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...ve.   Some sales-training courses recommend an aggressive 'up-front cl...

... the little, seemingly insignificant and often bothersome things that a company does day in and day out to attract and hold customers. Marketing is about doing one thing right: Marketing is the task of constantly pulling customers' closer and closer to your company, product, or service so that they decide that it's in their best interest to do business with you. That means keeping your hand on the rope every minute of every day. Wow! ' PUT MARKETING IDEAS, STRATEGIES, AND PLANS TO THE ONLY TEST There's always the feeling that to justify your existence you need to make the simple look complex and the easy ever so difficult and complicated. Marketing is no exception. But marketing is too important — too valuable to your business — to permit it to be distorted and misunderstood. Although ... they were still up to their eyeballs in sweater inventory even after offering up to 70% discounts early in the Christmas selling season. Is it fair to blame marketers for these horrendous mistakes? Perhaps they advised against introducing Dryel. Perhaps GM's marketers weren't involved in the development of the Pontiac Aztec and the Buick Rendezvous. Let's hope that their loud protests were ignored. There are other examples, of course, such as the spate of home delivery services a la Webvan, Peapod, and the like. Hundreds of millions of dollars were swallowed up by these outfits that demonstrated an insatiable appetite for capital. Worse yet, venture capitalists stood in line outbidding one another to see who was going to give them the biggest pile of money. Didn't home delivery die out when women went from being everyday ...

... during one-third of the year are going to be lousy. You might guess that the employees have come to look forward to these peaceful, quiet days of spring and fall. But you also know that nobody has ever thought of developing a marketing program to change this pattern. Remember, when sales go down in the valley, someone is eventually going to have to scale the mountain - without a rope (other than the one around your neck) . May I go with you on a sales call? With this question, you start to make your move. This is the one that separates you from the rest of the pack. It shows that you're willing to take time and go along on a sales call to get a better feel for the operation. There is more to your ... lead-generation program. It's the company's job to market its products or services in ways that produce prospects. If it doesn't, you will become a canvasser, not a salesperson. And don't fall for the story that the company has a great new business development program in the works. You can bet it doesn't. May I see your office? This is another question for a sales manager. (Of course, if you happen to be in the person's office at the moment, skip this question.) What's in the office that should grab your interest? If you see a sales scoreboard on the wall, get out quick. This company is not interested in developing customers - it only wants to push product to meet quotas. Your only value will be measured by where you stand in the ...