The CEO of United, Jeff Smisek, was there to congratulate Stuker when he flew into Chicago from Los Angeles.

As a member of the United Airlines Global Services Programme his frequent flyer programme has kicked in big with as United have told him he will never have to queue at airports again. Plus he’ll always get upgraded and to really show how much they love him they’ve named a plane after him.

It seems to me that nowadays not having to queue at all is an absolutely massive benefit and almost worth flying so many miles.

Amazingly Stuker takes his wife on up to five honeymoons a year, presumably paid for through his Rewards Credit card with his colossal amount of frequent flier points?

Martin Hand, United’s Vice-President of Customer Experience, said it took Stuker 19 years to accumulate his first five million air miles and just 10 years to double the mileage.

Of course this is all great publicity for United Airlines and Martin Hands said, "So we figure that we’re going to be here in five years when you hit 15 million miles, because you’re cutting it in half every time."

So you can image the amount of air miles stacked on to Stuker’s airmiles credit card if he manages 15 million of them!

When ABC News interviewed Stuker he said, "People have vacation homes and I have United."

Interestingly enough United didn’t mention the amount of money Stuker must have spent to accumulate all those air miles. Although as a sales consultant I’m sure his clients were happy picking the bill up.

Stuker has 50 million frequent flier miles. In fact he had so many that in the 1990s he used some of them to buy an appearance on "Seinfeld."

In 2009 Stuker flew 700,000 miles and again United Airlines were able to get him into the news. So he’s definitely an airline PR asset.

The club Stuker belongs to at United is a highly selective one and you don’t know you’re a member until you’re invited.

Interestingly until the George Clooney film, “Up in the Air”, these sort of high mileage travellers weren’t really heard of.

I remember in the early days web sites were very unsophisticated and shopping karts and Paypal and Google didn’t work like they do now.

People seemed to have very little trust that the Internet would deliver the goods they chose and bought. There was the twin fears of being scammed and of not getting the goods in a timely fashion.

And yet there’s no doubt that in the last 20 years the Internet has grown massively in the amount of money spent through it. #

Fundamentally Internet marketing has driven prices down and allowed people with virtually no capital to start a new business. That means the gene pool of people trying out whether they’re any good at business has increased massively. Many of them would never have been in business without the Internet. And yet a lot of them find that they can do business.

And of course as more and more people come online the rush to get their money continues. That means that in order for their site to be chosen as the buying site they need to be different/better to the other sites.

That means the use of marketing. Initially marketing was pretty much what was being done offline – long form sales letters and the creation of lists.

However, with the power of the computer to see exactly how people were behaving, rather than relying on focus groups, marketers could do thousands of experiments on headlines, colours, offers, body copy and page placement. All of which meant that they could then do the same for another site, more easily using these results.

Google helped in a variety of different ways to allow people to measure their marketing results. They also helped by introducing a straight forward RSS reader. RSS was very useful as it meant you didn’t have to go to someone’s site to find out their latest tale. Instead the RSS feed would keep you up to date with any changes. That meant you could stay informed and up to date more easily than in an offline marketing environment. That also meant you could stay at the leading edge of marketing more easily too.

So as a marketer you just kept learning and earning. The money being earnt was talked about in all the presentations and events held for Internet marketers. And of course this attracted yet more people into the Internet marketing field. Everyone could have an opinion on Internet marketing.

And then blogs and social media in general (such as Twitter and Facebook) arrived that allowed everyone to have a voice. It also meant that many blogs could be monetised with Google ads, text link ads and other advertising services.

And through all this affiliate marketing was running. Clickbank is probably the best known of the many affiliate marketing sites. Using the affiliate strategy meant marketers didn’t need to do the hard work of designing a product, they could simply choose one that looked to be doing well and market it on their site and watch the money roll in.

So Internet marketing became a beast that was fed by the people who trawled the Internet looking to spend the dollar in their pocket in the most cost effective way to buy the product they wanted.

