Hiring A Marketing Company

Choosing the right marketing company can be a daunting task. The problem with the selection process is that every branding, advertising and graphic design company says they are a marketing agency.

This of course is not the case. To be a true marketing company they must focus on one thing. Marketing. Marketing is not about media buys, logo designs and direct mail. It is about developing your clients brand and positioning in the market place. Inherently that is where advertising agencies, and graphic design firms fall flat on their face.

A marketing company should be about long term strategic thinking concerning their clients brand. Some of the strategies and tactics a marketing firm should take is branding research, brand planning, brand marketing, brand image and internet branding.

How to choose the right marketing company? First do a Google search from the phrase marketing company or agency. Then start calling the top results of your Google internet search. These companies have done the things necessary to appear in the rankings or Google has put value on these firms. If it is in the top results they are most likely a good company to work with.

Now that you have narrowed your selection down to say 3-5 agencies start setting up conference calls or meetings. It is nice to hire a local company but by no means is it necessary. In the internet world we are in today dealing with someone in another state is pretty par for the course. Do not dismiss them just because they are far away.

Be prepared for your first conference call or meeting. If they sound like they are really an ad agency, or graphic design company dismiss them immediately. You are looking for a true marketing firm. You will know right away as ad agencies will push media spending, graphic design firms will push, well, graphic design work.

Ask them what they do to develop a brand identity and positioning. Follow that up with questions about internal branding and how to go about setting up an internal strategy for brand development. Ask to see samples or case studies of each of these elements. A real marketing agency will be able to talk intelligently about internal branding.

Branding research is another area that you may want to focus on. Marketing research and branding research are two very different things. When you conduct brand research it is more about understanding how customers and prospects feel about your product or company versus quantitative approaches that marketing companies take.

Finally go with your gut instinct. The gut usually tells the story.

February 8th, 2010 by admin | No Comments »

How To Lose Strong Sales Candidates



Hiring salespeople is a daunting task in that they are good actors with the ability to project more skills than they actually possess. Bad salespeople can masquerade long enough to get through the hiring process and onto your payroll. Selecting strong salespeople requires certain disciplines.

Most sales managers were hired to grow profitable revenue at their company. Hiring new salespeople is an ancillary task they complete as needed (which hopefully is not often). This infrequency means that these sales managers are not well-schooled in the art of sales interviewing. Consequently, mediocre or weak salespeople are hired as a result of the sales manager’s bad hiring habits. There are 3 common habits that cause company’s to lose strong sales candidates.

DIVINING

Resumes are a difficult topic to discuss in that they are needed in the sales hiring process, but often times they are grossly overvalued within that process. A candidate’s resume reveals his or her previous positions and little more than that.

Resumes are embellished. It is fair to say that most hiring managers have encountered this truth. Therefore, any stated successes have to be taken with a grain of salt. Sales successes should be recorded on the resume in data-driven statements (top 5% of the company, 125% of quota, etc.). Yet those data-driven statements still need to be qualified for context to understand them fully. This qualifying occurs only talking to the candidate.

The other issue is a less detailed resume. The fact that a candidate has not created a 4 page work history is not grounds for disqualification. Although a detailed resume often is more desirable than a minimalist resume, candidates should not be sorted on this criteria.

Hiring managers get caught in this trap and attempt to divine more information than is contained in the resume. The resume does not tell the entire story. In fact, it only tells a small part of the story. Granted, some resumes will provide enough information to reject a completely misaligned candidate. However, no resume provides enough information to finely filter a candidate’s abilities.

DOMINATING

Face-to-face interviews are the backbone of most hiring processes even though vast majorities of hiring managers have never been trained to run an effective sales interview. Just imagine, the pivot point of their process relies upon an unrefined manager’s skill. This reason explains why so many sales hires are based on a manager’s “gut” or intuition regarding the candidate.

This inherent weakness is exacerbated by a hiring manager who covers his or her abilities by dominating the conversation. The interview deteriorates into a data dump where the hiring manager talks for >75% of the interview. This percentage does not allow the hiring manager to see the sales candidate in action. Many times the candidate has done an excellent job in using questions to control the discussion and learn important information about the company. This is also known as qualifying and many hiring managers miss it because they were too busy talking about tangential topics.

