I have been involved with Win-Loss Analysis from the product and sales sides since the mid–1990’s and have written about the subject since 2009. To this day, I do not understand why more companies aren’t conducting win-loss interviews, analyzing results and implementing lessons learned. When I speak with companies, many think they know the answers [...]
I recently asked a marketing director about customer testimonials on his company website. He openly said, "The testimonials aren't real, I made them up. Everybody else does it, so why can't we?" My second thought, after "Two wrongs don't make a right," was "Aren't you in the business of building trust? What does that say [...]
Today, I read with interest Apple's public apology about their miscues with their maps program. This was very much out of character for Apple. If you recall, in 2010, the antenna in the iPhone 4 had some issues. That whole situation is now referred to as "antenna-gate". Steve Jobs didn't apologize for it. However, how [...]
A few years ago, I wrote an article about Win-Loss Analysis for Product Managers. This is an update of that article. Marketers need to show their internal and external customers the value they bring to the table. Internal customers you say? The first group is Sales. Marketing can go a long way to close the [...]
I have been thinking about this koan Steve Jobs used when developing the first Mac - "Real Artists Ship". I couldn't agree more. As product people, we must produce. That means, plan, develop, launch and manage. Keeping to schedules is key. Like Gordon Gecko's famous line in Wall Street, "greed is good", "shipping is good". [...]
Welcome to the new home of M4 Communications and our blog. The blog will include discussions about Marketing, Branding, PR, Product Marketing, Technology, Communications and Entertainment and how we use all of them to navigate through our world. We hope you will take this journey with us and we can learn from each other. We [...]
