This new opportunity, which has just come up, is one I’m really excited about. Imagine selling products to your customer and creating a promotional video and providing strategy about their business using your product. Everybody wins. Getting real estate on your customer’s web page? Who could ask for anything more?

I did this for years as a sales rep in Arizona until the home office brought me inside and built me a studio. That was almost 14 years ago. I do video production and e-strategy to enhance the business. This approach creates a real partnership. An added benefit other companies don’t provide or would even know how to approach. Close the deal and move on. So much for customer intimacy.

What a cool way to team up with a company. Sell them a product or service and then be able to help them effectively reach their audience using your digital experience. Some folks can make widgets, but they have no idea on the creative marketing.

First: a little backstory. When I took a sales position with Dupont Radiopharmaceuticals, I had already spent years as a professional chef, a musician and an erstwhile stand up comedian. What did that background have to do with selling isotopes? Plenty, as it turns out. Being of sound body and creative mind I looked for ways to differentiate myself from the competition. In 1999, I started shooting patient education videos for existing and potential clients.

The videos were educational, promotional and of course, branded. They took my customer relationships to a whole new level. My company, Bristol-Myers Squibb also made a generic version of my video called “Taking the Test” and put them out in VHS and DVD for everyone in our market.

Word spread like wildfire and customers even started to call my house. Competition started calling my company. They didn’t feel it was fair. Oh, well. When was the last time a cardiologist called your house? I was getting pretty popular. Started getting calls from reps that wanted to gain or maintain business all over the west. Even created newsletters for Kaiser Permanente, “The Hot Spot”.

This is definitely an unusual offering, but can be very effective in most businesses. A few years ago I created a bunch of informational videos for GPOs, (group purchasing organizations) for a medical imaging company. I wonder if they realized the power of gaining that real estate inside these organizations. I wonder too, if they enhanced that opportunity.

For me, this is the way in. If you want to partner with a customer, help them grow their business and reap the benefits, you need to have some creative chops. In my time in the field, I created and managed web sites, newsletters and produced many patient education videos using a company approved script.

I even bought up every domain name of every targeted account in my territory before they even knew what a web site was. I still get calls from time to time asking me to relinquish a url I had forgotten about.

It’s a “value added proposition” for sure and might not be a fit for everyone, but when you bring solutions to improve their business to the table, be it e-strategy, video and increased global presence you’re always welcome.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bob@doubleocreative.com