As my blog title suggests, one of my main focuses will be on driving revenue for your organization, whether it be through sponsorships and other forms of corporate partnerships, advertising, product or service marketing, membership development, events and trade shows or any other revenue generating activity that comes to mind. To set the tone for what’s to come in the following months, the following are 5 Key Principles that I believe  apply to any revenue generating activity. These principles are based on my work with hundreds of organizations and in my opinion, set the foundation for a successful revenue generation strategy.

Principle #1 – “The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary”. This quote by the late marketing guru, Peter Drucker is so simply stated, but has so much meaning behind it. The whole premise of this principle is that if you are providing the products and services that your customers want at the right time, place and price, the amount of selling you need to do is minimized. If you’ve ever tried to sell a product or service that wasn’t any good, you’ll know what I mean. Conversely, if you’ve ever marketed a product or service that everyone wanted, selling it was a pleasure.

Principle #2 – If you ask your customers, they will write your business plan for you.  This principle is very much tied to the first and simply means that instead of guessing what our customers want, we should be asking them what they need. Your current customers are your biggest supporters, so why not use them to gather business intelligence such as what they see as your strengths (USP) or unique position in the marketplace, who else would benefit from your services or what new products or services you can offer to make their life easier. And if you do this often enough, you’ll find that your customers will help guide where your organization should be going.

Principle #3 – Your audience is your important asset. Let’s face it – we are nothing without our customers and yet, many organizations do not take the time to really get to know who their customers really are nor cultivate them for new business.  I’m amazed at the number of organizations that don’t know anything about their customers beyond the superficial demographics that are often spouted. For example, if you want to expand your sponsorship prospects, you need to understand the values and lifestyles of your customers (and ultimately what they buy) in order to identify companies that want to sell to that market.The bottom line – we need to treat our customers like gold and that includes knowing what’s important to them at all levels.

Principle #4 – Not everyone wants to buy from you.  You may think that you have the best program, product or service in the world, but the fact is, not everyone will agree with you or actually even remotely care, depending on their frame of mind at any given point in time. The key is to recognize this, not take it personally and move onto someone who might care.

Principle #5 – You need to have conversations. Sounds like a simple notion, but email and other technologies have created a mindset that everything can be done electronically.  The fact is that we still buy from people we know, like and trust; so whether it’s a membership, sponsorship or product purchase, human interaction is still a big part of the process. The bottom line is that we need to spend less time in the office pumping out emails and more time in front of people having real conversations.

So there you have it. Print these out, put them in a place where you can refer to them daily and live by them and you’ll find that the rest of your job becomes much easier.

Later, BC