Latest News from Ben Bradley

How to Cannibalize Your Own Products Without Getting Eaten Alive

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:30:00 EDT

The scenario is fairly typical. You launch your SaaS application for $14.99 per month. A few months later, a competitor launches a competing service for $10 per month. How do you respond with a competitive offer without cannibalizing your existing customers? We asked three software executives for their thoughts on the topic and have summarized their responses. In the above scenario, you are introducing a new tier in the Free->Premium continuum. The inherent risk is that existing customers might want to downgrade to the new level to save albeit with a constrained set of features. While you cannot stop this, one way to have your customers think about this decision is to make the distinction between the SKUs extremely clear in the new tier vs. the premium SKUs. For example, at the low-end customers might be able to only perform 50 transactions a month (or an equivalent measure that makes sense in your business). While this might be okay for someone who is getting on board just to try the service, existing customers must think twice about downgrading for the ever-present fear of "what if I grow?" Usage-based price tiering lets your customers experience the product with little risk then upgrade to customize features to their unique needs.

Billing and the Value-Added Paper Cup

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:15:49 EDT

In his book Business Agility, Michael Hugos says :Opportunities to make money by being responsive have exploded. There are far more ways to use responsiveness to attract customers than there are ways to use efficiency and low prices. This is because there are so many different kinds of customers, and each is looking for slightly different mixes of products and services. Constantly changing environments and customer needs enable responsive customers to offer continuously evolving mixes of products and services. This simple quote and this simple concept requires that we rethink what the basic concept of billing means to an organization. When we evolve basic billing concepts from simple order to cash processes and being supporting activity to cash process, even simple products – like paper cups – create opportunities for innovation and new sources of revenue.

MarketingReportCard.com seeks BETA testers

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:11:21 EDT

Just launched free website that helps small business better measure and manage tactical marketing programs We are looking for beta testers for our new website called MarketingReportCard.com – a marketing measurement dashboard. Designed for small to mid-size businesses, companies can login to the beta version of the MarketingReportCard.com and document and measure tactical marketing results [...]

How to select a wireless broadband distributor

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:03:51 EDT

The best way to find a good wireless broadband distributor, says John Diem, VP of Sales and Marketing for Fox Valley Internet (http://www.foxvalley.net), is simply to ask other VARs, WISPs and ISPs. “Most think of distributors as companies that just move boxes. When you ask other ISPs, you find that’s not always the case and that is certainly not why we work with value added wireless broadband distributors,” said Diem. “The trick is understanding the distributor’s real expertise. Some specialize in moving boxes with extremely low margins while others excel in configuring and supporting multi-vendor solutions with wireless, security and financing options,” said Diem.

Marketing and sales freaks unite

Fri, 28 May 2010 08:24:45 EDT

The Grateful Dead were light years ahead of the concept of lead nurturing. In one of their early albums, they inserted the following message: “DEAD FREAKS UNITE. Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address and we’ll keep you informed.” The street address of the band’s office [...]

Ask your attorney to cut your grass

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:13:41 EDT

When did the job of selling get lumped in with everything else? Asking a great sales person to clean CRM data, lick envelopes and turn over rocks looking for prospects is about the same as asking your attorney to cut the grass – it could be fun but overall, it is not a good use [...]

How we clean your CRM data

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:08:22 EDT

OUR PRACTICES FOR KEEPING DATA CLEAN IN YOUR CRM During the execution of an outbound prospecting campaign, CRM data hygiene is important. I’m going to share one of the processes we use internally to make sure users have a good way to “flag” inaccurate contact records. When we come across an unworkable LEAD, a Salesforce.com or a ZOHO CRM field [...]

Don’t let your CRM data curdle – simple practices for improving CRM success

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:54:54 EST

http://zoominfoblogger.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/making-sure-your-data-do... Data, like unrefrigerated milk, goes bad fast. In fact, by conservative estimates 25% of the database will sour within a year. Add poor import practices and other minor mistakes and bad things quickly snowball. It isn’t until senior management realizes it is making strategic decisions on the back of sub-par data that heads begin to [...]

