Factors That Determine the Marketing Design for a Business

There are many factors or elements that will determine what the marketing design of any business is. Such as the location of the market, demographics of the customers and their age, sex, purchasing power and preferences. But that’s not all. Other factors include the product or the service itself the business is offering and of course the competition. Then there are some dependent factors that are dependent on what the competition is doing and also the industry standards. For example, if there are trade shows and all your major competitors are putting up stalls, then you need to have a presence too. Even if you are not planning to sell from the show then also you need to be there just to have a presence.

Marketing Design And The Various Channels

Before a company can plan the channels, it needs to do an analysis as to what are the best channels to reach the customer given the positioning of the various factors. Then once the result of such an analysis is out, the business is in a position to take an informed decision. The next step is to decide on a budget for this.

The channels of marketing design include television/newspaper/magazine advertisements, billboards, direct mail, printed materials and brochures, participating in seminars/conferences/trade shows, coming out with press releases and hosting press conferences. There are others too such as “Point of Sale advertisement”, Cold Calling using the telephone, Viral Marketing and more. In the Internet age marketing design also has to ensure that the business has a web presence. And so the Internet should also be one of the channels using which the business needs to get closer to the customer.

While many companies (only those that are particularly big can afford this) do this internally, there are countless others that seek outside help of professionals. And helping them are the advertisement agencies, public relation houses and IT firms.

Marketing Design and Research

Research and analysis needs to be an integral part of marketing design. The guys who are in the marketing department need to be able to understand the trends and the issues, because based on this, the business can change quickly to adapt to a change in the market and consumer behavior. The opposite of this can be disastrous for the business.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.bigstrategies.co.uk

How will you find the right PR agency for your business?

Get together a team of professionals from your own company to select the agency that will work for your business. The team should ideally consist of a review team with staff members like the brand manager and the finance officer. Also include a couple of internal clients in the team for best results.

While choosing the PR agency, you need to be very clear about what you require from the agency. If you can articulate your demands properly, chances are that you will get a good agency for your business. Being clear about your goals will help you find the right agency.

Remember that your PR agency has to work along with your business. The agency will be vital in moulding the public opinion about your business. It will devise strategies for everything ranging from tactical execution to partnership building to media relations.

Thus, get to know a lot about the agency, about how well reputed and experienced it is before hiring it.

Be very clear about the kind of public relations help that you want. Always keep in mind the nature of your target audience and your prospective audience and then embark upon selecting the right kind of PR agency.

Get a clear idea of how the PR agency that you will choose wants its payments and what its rates are. The financial aspect, as you know, is a very important part of the whole deal.

Short listing:

Keeping in mind the things mentioned above, you can narrow down the list of your PR agency to about five firms. In fact, you can also have a look at the internet and shortlist about five public relations agencies from there.

Presentations by the Firms:

You can ask for presentations by the agencies so that you get an idea about what they can offer you and how the plan to improve your business. The presentation is something that will help you identify the potential of your PR agency. It will also help you meet people from the agency and this will be an opportunity to get to know the individuals whom you might be working with.

Starting the Relationship:

Once you select the PR agency, you need to strike the right chords and establish a good relationship with them. Get over and done with the formalities of document exchange and contract signing before you embark upon working together.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.bigstrategies.co.uk

In fact, there are numerous companies around the world that exist solely for contacting individuals over the telephone! The numbers indicate that there are thousands of people working for the telesales industry just in the United Kingdom. However, these telesales personnel strive hard to get good commissions owing to the fact that the basic pay of these firms is generally insufficient.

With the change in the world economy market and the nations all plunging ahead towards a fuel crisis, the number of sales men and women on the road is decreasing incredibly. This is also aided by the fact that communication through the telephone is becoming easier and cheaper, which makes telesales techniques very important.

Even postage costs are rather high and although the email is a good idea for communication, it lacks the element of personal contact. This is yet another reason behind the booming of telephone sales.

The sales persons included in the telemarketing firms have the drive to earn more money and thus work dedicatedly. The individuals working for telesales also make their best attempt to make the most of their talent.

