The Customer Experience Project

GIL-ISM: Think of your business relationships with the outside world as a customer experience.

EXPLANATION: Here's a new way to think about the various "business development" functions. First comes marketing that generates people to talk to. Then comes sales who convert those people into customers. Then comes customer service who takes care of those people to make sure they keep coming back and say nice things to others. The corporate department could best be called "Customer Experience"

More Than Just The Fax

GIL-ISM: Sometimes old ways can become the newest ways.

EXPLANATION: Think about adding faxes back as part of your customer development efforts. In these days of email, faxes have taken a back seat. Because of that, faxes get noticed. Carefully position faxes as part of your prospecting efforts, but make sure your are not violating laws about sending mass faxes to people you have no connection to.

Don't Plan Before Talking To Customers

GIL-ISM: Most business and marketing plans gather dust on a shelf because they never survive their first brush with reality.

EXPLANATION: Many budding entrepreneurs spend countless hours writing lengthy business plans before they have even validated their concept with potential customers. In addtion, one of the first hires they make is a Marketing Director, to whom they delegate the vital process of getting their message across to customers. Both of these actions are sheer foolishness! What should you do instead? If you have a business idea, the first thing you should do is go see whether you can find any customers who will actually pay you for the idea. If you can produce genuine cash transactions (not some future promise), then you know your idea is viable and you should have very useful market intelligence. Likewise, the last function an entrepreneur should delegate is marketing and sales. That should not happen until all marketing processes have been tested and proven. The number one job for any business owner is cash generation!

Your Future Desires

GIL-ISM: Although everybody wishes for a predictable future, business will never be static.

EXPLANATION: There seems to be an almost universal human desire that longs for a future that looks almost exactly like today (or yesterday). But if human history has proven one thing, we know that our tomorrows will NOT look like today. But for some reason, most people find that reality hard to embrace. A wise marketer makes a point to scan the emerging horizon and anticipate coming changes. When properly identified, those inevitable changes can provide enormous competitive advantage.

On Taking Names

GIL-ISM: Every wise business owner takes names!

EXPLANATION: The database is a business' most important asset. These days the competitive advantage goes to the firm with the most information and data points about it's customers. If your company has poor or non-existent processes to collect information about your prospects and customers, then you are instantly at a competitive disadvantage. It should be the first sales strategy you should rectify!