It seems so obvious.
If that team member has a Blackberry and a company car; if they call on customers and help resolve their problems; then they must be a salesperson, right?
Well, maybe not!
Sure, that’s the way things have traditionally been done: the person in the field is automatically the salesperson. But, in many cases, today, […]

We don’t want salespeople writing proposals, simple as that!
However, freeing them from proposal generation can be more difficult than it initially appears.  The problem is not with minor or major opportunities — there’s an obvious approach for each.  It’s the ones in the middle that are the issue!
Let’s consider the extremes first.
Minor opportunity
If the opportunity is […]

We have disbelievers in our midst!
Among our loyal flock of AdVerb subscribers there are those who profess to embrace our principles but who flout at least one of them conspicuously.
I’m referring to those executives who claim to be Relationship-centric Marketing aficionados but who, nonetheless, invest their scarce promotional dollars in golf days, boxes at sporting […]

Wastepaper baskets, the world over, are full of them.

In fact, if there were ever a competition to judge the most self-indulgent of all business communications, the newsletter would have serious competition from only the corporate video for first place!

A tragedy, when you consider that newsletters have the potential to be by far the most valuable […]

At best, most marketing communications are irrelevant to most of their recipients, most of the time.

At worst, these communications run the risk of damaging the very relationships they are supposed to be cultivating.

The problem is, from a marketing department’s perspective; every relationship looks like a sales opportunity.

Accordingly, marketing (and sales) people tend to design communications […]