I have found the book perfect for these economic times. The book will
show you how, to take more from the market than the market is prepared
to give you buy out strategizing, out managing, and outselling your
competitors.
Rather than writing about rehashed sales and sales management
methodologies, the author, Dirk Beveridge went to the heart of the
issue of sales performance and productivity, by researching – what is
it that separates those businesses who consistently outperform their
competitors. And what he found is gold.
The research led to defined best practices that are spelled out in
this book that form a roadmap for you and your organization. A
roadmap for significant top and bottom line sales results.
But more than a listing of best practices, you will hear the stories
of execution, stories of performance and success, providing a unique
insight that you’ll immediately relate to your business.
Now, there are no quick-fix-promises as part of what you’ll find in
this book, but you will want your entire management team to immerse
themselves in the provided wisdom and implementation tools. Then as a
team, together you can use the implementation roadmaps provided to
guide you in:
* Institutionalizing a differentiating sales process
* Developing and nurturing a high performance sales culture where
the team is committed to your vision
* Guide you in implementing a training and development program to
foster continuous skill development – even from your veterans.
* And… this book will show you how, to take more from the market
than the market is prepared to give you buy out strategizing, out
managing, and outselling your competitors.
Click here to read the 31 key-take-aways you will gain by reading this book and
to order your copies of Driving Distributor Sales Beyond for you and
your management team.
About The Author: Dirk Beveridge
Dirk Beveridge is president and chief executive officer of 4th
Generation Systems, a sales, marketing, and leadership development
firm that helps distributors and manufacturers become more competitive
and provider deeper value to customers. Dirk is an experienced
business executive who has helped strengthen the sales and marketing
strategies of leading firms, such as Time Warner, IBM, Andersen
Windows, Avaya and Berlin Packaging.
For more than 20 years, he has worked with over 3,000 firms as a
leadership consultant, trainer and speaker.
In addition to leading 4th Generation Systems, Dirk is one of the
nation’s most requested and highest-rated business speakers. He
provides timely, pertinent information to organizations on the topics
of customer focus, sales motivation, and market leadership. He is a
passionate, energetic and entertaining presenter and has been featured
on international speaking tours addressing groups on six continents.
Stephanie Leavitt is the Social Networking Strategist at Carnival Cruise Lines in Miami, Florida (www.carnival.com). Her background includes experience in youth marketing, public relations and social media.
How did you get started? It goes back to an internship with Gollin Harris, which was about seven years ago. That internship was for anti-tobacco work around youth activism. The project focused on viral and online social marketing efforts, but was before social networking as a media trend came about.
? Did you see social networking on the horizon? Yes, as I went to my next internship at Fleishman Hillard in NY the department focused on youth marketing. At that time we were going and finding online communities and posting on message boards for fans of certain bands playing for such events as Vans Warped Tour. Our client was Cingular who was focusing on the youth market. I started to see a growth in the number of people who were on message boards. Although most were considered "youth", the age span of the participants ranged from children to grandparents. This was also around the time that blogs first emerged.
What happened next in your evolution around social networks? I then had my senior class in college, Florida International University, got involved in the IAA’s InterAd student competition contest with our client being Yahoo! who wanted to focus on the youth consumer. We did a lot of research; spoke with a lot of teenagers and found they really wanted a lot of free stuff. Yahoo wanted more users for a variety of their products so we put together an integrated campaign to encourage users to involve their friends in actually using more Yahoo services. Our team ended up winning first place in the U.S. and Canada and second place in the global contest. We didn’t realize it then, but the underlying theme of our campaign was social networking.
So what happened next? I graduated and got a job in public relations and marketing, but the more and more experience I got the more I noticed the big change to online media. People started believing in it more—especially the youth (many of whom were transitioning into the entry level workforce). They see this form of marketing as more authentic than traditional advertising and marketing.
I was, however, continuing to do traditional pr and so I decided to blog on my own. I launched my own blog on Generation Y’s influence on marketing and pr and I also joined the Public Relations Society of America where I served as the vice chair for the New Professionals Group. There I spearheaded the launch of the new pros blog. I continued to see the decline of traditional media and decided that I would look for a job in social media, which was the on the rise.
When did you end up at Carnival? It was June of 2007 that I was hired by Carnival. At that time they had a social media site that had launched in 2006, www.carnivalconnections.com, which focuses on building community for those interested in cruises. Carnival also had a few other social media projects in development, including a popular travel blog.
What is special about the site? For a corporate website we are pretty open. People are free to say what they want so there are negative as well as positive comments. This is rare as many organizations are hesitant to have these types of comments on their sites.
We have a very popular blog written by our senior cruise director, John Heald, (www.johnhealdsblog.com) that launched in March 2007 and has resulted in a "Bloggers Cruise." Over 800 attended that cruise. Another example is Carnival Connections. There was a group of users who gave themselves the name "Coconut Monkey Head Group" based on a popular cruise drink they had when sailing. These people met on the site (have never met face-to-face) and are now planning to take a group cruise together. These are just two examples of social media helping grow bottom line sales.
What are you passionate about in the future in business and then in your personal life? In business, it would be creating authentic two-way communication with our guests. In my personal life it would be travel and spending time with my family, friends and my dog, Cocoa, a mini-dachshund.
Bonus Question: How do you like using LinkedIn? I like it and am not as involved as I would like to be, but I plan to use the question and answer tools more in the future.
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