I don’t have to tell anybody in business that competition today is stronger, more aggressive and less sensitive to the impact it has on local competition. We only have to look at category killer stores (BestBuy, CompUSA, Linen N Things) together with big-box stores (WalMart/Target/etc) to get a sense of how different today’s marketplace is from that of even as recently as 20 years ago.

The difference is most heavily felt with retailers whose cost of product they buy from vendors is significantly higher than that of their mega competitors. How big a difference? It can be as much as 20-30%. This explains why clients and friends in business often say that “X competitor” is selling product at less than I can buy from my vendors”.

Y2012 looks like a real winner for business that can break the RECESSION MINDSET! What do I mean by Recession Mindset? I refer to a pessimistic through process that suggests that the future is likely to be “more of the same” or “worse”. The result? A passive marketing/sales effort that relies on little, if any, change and a even more conservative willingness to invest in growth.

One of the first things that sales and company executives ask us when we meet them is; “We need to grow our sales, what can you do for us?” To that we always respond, “If you’d share with us some of the processes that you have in place now for the sales team to follow – we can then take a look at them and see if there might be a way that we can help.”

Is it time to build a Marketing Machine? Let’s examine the benefits. And Assemble The Best of Both Worlds There’s marketing and there’s sales, and each has its pros and cons. To ensure your marketing and sales people work in concert with one another as teammates, like they should, you need a Marketing Machine. A Marketing Machine combines the strengths of marketing and sales to create a powerful business development system – a combination of technology aprocess! Strategic Planning & Implementat-ion Associates builds Marketing Machines using a combination of software and eMarketing system.

Kicking off a new business means that the entrepreneur or business owner begins operations leveraging his/her knowledge of the products or services it performs and how those product/services will be delivered to the marketplace. When the start-up begins with the entrepreneur him/herself – a non to infrequent occurrence, the entrepreneur begins operations doing absolutely everything – sales/marketing, finance and operations – dividing up his/her time based on what has to be done based on a priority known usually only by that individual.