One subtle facet of dominating is the assumption that this opportunity is the candidate’s best, or only, option. A manager who has invested his or her time in talking through most of the interview often deems that time as influential. Perhaps, but the larger risk is the lack of knowledge about the sales candidate’s abilities, fit to the position and interest in continuing the process. Remember, hiring is a two-way street. The candidate is interviewing the company simultaneously.

DELAYING

Hiring the right salesperson is a critical decision for any company so it is a decision not to be taken lightly. Yet, delaying is the most detrimental error a hiring company can make. An inordinate delay produces two unintentional negative effects.

First, the candidate often has an initial energy that occurs when he or she first discusses the position with the potential employer. There is excitement in the opportunity and the candidate, if interested, wants to maintain that level.

The quickest way to suck the life out of the interaction is to delay your hiring process. The candidate typically assumes that he or she is not the top candidate. Once they reach that point, they tend to look for another employment opportunity. If they find one, the excitement of that new possibility will displace the delayed opportunity. The candidate now becomes far more difficult to hire.

Second, you present an image, accurate or not, of a company that struggles with decisions. In sales this can be fatal. Closing a complex or customized sale requires many decisions made at the appropriate time to keep the sales cycle moving.

Companies that take an inordinate amount of time to move through a hiring process (i.e. make decisions) cast a long shadow of doubt in the candidate’s eyes. If the company appears tentative in the hiring process, the candidate extends that trait to the culture. If the culture isn’t conducive to timely selling, the sales candidate will become cautious about the company. It is at this point that the candidate will attempt to delay the process which is a red flag to the hiring company.

Divining, dominating and delaying are 3 of the most costly errors a company can commit in attempting to hire strong salespeople. Each one derails an effective hiring process by removing objectivity, reducing information and creating doubt. Avoid these pitfalls and you will vastly improve your company’s ability to hire strong salespeople.

Every time.

February 7th, 2010 by admin | No Comments »

Adsense Marketing Business



AdSense, on the other hand, allows publishers that they ads appear like texts only on relevant web sites that have similar target audience like their business. You must treat Google Adsense as a real business. Google Ad words/Adsense – Advertise your business on Google. Currently, there is a special offer with a number of bonuses including a whole network of associate websites, already set up and hosted for you, an absolute Adsense business and a monthly newsletter.

You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail – or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business. Before we begin let me point out that Google Adsense isn’t a game or a get rich quick scheme it’s a legitimate business, so approach it as such. People place adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. Say you build your business model on creating hundreds of sites and earning big money by putting Google Adsense ads on the pages.

Ok, if you decided to have a full fledged e-commerce website for business, filled with good selection of products, jointed up with other links …let me share with you, it is not an ideal site for Google AdSense Program. Above all these, you will need a collection of good resources to assist you in your business as an adsense publisher. Google AdSense, affiliate programs, joint ventures with other, none competing Business, as well as the sale of your own products or services has the potential to multiply your income. During the six months or so that we went through this I spoke to numerous business coaches and others who have been seduced by the hype and wasted their time optimizing their web sites for Google’s AdSense, which only served to get people they wanted to do business with to leave them for their competitors.

In other words, an continual non-stop drive to keep on building websites and treating the business as strictly one of providing workable content sites for publishing adsense. To get into the Adsense marketing business and start earning some good cash, ask yourself. For example, if you are interested in building adsense content sites, you should either find a thriving adsense publisher who is willing to help you out, or join a network of adsense publishers that can provide the help you need in order to see regular improvements in your business.They can use them to promote their member marketing business, or they can place Google Adsense ads right into the text.

It is possible to construct a more or less viable business model around AdSense. It is possible to construct a more or less viable business model around AdSense. Nike traditional site monetization models like Google Adsense, Amazon, and a host of popular affiliate-type programs, Photo max is structured as a multi-level or network marketing business which will have many folks turning away before exploring its real potential. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail – or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business.

Ok, if you decided to have a full fledged e-commerce website for business, filled with good selection of products, jointed up with other links with more selections…let me share with you, it is not an ideal site for Google AdSense Program. Above all these, you will need a compilation of good resources to assist you in your business as an adsense publisher. Google AdSense, colleague programs, joint ventures with other, none competing Business, as well as the sale of your own products or services has the potential to multiply your income.

February 4th, 2010 by admin | No Comments »