Three letters can make you the Olive in the Marketing Martini Glass: R. O. I. Return On Investment.
Olives, when dropped into a Martini Glass, do one thing – they sink. To the bottom. Of the glass. They won’t spill out of the glass, because of the way the glass is set up.
[They’re also vital to a good Martini, but we digress.]
Before we go on, here’s another look at the Marketing Martini Glass.
We offered up this maxim before – that you’re not competing with other companies in your space, but you are competing for resources AT YOUR TARGET COMPANY.
True, that. And the easiest way to do this is through calculating ROI. HR: does it have a Return on Investment? How about the CFO? Furniture: can you quantify how much you’re getting back as a company from having killer office chairs?
Meanwhile, if you remember the CRM example from Wednesday’s post and apply an ROI calculation, it could look something like this:
TOTAL CRM INVESTMENT: $50,000.
SALES INCREASE AS A RESULT OF TAKING ONE WIDGET CLIENT AND SELLING THEM MORE PRODUCT: $200,000.
ROI: 300%
Next, explain to the prospect that they should do the same calculation with their HR and Finance departments. Heck, even Web Analytics can be quantified this way. HR and Finance may be out of jobs soon.
The best way to “Be the Olive” is to actually avoid marketing your stuff and, back to our earlier examples, figure out what the heck the client needs. And figure out a way to give it to them.
HR and Finance might actually be out of jobs soon if you figure out the best possible way to help the company with those functions through a software solution, or an outsourced service, or a value-added, headcount-subtracted pain point you can solve for them.
Then you’ve got something you can quantify. You have shown Return on Investment.
You have learned how to Be the Olive.
[We hope you enjoyed all four parts to this series. You may disagree with some of what we talked about, and that’s okay. But the important thing to realize is not that things are changing but HOW MUCH THEY ARE CHANGING. Change your thinking accordingly and you’ll go far.]