So, what does your business card do for the person you presented it to?

It should tell them your name, your company, your role, your contact details and better business cards deliver further marketing for you, the owner of the business card.

Your Name On Your Business Card

Your name needs to be printed. Not hastily scrawled on. Not even printed on through a business card print program. Anything that smacks of cheap instantly downgraded your value in the eye of the receiver. After all which business is unable to afford to buy business cards for the staff who mix with other businesses? And obviously the answer is, "those that are about to go bust, or cut corners!"

Lack Of Contact Details

Conventional business cards tend to carry landline number, mobile number, less often fax number, company address, web site and email.

If any of these expected details are missing that business card is shouting out that the owner is a one man fly by night operator who wont be around and be available if the going gets tough or they don’t deliver on their promises.

Business Card Phone Numbers

I’ve come across a number of cards that still only have a mobile number on. That tells me you’re running your business from the kitchen table. Nothing wrong with using the kitchen table. However no landline makes me less likely to choose you over someone else who appears to be setup with a landline too. It tends to indicate that they intend being around for a while.

Using The Wrong Email Address

  Email addresses that aren’t the same domain name as your web site or blog tend to make people question whether you intend keeping going. Also using Google mail/Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail whilst very convenient shouts out that you’re not a "proper" business and again raises the question as to whether you’ll still be there tomorrow.

Badly Designed Web Sites or Parked Domains

If your contact sits down with your business card to check your site out will they see a well designed site? Or will they see a home-made mishmash or possibly worse a domain that is parked?

When your site is on your cards you need to be confident that it continues to support your message when you’re not around.

I speak from personal experience as I put up a site when I first started in business (about 5 years ago) meaning to get it designed better later and then within 3 months moved to using my blog as my site. However, I didn’t redirect my site to my blog. That meant that as time went on my hastily created site became more and more old-fashioned and out of step with my own business. And in fact cost me business.

No Business Address Speaks Volumes

It tells your contact that you don’t have business premises. If you’re selling products that might need to be returned that is a massive blow to your contacts confidence in you. If you’ve missed the address off as you work from home realise that few people are going to call round on the off-chance of seeing you.

I have an office in my house and I’ve never had anyone drop by unannounced. Just as well as my insurance doesn’t cover business visitors! Instead we go to a nearby hotel which has lovely on-tap coffee all the time, plus WIFI.

However, the unexpected amounts of snow meant that it was totally impossible.

I was looking forward to helping people decide whether Social Media Marketing was right for their business. And then if it was showing them strategies to use to make the most of it, whilst not taking all their time.

Why Use Social Media Marketing?

Firstly most businesses already use one form of social media marketing, also known as business networking. Where you go to meetings to talk with other people.

The reason you should test whether social media marketing is right for you is because it’s become another marketing channel and people may expect you to use it.

The Problem With Social Media Marketing

There are so many different ways to get involved with social networking. As I’ve said before, just some of those ways include:

1. LinkedIn
2. Blogging
3. Squidoo
4. Hubpages
5. Digg
6. Facebook
7. Reddit
8. Stumbleupon
9. YouTube

And on, and on…

So how do you decide what to do, when to do it or even how to do it?

Funnily enough my audience would have discovered exactly that!

The What, When And How Of Social Media Marketing

The first thing to is to decide what you want this type of marketing to achieve. That’s part of the what. Remember it’s internet based but can be used in every other marketing channel you have too.

The next ‘what’ is decide what you want to say, and who you’re going to say it to to meet your goal(s).

And the final part of the ‘what’ is to decide which tools can communicate your message most effectively.

There’s much more to it than that but for the moment let’s go on to ‘When’. The question that arises is when should we do this type of marketing. The simple answer to that is when you have something to communicate with your chosen audience.

Notice that I’ve been saying “with your chosen audience” and not “to your chosen audience” and the reason is that your audience is in a conversation with you. And they have the ability to simply stop the conversation dead.

