As highlighted in this NPR article, increased fuel costs, demands for improved work-life balance and technology advancements all support more people doing their work from their home.

Two key reasons this is of special importance to the marketing community.   First of all, many of us are “knowledge workers” – in that what we do involves information, graphics or communications – all of which can be digitized and managed as well from one’s home office as from anyplace else.  Also, as marketers, we need to be aware of all such trends.  There are marketing opportunities in the “telecommuter” segment, either by bundling business services in a new way that appeals to the telecommuter segment or in yet-to-be-defined innovative products, services or campaigns.

One promising aspect of this trend is the incredible productivity boost it can create.  For the employee it comes from eliminating the time and cost of transporting yourself from your residence to your place of work.  On any given day this probably adds at least an hour of discretionary time for most people.  It is certainly something I value in my own “work from home” environment.

The employers’ side of the equation includes reduced expenses for facilities to make room for the employee.

Of course telecommuting won’t work in all situations and for all people.  It takes a certain type of person to manage the independence inherent in telecommuting.  If you’re looking for hierarchy and structure you won’t find it working from home.  While the NPR article also mentions a need for personal interaction, I think this “need” will be increasingly fulfilled by interactive technology as time goes on and in fact it may be easier to connect with people via a network than face-to-face in a workplace.  Anybody who has ever scrambled for a meeting room at the last minute can relate to that!

People who grow up texting and on Facebook will collaborate in different ways than older generations, for sure.

My company is initiating use of a computerized system for managing email communication with clients and prospects.  We’re probably behind the curve in this application but as a small organization (<20 employees) whose core competency is not based in things electronic, I suppose this is fairly normal.

What is exciting to me is that this meshes clearly with a need I have in this area.  I’ve got the content and process for prospect and client communication but what’s missing is a method to systematize that knowledge.  My current process is based on one-to-one communication with my contacts – which is the ideal approach in my business.

I’m hopeful that the solution we’ve chosen will make my marketing efforts scaleable to ever-larger numbers of contacts.  Maintaining a one-to-one “touch” while improving efficiency is the promise.  By summer I should know if this promise is realizied.

In the shiny, beautiful world of magazine photography, airbrushing models and actresses is an open secret. How much this affects the self-esteem of girls and women is a recurring topic in the media.

Recently, a British government-commissioned study proposed affixing disclaimers to photos depicting digitally altered models.

Retouched photos turn up in both editorial and commercial photography. Focusing on commercial photography for our purposes, it seems appropriate to ask if we have pushed the perfect, unnatural world depicted in advertising to a new realm.

We want our target audiences to aspire to the world we create with our particular product/service.

Is it right to make that desire, for most women, completely unattainable?

My son is graduating from High School this year and we’re right in the middle of the decision-making process on where he will attend college in the fall.

The process is complicated by the fact that he seeks to major in music performance so an on-site, in-person audition is required for each school to which he applies. We’re focusing on six schools, which means the campaign requires six university applications – plus additional application requirements for the school of music in some cases – and the aforementioned auditions. I keep telling myself not to think about the time investment and out-of-pocket costs for this campaign!

At the audition-day lunch at CIM, the Cleveland Institute of Music (the only location that provided a lunch – a nice touch despite the mediocrity of the food), I met two marketing consultants recently hired by the college to update their marketing strategy – this got me thinking about the topic.

Competitive Set

As with any marketing strategy, the competitive set is a critical variable. CIM’s consultants inquired about the schools we were visiting and they noted with interest that we had not applied to Oberlin, which I’d guess is an important competitor to CIM. Many of the schools we visited took pains to compare themselves to certain other schools – either because a program like Juilliard, often mentioned, is a true competitor or the school would like to think so, at least.

Segmentation

The consultants also noted that CIM was the only pure music conservatory among our choices – all the other music schools were incorporated into a larger university. The pure conservatory distinction is a major segmentation in the music school market.

Among the music schools embedded in a larger university, there are very different offerings with regards to how integrated the music program is with the rest of the place. At CCM, the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, they tend to wall off CCM from the rest of UC. For example, the music students are largely concentrated in a single dormitory. Rice University, on the other hand, prides itself on how all its students are mixed together in their living arrangements. Carnegie Mellon describes its mission, in part, as combining technology and the arts, and its music program integrates the technology (for which CMU is well-known) more so than other schools.

Another segmentation is the size of the program, is it relatively small and “Selective” or a large “Factory” (the latter term used by fans of the smaller organizations). This interacts with another variable, the performance opportunities, with larger organizations having more ensembles and variety.

Location

This is an important consideration for a music student since exposure to outstanding culture available in a large city becomes part of the curriculum. Rice admissions personnel described Houston as a cultural “hotspot” – which would probably surprise anyone not acting as a Houston booster. Location is a bit of a handicap for a school that merits high ranks in most other categories – the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Another element of location is the importance of “moving away” for college, Ohio State is a bit too close to home for my son.

We have to make a decision by May 1.

Sales occur at the nexus of customer need and company value.  Connecting those two requires a skill we’re addressing in a series of sales training workshops I’m conducting this winter.

A prerequisite for selling is to understand how your products’ attributes generate value.  Most salespeople are very familiar with the attributes of their business.  If you’re a manufacturer, you know the specifications of things you make.  If you’re a service provider, you know the parameters of your expertise and customer service that define a customer relationship.  For each specification or parameter you must understand the answer to the marketplace’s demand of “So What?”

For example, one of my projects involves a client whose salespeople are justifiably proud of the company’s strong community commitment exemplified in their local investments, their donations to charitable causes and the support they provide to employees’ volunteer activities.  But when I challenged them with a “So What?” all I got in response were blank stares.  For them, the commitment is an end in itself.  It is part of who they are.  This is a great sales story about their authentic and genuine commitment to their hometown but what value does this deliver to a prospective customer?

