Today I will poach a post from Marc Benioff the Founder/CEO of Salesforce.com. He is the man who led the world into the Cloud Computing phase by saying that enterprise software should be more like Amazon.com back before web-based software was created.
Now he is predicting yet another movement in the software in the software industry, this time having to do with the iPad and the activity of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Have a read:
http://tinyurl.com/ybusldv
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Who Is Your Client Messenger?
Yesterday I had an interesting call with a client who was informing me that he wants to switch to a competing website provider because he found a new company with better SEO/SEM capabilities and he feels this new company will improve their search results.
I went on to tell him that we had recently "beefed up" our SEO/SEM capabilities (which we have, I wasn't just blowing smoke at him) and I am confident that we have a better solution for him which led him to ask, "Well who inside your organization is responsible for messaging this new capability to clients?" Interestingly enough, I didn't know, I'm not even sure what I told the client...I probably just fumbled over my words and sounded like an idiot.
I began thinking about this, who REALLY is responsible for messaging new functionality to clients? Is it the Account Manager who has regular contact with the client? Or maybe it's the sales person, after all he is responsible for generating more revenue from clients. Maybe I'm just trying to cover my --- but this scenario doesn't necessarily fit the salesman's job because the new features are not "revenue generating" features, they're just enhancements. Maybe it's the marketing department who puts together all newsletters and client notifications.
Either way, if your organization hasn't had this discussion then it's probably time to be proactive about messaging new features to your clients. It does absolutely nothing for your business if you're working hard developing all these new features but no one knows what you're doing! If that explains your organization then someone with a better message is ready to come in and take your business.
Competitors are out there!
I went on to tell him that we had recently "beefed up" our SEO/SEM capabilities (which we have, I wasn't just blowing smoke at him) and I am confident that we have a better solution for him which led him to ask, "Well who inside your organization is responsible for messaging this new capability to clients?" Interestingly enough, I didn't know, I'm not even sure what I told the client...I probably just fumbled over my words and sounded like an idiot.
I began thinking about this, who REALLY is responsible for messaging new functionality to clients? Is it the Account Manager who has regular contact with the client? Or maybe it's the sales person, after all he is responsible for generating more revenue from clients. Maybe I'm just trying to cover my --- but this scenario doesn't necessarily fit the salesman's job because the new features are not "revenue generating" features, they're just enhancements. Maybe it's the marketing department who puts together all newsletters and client notifications.
Either way, if your organization hasn't had this discussion then it's probably time to be proactive about messaging new features to your clients. It does absolutely nothing for your business if you're working hard developing all these new features but no one knows what you're doing! If that explains your organization then someone with a better message is ready to come in and take your business.
Competitors are out there!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Stop Negotiating Against Yourself!
Here is a great post written by a University of Texas professor on why we need to stop negotiating against ourselves! I know most of us are guilty of it, we say "I can't get X because of Y".
Recently I rationalized that I couldn't land a large sales deal simply because the potential client was using one of our competitors. I assumed they were happy and had no desire to switch. It wasn't until much later that I found out that the potential client was in fact unhappy with their current provider and I swept in and landed the deal. While this example has a happy ending, if I would not have negotiated myself out of the deal up front then we'd have landed the business MUCH sooner.
Have a read...
http://tinyurl.com/yd9wkgw
Recently I rationalized that I couldn't land a large sales deal simply because the potential client was using one of our competitors. I assumed they were happy and had no desire to switch. It wasn't until much later that I found out that the potential client was in fact unhappy with their current provider and I swept in and landed the deal. While this example has a happy ending, if I would not have negotiated myself out of the deal up front then we'd have landed the business MUCH sooner.
Have a read...
http://tinyurl.com/yd9wkgw
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