If you simply broadcast stuff to them all the time it’s not a conversation.

Lastly we come to ‘How’ to communicate with them. This comes down to having a social media policy, choosing who will use social media on behalf of the company (ideally all of your employees) and then working out the most effective times to do it and the expected amount of time people should invest in working with social media.

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence.

In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging.

The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.

And the same is true of marketing.

Before the Internet arrived marketers would have told you that there was only a defined set of ways to attract customers.

When the Internet came into its season marketers would have told you that a web site was all you needed.

The blogs arrived. And bloggers would have told you that was the pinnacle of marketing – fresh regular content.

Then Twitter was introduced and many poured scorn on it pointing to all the other marketing tools we have. And yet Twitter is now a very powerful marketing medium.

We all talk about the importance of social media and the development of relationships with our prospects and customers and yet isn’t that what our great, great grandparents did when they talked with and got to know their customers in their shops? And as Heraklietos said, “The beginning of a circle is also its end.”

Table of contents for Better Proposal Writing

1. 10 Questions To Create A Great Proposal
2. Proposal Teams – Who’s In Them?

10 key questions for producing a great proposal were listed in my previous article, (10 Questions To Create A Great Proposal).

Now we can look at the questions “Who’s Involved?” and “What Do They Want?”

Who’s Involved?

You may find it tempting to simply allocate the responsibility for producing a proposal to one person.

And that’s OK, provided the proposal will affect only one area of your company, ever. And the person managing the creation of the proposal understands that particular area as well as the people working in it.

Normally a proposal tends to require involvement from a number of different areas in a company.

Mid Sized Consultancy Example

Let’s take an example. Say you’re a computer consultancy responding to a tender request for the provision of a new set of Financial Back Office applications, including sales, purchase and all financial ledgers.

The people likely to be affected in a mid-sized consultancy organisation could include:

1) The prospective project manager
2) The application development managers for each financial back office application
3) The accountant responsible for project profitability
4) The sales staff responsible for winning the business
5) Experts in the conversion of existing data
6) Representation  from the planned hardware provider (internal or external)
7) Representation from other interested parties to extend the sales possibility of the proposal.
A technical architect
9) The staff who will create the report and the presentation

The reason so many staff are required is that any one of those can affect the production of the proposal document. Proposals tend to be produced in very short timescales. So If any are on holiday during the creation their input would be missed, or the proposal would have to be cancelled.

Again, the application development managers know which products are suitable for the proposal and if a new release is due and when.

The data experts are able to advise on the conversion of existing data and, crucially the complexity and time to create data conversion suites to convert the data from an existing format to the proposed format.

The accountant is there to ensure that the proposal has all the costs included, if any cost is missed it could end up with the consultancy taking a loss on the project.

In a nutshell everyone is there to provide information to ensure the smooth production of a proposal. Often they will need to give further information, or write part of the proposal, and each persons input needs to be dovetailed into an overall timetable.

Responses From A Small Company

What would a small company do to respond?

Obviously they wouldn’t have the number of people I listed previously. However, they would have all the roles I listed. So for example a small software development company could have one application development team leader who is also the data conversion expert and is also the technical architect and defines the required hardware for any project.

The owner might be the person responsible for checking costs are correct and for the sale and for assessing  the potential for further sales and the person who prepares the proposal.

The Right People Are The Right Number To Respond

In the end everyone who needs to be involved to produce a good proposal are the people who should be involved. And this is the “proposal team.”

If they can’t get involved think again about whether to respond to the proposal.

What Do They Want?

Before anything else the whole proposal team must read the proposal and consider if from their own area of expertise and then from any interactions they might need with other areas of the business.

The team should then meet to decide whether the prospect has worded the proposal to slant it towards a specific supplier – yes, it does happen! In which case you need to be very careful as to whether it’s worth replying with a proposal.