TedXNaperville

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:18:14 EST

Mark your calendar for March 25, 2010. TedX is coming to Naperville. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxNaperville, where x=independently organized TED event. At our TEDxNaperville event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection [...]

Thinking About CRM Data Quality

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:18:00 EST

Differentiating Your Company’s IT Services Menu

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:10:34 EDT

NOTE: Robert Hamilton and I collaborated on this article. It seems every week we talk to just another IT services shop trying to kick-start their marketing and sales process. We sit down with the founder and ask the same question: “so how are you different from all the other firms out there?” When we ask that question, [...]

Upcoming Events

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:21:05 EDT

The next Silicon Prairie Social is here – are you ready? Join us for a drink on September 24 from 6 to 9PM at Arrowhead in Wheaton. Ben Bradley will be speaking to the Midwest Entrepreneur’s Forum on September 14 from 6 to 8PM. The topic is Using Trust to Bridge the Sales and Marketing Gap. Please join us [...]

Does social media generate leads?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:56:42 EDT

These are my experiences. The answer to the headline question is “yes and no.” Let me explain by talking about a few different ways we’ve converted social media activity in new business. Later, when I have more time, I’ll talk briefly about a few things that didn’t work. TWITTER FOR LEADS? Personally, no. We have seen [...]

What do you do when you lose a client?

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:36:16 EDT

Ouch. It hurts. Now what? 1) Ask why? What didn’t we do? It is important to ask the client for candid feedback. The candid feedback is an important opportunity to improve things going forward. 2) Ask “how were we being measured?” Did we both understand the measurement criteria? Was it the right measurement criteria? Where did we overpromise [...]

Karma rocks

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:26:51 EDT

You reap what you sow. We just signed a new statement of work with a client (now in a new job) that we once fired. She appreciated the fact that we stuck to our guns. Doing a bad deal with a customer is not worth it. Doing the right thing sometimes hurts. No sales person wants to say [...]

When higher education and economics collide

Sat, 30 May 2009 13:58:50 EDT

by Robert van der Hooning and Ben Bradley NOTE: Robert is a friend of mine who used to teach at Northwestern, University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He’s a former high-tech CEO and President of the International Bankers School in Zurich, NYC and Chicago. This article is the result of an ongoing discussion about the [...]

Weigh the total cost of lead generation into P4P deals

Mon, 25 May 2009 20:58:40 EDT

In my 20 year career, I’ve used nearly every form of B2B lead generation available. To properly evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns, it is important to know your real cost of a lead. Forrester Research recently revealed that about 50% of b-to-b marketers don’t use e-mail metrics to measure their campaign results(1). Do you know [...]

Sick of splogs copying your content?

Tue, 12 May 2009 14:05:28 EDT

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/05/10/i-am-sick-of-splogs... This is a good article from Mark Ghosh about splogs and Content Theft. What Mark doesn’t talk about is the impact of plagiarism on corporate blog content. How is this content being policed and protected? Do sploggers deface the brand? How can corporations curb content theft? One of my clients, BrandProtect, is sponsoring a “Trademark Dangers [...]

Making your marketing tick

Thu, 07 May 2009 11:23:08 EDT

The pressure is on. How do you optimize your minimized dollars, eliminate stale marketing efforts, and expand your outreach to prospects? Focusing on what can be achieved quickly and by leveraging your existing marketing assets. You might be surprised at the results if you focus your efforts on just a few key components. Refine your messaging Messaging is key [...]

What do you value? Pay for Performance Marketing: Good or Bad?

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:59:49 EDT

As mentioned in our April newsletter, one of our clients recently asked us for a proposal for an email newsletter program. Instead of paying an hourly fee for our effort, the client wants to pay us for the for the “performance” of the newsletter. That means, they wan to pay for clicks, inquiries, leads. Compensation for [...]