Read on to know more about how you will make the most of telemarketing with great telesales techniques:

Openers The most important aspect of the entire call that your telesales executives makes is the opening. Generally, the individuals who receive the call run on a busy schedule, thus the person who is called might not be in a receptive mood. What happens often is that the calls irritate the person. Thus, the most vital part of the conversation is the opening where the telesales department worker needs to make an impact. If the initial moments of the conversation are able to interest the person called, the telephone call becomes a success. The opening, therefore, that makes the call or breaks the call. So follow the tips given below to ensure that the opening moment of your call strikes the right chord:

A good telesales caller will begin by politely introducing himself or herself and then the company on behalf of which they are making the call. This is one of the fundamentals of telesales techniques.

Try to say something that will immediately grab the attention of the person and engross him in a conversation. In fact, if the person can be convinced that he will benefit from the conversation, the telephone call is likely to become a success. Try to imagine yourself in the position of the customer. What would you like to hear? Once you can get this clear in your head, you will immediately know what the prospective client wants and how to make a call that will make your business a success.

Remember to make some impact with the opening line because it is the part that will determine whether the call will become a success or a failure. You need to construct the initial line such that it attracts the person being called. At the same time, it should be brief because the person on the other end will not give you a lot of time.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.bigstrategies.co.uk

Why would they do this?

These affiliates all know that with the hype of a huge launch, and the frenzy of emails sent by multiple marketers, people will often go to the search engine for more information regarding the product. By targeting specific terms, these affiliates hope to capitalise on the large amounts of free, (and more importantly targeted) traffic and drive them to their own sites and/or affiliate links.

There are many different ways you can create content to dominate the search engines, but Craig Beckta is one man who is very proficient at this type of practice.

With two recent high ticket launches (both for a $2,000 product) Craig was able to capture top 10 rankings in Google for related terms. The people searching on Google were all interested in the particular products and as a result of finding relevant information on his page, many then went on to purchase … through his affiliate link. This meant that he had earned the commission (typcially 50% or so of the $2,000 sales price).

Using these methods (which don’t require any financial expense) Craig was able to generate $6484 worth of sales in just one week for one particular product. While others were paying $5-10 for click using Google Adwords and hoping to make enough sales to cover their expenses, Craig sat back as all his traffic came in for free.

While this may sound impossible, it’s actually quite simple if you follow a specific formula. I would personally recommend that you stay away from spending large amounts of money on pay per click when large launches come around. The problem is that everyone is fighting to be at the #1 paid spot which results in people pushing the bids to ridiculous levels.

In the secret affiliate code, Craig divulges the exact methods behind his success and details a step by step plan that is designed for anyone, of any experience level to be able to follow. Instead of spending time on methods that don’t work (and don’t pay), it’s possible to focus on the methods that have shown to produce reliable and repeatable results. With new products being launched seemingly everyday, particularly in the internet marketing niche, this method provides a secure way to make money as an affiliate without having to have a large advertising budget. In fact, once you use the techniques to gain good positions in the search engines then you can leverage the efforts of every other marketer who is promoting the same product.

As they all email their lists, the interested prospects will inevitably go to Google for more information and that’s when they stumble across your pages peppered throughout the search engine listings.

For an in-depth secret affiliate code review and to find out what the real secret is, click the following link now: http://secretaffiliatecodereviews.com

People really complicate the entire process of dominating search engine marketing. It’s nowhere near as hard as most people think that it is and there are even some website owners that never even give the idea any time of day, but you’re going to start dominating it today.

I’m going to outline several key areas that you’ll need to focus on to become the powerhouse search engine marketer that I promised you and you’re going to need to do each and every one of them as soon as possible to dominate your market with your website, products, and services.

Choose keywords and keyword phrases that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that people will look for in your market. Try to find long tail keywords to add to your site because searchers that use long tail keywords are much more targeted traffic and that’s what you want coming to your site. Some great ideas for long tail keywords are phrases that start with “how can I”, “how do I”, and “how to” because the searchers are looking for a solution to a problem with those type of long tail keywords.

Make the content of your site match the keywords and keyword phrases that you’re targeting your site for. Don’t have your web site pages optimized for one set of keywords or keywords phrases and the content on your site contain completely different keywords and keyword phrases. That will hurt you in the long run and you’ll need to fix that immediately.

Take advantage of the power of pay-per-click advertising as often as you can and as often as you can afford it. Pay-per-click advertising can allow you to start dominating your market in a matter of minutes and drive highly targeted traffic to your site on the very same day.

