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Welcome to September! We hope you're as enthusiastic about the end of
summer as we are...not that we have anything against sunshine and warm
weather, but we've talked to a lot of business people, and many expect the
fall and fourth quarter to offer a healthier business climate.
As business picks up, now is the best time to invest in your business.
While your competitors are still weak and your customers need assistance,
you can build a far stronger position in the market.
Effective Pipeline Management - You Cannot Manage What You Do Not Measure
Too much marketing and sales management are done by gut feel...marketers
carrying out various initiatives because they've been successful with these
initiatives in the past, or perhaps because someone else recently had
success with a similar initiative.
Similarly, many sales managers hold their staff accountable to the only
obvious measures of success - the weekly, monthly or quarterly bookings.
This approach to pipeline management is guaranteed to fail, as it:
provides no feedback on the effectiveness of marketing or sales programs
focuses on external measures rather than behavior
is too subjective
The savvy marketer runs marketing campaigns as a series of science
experiments - identifying variables, forming hypotheses, and running a
series of tests to determine how to achieve the optimal result.
In this manner, the marketer can invest in programs that provide the
highest marketing ROI. Our article Effective Pipeline Management - You
Cannot Manage What You Do Not Measure goes into further detail on the
appropriate variables to measure and the issues faced by both marketers and
sales management in implementing a formal, proven process to efficiently
growing sales.
Manage your pipeline more effectively!
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Networking Alert! |
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September is shaping up to be a busy month for networking, so you'll
want to plan ahead. We've identified several great networking
opportunities in Boston over the next couple of weeks, including:
- MIMC Roundtable discussion - What Every Business Needs to Know
to Grow in Today's Economy. Tuesday, September 10th (morning).
Representatives from some of the world's leading consulting and
integration firms will offer a short term survival guide that provides
insight into what every company should be doing now to tend to their
business while also offering a fast forward look at what business and
technology objectives should be on the agenda of corporate boardrooms
in 2003.
- WPI Venture Forum: Massachusetts' Technology: What State is it
in? Tuesday, September 10th, evening. The kick-off meeting of the
WPI Venture Forum will feature Michael G. Olivieri, publisher of the
Boston Business Journal (BBJ), who will provide his perspective on the
technological climate in the Commonwealth.
- JTBN: Hot Technology Companies - The Next Big Wave of
Technologies. Tuesday, September 17th. Join JTBN and the panel
moderator, Jack Derby, of Derby Management, for some great networking
and the opportunity to discuss the hot upcoming technologies.
Learn more about these events and others.... » |
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A quick networking tip |
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The early bird gets the worm.
And in networking this is particularly true...show up on time for an
event and you'll miss all of the early networking. You're not really
going to the event for the content anyway, so why show up just
before the program starts?
Show up early for the event, and you'll get a chance to meet
all of the important people - the meeting hosts, other early birds, and
perhaps the speaker or panelists. You'll also be able to play host as
other people arrive, and you'll have your choice of seats!
It's a simple technique...and it works. Try it, you'll be pleasantly
surprised with the results.
Learn more about effective networking... » |
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Upcoming topics |
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Next issue we'll explore the question:
In today's complicated and noisy market, how
do you expand your business through partnerships?
While many companies have initiated partnerships with marketing or
reseller partners, few have successfully managed these partnerships to
provide business benefit.
In our experience, fully 90% of all partnerships fail to deliver
tangible business benefits.
In other words, most partnerships are a waste of time.
We will explore the strategy and techniques necessary to build and
manage effective partnerships. Done well, partnerships can dramatically
improve your market reach, profitability and revenues.
Done poorly, partnerships will waste your time and money. We know of at
least one company that went bankrupt due to a particularly bad
partnering strategy.
Stay tuned for this important discussion! |
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Your Comments Appreciated |
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This newsletter represents a forum in which we can discuss the methods
for building that stronger position. To that end, I invite you to reply
to this newsletter with a brief comment on the key issues facing your
business and a couple of recent successes. I'd like to share some of
these (without divulging specifics) with other readers so that we may
all benefit.
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About the Acelera Group |
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The Acelera Group plans and manages the marketing initiatives to fill
your sales pipeline with high quality prospects, leading to repeatable
business and higher profitability.
In focusing on the intersection of your core competency and market
opportunity, we help you to maximize market, revenue and profit
opportunities. While this may sound like strategy work, we focus on the
hands-on implementation of the marketing initiatives.
If you're interested in growing your business more quickly and
profitably, please contact us at 617.737.7100 to schedule an initial
discussion. We look forward to talking with you!
To contact us... » |
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