The Team

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So far The Team has created 431 blog entries.

Make a Customer, Not a Sale

Making a customer instead of a sale sometimes means doing the work of building a bridge between their needs and your product or service. This may come in the form of either simple communication: what does your customer need to know about your product or service in order to make it work for them; or in the delivery or your product or service: how can we make it work for this customer in a unique way -- can something be added or changed to make it fit? As business managers we're trained to make the delivery and support of our wares as efficient as possible to avoid cutting into profits with time-consuming and expensive tailoring to fit and it's [...]

By |2023-03-10T10:28:51-08:00March 1st, 2023|Categories: Easily Forgotten: The Basics|0 Comments

Take a Closer Look

A common mistake many of us make is to forget, over time, that our audience really is unique. We depend on luck to find a message that connects. Don't lose sight of the true face of your best customer! Here is a quick exercise to help focus your marketing effort where it counts the most: Get specific. Consider your top 3 customers for a moment: What are their characteristics? Are they an aggressive go-getter? Nurturer? Authoritarian? Anti-establishment? At work by 6am? Dressed up? Dressed down? Social butterfly? Detail oriented? Focused on the numbers? Focused on the people? Focused on the task? Get personal, intimate and specific. What's their poison? News junkie? Pop culture junkie? Caffeine junkie? Is it family, [...]

By |2023-02-23T08:40:06-08:00February 20th, 2023|Categories: Easily Forgotten: The Basics|0 Comments

Marketing — Making it Smaller

If you're putting off your marketing because it seems there's just too much to do, or business is good and there's no time -- or there's not enough in the budget to do it all -- start with just one thing. And if necessary, break that one thing down into several parts. If all you can do this quarter is add a few names to your subscriber list, or add one portfolio item to your website, or call one customer to see how they're doing -- do that one thing. Something small is almost always better than nothing.

By |2023-02-14T09:26:45-08:00February 10th, 2023|Categories: .Think Bigger, Easily Forgotten: The Basics|0 Comments

Sales…it can be the hardest — or the easiest — job of all.

Negotiation is give and take, but if you remember the basics, you'll have much more flexibility to give the customer your best work, and more of it. If the only answer you'll accept is a yes, you'll be working too hard. NO's are fantastic...they allow us to keep our good energy and keep moving, rather than the slow torture of a sales exercise that leads nowhere! If you give people your product before they pay for it, you're working for free. A small sample is great, but giving away the recipe before the cake is ordered will put us out of business fast. Yet many of us do just that with comps, extensive proposals, presentations, and other giveaways of [...]

By |2023-02-14T09:12:48-08:00January 14th, 2023|Categories: Easily Forgotten: The Basics|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? #33 – The Brand

As legend has it, a gaggle of players was assembled in the locker room awaiting the start of the NBA All-Star game's three-point shooting contest when Larry Bird walked in. “So,” he said with a broad grin, “who’s playing for second?” Perhaps as much as his basketball acumen–he did indeed go on to win the three-point shooting contest that day– the predicate for Larry the Legend’s iconic brand was his swagger. It was an unlikely swagger: in a world of fast, agile black men who could seemingly jump out of the gym, Bird was a lumbering white guy who might not have been able to clear a shoe box in a single bound. The “Hick from French Lick” [...]

Marketing Memories

Reading  a middle-aged man’s  reminiscence about a high-school classmate who was a gifted athlete raises a question: can memories make for good marketing. Here’s what was written; The first time I saw someone fly I was 18 years old. It was a cloudless, Midwestern, spring afternoon in 1983 and I was among a clutch of teenagers jostling for a rebound on a blacktop basketball court. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, one boy soared above the throng, and with his lithe body framed in amber by the midday sun, slammed the ball through the hoop in one fell swoop, like a cobra plucking a baby bird from its nest. I’ve seen human beings fly many times since then–Sonny Rollins on [...]

By |2021-01-18T01:25:51-08:00May 20th, 2020|Categories: 00 Team Talk Immediate Send, Team Talk|Tags: |0 Comments

United Nations COVID-19 Message

Proud of these creatives made with skill and love - a team effort that brought the team's creative, writing, and design skills together to deliver the United Nation's COVID-19 key message in a delightful but sober way. World Health Organization United Nations Talenthouse #CovidOpenBrief #UNCovid19Brief #FlattenTheCurve #AloneTogether #ViralKindness #StopTheSpread #Coronavirus #Covid19 Please share ...and stay safe! {!{wpv-view name='un-graphics-shares'}!} Help during the COVID-19 Crisis Let us help your business or organization with free and low cost options to help now and as we transition to a new business landscape. Find out more

By |2021-01-18T01:25:52-08:00May 6th, 2020|Categories: Community, Recent Projects|0 Comments

What can we learn from Sports Brands? The Packers – The Brand

A 2017 survey by the number-crunching website Five Thirty Eight found that the most beloved team in the NFL is not the Dallas Cowboys, or New England Patriots, the San Francisco 49ers or the New York Giants. It is, by a fairly wide margin, the team in the league’s tiniest market:  the Green Bay Packers. With a population of 105,0000–you could actually squeeze the entire city into the University of Michigan football stadium and still have seats left over– Green Bay clearly punches above its weight when it comes to its fan base. Is it the Green and Gold colors, or the 13 NFL championships dating back to 1929, or its legendary tough-as-nails coach, Vince Lombardi, who seemed sent [...]

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