With further exploration we identified the relevant connection.  Part of their service differentiation is the relationships their sales representatives develop with their customers.  The community commitment is relevant to that relationship because it is directly tied to their deep roots in the community.  This company is not going anywhere and its people aren’t either.  They tend to have long-term employment so clients can trust what they say – when questions arise then the same person who sold them the program is going to be there to answer questions about that program.

For prospective clients, then, the value of the company’s community commitment is how this translates into committed employees who develop deep and trusted relationships with customers.

You have carefully crafted your marketing plans, presented them to the sales team at their biannual meeting and…

the sales numbers move not all in the next couple of months. Or, worse, they slide in the wrong direction.

What went wrong? Was it your marketing plan or did the competition’s marketing team hit one out of the park?

I have been in this position as a salesperson and would be lying if I did not admit that on a few occasions the thought crossed my mind that maybe my marketing team had been…wrong.

But the blame game is useless.

Most likely, your first action will be an objective analysis of your original marketing plans. Hindsight may reveal subtle but significant weaknesses hidden from you months ago.

However, from a sales perspective, there are a few other considerations you might explore.

Consider speaking to some of your veteran sales representatives and ask how the messaging landed with customers. Were the representatives presenting the message as you originally intended? Did the representatives believe in the messaging when they left the sales meeting?

Next, go back over your market research. The messaging may have met with approval in your test groups but did it decisively make your customers purchase your product? At the end of some of my sales presentations, my customers gave every indication our discussion met with their approval only to find they did not actually buy.

The better marketing research question would seem to be which messages resonate with your purchasing customers?

If you are launching a product, you will have to wait a bit to learn this valuable information.

From a sales perspective, do present your market research in your sales meeting presentation. Salespeople will always respond more favorably if they feel there is solid evidence to support a new marketing direction.

Finally, keep lines of communication open between yourself and the sales group.

Honest discussion will do much to turn sales back in right direction.

As I write this my travel plans have been disrupted by the major winter storm blanketing Ohio with up to a foot of snow.  I happen to be at the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati, which has a major theatrical performance section, which is perhaps what inspired the title above.  My son had a competition for merit-based scholarships to the university today and is scheduled for an audition for entry to CCM tomorrow.  Now the storm has forced an unplanned overnight stay upon us.

So the weather has forced me to improvise a new plan on the fly and I’ve found an empty classroom to get some work done – including this blog entry. 

This past week I’ve been immersed in a variety of sales activities:

-  Coaching a National Sales Manager in Michigan on how to develop his team – including better performance in improvising new approaches on the fly within a sales call based on client behavior.

-  Preparing a sales training program for next week – including custom modifications based on the unique circumstances of our client in Indiana.

-  Selling our services to a new prospect in Dayton, which meant modifying sales call objectives on the fly as my sales team rapidly ascended the learning curve in this first-ever meeting.

Improvisational skill is essential to business survival.  Rapidly changing conditions, whether it is the weather or the economy at large, require the ability to think on your feet and adjust as necessary. 

This skill demands intelligence, affinity for high-pressure performance and, above all, preparation.  My son and I could not stay here in Cincinnati tonight if we had not planned for the situation – he brought his French Horn with him – which he will need for his audition tomorrow.

Adjusting sales call objectives in real time based on client interaction is most effective when preparation lays out a series of options you can adopt based on the situation.

We all have varying levels of intelligence and different employee productivity in high-pressure situations – these are things over which we have little or no control – but we all can control our level of preparation and when the snow hits the fan it is those who have prepared most thoroughly who will come through the storm in the best shape.

What a miserable week for Toyota!  The gas-pedal recall has the automaker reeling, suspending sales on its most-popular models.  Can you imagine a worse public-relations nightmare than nightly news videos showing worried Toyota-owners crying in front of Toyota dealerships that have no answer to the safety crisis?

So here I sit with two Toyotas in my garage – both of which qualify for the recall fix.  I’m on a bit of Toyota buying spree, my last three vehicles have been Toyotas.  My brand switch to Toyota from American brands did not come easily.

I was born in Detroit and grew up in the Downriver suburb of Grosse Ile.  Many of my friends, neighbors and family made a living from Ford, GM & Chrysler and some still do.  The brand loyalty of the Detroit area is as firm as ever, if my recent drive up the Southfield Freeway in Detroit is any indication.  For about 10 minutes I was the only foreign brand I saw on the heavily congested motorway – it was really quite remarkable.

My last Ford, though, was pretty much a lemon (requiring two expensive transmission replacements before reaching 75,000 miles) and its been Toyotas for me ever since.  Of course, Ford reported this week its first annual profit in four years, of the big automakers it seems to have the best momentum right now.

This gas-pedal recall shakes my confidence of bit.  If the thing actually fails on one of my cars and I end up flying off a freeway in an uncontrollable acceleration mishap – well, I probably won’t be buying any more Toyotas, if I survive.

It is difficult to miss the recent wave of advertisements promoting products alongside messages centered around how consumers are saving money.

A woman in a recent television ad is shown walking into a train car while explaining to a friend that she helps herself to all of the available hotel bathroom toiletries. The ad then goes on to show a number of people discussing various ways to save money. Sadly, I remember the commercial but could not tell you what company sponsored it.

Speaking broadly, companies have reshaped their advertisements to reflect the new economic reality while still driving home branding messages.

It is in vogue to have a savings account again.

Flashy spending seems vulgar.

Given the speed of the economic recovery, it appears this new advertising direction is here to stay.

This must-attend luncheon will be moderated by the incomparable Artie Isaac and will feature a panel of industry experts, so come see what the greatest advertising minds have in store for us this year!
Start Time: 11:30
Date: 2010-02-09
End Time: 13:00