Sales Event/NNDS Nemacolin
Ice Cubes to Eskimos NNDS, a provider of online curriculum, approached Integra to help increase their sales. The problem for NNDS was that they were not the leading provider of curriculum and were competing with K12 and other better-known companies. We realized our task was to build better brand awareness of their products in order to move their needle in sales as they competed with industry giants. Our aim was to steer the company, which was a small to medium sized business, by making a sales person of the NNDS brand of every employee. at every level. This kind of comprehensive sales approach and understanding was what it would take for them to be able move their business forward. Communicating this to the staff and management as
well as laying out a strategy involved some “outside of the box” thinking. The old saying that a good sales person is able to sell ice cubes to Eskimos, became the theme and motivating message we used for developing a marketing strategy that was focused on creating salespersons from every employee, everyone at NNDS who “touched” a customer. IMG drafted a 18-month marketing plan that enabled NNDS to be able to strategically compete with the big players, while giving their brand the top of mind awareness with potential customers, they so badly needed. Through coaching and hands on sessions in a 3 day sales training workshop held at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, the IMG events team demonstrated to management and staff how to think differently about sales as we equipped them to take that message back to their offices where the strategies of our marketing plan were successfully implemented.
Sales/PTC Charlotte
IMG created a Sales Training Event Series,designed to training an engineering sales force how to help the VAR sales channel market and sell product for PTC Engineering Software throughout the United States called “Empowering the Channel”. This three day event was created specifically to help provide the groundwork for the sales engineers to advise the VAR (Value Authorized Resellers) how to market their ever changing products and services. This intense training was very exciting and action packed interactive exercises dealing with subjects from Social Media, Trade Show Implementation to Website Search Engine Optimization. In one such exercise IMG facilitators were shocked when the ‘sales engineers at PTC’ actually replaced the tooth paste ‘back into’ the tube – when asked.
IMG also created the pre and post sizzle around the event to use as an example to showcase how they might add some excitement around the existing PTC events, that they use today.
Social Media/IMG Event
Over the years, IMG has conducted Social Media workshops to coach clients and their staff. One of these workshops was hosted at IMG headquarters as part of our ongoing Entrepreneur Series of workshops and seminars.
At Integra Marketing Group, we work with entrepreneurs on a regular basis. We hear a lot of business owners’ concerns. We have solutions for many of these concerns of clients, but there aren’t a lot of locally accessible venues for this kind of information.
That’s why we started the Entrepreneurial Series. To cover these topics through educational forums, seminars and workshops that equip business owners like you to deal with issues that matter to you.
Entrepreneurial business owners from Allegheny and Beaver County representing industries as diverse as Bio Medical to Electrical Lighting and Non-profit organizations participated in the event titled “Social Media: The End of Business As Usual.”
After opening remarks, the IMG team took the attendees through a series of exercises that demonstrated the benefits of using the various forms of social media for public relations for their organizations.
The benefits and features of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and the use of e-Blasts were addressed.
In a follow-up, the overwhelming majority of attendees surveyed stated that the workshop was very beneficial. While at least half of the participants rated their particular business communications as fair, nearly 80% claimed to have learned a lot from the IMG workshop and were very excited to begin to implement some form of social media for their own businesses.
If your organization is interested in attending an IMG Social Media workshop,call Chuck at 724.200.0005 or email chuck@img-group.com or like us on Facebook!
Flash Flood Brainstorming/AMS San Deigo
In an ongoing desire to paradigm shift ways to serve clients Integra Marketing Group, Inc. added Flash Flood Brainstorming to its arsenal of effective creative brainstorming tools. Developed as a tool to utilize catharsis-producing (ie “flash flood”) techniques and galaxies of categories concepts as well as “100 mph thinking” in a series of directed activities to enable corporate clients to perform transformative self-assessment and evaluation.
Recently, Integra used the Flash Flood Brainstorming program on one of the top financial service organizations in the USA. Held in San Diego, California, the goal was to create a relaxed yet energized atmosphere in which these professionals could discover new ways to critically view and improve their organization.
The atmosphere produced by the Flash Flood Brainstorming is conducive to break through obstructions of corporate culture, allowing for management to productively participate alongside employees in a relaxed game-type environment. The leader’s questions provoke creative answers that are sometimes absurd. This thinking outside of the box behavior is encouraged, and the relaxed atmosphere ensures that participants are not intimidated by the performance of their peers.
In this particular event we harvested powerful information we were able to use in our Questmark AnalysisÒ. The employees and executive team enjoyed the exercise that helped them to realize vital discovery. This was a result of breaking down inter-departmental barriers, enabling the opportunity for social interaction in a controlled exercise.