This is both a preview of my talk at FISPA Live 2019 next week in Nashville AND a checklist for the chief executives at service providers everywhere.
The slides reflect my appreciation of Seth Godin, Hugh MacLeod and Peter Drucker. I fit in a slide from Tony Robbins, but couldn’t fit in Tom Peters.
When you compete against the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Comcast or RingCentral, you better have your marketing elements nailed down.
RingCentral spends more than 40 cents of every dollar in revenue on sales and marketing, compared to Verizon who spends 23. How much are you spending on sales and marketing?
- What is your Value Proposition?
- Who are you selling to?
- Why would they buy from you?
- How will you find them?
In every piece of marketing, there are important components.
- Headline
- Offer
- List
- Call to Action
- Repetition
- What is the purpose of this piece of marketing?
I wrote about how telecom is like the potato chip aisle in the grocery store last week. This is why your marketing has to be on point. This is why as the chief executive you have to know your value proposition, your target, the Why.
I also wrote about my frustration with telecom. We live in a world of Instagram and YouTube celebrities, who make their riches in niches.
We live in a world where we know – hear it every day – that no one gets fired for buying AT&T or Verizon, yet ignore this by not having a very good answer to the question: Why should I buy from you instead of them?
This industry has watched two UC providers – 8×8 and Ring – grow business by becoming sales and marketing machines. Two others – Fuze and Evolve IP – have done it by identifying a segment of the market that they can serve well and selling directly to it.
This is the Age of Information as well as the Connection Economy yet execs ignore the info available about launch plans, LinkedIn sales success, and an active referral program.
It boggles my mind.