Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

10 Ways IT Companies Screw Up Their Retainer Contracts

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

There are not many things in life that are worse than being forced to listen to Rimberger Zuzupimple’s 1st vuvuzela Concerto in B-flat at full 127 decibels without earplugs, but one thing that is definitely worse is when IT companies make a pigs ear of their retainer engagements and turn those great opportunities into temporary manual labour jobs.

Yes, when you listen to vuvuzela music, it sure hurts your ears like hell, and you may even go as deaf as a cannon more quickly than you could say Jemima Puddle Duck, but when your company’s retainer contracts are set up incorrectly, you may equally go deaf by repeatedly yelling at yourself…

“You see, you raving bloody lunatic! What have you done!”

And while I can’t offer any remedy against eardrum-cracking vuvuzela music, in this month’s issue of Tomicide Solutions we discover some profit-leaking mistakes many IT companies make about their retainer services.

Many IT companies set up their retainer contracts incorrectly, often murdering their bottom lines in the process by positioning themselves as temporary day labourers and fungible vendors, as opposed to respected, recognised and in-demand industrial authorities.

There are probably more causes for this error, but over the years I’ve identified the following 10…

Posted in Client Work, Marketing, Project Management | No Comments »

14 Ways Information Technology Companies Waste Their Marketing Budgets

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Greetings on the National Prime Rib Day, the 27th April.

Just for one day, forget about your diet, cholesterol and mad cow disease, and enjoy a juicy slab of prime rib with some baked potato and some red wine.

But before we eat ourselves to death and get drunk as a skunk, let’s see what we have to discuss today under the aegis of business development.

What happens when many IT companies’ leaders realise that the competition is gaining on them?

In most cases, just to speed up the rate of the existing marketing activities and hope.

In the worst cases they hire more salespeople with atrocious compensation structures, and keep hoping.

What they fail to realise is that in many cases their marketing undermines their salespeople’s success.

It’s like the farmer who buys the best harvesting equipment and the best equipment operators, and send them out to the fields to harvest, although he’s never planted anything.

And when the people return and say there is nothing to harvest, our hero takes his anger out on the operators and fires them.

The dumb bastard doesn’t realise that he caused the problem in the first place by making some serious marketing mistakes.

And this is what we discuss this month’s brain-fryingly exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, 14 Ways Information Technology Companies Waste Their Marketing Budgets.

And after reading it or listening to it, feel free to hop back here and discuss it.

Posted in Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Setting Marketing Budget For Optimised Client Acquisition

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Do you know that more people are allergic to cow’s milk than any to other food?

The reason why I mention this hair-raisingly (your hair not mine) interesting fact is that in many small and medium-sized IT companies’ executives seem to be more allergic to setting their marketing budgets than anything else. Actually there is only one topic they are more allergic to: Setting their fees and prices.

Therefore budget-setting becomes guesswork, and very often this guesswork creates pathetically small marketing budgets, which, in turn create pathetic bottom lines in the following year.

Many small and medium-sized IT companies invest only a mere 1-3% of their gross revenues in marketing.

Why so little?

Hell knows?

But they do.

And this is what we discuss this month’s brain-fryingly exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, Setting Marketing Budget For Optimised Client Acquisition.

So, go and and read it. You may even learn something new, or at lest have a good laugh.

Posted in Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing | No Comments »