Submit your web site to as many free and paid online article directories as you possibly can. Start with the free ones first and then start adding your site to the paid ones as you can afford it. This search engine marketing strategy will give you a search engine optimization edge that will see for months and months to come.

See? Those steps aren’t hard at all to do, are they? Most people simple don’t know about them and if they know about them, they just don’t understand the importance of them. But that won’t be you, now will it? You’ve just been armed with some of the most powerful search engine marketing information available and now it’s time for you to dominate your market with your keywords and keyword phrases, your content, your pay-per-click ads, and your web site directory submissions.

There’s a lot to learn with the search marketing game. Fortunately there is a way to earn money online making $100 a day within a matter of weeks and you can get the step by step guide for free. I sell it on my homepage for $19.95 but for a limited time I’m giving it away free of charge. Hurry though before it’s gone forever. Get it at http://www.make100perday.com/secret-page.html

The forum spamming is one of the most noticeable increases in this niche, any forum that has anything to do with making money lately has been so filled with self promotion that I can barely discern what is viable advice. This is unfortunate and results from major forums such as DigitalPoint as well as many smaller affiliate marketing forums allowing users to post more or less anything they want (I’ve even seen some that allow blatant pornographic advertising as long as it doesn’t have viruses). The definition of the word forum is “a public facility to meet for open discussion”, but when the information itself is taxed with self promotions those that wish to get their foot in the door cannot. Whenever I meet a new marketer that is asking where to find information I point him in the direction of a free ebook that I find, a forum, etc. but more and more these are becoming the targets of blatant advertising, the free exchange of information has ceased to be as the true information is guarded by those making large amounts of money from it.

The home business opportunity industry is one of the most essential as it is the gateway for a large portion of the newcomers into the internet marketing field. Through various ebooks, infomercials, and other media people are finding themselves entering into the field and from there they disperse into promoting whatever products it is that they like (and typically a bit of business opportunity promotion themselves). By contaminating the information that they receive when they enter the industry, it creates a self feeding loop of marketers that do not respect their customers, other affiliates, etc. which breeds more and more “black hat marketers”, email spammers, and other things which the world outside of our cocoon greatly discourages.

I am not saying that self promotion is necessarily a bad thing, but as a white hat marketer myself I feel that there are plenty of opportunities out there to make money in a legitimate manner without being a nuisance. By promoting white hat methods rather than black hat you will gain more respect in the industry and it will greatly increase the chances of you eventually making it big or reaping long term profits. I find it hard to describe my actual job to friends and family because of the recent trends online, not that I am ashamed, I simply mean that they do not comprehend that there is such thing as marketing without spamming, and that there are ways to make money without ripping people off. I hope that everyone in the industry can learn a lesson from this, give it a shot yourself and you will see that there are far more results to be had from white hat marketing when used properly.

James Clipp is an internet marketer that specializes in white hat article and bum marketing tactics, he is also the author of The Seven Day Millionaire. You can find his latest thoughts in his free ebook and newsletter which can be found here: Affiliate Marketing Guide.

You can sell books, you can be an affiliate marketer and you can write your own e-books. There are e-books that can help you learn to make money and there are books about various things that you can sell as an affiliate to help you make money. You can also sell your own money making secrets e-book or an e-book about some niche topic that people want to know about and then get your own affiliates to help you sell that book so you can make money. The downloadable digital book business is huge and can be very profitable. But there’s a big question here.

Should you pay to learn how to make money online?

Many people who warn of scams say that anything that is suggested online that will cost you money in order to make money and say that red flags should go up the moment anyone asks you to buy something. Is this true? Yes and No.

First of all, you can learn to make money online without spending money. You don’t need to buy a website or buy a money making secrets book or pay for SEO services. But, it can take a long time to assimilate all the knowledge you need to make that first dollar on the Internet. Buying information can help you with short cuts because other people are willing to share their secrets and their shortcuts that they’ve determined through their own trial, error and expense.

A question to ask yourself when trying to decide if you have to buy something to help you launch an online business is: Do you have time to learn from your mistakes? If you don’t, a book can be helpful. Also, if you’ve learned a base amount of knowledge on your own, buying some knowledge through a course or program could be a logical next step and an investment into your future income.

Second of all, buying the right book is what’s going to be the difference between feeling scammed and getting valuable information that can help you get started at working from home. How do you find out what is good and what’s mediocre and most importantly, how do you know what you should stay away from?