Also, if there’s a guide as to the expected price of the project the team need to decide whether it’s feasible to provide a solution at, or near, the price suggested.

Once the team has decided whether it’s worth producing a proposal they should discuss each element of the proposal and note whether any clarifying information is required from the prospect.

The second is to really understand what the prospect is looking for, both in the solution they’re searching for and also whether there is actually something else that is better that the proposal team’s expertise can assist with. This process also tends to throw up questions.

Using Clarifying Questions

Then there are two ways of dealing with clarifying questions. The easiest is for the sales staff and appropriate representatives of the proposal team to visit the prospect and ask them and any others that may crop up from the replies.

Meeting the prospect is almost always the best choice as it allows you to demonstrate interest in the project and to show you’ve considered it thoroughly and to deepen the relationship with the prospect

The other choice is to contact the prospect via fax or email or through a joint supplier meeting or meeting a single representative of the company. None of these is ideal as other companies often find out the questions you’ve asked when they’re documented.

In my next post I’ll write about what we need to produce a proposal and how we can deliver the solution.

Some I’ve seen say they believe that marketing is pushing out the relationships constructed through social media sites, before marketing was used.

And yet good marketing is all about building relationships with the people you know are the right ones to buy your product or service.

Think about it…

Marketing Trust

Would you buy if you didn’t believe it would last for the time you wanted it to? Would you buy something if you suspected you were being led up the garden path?

You wouldn’t. And they key to getting comfortable with buying anything is making sure that you trust what is being sold to you. And a major part of that trust is through the relationship you have with the supplier of the goods or services.

I don’t mean one where you slap each other on the back, or one where you go skiing together.

What I mean is that you build a business relationship where you feel you can trust what the other is saying.

And the problem with business is that it’s actually quite difficult to build that relationship.

And that’s where marketing comes in.

Marketing is there to inform, educate and build trust in your customers and prospects. Build trust in what you’re saying through all the mediums you say it.

Marketing Builds Trust

And the key point is building trust through all the mediums you say it. Because your target market has a choice over which communication channels it uses. Therefore your communication will only be seen, heard or read if it goes through the right channel.

Social networking has helped to differentiate groups of people and sites like Twitter mean that you can actually proactively find people who match your target market and begin to build a real relationship of trust with them.

Marketing Can Abuse Communication Channels

Granted people can abuse routes such as Twitter. However, Twitter’s openness means that marketing abuses get short shrift and the likelihood of anyone buying from a company perceived to spam or overly “market” through Twitter is low.

Instead Twitter can provide a better service for clients. Interesting items in social sites such as Digg, Twitter and others can lead to massive spikes in traffic. Those spikes in traffic can bring prospects who are actively looking for what you sell. And are pleased to find you.

Marketing Can Be Bad

In conclusion, marketing can be “bad” in any medium used. Equally, it can be very helpful to prospects and customers when it is very well targeted. Social media allows companies to get better at targeting who they build relationships with, which must be a good thing.

Some I’ve seen say they believe that marketing is pushing out the relationships constructed through social media sites, before marketing was used.

And yet good marketing is all about building relationships with the people you know are the right ones to buy your product or service.

Think about it…

Marketing Trust

Would you buy if you didn’t believe it would last for the time you wanted it to? Would you buy something if you suspected you were being led up the garden path?

You wouldn’t. And they key to getting comfortable with buying anything is making sure that you trust what is being sold to you. And a major part of that trust is through the relationship you have with the supplier of the goods or services.

I don’t mean one where you slap each other on the back, or one where you go skiing together.

What I mean is that you build a business relationship where you feel you can trust what the other is saying.

And the problem with business is that it’s actually quite difficult to build that relationship.

And that’s where marketing comes in.

Marketing is there to inform, educate and build trust in your customers and prospects. Build trust in what you’re saying through all the mediums you say it.

