Black In Business

Are you creative at work? Can you think outside the box? I have labored in sales and marketing and have met many creative people. In the business world, we are taught, the customer is king and their satisfaction is our priority.. Is it? I agree it should be many times and in many ways we can learn from our customers in a way to make our companies more successful.
Unfortunately often business creativity is best exhibited in meeting rooms far away from customers. There are scores of business executives who excel by being great in meetings. They sit close to the boss and have figured out what the boss wants to hear.
Most salesmen have to discover creativity in them selves because they have to make ridged inflexible company policies adhere to customer needs.
The point is for business if you want to be more creative, spend more time with customers. Understand the needs of your customers, the objections to your products, competition and how decisions are made. I know these are things you know but learn it from a customer vantage point and you will find creative juices you never knew you had, providing you with solutions so compelling, your prospects become customers.
I have an example. I was a marketing manager for 2 sales regions and we had just been trained on a new product that eventuality would revolutionize the marketplace. There were 7 sales regions in the country and we were to return home and hit the street running and gunning for new business.
As the marketing manager, I thought back to my customer interactions and what it took to do business. I felt the training was good but rushed and not enough hands on time for our sales reps to feel comfortable manifesting a sense of urgency in our prospects to buy. Here are the steps I initiated to make my 2 regions rank number 1 and 2 of 7 in the USA for the new product sales in the first year.
1 We instituted retraining in smaller groups with plenty of hands on time.
2 assign team leaders for each of the 14 districts to be product and sales experts and assist the district manager in product leadership.
3 We had a demonstration contest for all team leaders and then for all team members with prizes. We were able to coach on the most effective way to demo and have everyone learn from each other.
4 We had each sales person review their top candidates and talked about creative ways to close the deals
5 We had weekly conference calls to monitor progress and complemented that by celebrating every new close by group voice mail announcements.
We kicked butt and I was honored as Regional Marketing Manager of the year. It worked because I was in front of customers enough to understand their needs and what we need to do in order to close vast amounts of business. This successful product launch pushed my regions to number 1 and 2 for 2 straight years for new product sales but also total business sales!
My friend Robyn has an excellent review of ways th find creativity in the work place. Pay her a visit to discover more.
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