Today I’ve reflected upon what is important, as an Account or Sales Manager, for helping premium drinks clients that are sourcing branded merchandise.
Here are 3 things that have proven valuable to me:
1. Understanding value
It’s important to understand the broader market your customer is part of and how they ideally want the product they are sourcing to tie into their marketing strategy, along with all the other tactics they are applying. Unless you are in a commodity type of market, which is something only few people would want to be part of, what is the value your product adds when it comes to your client achieving their goals? What’s your value proposition that makes your product appealing to your customer?
2. Communicating value
Being transparent and clear about what your product solution and accompanying services, e.g. graphics design, entails. What are its limitations, what its strength? How do you communicate this?
3. Building value
Even when you are in a B2B type of setting, it’s always humans that are buying from humans. Sure, the psychology between a B2B and a B2C purchase is different, but it always comes down to human interaction. Beyond your product and services, you can build value by developing quality relationships with your customers. This means showing up not only when you believe they are ready to buy but on a more regular basis. It’s always a chance for both giving valuable input and learning from your client’s input. Beyond this just being friendly and truly wanting to help, which manifests by going beyond the mere minimum that is expected, go a long way.
Tag: marketing
The 3 fundamental elements of marketing
When thinking about marketing it’s easy to skip steps by immediately focusing on sales. It’s important to avoid loosing sight of certain fundamental elements of marketing.
No. 1
What’s the impact you want to have, the type of change you are seeking to make? This is your WHY.
No. 2
WHO is your audience? Notice that audience is much broader than customers. A lot of people will be part of your audience but not be customers, at least not as fast as you might like them to be.
No. 3
What’s it for? WHAT is your brand promise?
Marketing always has to do with telling a story. Based on how good of a match you have, between the worldview of your audience, the type of stories they keep telling themselves over and over again, about themselves and the world around them, and the elements of your brand story, that’s what will ultimately help you move forward.
If you show up in a thoughtful and consistent way that helps your audience with what they care about, you have a chance, the chance to earn both attention and trust, currencies that are immensely valuable in today’s world of constant distractions.
The price of a low price
If you have the scale for it and a vision for becoming profitable making a low price your primary strategy is a valid option. The challenge is there’s usually only one player with the lowest price and it tends to lead to a race to the bottom, making it extra hard to keep doing it successfully. It’s even harder to figure out how to do marketing.
I believe Seth Godin is right when he says: “Low price is the refuge of the marketer who can’t figure out how to do marketing.”
Seth Godin
Seth Godin is a great teacher. I perceive him to be an exceptionally kind and generous human being, a master communicator and very consistent in creating value for his audience. He sees things and then writes about them. I regularly follow his blog, his podcast Akimbo, read a few of his books and participated twice in one of his fantastic online seminars, The Marketing Seminar.
If you google him you will find a lot of content such as videos, podcasts and articles. I recently listened to an interview on The Moment, a podcast by Brian Koppelman. If you are interested in entrepreneurship and making art, I highly recommend this interview.
#gratitude to both Seth and Brian