A Dozen Sales and Marketing Commitments

Improving the sales and marketing effort is a ongoing process in which commitment is a prerequisite. To get the thought juices flowing, we offer the following 12 action items that you can personally implement. That is only one a month.

1. Explore new opportunities. Listen to new prospects that are not in the designated target market to understand their needs. Read industry journals that are not directly related to your line of business.

2. Improve customer retention rates with a relationship marketing effort. Send past and exiting customers thank you notes and success stories. Throw customers a party at your next tradeshow.

3. Execute an effort that requires close coordination between marketing and sales professionals, such as a customer contact campaign, sales message improvement effort, or service offering expansion. Make sales professionals understand the effort from the marketing perspective and marketing professionals understand the effort from the sales perspective. Create a common understanding of the challenges and potential solutions to reaching the common goal of revenue achievement.

4. Conduct formalized research to understand customer needs and their perception of your solution. Share this understanding throughout your sales and marketing organization. Request feedback on methods to take action with a fact based understanding.

5. Develop new case studies based on customer successes. Publish these case studies on your website, in brochures, and relevant media outlets.

6. Repackage a product to be sold as a service OR standardize a service to be sold as a product. Overcome the organizational challenges to execution.

7. Use a customer solution oriented elevator speech when meeting with new people. Try this template: “For Target Customers, Your Company provides the best Solution to overcoming These Customer Challenges because/as demonstrated through These Differentiating Factors and Claims.

8. LISTEN TO CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS. In customer meetings, create an early agenda item to understand the customer’s challenge. Communicate these understandings throughout your organization.

9. Commit to making internal meetings a timely and efficient process focused on improving the team’s coordination, motivation, and execution.

10. Subscribe to the Wiglaf Journal.

11. Quantify the value of your offering using the customer’s reality as the starting point. Communicate the sources of your value consistently.

12. Execute boldly.