Adara Associates - Adara updates

I’m not whining about Virgin Wines, an impressive customer service story

nospam@example.com (admin) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:40:04 +0100

I'm a user of Virgin Wines web-based service, I enjoy a glass or several and they provide good quality vino at sensible prices, in a no-nonsense, pragmatic and very fast way. But that isn't what has impressed me. As a regular and frequent buyer of a number of cases they invited me to join their wine club, where they add a thirteenth bottle of a wine of their choice to every case of wine, quite clever, shift excess stock, get customers to try new wines, increase customer satisfaction, but that’s not what has impressed me.
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On not breeding contempt…

nospam@example.com (admin) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:02:19 +0100

There’s a lot to be said for familiarity. There’s a reason why we miss the little corner shop and the grocer who knew everyone’s name. There’s a reason we’re generally loyal to our favoured supermarket chain, websites and restaurants. We know them, we know what we’re getting, we’ve a history of mostly being happy with what we’ve got and in some excellent cases we’ve either got a relationship or the sense of one (buy a few things from Wiggle.com to understand a great customer experience).
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Jumping out of the sales rut, a recessionary story

nospam@example.com (admin) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:50:00 +0100

In these testing times many of our clients are busy (and have been for many months) making sure that their sales force are working like beavers exploring every opportunity to get in front of old and new prospects, to explore the need and to set out their stalls.
We got a call from a Sales Director, an old chum and valued client who’d inherited a very experienced team, specialist sales folk and expert, (in their field) client managers. She was convinced that opening up new markets was the only way to go and was having a tough time getting them to explore opportunities in new markets, well out of their comfort zones.

She asked for our thoughts. We spoke with the team and identified some obvious (and less obvious) issues...

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TFMA – So what’s new?

nospam@example.com (admin) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:29:00 +0000

Having just spent two full days at the Technology for Marketing show
it’s been interesting to reflect on what’s old, what’s new and what’s
changed. The conclusion we came to is that whilst marketing folk are
getting all excited about social networking there’s not much that’s new
for sales people, with one notable exception.
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Taking Account Management off the shelf

nospam@example.com (admin) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:14:21 +0000

Walk around your sales team, where are the account plans? Typically they’ll be sitting on a shelf unread for months and deemed irrelevant to the current priority of digging up as many deals as possible, after all, how would they help you to make your numbers in a tight market?

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What is the point of Twitter?

nospam@example.com (admin) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:29:21 +0100

A good question, although hardly original, and one which might reasonably be asked of anything new. Twitter, like many web-based applications, is flexible, adaptable and easy to enhance. Ease of change and instant feedback enable applications to evolve very quickly, to deliver what users want and need, but which may, or may not be, what was originally intended.
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Do you fear the CRM juggernaut, do you use it, do you go around it?

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 10:28:00 +0100

We’ve been busy recently with a chunky piece of research around the painful area of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and how well sales and marketing teams use them...

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Credit crunch survival strategies

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Everyone has a different reaction to the remarkable events of the past few months; surely no-one can believe that business is going to carry on as before...

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How do you deal with a nervous market?

nospam@example.com (admin) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:06:00 +0000

We’re well into the New Year, all our well-intentioned resolutions are forgotten and we’re trying to work out how to deal with an increasingly cautious marketplace...
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It’s a matter of perspective

nospam@example.com (admin) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:25:00 +0100

Those who live by the target and the bonus like to think that we’re actively selling, not just helping prospects to buy, the reality is that both things are happening at the same time. If they’re aligned, then all’s well, if they’re not all sorts of unpleasantness can arise...

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Account management

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:50:00 +0000

Do any of us really manage accounts? I’ve never forgotten the words “I don’t want to be managed” blasted out years ago to my sales director by the customer to whom he’d just introduced me...
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Don’t shoot the sales person…

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:02:00 +0100

We’ve all seen it; when sales are not on track sales people get the blame, sometimes it is justified but often we find that they just don’t have a proposition that the market wants...
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Are you talking to me?

nospam@example.com (admin) — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 20:28:00 +0100

Websites arouse passion, everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to have a say in what goes on the site. It’s not surprising that so many sites either gather cobwebs or grow like a rolling snowball, collecting irrelevant material and becoming confusing and difficult to navigate or manage...
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The “Keep Warm” List

nospam@example.com (admin) — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:24:00 +0100

You pay good money for leads, one way or another, how many of them end up being qualified out by the salesman? What happens to them then? It’s all too easy for them to fall down a gap between sales and marketing...
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