Category: Marketing

Most business-to-business companies make sales presentations to their potential clients and customers. There are several ways business professionals communicate their message:

• Some use a power point presentation from a laptop
• Or leave the laptop and deliver the powerpoint bound in books
• Others present a portfolio
• Still others describe their service business with a 30 second commercial
• Printed trifold brochures are still popular - especially for mailing
• Some sales people use the proposal to explain their services
• Folders with sell sheets work better as leave behind pieces, in my opinion

What’s the difference between a marketing presentation and an sales presentation? In my mind, marketing presentations are part of the lead generation process and sales presentations are an effort to convert a lead or prospect into a customer.

But honestly… sometimes the process switches back and forth.

Q= “When is a customer actually a prospect?”
A= “When they’re considering adding a service or product.”

I think that each one of the marketing pieces works as a stepping stone in the marketing and sales process. Sometimes you can skip a step or get them out of order. That can make the entire process more expensive and not as effective.

Marketing Resources & Results comes up 14 in Google for marketing presentations because we do marketing presentations in the form of workshops and seminars to business organizations. I guess it’s because we don’t mind “giving away” our secrets of how to market your company or product. Many of our presentations are luncheons and breakfast meetings, but more and more we are called on to provide customized marketing workshops for an association or other organization. It’s funny how sales presentations can get mixed up with marketing presentations!

It’s interesting that we provide a whole variety of marketing communication services for manufacturers and professional service firms, but our “internet reputation” focuses on one of our own marketing tools instead of our services. Perhaps other companies are looking for tools instead of services! I guess it’s part of what we’re always talking about: focus on the benefits instead of the features!

Have you mapped out the steps in your marketing and sales process? What tools do you use at each step? How do you evaluate them?

Many of our clients prefer the effects of public relations over advertising. It not only has the implied endorsement of the media, it actually gets read and noticed.

Although it’s nice to be able to create and proofread an ad so it says exactly what you want to say, the way you want to say it… how much more believable is it when an editor or reporter says it in a column compared to reading a similar message in a little box near the bottom of a page.

Here are 4 tips from Entrepreneur magazine for creating a compelling press release to help get media exposure for your business.

Trying to create a brand is more than just wanting to sell something. It’s one part product, two parts image and three parts communication. Here’s a site that offers some inspiration… Take a look at Adcracker’s ideas for creating memorable brands.

They’ve got some entertaining ideas for how to create brands and fill the “how-to” with lots of fun video!

Norma Rist went to the Sales and Marketing event RistWatch: Renea Woods and Sabrena Schweyer Spotlighted and comments from another point of view.

Yesterday was a full day of videotaping. Lucky for us the two professionals we were working with were very good — Crain and Jeff. They made the day seem more like fun than work. It’s always a pleasure to work with people who make their job look easy!