On Tuesday this week Intelligent Office of Alexandria hosted a CEO-level seminar titled “Rev Up Your Revenue – the Six Top Mistakes that CEOs make to derail revenue growth.” Steve Kraner of Sandler Sales Institute and Kim Guarino of Evolve Marketing delivered the seminar. Steve presented the first three “mistakes” from a sales perspective, and Kim presented numbers 4, 5, and 6. Since we’ve hosted Steve Kraner several times in the past year, I thought I would focus on mistakes 4, 5, and 6 as presented by Kim Guarino.
Mistake #4: Failure to Focus: Kim explained that while small companies tend to want to be everything to everyone, in fact the marketing efforts that work the best are very focused on a market or product. She recommends spending more to reach VIP prospects, and focusing more on a few high impact marketing campaigns.
This mistake definitely hit home for me. As a provider of virtual office services, we serve clients including attorneys, government contractors, associations, medical providers, coaches, realtors, financial planners, and various others. It’s hard to make the commitment to focus on one or a few market segments as our various services – office space, receptionist services, and professional address and mail handling – work for so many different client types.
Kim gave an example of a general practice law firm she worked with that happened to be well known for their detailed work in property law. When they began to focus all of their marketing efforts on branding themselves as “the property law firm” in Virginia, all aspects of their business got a boost as a result.
Mistake #5: Failure to Instill a Sense of Urgency: Kim suggests finding clever ways to instill a sense of urgency with offers. Echoing the earlier words of Steve Kraner, she talked about the importance of talking about customer pain in a story format.
At Intelligent Office of Alexandria, many of our ads for our virtual office services focus on the pain of the small business owner – juggling many tasks at once, trying to convey a professional image while working from home, trying to convey the same credibility as much larger competitors, holding important meetings in noisy public spaces like coffee shops. We regularly run limited time offers, like a recent promo to try a month of receptionist services for just $49.
Kim cited one of the seminar attendees, ROCS Jobs, for a clever and memorable campaign they did last year around March Madness time.
Mistake #6: Failure to Build Momentum and Synergy: It seems like a cliché in marketing, but Kim assured us that people need to be exposed to a campaign at least three times before it begins to sink in. She suggests that marketers take a very strategic approach to campaigns, planning them well out in advance, using a thoughtful and consistent approach to the message, and seeing them all the way through. Repetition brings familiarity and results in the form of an S curve. The tendency for most small business owners is to look for immediate results, and if none are achieved, abandoning the effort.
Kim talked about a client that put together a series of mailings to their most important prospects (see Mistake #4), which culminated with a dimensional direct mail piece. (They sent something other than a letter.) No surprise – they achieved great results.
My overall take-away from the seminar, specifically from the marketing portion of the seminar, was that it’s important to think strategically about marketing and to develop an annual plan and see it through. Please join us for future seminars – check us out at http://alexandria.intelligentoffice.com.
Intelligent Office of Alexandria Blog 
Posted on January 27, 2011 by mwhitaker12
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