Increase Sales and Marketing Productivity:
Read "Steal These Ideas!

Your sales and marketing productivity efforts are about to get a major shot in the arm! Steal Your Ideas! is a breakthrough book that you need to read from cover to cover.

Effective marketing can help any size business go from ho-hum to world-class in terms of achieving improved results.

In this very well written book, Steal These Ideas!: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star by Steve Cone, you are provided with an incredible number of insightful and powerful tips and ideas to improve results for your business.

Illustrated in great detail with clear-cut examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in advertising – this book provides the secret ingredients to increase your sales and marketing productivity that no one ever takes time to share.

Cone speaks with great effectiveness on the importance of keeping your employees closely connected to your marketing plans. Simple concept given your associates at ground level are likely to more closely relate to the customer versus a high-level executive.

You will continually increase your sales and marketing productivity by:

• Always giving employees a heads up on an upcoming launch so they feel a part of the effort
• Always asking for employee feedback in order to avoid making costly mistakes that higher ups may not see coming
• Always communicating in an effort to maintain employee loyalty and retention.

Big Ideas for Sales and Marketing Productivity

Cone talks in great detail about where the really BIG ideas come from. He shares a story about a former CEO telling his employees that if he ever walked into their offices and caught them with their legs resting on their desk just thinking about sales and marketing productivity, they would be first in line for a raise!

His rationale was that he was paying his top brass to “think” about ways to take the company to the next level, not to run the office – that’s why they have secretaries.

Cone speaks directly to the small business man or woman who continues to give excuses for why they don’t advertise.

Costs too much? Lack of effective advertising costs you much more when you fail to promote your business.

So why do we advertise? To motivate our workforce, to remind our customers why they are customers, generate new leads, recruit new talent from our competitors, to build a recognizable name brand people trust – all in an effort to be the "business of choice" in your industry.

Cone goes on to ask, "Why aren’t you advertising?"

Don't Wait For Results, Generate Them!

In the preface of the book, Steal These Ideas!: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star Cone shares a wonderful little story about the first time that Woody Allen and Arnold Schwarzenegger ever met.

Picture for a moment both highly successful men in attendance at a small intimate cocktail party. As the story goes, Woody walks up to Arnold and asks the multi award winning Mr. Universe, “Arnold, what would it take for me to look like you?” Without skipping a beat, Arnold replied, “Two generations.”

The point of the story is that unlike Woody Allen, you will not have to wait that long for a sales and marketing productivity transformation if you utilize Steal These Ideas!

Cone encourages businesses of any size to think globally, act locally, and whatever you do – have a point to doing it.

He provides a large number of real-life examples of marketing ads that have worked to increase sales and marketing productivity for his organization and others, and many that did not. Cone points out the not-so-obvious reasons for each outcome.

Cone is a huge proponent for “sweating the details”. To a great degree, he believes that the success or failure of any marketing campaign is directly related to the correct fulfillment of each and every detail.

To this end, Cone urges business owners and managers to be squarely involved in the marketing of the organization versus simply turning it over to an agency who does not have the same passion for the business.

Sales and marketing productivity will rise or fall based on the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. We encourage you to read Steal These Ideas! and benefit now by learning from others past mistakes. 

Author Bio

Steve Cone is managing director and head of advertising and brand management at Citigroup Global Wealth Management. A true out-of-the-box thinker, Cone is known for imaginative solutions to tough marketing issues, which lead to increased sales and marketing productivity. 

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