The Key to Demand Creation

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  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine02/22/07 Report as spam
  1

  Deconstructing the Press Release

  I couldn't resist deconstructing the press release paragraph:
  
  By embedding business rules (whatever they are) into Siebel CRM, businesses are able to achieve new levels of cost containment (really? are there levels? who sets the levels? some kind of standards body?), time-to-market response (what does this mean? Really, what does it mean?) and long-term competitive advantages (how long is long term? and what is a "competitive advantage" anyway?). Haley technology is a key part of the Siebel Privacy Management solution within Siebel Universal Customer Master, (yada, yada, yada) a comprehensive (says who?) customer data hub that unifies customer data (you're talking about customer data, right? just wanted to make sure because you only told me twice in seven words) across multiple business units and functionally disparate systems (what the heck are they talking about? different applications? different operating systems?) to provide a trusted authoritative (according to whom?) source of customer information across the enterprise (does this mean the company or the company and its partners or what?).
  
  By the way, this paragraph wasn't selected because it was so horrible. It was selected at RANDOM from a Google search. There are thousands upon thousands of press releases that are equally bad or worse. God help the poor sales force.
  
  This could all be said in one sentence:
  
  This product integrates customer data that's in different databases, so that you can find it when you need it.
  
  All the rest is just verbal diarrhea.
  
  Geoffrey

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  Todd Lappin02/22/07 Report as spam
  2

  Another way of putting it...

  Good points, Geoffrey! Journalists have a very simple way of expressing this same idea about the higher value readers place upon real-world anecdotes and testimonials:
  
  Show, Don't Tell.

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  mcontois@...05/10/07 Report as spam
  3

  Poor Salespeople???

  I hate to be the one to break it to you but it's because of management. Marketing is usually only assigned one of its proper tasks: Promotion with little to no information except existing literature. Could you do a better job even if you had a marketing background and study marketing continuously because it is a very dynamic field? Competitive advantage is a marketing term. It means something that your company does that is valuable to your customers that your competitors cannot do. If a company doesn't have one then why the heck is it in business? No area should work in a vacuum. It is beneficial to separate business processes but in the end we must all come together as a team with the same ultimate goal. If there is a problem we must work together to solve it or just grumble and complain in which case no one wants to listen. Someday people in companies will be forced to work together for survival. It is the ultimate competitve advantage because no one seems to do it and it is extremely valuable due to the sharing of pertinent information that can lead to changes that bring in more business. The bottom line is we must stay connected to the customer and to the bottom-line. They don't always mesh well but we must strive for them meshing. No proft then no business.

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  andrea_miklos@...04/20/07 Report as spam
  4

  Benefits and advantages

  While I agree with the main point of the article, there is an important misunderstanding in many people that appears here as well: benefits are not advantages. Advantage is the same for everyone - you have a pen, you can write with it. Benefit is personal. You have a pen, you can sign contracts, you can write to your penpal, you can draw etc. There you never can write benefit in a catalogue. You can use ONLY when you know what your customer wants or needs. Don't reduce the importance of benefits.

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  barrielocke05/10/07 Report as spam
  5

  Features, Benefits andTestimonials

  While I would agree with the article in principle, it's also important to note the features of the product, which drive the benefits. Supporting the benefits via an end user testimonial is ideal, providing you can find a customer that's willing to say publicly that their business was a wreck before installing said product. If a company is launching a new product and has beta sites, those beta contracts should include a note that the test site is willing to provide a public testimonial.

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  brandbuddies@...05/10/07 Report as spam
  6

  Thanks

  Thanks,
  Good post, good points - you gave me a few things to think about.
  
  Regards
  
  Robert Wright