Continuing the series on marketing for the newly promoted, today's post is about networking. Networking is another one of those things that we are told to do, but we aren’t given a lot of instruction on how to do it effectively. Much of what I’ve already written in...
Why would a series of posts about marketing for the newly promoted include a discussion about turning away business? Mostly because it’s one of those things that everyone seems to learn the hard way. You are probably going to prefer to learn it the hard way yourself,...
Continuing on the theme of marketing for the newly promoted, today I want to talk about giving referrals. When we talk about referral marketing (newly promoted or not) most of the focus tends to be how to get referrals. I think we should put more focus on giving them....
As professional service providers, most of our new business probably (should?) comes from our existing customers. Whether you call it cross-selling, up-selling, or anything else, being able to identify additional needs and sell services to meet those needs is an...
Do you understand the process your customers go through when making a purchasing decision? For most of our customers, buying professional services is process, not an event. Therefore, it makes sense that we have marketing and selling processes that match their buying...
Yesterday, I posted about talking about what you do. An important part of talking about what you do, and marketing your services in general, is understanding what your customer is really buying. People don’t want to buy insurance. They don’t want to buy legal or...
I think everyone, newly promoted or not, struggles with this one at some point in their career. How do we talk about what we do and talk about it without boring ourselves and everyone around us to tears. The default, of course, is to fall back on your title – I’m a...
Last week I posted a little about using personas as a tool for marketing your professional service firm. I mentioned that I first ran into personas in the software development world. Today I thought I would share a lesson that took me a little while to learn back...
A long time ago (but still in this galaxy) I used to spend most of my day writing and customizing business software. I probably entered the software development world differently than most at the time - I learned how to write software to help me be a better auditor. I...
I recently picked up Ardath Albee’s eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (Amazon affiliate link).I really liked this book as I thought it presented a clear strategy for using eMarketing tools to attract prospects and nurture them as they progress through the...