We had another excellent roundtable at SMEI last Thursday, discussing the importance of relationship marketing and selling. Lisa Dennis of Knowledgence Associates was in her usual role as facilitator, but she also shared some specific ideas on what relationship marketing and selling is. Most of the conversation circled around maintaining and building relationships with existing customers or clients,...

In a couple of earlier posts, Rachel shared some quick tips on storyboarding and keeping your message brief, and then on how to get the most for your production dollar with good scheduling. Here, she spends a couple minutes (1:47, to be precise), offering a few ideas for how to prep people for their on-camera interviews and discussing the pros and cons of teleprompters. wistiaEmbed = Wistia.embed("zdbosvosx2",...

I attended an informative event last week on the subject of mobile marketing, hosted by AMA Boston. Jeff Peden, the CEO of CraveLabs, and Dan Rowinski, a writer for ReadWriteWeb, had an informal conversation on the topic. Reflection Films is primarily a business-to-business company, and my perception has been that mobile marketing is primarily about marketing to consumers rather than businesses, via smartphones....

In a post from awhile back, we shared some of our favorite documentary films, and Hoop Dreams was identified as "must-see." It definitely lands in my all-time favorite top ten. The Interrupters is another documentary by the same filmmaker, Steve James, who co-directed and produced the film with Alex Kotlowitz.  The personal story-lines in The Interrupters aren't as powerful as those in Hoop Dreams,...

In our last post, I mentioned that Kevin Riley of The Allied Group (among others) shared a few ideas for how to use referrals for business development purposes. Last week, he distributed a document with his process outlined in greater detail. Here it is, almost verbatim: Step by Step Referral Process Choose people that like you professionally or personally – and who trust you. List 3 business contacts...

Last month at SMEI Boston's roundtable breakfast, conversation focused on sales tips. Yesterday, we talked about how to ask for referrals. Here are just five pieces of wisdom shared among many: Have the right mindset. Some of us are not as diligent about asking for referrals because we are uncomfortable with the process. But if you offer a good service or product, it's important to believe that you have...

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead seems like a combination of things. It begins as the personal journey of Joe Cross, the filmmaker, to a healthier life. He also mixes in some education on nutrition. And the films ends with an inspirational moment and an invitation to change our bad eating habits. Stories of personal journeys usually are most powerful when there's a strong, narrative arc: desperate man, living...

Meryl Bralower is friend of a friend and a two-time cancer survivor. Part of her medical treatment involved surgery, and, not surprisingly, recovery from that was painful. Getting in and out of bed was particularly difficult, but she came across a very simple technique to make it easier. She did some sleuthing on YouTube and elsewhere to see if it was something that other people mentioned or demonstrated,...

We attended a very worthwhile AMA Boston event earlier this week, which featured Chad White from Responsys, who was speaking on the subject of good and bad email marketing practices. Here are a few of the thoughts he shared related to email marketing: 1. Less is more. A smaller, higher-quality email list is better than a large one with lots of inactive subscribers. 2. Stay out of the ISP doghouse....

Each month, SMEI Boston (Sales and Marketing Executives International) hosts an excellent roundtable discussion that explores all things related to... you guessed it - sales and marketing. The roundtables are mostly an opportunity for folks to come and share ideas, wisdom, and knowledge, and we always walk away from the conversations with at least a couple good ideas gleaned from others for our own sales...