Why go to the trouble and effort of bringing your customers big, creative deals when the batting average for such deals hovers well below .100? Why expend the creativity, vision and ambition to develop these "Black Swan" deals if the vast majority of your business will flow in through normal transactional channels? To really understand the rationale, you need to factor in The Downstream Effect. The sales organization that consistently pushes smart ideas up to the customer is winning even when it doesn't land the sexy 'Black Swan' deals. It's getting regular access to primary upstream decision makers and self-branding along the way. When well-executed, the process itself has value to the marketer. They learn and grow along the way -- they enjoy the process -- and they subtly but measurably reward companies who make the effort. Here's a checklist to follow if you want to prepare your sales team to bring quality ideas to clients and enjoy the benefits of doing so...
The following is excerpted from a Drift column published in October of 2008, when we were staring right into the jaws of the current recession. As things start to brighten a bit, the core theme seems just…
The more I get to know about the web, the more it looks like the world. Take for instance the attitudes of media owners, ad networks and enabling technologies, which in the end starts to sound an awful…
When I started in the advertising business 29 years ago, my boss at the agency (yes, I worked at an ad agency) sent me to ride on the back of a beer truck and deliver kegs to restaurants for our client…
I've long been in favor of the IAB taking a more muscular and vocal position in the online privacy debate. Given the blink-of-an-eye in which Congress gave life to the National Do Not Call Registry ("...Telesales…
Today marks the soft launch of the web's oldest brand new blog, The Drift. I've written and published The Drift since March 2001 as an e-mail newsletter, and have now recreated it as an influential and…
The common flea is apparently quite a jumper. The little guys travel by leaping from one surface or host to another, often reaching pretty significant heights. That is, until they are confined to a…
Picture a rather odd and cumbersome looking bird demurely dragging a mottled clump of tail feather through the dust as it crosses your path. This metaphorical bird represents the present and future of…
Two years ago I gave speeches at CIMA and iMedia events on something I called "The Oreo Doctrine," a model for understanding the distinctions and divisions in the world of online advertising and marketing.…
Maybe I'm late to the game, but I've been fact-finding and mulling over many questions related to social media and social networking over the past weeks. I've also followed the truly silly media debates…
Picking up on the theme from the March 13th edition of The Drift, I continue here in "Profiling the New Seller;" that is, describing the very new skill sets and orientations of tomorrow's digital and…
This week's Drift was to have been part three of our series on "Fusion Selling" but that will have to wait. I mean, the world doesn't implode every week, ya know?
Turns out Bob Garfield, the information…