The answer here is reviews. Learn from people who have tried and failed and from people who have tried and succeeded. How do you do that? Visit Internet marketing forums and blogs as well as other online communities or sites that offer reviews of many products and services.

There are loads of books and programs out there that offer to help you such as StomperNet, TheWebReviewer, The Frustrated Affiliate, The Rich Jerk and more. Some programs are known as effective and cost a lot of money. Other programs are inexpensive and have had mixed reviews and there are programs that are free as well that can provide you with a great amount of information that you can use to launch your own online business.

Whether you’re getting into dropshipping, affiliate marketing, freelance copywriting or some other online business venture, the most important advice you can get is to do your homework and learn all you can about your chosen niche.

To learn about making money programs like the 7 Figure Secrets e-book and others, visit The WebReviewer; a great source for free information about making money online.

And while business may slow for some of us, if you are creative, a down economy creates opportunities for entrepreneurial businesses. For example, down economies create price sensitivity. Prospective clients who have been loyal to their existing service providers may reconsider working with an entrepreneurial company or small firm that has better rates.

It was exactly this type of economy that propelled me into my own law practice six years ago and, like in the last down market, I have recently seen opportunities open up to me that weren’t available a year ago.

According to sales expert, Adrian Miller, keeping your name at the top of your new and existing contacts’ minds is the best way to make sure you don’t miss out on any of these new opportunities. According to Miller, “marketing is all about staying on the grid.”

Most rainmakers, and especially professionals, are guilty of making a new contact, either through a networking event, golf or lunch, and then have no follow up system in place to stay in touch. And while it’s great that you are “out there” having meetings, without a follow up strategy in place, your return on the time, effort and possibly expense you invested in taking that meeting is limited. The people you meet with may not know of (or need themselves) the services you provide at the time that you meet them. You want to make sure that you stay at the top of their mind so when the need arises, you’re the person who wins the referral.

For her own business, Miller says that for her to keep a pipeline of prospective clients large enough to generate the revenues she aspires to achieve, she needs to make a minimum of 50 touches a day, which includes people she meets networking, at speaking events, and communications with clients and prospects.

But according to Adrian, your point of contact should never be a “hey, just touching base” email or call. Miller says that these types of correspondence are self serving, add no value to your clients and you become the annoying guy or gal whose email and calls get ignored. Says Miller, “you win business because you equate to an improvement to a situation the prospective client is dealing with.” “To do this your communications must offer value to your prospect or referral source.”

Adrian had 8 easy tips to stay in front of your prospects with value-add communications:

1. Be a Connector. You can be valuable to your contacts and business prospects by connecting them to people who can help solve their problems or increase their business. These can be introductions between clients, prospects, vendors and referral sources. Adrian suggests making a commitment to connecting five people a day. Miller uses her subway commutation time to make these connections via her PDA. If you are known for making connections that lead to new business or other opportunities, then you can be sure your emails will get opened.

2. Send an Article. A touch point can be as simple as cutting out or photocopying an article that may be of interest to one or more of your contacts. Adrian says she walks around with a stack of her business envelopes and if she’s in a waiting room, she’ll take an article out of a magazine and send it to a client or prospect that’s of interest.

3. Send a Link. If you’ve just spoken to a client and found out he or she is going on a vacation to a special destination, or that they have a particular interest, Miller suggests using Google to find an article or something of interest to your contact and sending the link to the article in your follow up message.

4. Newsletters. Not much to say here, most everyone knows the drill. The key is to make the commitment to getting the newsletter out consistently. Miller suggests hiring a freelance writer to write the copy for your newsletter. You can have a sit-down with a freelance writer, give them five bullet points about an article idea, which they will then turn into a 1,500 word article in less than a week. Do this for three topics once per quarter and you have your newsletter copy for a year. I have colleagues who have successfully used Elance (www.elance.com) to find affordable copy writers.

5. Take Them to Lunch. Don’t just plan a lunch with one person, schedule a lunch for two or three people (plus you) who have synergies. Same concept as being a connector, except you are sharing a meal together. Miller sets her lunches up a few weeks in advance, and if you’re lucky enough to be invited, you don’t miss it. This is something you can train your assistant do for you. All you need to do is provide your assistant with names, and she can schedule dates a few weeks in advance. A good time saving tip is to pick steady venues located in different strategic areas.

