IDEAS FORWARD BLOG | PrairieSkyGroup

My 100th Blog Post! Should You Blog?

A lot of marketers and companies ask themselves if they should start blogging in order to generate leads. It’s the new conventional wisdom. So there are millions of business blogs. And there are thousands of marketing blogs, some great, but most very dusty.

I started the Prairie Sky blog as an experiment. I had some grandiose ideas, a few ulterior and selfish motives. I wanted to see if I could create 25 posts with a small investment of time. I wanted to test the conventional wisdom that you need a blog to generate traffic and leads. None of these turned out to be so important as I anticpated, and I keep asking myself, why I blog?

Ten Topics for New Year’s Reflections

So, if you don’t make New Year’s resolutions, here is a list of items from my posts during the year that might make good subjects for reflection.

New Year’s Resolutions?

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. The way I figure it, if you don’t have the discipline to decide to do something or not during the year, then a resolution is not going to help. Resolutions are mostly about things that weren’t important enough to begin with or we would have done them. Indeed, most of us abandon by February, what we resolved to do on January 1.

On the other hand, I do believe in spending time reflecting on your marketing, sales or personal plans…

Prairie Sky Book Review – The Trust Edge

The Trust Edge by David Horsager is a compelling look at how trust and lack of trust can impact an organization. Horsager turns what might be a soft skill into a hard skill by giving the reader conrete steps to build an organization basewd on trust.

Think Like a Client

In Norman Maclean’s, A River Runs Through It, he tells a story of two brothers growing up in rural Montana and fishing the Big Blackfoot River in Montana. (The book is a lyrical and beautiful story, and I highly recommend the book over the movie.) In one passage, the older brother, Norman, after watching his younger brother Paul catch an enormous fish and being swept into the rapids, remembers….

Do You Have Customers or Clients?

I bought a pair of hiking poles from REI for a trek across the Grand Canyon. I used them on a couple of warm up runs in the high desert on dusty hikes when I discovered that the locking mechanisms began failing. Was I a disappointed customer or a disappointed client? Marketers need to think about this question, “Do we have clients or customers?”

Genetically Test for Great Sales People!

For years, VPs of Sales and CEOs have been looking for the magic bullet to help select the best sales people, the top 20 percent that bring in 80% of their sales. There are minor industries built on evaluating and testing sales candidates. Including recruiters, testing, and the risk of making the wrong decision, hiring a great sales person can be an expensive proposition.

So with advances in genetic testing, why can’t we test for the genes that make great sales people? Now you can.

Step 1: Admit You Have a Problem – Presentations Don’t Work

Many companies still rely on the “presentation” as a sales tool. But a couple recent studies may indicate a major problem with this approach.

CEOs: Call Your Company – Access to Experts Part II

The other day I needed to get a quote on a service costing tens of thousands of dollars. I visited a website of a well known vendor, spent five minutes trying to find the information I needed, then looked for the contact us page. The “Contact Us” page had no phone number, only an email form. Looking further, I finally found a number and called. VPs of Marketing, what will your CEO find when he calls his own company?

Trend Spotting: Access to Experts

Recently I wanted a piece of information from a web company for a service in which I was interested. This time I really didn’t want to “read the whitepaper,” so I called for a “demo.” The resistance I had was that this would begin a sales cycle, yet all I wanted was information.