Moving from products and services to solutions. Frame your existing products and services in the problem they solve for specific customers, instead of viewing the offer independent of the context of its use. Interview customers and engineers to clearly define the issues faced by customers, mold your offer around the most desired solutions.
Working more effectively with sales. Help them shorten the sales cycle, ask for feedback on the quality of leads created for them, and work together to produce a greater return on marketing investment. Create a few cross-marketing-sales measures that demonstrate the quality of your own work through the success of the sales department.
Leveraging partners. You cannot expect to do everything exactly the way your buyers want to receive it, so draw from a pool of talented partners who extend your organizations value to customers. Work with complementary partners to reach a larger share of customers.
Building a stronger and more differentiated brand. In the minds of your customers, "what makes your company the single most important purchase they'll make this year?" Help customers see how you're different, better, and a better choice -- prove your case with success stories from your existing customers.
Strengthening relationships with existing customers."Blessed is he that is a paying customers." Study your customers in every detail, understand every aspect of their business, and seek to solve every problem you can in the realm of the solutions you provide. Capture their attention with solid details that help them advocate what you offer.
Demonstrating quantifiable return on marketing investment. Measure everything, look for marketing efforts that attract your most profitable customers, and cultivate relationships for longer-term revenue generation. Do more of what is working, and through testing, stop doing what cannot justify its existence.
These points demonstrate the core agenda for many marketers responsible for generating profits in a maturing industry hurt by a slow-growth economy. I'll help you solve many of these problems, and if you're in the information technology industries I recommend you take a look at ITSMA to connect with peers.
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