Most companies “buy” their positioning, they don’t really live it

Many companies that are building brands are really searching for a position in the market place. Without a position it’s hard to understand what is truly believable by your clients. Just because you have a tag line doesn’t mean you have a position in the market place.

You really have to get the employees and all interactions with the client to provide the experience of what your tag line states. I read a lot of ad reviews and have seen big companies win major advertising accolades when what I see is a big budget campaign with simple statements. They are buying their position not really living it. At some point a competitor will either really start living their position or they will out buy them.

If your employees don’t “just do it” or “Customer Satisfaction” isn’t really important, the market will put you in your place. It’s better to live the position that buy it.

Is email marketing making us dumber?

Over the past year, I’ve noticed hundreds of emails come to my inbox and hundreds sent from my company to senior executives across the country. There’s a clear tactic of sending to get something out the door, but I’m not noticing any real strategy; it all ends the same way – “come to our webinar,” “come get our white paper.”

Clearly “content” is king right now, but I’m wondering if we concentrate on the content so much we forget about really trying to help the person we are contacting educate themselves? I’m not noticing a stream of conciousness or path with these emails that might show me what was developed was a campaign that truly helps me solve a need or problem. I see quick hits as if someone is trying to get my attention but not sure how.

I’d suggest a different tactic – why not email an invite to run the webinar. Let your audience member(s) choose the topic and all you do is facilitate the webinar or conference call. It would be interesting to see what happens then – by listening you may actually learn more and be able to develop a strategy around what you’ve learned. Or by all means just keep emailing me and I’ll keep deleting them.

Boy Scouts of America needs sales management support

My son is into his second year of cub scouts and his second year of selling popcorn. I noticed that the boy scouts were also selling in the neighborhood; so we were competing against eachother.

If only someone at national would coordinate the sales, both groups could sell throughout the year and they would get more sales. Some neighbors are nice and buy from both, but during these economic times many won’t. Now, if they made a mandate for one group to sell in the fall and the other in the spring, you get more sales. Now some groups do other things such as a car wash, haunted house, or barbeque. I’d just coordinate the switch. While one group is selling the popcorn the other could have a car wash. With a little simple coordination at the national level, the local scout troops would perform better. The next trick is to get customers’ contact information in a national database. In the following year, Boy Scouts could email or mail the customer list to the boy scout that sold the customers and tell them to contact them for a repurchase. It’s easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.

These kids and scout masters are not marketing and sales people. A national office of any type needs to make it easy for their clubs, distributors, franchisees to make the job of earning funds easier. A central organization needs to provide process and management to ensure improved success from year to year. With a little better organization and process, the Boy Scouts could do a lot better.