Your prospects are just not that into you.
From Private Equity to Community Banking, the biggest problem in driving new originations and revenues may not be what you think it is. Most industry participants point to a ‘lack of awareness’ of their brand in the minds of their prospects as being the biggest obstacle to growth. Well, you’re right and a little wrong […]
The “Gorilla” Math Problem of Commercial Finance Growth
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Isn’t it fun to be growing again!?! Leaders in the commercial finance business are positioning themselves to take new ground, expand into new asset classes or markets and grow the sales staff. But be careful Houston, you might have a problem. Throwing people at a growth initiative can get it done. Man it’s expensive though. […]
The essential guide to trade show success
It’s trade show season and many of you have already been or are headed to Vegas, Dallas, DC, Atlanta or more this year. And while these shows can be a great way to drive some business…we find most of you wonder or outright question if you can get more return for your investment in these […]
Maybe the biggest sales and marketing mistake
Don’t define yourself or your company by what you sell, define it by what you believe? Do you sell asset based lending or believe you are enabling growth through acquisition? Are you selling equipment finance or do you believe that new equipment package will give a customer a chance to profitably win that road construction […]
Is there a crisis of poor sales management?
The final six coaches of March Madness are: John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Mike Krzyzewski, Mark Few, Bo Ryan. For those that don’t immediately get it, these guys represent a roll call of 6 of the 10 most successful coaches of the last decade or more, so as much as we talk about players…there’s […]
Commercial Finance Websites: 10 things you just gotta have down
What should a commercial finance website be? You must think it should be a boring piece of online sales collateral that has no chance of helping you do much of anything. And after reviewing hundreds of your websites, we must say if that’s what you’re after…great work. But on the off chance that that is […]
Helping your sales team have better sales conversations.
The new phrase, and one that is likely to stick, is sales enablement. The question is what is your company doing to enable your salesforce to have better, more effective sales conversations? The answer for most commercial finance businesses is…drumroll…nothing. Not that it was ever a great idea, but the days of just hiring salespeople […]
Why targeting the “middle market” can be sales & marketing disaster.
Provocative title, but a not-so-easy topic. Why? Because most of you originating in this space are generalists in a general category of poorly defined businesses. What is middle market? $10-$500MM, $50-$500MM, $100MM-$1B, 100 employees to 1000 employees? The National Center for the Middle Market (our friends at GE and Ohio State) define the space as […]
Marketing to private equity
Let’s face it, having a few great private equity firms in your stable of lending relationships is beyond fantastic. In fact, many of the larger ABL players are originating half of their business or more from sponsors and really carries the load for them. And this trend is likely to increase with private equity coming […]
Creating value vs. quoting on stuff
We just finished a case study driven marketing campaign and it felt a little like tooth extraction. No, it wasn’t getting client consent or approval that was the problem, it was pulling the story out of our beloved commercial finance salespeople. Let me explain. Our process starts with a conference call where we pull the […]