Archive for August 2002
From High Level Values to Features and Benefits: Nadim Shehayed of IAR Systems
IAR Systems, a Swedish company with operations in the US and around the globe, is providing products and services to make developing embedded systems easier. While the embedded system market as a whole is growing at 13% per year, IAR grew 45% last year to $14 million. Successes like IAR’s in generating revenue in high-tech…
Read MoreThe New C-Level Executive
Getting a handle on the customer moves to a new corporate hierarchy: The Chief Customer Officer, the outgrowth of “customer centric” initiatives. The question is, trend or fad? Evidence supports a trend. Just as ten to fifteen years ago the CIO (chief information officer) and CTO (chief technology officer) positions started to populate corporate officialdom,…
Read MoreImproved Market Conditions or Double Dip Recession?
Variances in fortune telling continue to be told. On one hand, Forester reports an 2.3% increase on IT spending during 2002 over 2001 according to a Business Technographics North America Benchmark Study of 1001 Senior Business and Technology Managers. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal reports declining prices for the semiconductor equipment industry,…
Read MoreCSA Explains… XML – Presentation Synopsis
XML has been lauded as the language that will enable networked computing to become a full reality. It is the extensible mark up language of the Web and machine-to-machine communication with embedded meta-data to describe the informational content of its own message package. Any language that is self interpreting and therefore platform independent, creates a…
Read MoreDriving Repeat Business Part 5: Wrap-up and Next Steps
Business-to-Business companies are increasing their focus on repeat and referral business. In this final installment on driving repeat business, we will review the series and highlight some questions for further research and discussion. One of the most important issues to address in embarking on a repeat/referral business marketing plan is how it will fit within…
Read MoreDriving Repeat Business Part 4: Newsletters
Business-to-Business companies are increasing their focus on repeat and referral business. While this may represent a sound strategy, talk is cheap but action is the key. In this fourth installment on driving repeat business, we will explore the use of Newsletters to drive repeat or referral business. Company sponsored email newsletters as a marketing tactic…
Read MoreDriving Repeat Business Part 3: Customer Group Meetings
Business-to-Business companies are increasing their focus on repeat and referral business. While this may represent a sound strategy, the bird’s eye view often looks different from the ground. In this third installment on driving repeat business, we will explore the tactic of using Customer Executive Meetings and User Group Meetings. Customer Executive Meetings and User…
Read MoreDriving Repeat Business Part 2: Direct Contact Tactic
Business-to-Business companies are increasing their focus on repeat and referral business. While this may represent a sound strategy, the devil is in the details. In this second installment on driving repeat business, we will explore the direct contact tactic. Directly contacting past customers is one of the most readily identifiable methods of communicating with a…
Read MoreDriving Repeat Business Part 1: Critical Success Factors
Lather, Rinse, Repeat…Lather, Rinse, Repeat…Lather, Rinse, Repeat… We don’t just buy one bottle of shampoo in our lifetime. Likewise, we shouldn’t expect our customers to buy just once from our companies. Business-to-Business companies are increasing their focus on repeat and referral business. In many instances, this is a sound strategy in which to embark, but…
Read MoreFrom “Techno Message” to “Business Message”: Developing a Return-on-Investment Sales Tool Internally
“We can’t just state ‘our product will let you do more.’ Instead, we have to go the next step and say by doing X with our product, you can save/make more money. This is a difficult statement to substantiate, but it’s what we get paid to do.” Tim Smith, PhD, “Selling Messages“, March 22, 2002.…
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