Marketing Builds Trust

And the key point is building trust through all the mediums you say it. Because your target market has a choice over which communication channels it uses. Therefore your communication will only be seen, heard or read if it goes through the right channel.

Social networking has helped to differentiate groups of people and sites like Twitter mean that you can actually proactively find people who match your target market and begin to build a real relationship of trust with them.

Marketing Can Abuse Communication Channels

Granted people can abuse routes such as Twitter. However, Twitter’s openness means that marketing abuses get short shrift and the likelihood of anyone buying from a company perceived to spam or overly “market” through Twitter is low.

Instead Twitter can provide a better service for clients. Interesting items in social sites such as Digg, Twitter and others can lead to massive spikes in traffic. Those spikes in traffic can bring prospects who are actively looking for what you sell. And are pleased to find you.

Marketing Can Be Bad

In conclusion, marketing can be “bad” in any medium used. Equally, it can be very helpful to prospects and customers when it is very well targeted. Social media allows companies to get better at targeting who they build relationships with, which must be a good thing.

In fact now is the time that enables you to concentrate on polishing the way you do business so that you’re ready for the upturn. Don’t think there’ll ever be one? There always is…

Plus looking at ways you can improve your lead to order ratio and reduce your customer loss.

To help businesses I’d like to offer these 10 tips to continue to grow your business.

1. Stop working so hard on tactics, step back and look at your business strategically
2. Implement a joint venture partnership to access your particular prospects
3. Use the Windows of Opportunity matrix to see if there are products you believe your current clients need that they don’t yet get from you
4. Improve your current sales processes, do it for an hour every week, until it works brilliantly
5. Innovate to create new, or better products
6. Use strategic marketing to get your message to your key customers and prospects
7. Look at your whole business with your entire staff. Improve one process at a time
8. Manage your time more effectively (I’m currently writing a book on this as it’s a subject particularly close to my heart as an ex IT Project director!)
9. Institute regular weekly staff training, it doesn’t need to be for more than 60 minutes, but it does ensure your staff learn the best ways of doing their jobs
10. Look at the assistance you can get from government bodies (I’m currently going through accreditation as a Business Link supplier – I’ll let you know how I get on)

Above don’t let the fear the rest of our economy is showing affect your attitude. You need to be confident that your business will survive. Follow these tips and you’ve got a much better chance of doing that than people who don’t!

If you’ve got a particular low, or no cost, tactic or strategy you use let us know by making a comment.

And almost invariably the reply comes back that it’s a complete waste of time, so why waste cash on it.

And yet everyone is exposed to marketing all the time and whether they realise it or not marketing helps them in their buying decisions.

After all think about it…

Car Marketing

When you want a new car what do you do? You go out and research all the new models of every car manufacturer on the planet, don’t you?

Of course the answer is really no. What you rely on is seeing a number of cars in brochures and showrooms to really help you decide which to buy.

Yet, even before you start actively looking for your new car your brain has been picking out all the marketing messages you get about cars. Through t the TV, radio, newspaper, magazines and the Internet.

So when you finally make the decision to actually go and buy something your brain has already got a leaning towards a particular manufacturer, or model, or type of car.

That’s marketing, making you aware of something so you go out and look for it.

Direct Mail

Direct mail, commonly known as junk mail, keeps pouring through our letter boxes. If it doesn’t work the banks, credit card companies and insurance companies are being very socially responsible by keeping the Post Office in work.

So of course as these financial organisations are highly commercial they know marketing works.

Marketing in Real Markets

Finally, look at real outdoor and farmers markets that sell clothes, cheeses, fruit and vegetables.  They often have several stalls that sell the same product. How do they differentiate themselves? By signs, sales patter and other marketing devices to set themselves apart from the other stalls.

So, remember marketing is all around you. If you want your business to grow and succeed, even in a credit crunch economy, you need to use marketing.

Ignoring marketing consigns your company to be "just the same" as all the other companies in your sector.