Sales Is…..

sales noun 1. The exchange of a commodity for money; the action of selling something. 2. A quantity or amount sold. Actually sales is understanding how your customer wants to feel, not what she wants to buy and doing everything you can to get her there. Image by Ed Yourdon.

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Winning In The Story Economy

Back to my hair salon. Sally shows up on time. She gets through two colours and three trims buy lunch, then waits impatiently for the hands on the clock to turn the next four hours until closing. Carmel makes five minutes to chat to the pensioner who took two buses to get there. She remembers…

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The Third Secret Of Great Marketing

It’s the reason Dropbox’s revenue hit $240 million in 2011 despite giving away their product for free and how Instagram has grown to 100 million users. Stand in your customers’ shoes. Start with their story. Image by Trey Ratcliff.

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The Death Of Retail. The Symptom Is Not The Problem

Georgina owns and operates a speciality gluten free food store in Brisbane and like many retailers she’s experiencing a problem. Increasingly people are coming to browse but not to buy. The perception is that if I can get it cheaper or faster online why would I make the trip to your store? So Georgina has…

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Brand Vs. Branding

Branding is….. “The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.” —The Business Directory Branding in the traditional sense was designed to create recognition and awareness of commodities. It was the way business persuaded customers to decide. There’s a…

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What’s The Point?

Business isn’t about transactions and giving people the thing they want. That box of chocolates, an upgraded phone or the business class flight. And marketing isn’t about selling them your facts. It’s about giving people a story to believe in and one that they want to tell. Just like Evan’s. (Take the two minutes to…

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If You Build It Will They Come?

I spent most of yesterday at Startup Weekend and was excited to hear the feedback from the judges during the final pitches. There were elegant apps and well developed presentations. Some teams had a product ready to roll out this week and others had nothing more than a well validated idea about what was possible.…

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Why You Don’t Want To Be The Impulse Buy

Have you ever watched people shopping at the airport? They amble distractedly fingering this, picking up that. Nine times out of ten they put things back. Sometimes the packaging, or maybe the boredom gets the better of them and the buy something they had no intention of buying. It’s a win for the manufacturer of…

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The First Secret To Great Marketing

The first secret to great marketing is knowing where to start. “Marketers have to move upstream now. We have to stop being the last step in the process and start being the first step.” —SETH GODIN Most marketers start by thinking about what they want their customers to do. “Buy now”, “click this”, “give us…

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This Time Next Year

“This time next year we’ll be millionaires!” —Derek Trotter CEO of Trotters Independent Traders You probably spend a great deal of time setting business goals, working on strategy and planning for growth. It’s the sensible thing to do. After all how can you get to where you want to go if you don’t know where…

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