6. Invite Them to an Event. Like the lunches, invite two or three people who will have synergies. Miller suggests that this is a good opportunity to be creative and connect with your clients on a personal level. Adrian is a member of MoMA and gets invites to exhibit openings. She regularly invites her clients and referrers. Recently, one of my clients invited me and a colleague to go to the pre-opening event at the New York International Car Show. It was an awesome experience that we are still talking about. Also, Miller suggests not being afraid to take your prospects and clients to places where your competition is. According to Miller, your clients will meet your competition anyway; many clients will actually be impressed that you’re not afraid of your competition.

7. Get Digital. Yes, websites are important and unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know this. But web marketing has gone to a new level, and Miller suggests building your online profile through professional social networking sites like Linked-In or Corporate Facebook. I know many professionals who are using these sites to effectively find staff, investors and clients.

8. Keep Clients Happy. Miller suggests that your clients are your biggest (and least expensive) sales force and, in fact, promoted her elder law attorney and IP attorney at our seminar without us even realizing it. Do whatever you can to keep your clients in your fan club.

Adrian also gave me her thoughts on a number of other common marketing tools:

Blogs: She likes them. It’s free, easy to post to and raises your online presence in the search engines.

Newspapar ads. Cold on them for small business. Ads have zero shelf life according to Miller, and are expensive. Unless you’ve got the budget for “image advertising” (think Tiffany’s ad on page two of the Times every day), or a direct response call to action like a free report, it’s not the best use of a limited marketing budget.

Radio Ads. She’s lukewarm. Radio requires consistency and frequency. Plus you need to have a system in place to qualify inquiries. Miller suggests carefully tracking results and return-on-investment.

Consistency. According to Miller, marketing is not an event (a workshop, a one time article, a networking lunch), but a consistent effort that’s part of a program or system that needs to be part of each workday. As the owner of two businesses, I know how tricky it can be to commit to marketing programs over the long haul. Miller suggests scheduling an appointment with yourself, and sticking to it like it’s an appointment with a client. In his book, Ultimate Sales Machine, Chet Holmes gives a straightforward approach to time management. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in marketing. I carry it around with me everywhere.

Metrics. In terms of metrics, any marketing or sales professional will tell you that only what you measure will improve. Without tracking every last detail of your marketing efforts, you have no idea what’s producing a return on your investment in time. This doesn’t have to be super technical, a simple excel spreadsheet will work.

Accountability. Finally, if you are a one man army or “the boss”, accountability is critical. Marketing requires most entrepreneurs to get out of their comfort zone, and they’ll find any excuse to avoid doing it. If you don’t have someone at your company to keep you accountable to the marketing program you develop, hire a coach or a consultant to hold your feet to the fire. More than any other service she provides, I believe Adrian’s clients get the most out of the accountability she provides for them.

Stephen Furnari is a business lawyer with Furnari Levine LLP. To learn how to save thousands in your business by avoiding costly legal mistakes, get our FREE mini e-course 7 DEADLY MISTAKES THAT COST ENTREPRENEURS THOUSANDS go to http://www.furnarilevine.com/legal_mistakes.html.

Medical billing is a very tedious and frustrating part of any medical practice. Coding alone can take a very long time, and filling out the paperwork can be just as long. It can be maddening if the insurance company rejects your claims and you have to start all over again. Add to that the existing claims that need to be filed and the person doing the work may find themselves in need of medication. It is a responsibility that most office personnel decline.

Many small practices feel that they cannot afford the cost of medical billing services, however when you consider the time it takes to fill out the forms by staff members, the time it takes for the insurance company to accept or reject the claim and then send the check, you are talking about several months with no income into the medical practice. For some, it is a financial burden that can cause great hardship. Using this type of service is very cost effective for any medical practice.

When a medical practice bills insurance companies on their own, they have to manually code and send each claim to the insurance company where they are combined with millions of other claims. They sit in piles on the desks of overworked employees waiting to be processed. It can take several weeks to several months for a claim to be processed manually.

If the claim is rejected it is sent back to the practice where the whole process starts all over again.

There are many advantages to using a medical billing company. Before a claim can be processed, it has to be coded. Coding the claim is done quickly and efficiently by specially trained professionals. Because all claims submitted electronically, more than ninety percent of all claims are accepted. Each claim is followed from the time it is submitted to the time it is paid. The repayment time for claims is reduced to a couple of days instead of several months.

