The Salesby5 Blog

Vision at 55, just like driving the speed limit, sucks.  Unfortunately, what you’ll find  is designers love putting together beautiful marketing materials that only a fourth grader can read due to the 8-point font.  Have a good look at all your marketing materials, business cards and websites to make sure you use a legible font and text size.  If the customers with the money can’t read what you put in front of them, they’ll likely toss your materials, rather than admitting that their eyesight is too poor to see what’s in front of them.  So make sure you use clear and concise words anytime you communicate with prospects and clients and you use a font anyone can read.  How do your marketing materials hold up?

This weekend, Pixar took top honors at the box office with Up, smacking about $70 million dollars out of our pockets and tickling the cranky critics. At the same time, GM is approaching bankruptcy and, if it clears, will be the third largest in the history of this country.

Why bother mentioning both of these companies in the same post? Although it would be insane for me to say that I know what that one thing was that sunk GM and made Pixar a winner, I will offer up food for thought. GM lost the race because they offered too many choices (aka brands) to allow for their success and Pixar kept it simple.

In 2008, GM manufactured Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall and Wuling. General Motors began by purchasing different car and truck companies in its early years, but kept the manufacturing, looks and brand personalities separate. More recently, it merged different brands and models together. No longer was it clear to GM and its customers what a brand or model stood for and why it was necessarily different or better than its shared parts cousin.

Pixar’s history is quite different. Since the launch of Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has only launched one movie every one to two years. Pixar has been nominated six times and has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature 4 times since its inception in 2001. The company’s movies consistently earn well at the box office and are well received by critics and viewers alike.

If you review the mission statements/objectives of these companies, you will notice that GM’s generalized statement talks about providing their customers “superior value” from “products and services.” Contrast Pixar’s objective to “develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heartwarming stories that appeal to audiences of all ages.”

When you overwhelm your employees with too many options, you make it difficult for them to provide a clear and concise sales message for a particular item. Additionally, it does not allow your company to focus on what matters most and what your company can be the best at. At the same time, too many choices confuse your customers. The decision becomes overwhelming and customers become lost. Could you slice your product offering in half, leaving more time to better your best offering? What effect would this have on your employees and your customers? I’d love to get your feedback in the comments!

As seen on MySA.com

It is September 4th of 2003. (I wrote blog posts on paper then). My wife and I were checking into a Disney resort in Florida with my 3 year old daughter and 1 year old son. I was scared of a tiny room that I had reserved and asked about an upgrade. It was going to be a $250 per night upgrade and I asked what was included. I was told “it is a little larger” with a small bedroom and an attached couch bed. I was having a hard time swallowing the $250.00 per night extra and mentioned this. Within a few seconds, the price dropped to $175.00 and I reluctantly said yes as I was told I could get the smaller cheaper room if I did not like it. I really wanted this to be fun, special and relaxing, right?

We get to the room to see what we got for the extra $175.00 and we had been completely undersold. We had a full suite with a fridge, kitchen, 2 full bathrooms and a full living room. It was 2.5 times the size.  The room had a porch which overlooked views of the giraffes and gazelles. I am pretty happy at this point and the family was too as we had friends coming in to visit us for the day and now had plenty of space.  But, there is more. The floor we were on had a giant living area, kitchen, bar, and two people at a desk who turned out to be concierges. I found that because we had the suite, we also had free dinner, drinks, South African wines, desserts, breakfast, snacks, lunch, French water, cokes, free tickets to events, free transportation and a person to take care of all of our needs as part of the suite.

I almost said no to the $175.00 as it provided only “a little larger room” and the real overt benefits were never mentioned. I wonder how many upgrades don’t get sold because of what comes with the room. Later, I went to thank the lady who booked the room. She had never seen it and others had not either, yet there was a whole floor of suites. They did not know what they were selling but viewed it as a tiny benefit. If you ever go to a Disney resort, ask about the upgrade, it may just be the best money spent.

