Recession or Something Else?

Talking with a business owner about sales, he said the recession was killing him. Based on what I learned in the conversation so far, I knew that wasn’t the whole story; it sounded like there were several reasons for the slow sales. We were talking because he wanted some new ideas to deal with the recession, and I had plenty, from both Marketing in a Downturn (see www.geniusmarketing.com/Recession_Help.html) and ideas that came up as we discussed his situation. Yet I also knew that new tactics wouldn’t fully solve the problem.

What are marketing tactics? They are the tools that do the work of carrying the message, unique selling proposition, and call-to-action to the prospective customer. They often get the credit (or blame) for the success (or failure) of “marketing”.

Tactics are like the old saying about computers: “garbage in, garbage out”. Much must happen before the tactics will yield their full potential.

For this business owner, the economy was hiding from he and his team some of the reasons that sales were slow. Let’s consider a few:

1. The economy: Okay, the economy does have something to do with it. For this business, the pie was shrinking (see next bullet), the number of potential end users was diminishing. In a bad economy, those prospects remaining in the potential group were fewer and less likely to want to spend the money on this product.
   

2. Smaller market: Because of the nature of the products that this company sold (an add-on to another product system), their market had decreased in size as users were offered more options in base product systems. Yet their add-on’s worked only with the former standard bearer.
   

3. Lack of communication: This company had built its business on an excellent product and great customer support. When the base product system they supported was the market leader, business came to them. Therefore, a proactive marketing communications strategy didn’t develop.
   

4. Process and people: The slowdown revealed some holes in the process (like the lack of marketing communication) as well as some people problems (the way people interacted in the marketing and selling process), which were only exacerbated when the downturn came.
   

So, a lot more in play than just a bad economy! We are now working on better understanding the problems, prioritizing them and working on solutions. One example: developing service packages or other new offerings that can support those former customers still using the product system and our add-on’s. This is a particularly powerful concept as the bad economy will mean users are looking to extend the usefulness, rather than replace, our system.

Bottomline: it is important to understand the marketing/sales process and the moving parts therein in order to be able to navigate accurately in bad times and good. That’s one of the reasons we’re now offering the Genius Marketing Assessment (see www.geniusmarketing.com/GM_Assess.html) piece as a standalone. A key part of the Marketing Coaching process, we are offering the Assessment alone to afford business owners and management teams a new perspective on their situation to uncover the areas on which to concentrate their efforts.

Yes, it’s the economy. However, good times or bad, it’s more about the process. If you’d like to talk more about an assessment, email me at genius@geniusmarketing.com to set up a time to talk.

SLE