Medical billing companies are available to every type of medical service. No matter the size of the practice, this type of service can benefit everyone.

Perhaps the greatest benefit is that the physician is able to reduce office expenses while being able to spend more time with patients. They know that their financial status is taken care of and that the insurance rebates will be forthcoming. This is very important to all practices, however those who have small medical practices find it extremely cost effective because they depend on the rebate to meet the financial obligations.

Physicians who have debated whether or not to use a billing service have found that by using it has given them the freedom to enjoy other things instead of sitting at a desk filling out paperwork. They have seen an increase in their funds and are better able to meet their financial obligations faster and easily.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firms. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing services

Of course, JFK was an outstanding orator, but then so was Stevenson (by reputation, at least - I have never heard a recording of him). So what made the difference between the two in terms of their ability to inspire action? One commentator, in discussing Stevenson, put it this way: “His speeches were isolated works of art rather than stations on a line along which he wished to travel.” So, in my own words I’d say that when Stevenson spoke he enjoyed the moment, but when JFK spoke he never forgot that he was trying to get people to vote for him!

What on earth does all of this have to do with marketing? It’s quite simple really: We must never forget while marketing that we are trying to get people to do business with us! If we do, we might leave a room full of people thinking: ‘How well he spoke’ and then turning to other things. Has that ever happened to you? It certainly has to me! I’m going to take this opportunity to share a story with you that was related by a friend and colleague, and I choose his experience rather than my own for two reasons: Firstly, he is a consummate professional whom I would never have imagined capable of such a blunder (where my own are depressingly regular) and secondly, because the circumstances make it all the more painful and therefore memorable. So, to the story!

My colleague is a Life-Coach who specialises in working with actors and the like, and is good enough to have been invited to address a group of three hundred recent and past graduates at Giulliard (the premier school of acting in the world, in case you haven’t heard of it). By his own accounting, my colleague gave a ‘kick-ass’ presentation extolling the virtues of working with a coach and the resultant benefits for the career and life of the coachee. When he had finished, he wrapped up by saying something like: ‘There are a pile of my business cards on the table by the door. If you’re interested, take one and call me.’ Guess how many calls he got? Yup - zero ! Now I’ve seen this person speak - and he has a rare gift - so it wasn’t because he didn’t speak well. It was because for a crucial moment he lost sight of the fact that he was trying to get people to do business with him.

So what should he have done? What should you and I be doing each and every time we talk to a prospect, either one-on-one or as a group? Simply this: Take them by the hand and lead them to the next station on the line which leads to a sale.

Let’s illustrate: You’ve met a potential client at a networking event and in a few minutes of conversation you’ve determined that there is a potential fit for your services. You may try giving the prospect your card and suggesting they call you, but what is your likelihood of receiving that call? As an alternative, why not ask for their card and call them? That’s better because you’re in control of the next action, but there is still room for improvement.

Why not try this next time you’re in that situation? ‘Sally, I sense that there is some opportunity for synergy in what we’ve discussed, don’t you agree?’ If they do, then you say: ‘May I have your business card? I’m going to send you an article that I wrote on that very subject. It will be in your Inbox by midday tomorrow.’ You now have a clear path for this prospect to the next step in your marketing process. (You DO have a marketing process, Right?!)

Of course, if this is a prospect you’re already familiar with and who you believe already has a level of trust in your credibility, you may feel that sending an article is insufficient progress. So you could carry on with: ‘Do you have your diary handy? I’d like to buy you a coffee and explore this area of opportunity further. How does 10 o’clock Thursday work for you?’ Wow! An appointment for a sales call! That was too easy!

You may be saying: ‘I couldn’t do that! It would be an imposition!’ Would it really? Why do you think that prospect came to that event? Why did they share their situation with you and then give you their card, if it wasn’t because they were looking for help addressing their issue? Another colleague put it this way (he’s Australian and doesn’t mince words!): ‘Most people are walking around with their umbilical cord in their hand, looking for a place to plug it in.’ A graphic image - but ultimately an accurate one. So you would be doing both yourself and your prospect a disservice if you didn’t make sure they got plugged-in to your value-adding services as soon as possible!

But it won’t happen unless you take them by the hand and say: ‘Let us march!’