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profitable growth by improved marketing skills and processes

Develop quality personal contacts: March "Task of the month"


Improve your business by another 10% by executing the "Decision makers" Task, task 2 of our 8 marketing tasks, which together should double your business...It tackles the problem of which individuals to promote to by a process which identifies the decision makers, their roles and values.

Like all, our tasks, this task splits into "The problem" and "The process to solve it"

The "Decision-makers" problem 

For the owner of a small business who has a technical background and no marketing training, there is a tendency to think (large) customers as <BIGCO>. They are not, they are just an organised(?) group of people.

Not only that:-

  • As big(=rich) business customers get "world class" they slim down and lose expertise.
  • That's good, because they are more open to buying from people like you.....
  • ....But it means that their decisions are increasingly not made on a sound basis of technical knowledge.
  • They start to buy more like the consumer market, based on peer group recommendation, attitudes and fashion.
  • So you need to identify the decision makers and their individual "values". ( In marketing speak: KCVs="Key customer values" )


The "Decision makers" process

 Try starting like this:-

  1. For your "segment" decide the key job titles in the decision making group. (eg: MD, Finance Director, IT Manager, Operations manager...whatever)
  2. For those roles decide if any of them have a typical decision making role, if any. (eg Decision maker, purchaser, user, blocker.) 
  3. Beware the blocker!
  4. Identify what is happening in their world:
    1. Identify the Trade Associations that your target companies are members of. Look at their web sites and identify their issues and events over the next year.
    2. Identify the Professional bodies each of your key decision makers are likely to be members of and the trade journals/web sites they are likely to read. Look at their web sites and identify their issues and events over the next year.
    3. Now try to write down their set of  KCVs ("key customer values" - remember?)
    4. Use this to draft a plan of potential "good" communications dates and messages. (This will be fully developed in Task 4: Marketing Mix - Promotion subtask)
    5. Also feed this information down into the "Prospects" task. Why? Because it will give you some good hooks for communications now, before you have finished the full promotional programme.

Click here to go to this task on our web site, with its helpful blue buttons for "hints", "tools", "textbook" and "services". (You need to be a registered user to see the pull-down lists under the buttons. Register here.)

Done it? Good! The next month you will be ready for the "Competitors" Task 3.

Remember, if you execute each task and improve your performance in each of the 8 areas by only 10%, then you will be on track to double your business...!

We hope this helps

Best regards

The Marketing Workspace support team