Is there anything you are marketing, selling, advertising that you are not articulating the real value, the real experience. Real matters and your customers should not have to dig to find it.

photo by DJ Riel

The number one question I get all the time regarding the ”Your Wife is Hot” billboard article, is “did someone from Jon Wayne company ever call you?”  The answer is still no.  I have called them back and attempted to ask the owners about the billboard, leaving a total of four new messages in the last two weeks. So far, I have seen about three places in San Antonio where these billboards reside and can’t understand why my calls were never returned. Jon Wayne Air Conditioning, are you worried about something?

My plan was to write about a billboard that finally caught my attention. After building and owning a top design firm turned ad agency and working in branding for about 24 years, I am always amazed by the story behind what you see. We use Beyer Boys for my house.  They do not have any funny or cool billboards but they do return your call, even if you want to talk to the owners. Great marketing is just hype if you don’t have the execution to follow-through!

Remember, the data shows that there are so few people that followup and are lacking in execution that you can win if you just stick with it.

Nan and Erik were asked to speak about Twitter to the 210 business owners at Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Summit. We helped many of these attendees to get their names and company names taken for Twitter. We quickly realized that most of these companies have marketing firms/departments, ad agencies or PR firms, so why on earth are these vendors/partners failing to get these accounts set up for their clients? Isn’t that the proactive services that they expect? Well, we think that people have low expectations and need to raise them. It should be painful to imagine running your business without your marketing company. What steps can you take today to make yourself invaluable? Are you taking the proper steps to delight your customers by saving them money, thinking two steps ahead or bringing an additional value that they didn’t expect? Drop us a line in the comments about what you do to be indispensable.

CSO Insights recently conducted surveys of more than 2,000 sales and marketing professionals.  Get this: 85% of company marketers felt they were doing a good job generating quality sales leads. By contrast, only 50% of the sales professionals in those same organization were satisfied with the efforts from Marketing. The result of the disparity is fewer closed deals and less revenue.

 Today’s rule of business marketing:

“You better be unique or you better be cheap!” Doug Hall

If you have a commodity business that has no uniqueness, you had better lower your costs and go cheap or go home.

Your brain has a limitation on the amount you can learn and retain in one day. The saying goes “you are what you eat” can also be paired with “you are what you learn.”  We are running into people fresh out of college and older, even some in software development or web technology, that do not use, understand or know what social media is on its simplest level.  If you don’t know what some of these tools are, take a stroll over to Common Craft to get a crash course on what some of the available social media tools are.   Keep in mind that just graduating (if you graduated) is not enough.  The question is – what have you done for you, lately?

Salesby5 will soon be hosting the first ever 17 minutes with the “Trained Brains,” Erik and Nan, at the end of January.  If you’d like to attend the teleconference, send us your e-mail and we will send you a phone number for your 2009 marketing jump start.

photo by lapolab

Many of us are stuck selling something that may not be sexy or new.  When you are in these types of businesses or starting a new business, it is easy to look around and do the same thing that everyone else is doing.  It feels smart and safe and it can be scary to stick out.  The rules were written by the leaders in the field and in case you didn’t know, they wrote the rules in their favor. We encourage you to ignore those feelings, be bold and try something new!

photo by Ashley Palmero

This past weekend, my wife and I traveled to Corpus Christi to visit friends and family.  Yesterday was a miserable day weather-wise in Corpus, 30+ mph winds, drizzle and chilly.  Before returning to San Antonio, I pumped my gas and awaited my receipt, then I saw the frustrating “RECEIPT WITH CASHIER.”  As I made the annoying walk, I was greeted by two ladies behind the counter.  One provided me my receipt, the other said “I’m so sorry you had to come in, may I get you a coffee or hot cocoa?”  I was so pleased with their attitude, I went back to the car and told my wife the story.  Then, when we joined our friends for lunch, I told them about the experience as well.  This company bought my admiration with a cup of coffee.  What small things can you do for your customers and clients to make their day a little more pleasant?  Can you keep the holiday spirit going year ’round?