by Darrell Amy | Jun 13, 2019 | Marketing
What you sell and what your clients buy may be two very different things. We think we sell products and services. What our clients really buy is outcomes.
Theodore Levitt, the father of modern marketing put it brilliantly: “People don’t buy drill bits, they buy holes.”
Your prospects don’t want to buy products, they want outcomes. For example, business owners don’t buy color printers, they buy color printouts. If you boil that down even further, they don’t really buy color prints. If they are printing invoices, what they are buying is the ability to collect money faster from their customers. If they are printing marketing material, what they are buying is competitive advantage and business growth. (more…)
by Darrell Amy | Jun 6, 2019 | Marketing
Having grown up in Canada, I love maple syrup. I remember Saturday mornings at the sugar farm. Each spring right as the snow was beginning to melt we’d head out into a grove of maple trees.
Each tree had a spigot with a small bucket attached. Sweet sap would drip into the bucket. We’d gather that buckets of sap and bring them the sugar shack.
Straight out of the tree, maple sap tastes like water with a few granules of sugar. When it’s distilled, delicious maple syrup emerges. It takes about 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. It’s no wonder that maple syrup is so valuable—and tastes so good. (more…)
by Darrell Amy | May 30, 2019 | Marketing
This week I’ve been creating the website content for the new suite of services our team here at Convergo will roll out this summer (can’t wait to launch this!) It’s got me thinking about what our ideal prospect looks like.
We all have ideal prospects. These are the future clients that are a great fit for your business. They value what you do. They align with your values and culture. They recognize the value you deliver and are willing to pay for it.
We also all have prospects that are not a good fit: They don’t value what you do. They don’t align with your values and culture. Instead of recognizing value, they want to grind you for a lower price. While you may make a little bit of profit on the deal, you’ll lose all and more of it as your employees get frustrated serving a client that is misaligned with your company. Usually, these non-ideal clients end up leaving and are often your most vocal critics.
Idea: What if you told your prospects what types of clients you want to serve?
I think if we were more explicit about who we wanted to serve, good things would naturally happen. Ideal prospects would resonate with your values, vision, and culture. They would say, “Yes! Finally! I’ve been looking for a partner like this!” The non-ideal prospects would be repelled. How helpful would that be?
As I’m writing the content for our new website, I thought it made sense to tell our prospective clients what type of companies we like to work with. The hope is that it will create resonance with our ideal prospects while repelling our poor-fit prospects.
This is a work in process, but I’d love to hear what you think. Here’s my message: (more…)
by Darrell Amy | Feb 26, 2019 | EOS
“Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than the competition.”
– Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year
If you want to be successful in growing a company as a business owner, or growing a territory as a sales rep, you need to execute consistently. You can have a great vision, amazing products, and all kinds of great intentions. But the marketplace only rewards ideas that get implemented.
Execution needs to happen in the three core areas of your business that touch your clients and prospects. Let’s consider each of these in turn. (more…)
by Darrell Amy | Jan 22, 2019 | Marketing, Sales
Both sales professionals and companies have brands. In our world of overwhelming options and distractions, a brand becomes shorthand to communicate things like:
- You’re in the right place
- You can trust me
In his book, This Is Marketing, Seth Godin says that as consumers, “We scan instead of study.”
We area all busy. We are bombarded with messages. So, our mind filters things out and quickly categorizes them. When we see a person or a company our mind immediately asks, “What does this remind me of?” (more…)
