One recurring theme we hear when interviewing decision makers on behalf of our clients is their desire for trusted resources – partners – who can help them be better than they could be alone.  Challenging times offer unique opportunities to step up to the plate and cement a bond by coming through for them in a time of need.  It presents an opportunity to get back in touch with key customers, and prospects on your target list that just didn’t get called as you had hoped.

This is also a great time to revisit whether or not you still feel that your value proposition is current and meaningful.  Does it clearly state the tangible results a customer gets from doing business with you?  Or said another, less tactful, way – does it answer the question of why they should do business with you?  What you wrote one, two or more years ago may not resonate today.  If not, it may just be because you have grown.  In that case, congratulations and now get out a pen and paper and start jotting ideas.  Short, clear, and crisp.  Something that could fit on a t-shirt.  Something you can embrace and have fun with.  Something that inspires and gives purpose and direction.
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Innovation has been looked at as an admired business strategy over the past decade. We’ve even written about it. But the other side of the story is that most companies that require a constant flow of new, innovative products will someday find themselves in deep trouble. Proof of that claim is that Sharper Image, home of innovative products such as the Razor scooter, the robotic dog, the Ionic Breeze, the StressEraser and the R2-D2 interactive droid, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as did a whole list of others.
 
As timeless author Al Reis points out, “Every successful company needs a branding strategy, which may or may not include innovation. Yet many marketing gurus have elevated innovation to a point where it is widely perceived as the single most important function of a corporation.”

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The Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) has published its list of what it considers to be the nine top trends affecting marketing, with the consumer’s increased desire for control being the overriding theme throughout all of the highlighted trends.
 
According to NMI, consumers today want more control in all aspects of life, whether it’s their health, their lifestyle, their finances or other critical areas, while at the same time they want new and innovative products and more information.  And they are also demonstrating increasingly fragmented, and possibly less predictable, behavior.

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