Quit Talking About Features & Start Talking About Benefits
No business is immune from living inside its own echo chamber where their world starts revolving about their own product or service. This can lead to lots of unfortunate side effects, but one of the most common is to focus its messaging and sales efforts on “features.” The problem is that most people don’t care […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Content, Knowing Your Customers, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Social Media
May, 26, 2015
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Let Your Customers Do the Talking: Creating and Leveraging Great Case Studies

There is nothing more convincing to a potential customer than hearing about the success someone else has had with your product or service – it’s way more believable than anything your sales or marketing team can come up with on their own. This presentation gives you the steps to create an effective case study and […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Marketing, PR, Product Management, Sales
May, 04, 2015
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Upselling Isn’t for the Untrained
A trip to the vet provides an important reminder that non-salespeople still end up selling, and they’re not always very good at it. This morning I took our two cats to the vet for their annual check-up and rabies shots. Instead of our usual vet a different member of the practice saw us. While she […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Sales
Aug, 11, 2014
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Safe Assumption: Your Customers Aren’t Paying Attention
Just because your customers are buying from you, it doesn’t mean they know what else you have to offer. Last week the president of GameStop, the leading brick-and-mortar video game shop in the U.S., announced something pretty surprising: “Believe it or not, only 40 percent of the people who walk into a GameStop store today […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Marketing, Product Management, Sales
Jul, 28, 2014
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7 World Cup Lessons for Your International Strategy
The 32 nations fighting for soccer supremacy in Brazil can teach us some valuable things for doing business abroad. Wow, There Are a Lot of Countries Sitting an ocean or two away from most of the world, it is pretty easy to lose your perspective. How often is Ghana or Bosnia-Herzegovina or Uruguay coming up […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Management, Market Research, Product Management, Sales
Jun, 18, 2014
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The Downsides of Leaving a Legacy

Don’t let your early triumphs drag down future sales success. When you are working for (or starting) a new venture, you hope your solution is widely used, if not ubiquitous. You want millions of people utilizing your products, relying on your services and promoting your wares throughout the marketplace. Truly successful firms may see this […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Customer Service, Management, Product Management, Sales
May, 27, 2014
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3 Ways to Head-Off the Naysayers
Proactive preparation for the people who can’t say yes, but can say no. It is essential for a sales team and the marketing folks supporting them to understand who their actual customer is. We’re not talking about “car dealerships” or “universities” or “software companies,” but rather who within those organizations is actually going to want […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Content, Sales
May, 14, 2014
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The Customer ISN’T Always Right… And Sometimes You Need to Tell Them
Making sure the customer is happy AFTER the sale is often more important than closing the deal. The old maxim of “the customer is always right” has been around since the 19th century, used by retail tycoons of yesteryear such as Harry Gordon Selfridge (who is so famous there’s a TV show about him). At […]
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Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Sales
May, 12, 2014
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