Posts by EvettField
Marketing expenditure in times of uncertainty? The answer is in the numbers
What marketing performance insights should leadership expect from their management and marketing agencies and contractors? In these times, the greatest service that managers can do is to provide business leaders with quality data and insights that inform and support their decision-making. This is as true of marketing as any other business function, and unless marketing…
Read MoreHow To Join The Dots With Sales and Marketing
In many organisations, the Sales and Marketing functions have a testy relationship. As a business owner or leader, what are your options? Appoint a dual role ‘Sales and Marketing’ manager? Create a complicated internal reporting dashboard to try and link the marketing metrics to sales results? Implement a new CRM to ‘force’ alignment Each of the above options…
Read MoreCustomer Buying Behaviour
What is the buying process, and who is involved? Many business owners and leaders talk about ‘the market’ and ‘their customers’ in a proprietorial way when in fact ‘your customers’ are not actually ‘yours’. They don’t even belong to ‘the market’. In B2B, your customers are independent businesses, owned and managed by individuals with their…
Read MoreHow To Create An Effective Value Proposition
What unique and compelling advantage or benefit does your product or service offer customers to induce them to part with their money given all the other choices they have, including purchasing a competitors product or ‘doing nothing’ and keeping their money in their pocket? A meaningful, credible value proposition, must pass through three critical stages:…
Read MoreYou cannot dominate a market by looking and sounding just like everyone else
There are many factors that motivate people to start a business, but no entrepreneur has ever set out with the goal of being average. They want to do something they are passionate about, to do work that has meaning, set their own goals and build something special. Something that justifies the risk and uncertainty of…
Read MoreThe value of effective value propositions
In business today, you only have the ear of a prospective customer for a short period of time. If you cannot articulate a compelling value proposition that resonates precisely with their needs and expectations, they will almost certainly move on to your competitors. If another competitor does stand-out in the crowd, you may be quickly…
Read MoreIs your sales team armed for success?
Most sales professionals know how to sell. They know how to generate leads, qualify clients, assess needs, develop proposals, manage objections and close deals. In many companies however, employees with history of sales success don’t seem to make the grade. Managers look for fixes such as training, developing performance improvement plans and, more often than…
Read MoreThe “Fast, Good and Cheap” Analogy
In its simplest form, businesses have two growth options: Increase sales Reduce costs In tough economic times, it can be challenging to grow sales. Cutting costs can appear to be the simplest and most direct way of improving profitability. But at what cost? Recently our company was invited to submit a proposal on a strategic…
Read MoreHow more risk taking can help grow Australian businesses
A recent article in the Financial Review discussed the issue of risk taking in Australian businesses. John Wiley, CEO of Lazard Australia and chairman of the Sports Commission stated that Australia has a ‘risk-averse’ culture and believes more guts and determination is needed for Australian businesses to grow and prosper at a rate on par…
Read MoreWhat Percentage Of Revenue Should Be Allocated To Marketing Expenditure In Your Industry?
The question of how much business expenditure should be allocated to marketing is a continual source of contention and uncertainty for many companies. Unfortunately, there is no straight-forward answer. On a superficial level there is a strong correlation between marketing expenditure and the quality of the results that are delivered in exposure, leads and sales.…
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