Category: VALCORT DNA

VALCORT® : The hard work leading to an aha moment

One day just a few years ago, the light went on in a conference room at a mid-sized manufacturer in the southeast. The idea kind of light. After hours of discussions with the company’s leaders and frontline sales directors, and dozens of interviews with its customers, we presented a simple...

Why Your Next Creative Idea Might Be Doomed Before It Launches

You can be clever in your marketing communications. You can be funny. You can be surprising, shocking if you want to. You can think outside the box…and then burn the box. You can come off sounding smart, savvy, hip. You can do all this, and still miss the point. Sure, you...

Do you need a strong corporate brand?

Creating and presenting a strong brand is all about establishing value.  This is especially true if you are selling direct to consumers. If you been dealing primarily with distributors or retailers, your brand is important, but to a lesser degree. If you shift your focus to selling directly to consumers,...

Building Organizational Trust in an Age of Cynicism

In times of change, the last thing you need to experience—as an employee, a colleague, a corporate leader, or a customer—is the discovery that trust has been violated. Does any of this sound familiar? A person, group or organization has broken a promise. A manufacturer’s work product is not up...

Creating value: the recipe for growth

To grow your business, the foundational task is to create value.  Creating value is the essence of business. Whether you’re selling consumer products, goods and services from business to business, raising funds for a charity, or recruiting students to attend your college, job one is to create and understand your...

How to track progress  in your sales process

You may be among the thousands of people who work hard to plan and execute a clear sales process. You prospect, qualify, approach, present, respond, close and follow up. You know the process and you do the process. How’s it going? If you’re not sure, you’re in good company. Here...

Need business referrals? Ask for help

Occasionally, a customer will take the initiative to refer your company to a contact because of the good work you’ve done for them.  That’s fabulous.  They may need a nudge, though, and it’s important to ask your customers to openly acknowledge how important your company is to them. #34 of...

Surprise Me!  7 Tips for Inventing New Ways to Reach Customers

Marketing success depends, at least partially, on creativity. Creativity helps you stand out in a world bombarded with advertising, it helps differentiate you from your competitors, and it makes you more memorable in your customers' minds. The solution is easy: come up with more creative ideas! That, of course is...

5 Keys to Successful Outreach

Here are five of Valcort’s 35 Keys to Business Growth that address the challenge of reaching out to your publics. Take a look. Making the Best of Customer Touchpoints # 5 Have a fully coordinated, customer sales approach, drawing a customer into an engaging relationship at every point of contact. Executing...

The Keys to Successful Corporate Communication

Communicating is simple. Right? Well, expressing yourself may be easy, but effective communication can be mind-numbingly difficult in settings from friendships to marriages, politics and religion, and business. It’s strange that although we all have been communicating since our infancy we still face communication problems all our lives. We often find...