession (implying recovery). It's a re-set. I believe him when he said the econony has permanently changed. That's why the strategies and ideas you propose here are imperative for sales and marketing folks moving forward. We cannot hope for better times quickly. We have to use these new tools and systems ever more creatively, tenaciously and effectively.

Thanks for these great insights!

By: Mark William Schaefer

Mark William Schaefer — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:24:21 +0000

By: Mark William Schaefer

Mark William Schaefer — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:24:21 +0000

By: Louis Larochelle

Louis Larochelle — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:09:36 +0000

Excellent article. I share all those ideas that only few senior managers are ready to consider.

By: BillBoorman

BillBoorman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:59:34 +0000

Dean,
Thanks for forwarding this blog (via Twitter) to me. I have a few suggestions myself on the subject based on my work on "Tin Hat Strategy." None of this is rocket science or new thinking, but these times give a great opportunity to re-invent your business. With positive signs coming, I’m convinced we are on the upward journey out of the bottom of recession worldwide. The key aim now should not be to beat the recession (that’s survival thinking) but to beat your competitors out of it. These are my 10 suggestions. You might want to disregard, but if 1 works it could make all the difference:

1: Focus on what you can affect and not what you can't. No point stressing on the economy, lay-offs etc, you can't do anything about that. Focus on your business, your products, your staff and your market. Get your business mix and attitude right.

2: Check you are offering your customers what they want, and that they know what you do. We have been complacent at this during the boom years and customers generally think of you for one thing. Lots of hidden business you can get when you re-educate even your oldest customers and ask what they want from you.

3: re-write the job specs for everyone in your organization. The world has changed and so has the skills needed your expectation etc. You need new specs for both recruitment and re-training.

4: Merge your Sales team and your Marketing team in to one department with one objective, to increase profitability (not sales turnover.) Might seem radical but brings real co-operation and appreciation.

5: Identify the data you really need to have on your customers. Make sure this is easy to save and to retrieve. Ensure your C.R.M. system is geared to key information retrieval rather than information storage. Simple attributes behind clients, used consistently do this.

6: Invest in retraining. Reverse the trend of spending 80% of time and money on those that generate 20% of your revenue. Spend 80% on those that give you 80%. Much better returns.

7: increase your contact base at all levels of the organizations you deal with. One lesson from this recession is that decision making is going higher up the food chain (That’s why it takes longer.) You need more levels of influence to keep and win business.

8: Have 2 strategies behind the business plan based on "What if." What if the market rises (plan a), what if it falls (plan B)

9: Have something you can sell on-line and forget geography. Everyone is in your backyard through social media. The only geography is bandwidth.

10: live by this creed: Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity but CASH is reality!

These are my thoughts, please let me have your comments even if you think I’m mad!

Bill

If you like my thinking you can follow me on twitter: @BillBoorman