Greetings!
Welcome to the March edition of The
Knowledgentsia, the newsletter for the
customer-obsessed.
Top 5 Tips for Extending the Sales Kickoff "High" |
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By now you’re 30+ days past your Annual Sales Kick-
off meeting. The sessions went off without a hitch and
the travel reports have been filed – does that mean
the "high" is over? Not if you want to leverage the time
and investment you made to set the direction and tone
of the 2007 sales year. After participating in several
corporate sales kick-offs this past January, here are a
few tips to extend the impact of your sales meeting
throughout the year.
Tip 1 – Amplify the Theme
Take the theme you used for this year’s kick-off and
reuse it in every “All Sales” communication that goes
out to your team. Think about how the theme relates
to the content of what you are sending to the reps –
and tie it in at every opportunity. What actions, activities
or occurrences are contributing to achieving the goal
of the theme? For example, if the theme is “Leading
Customer Success,” then every time a customer has
become successful using your product or service,
share it with your organization. Note – I’m suggesting
sharing the customer’s success which means waiting
until the product is installed, used and shown to be
successful. This is about embodying the theme, not
just celebrating the sale.
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The Name Game |
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Selecting a good name is one of those things that
many people think is an easy thing. Whether the name
is for a product, or a company, or a service or a
building, there's more to the process than meets the
eye. The problem is that too often naming exercises
are done without consideration for the world that
surrounds the name. Is it being used anywhere
else? Are there permutations of the name that could
be confusingly similar? And what about ownership?
Aside from registered trademark rights - who else
might "own" the name?
Let's take a trip down Route 9 in Natick,
Massachsetts. There is a shopping mall that has
been there for 40 years, engagingly named "The
Natick Mall." My first after-school job was in a
restaurant there, back in the dark ages. The mall has
recently undergone a major expansion: 500,000
square feet of new stores, restaurants. With a new
and improved mall, it makes sense to embark on
some new marketing and positioning. All of that begs
for a new name. Something that denotes the new
status of the mall, creates some new buzz, describes
what the mall is today. Right?
The marketers of the mall labored over a new
potential name. End result: the owners of the mall,
General Growth Properties, selected "Natick" for the
new name. Of all the potential names that were
generated, they decided to appropriate the town of
Natick's name.
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The Colonel and the Pope |
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Recently, global fast-food chain KFC decided to offer a
fish sandwich during the period of Lent (the forty day
period of Christian fasting that precedes Easter). Not
satisfied by merely cashing in on a religious holy
period, KFC has requested a blessing of their fish
sandwich from the Pope! Holy Endorsements!
Now, certainly, I can see the marketing appeal for
hard-core Catholics, but could this have a reverse
effect on Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Devil-
worshipers, Atheists, Agnostics, and members of the
Saint John Coltrane Church? And anyone else who
does not see the Pope as an infallible entity? I mean,
how much sense does it make for a fast food chain, or
any secular business, really, to draw a line in the sand
and ask for a Papal endorsement? You run the risk of
alienating as many, if not more, people than you
attract.
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VOICES OF THE KNOWLEDGENTSIA |
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"Re-examine all you have been told . . . Dismiss
what insults your Soul."
- - Walt Whitman, poet 1819 - 1892
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Lisa Dennis Speaking Engagements
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