Driving Sales

“We’d have to add a salesperson,” said the business owner, exasperated, “but we can’t afford that right now.”

That was the answer I received to my question, “What are the top three things you could do immediately to increase sales?”

I wasn’t completely surprised by this. The owner I was speaking with runs a sales organization. There go-to-market model is to direct sell prospects and customers. All the marketing items developed are sales support. Even there website is merely an extension of the sales literature.

There is a difference between a sales organization and a marketing organization. Direct sales are imperative in many industries, but often overlooked is the need to create an integrated marketing and sales process.

Adding more salesforce can drive more sales. Yet this is an expensive “all in” strategy. Another option is doing a better job creating leads and referrals for the current salesforce through inbound inquiry generation. This drives sales as well. Usually at a lower cost, and certainly at a lower risk and commitment level.

Sometimes sales organizations doubt the value of marketing. Afterall, anyone who has ever been involved in direct selling has complained about some deficiency in the quality of the leads marketing delivers. Probably true in some cases(!)...but that doesn’t mean you don’t ever use a turbocharger on your racecar because one you had years ago blew up.

The disconnect between marketing and sales is often about what we want to get out of the marketing process and deliver to the sales process. Many marketing elements are focused on building awareness and credibility. These are important, but not necessarily what will yield rich sales leads.

Here are a few things for a sales organization to consider:

• What are the first couple steps in the sales pipeline? Could a marketing element accomplish them? Example: If our product needs some technical requirement or other specification on the client side, how could we gain that information and know it before the sales call?
• What is our best call-to-action? A strong call-to-action will do more to self-qualify a lead. Testing multiple calls-to-action should be standard practice.
• Consider the right conversion tactic online. Trading information is standard operating procedure (i.e. contact information for a white paper), but is our offer and return balanced? Does it yield the right title in the right organization and other key information? Are people not signing up because the value received isn’t worth the fear of getting a sales call?

Marketing vs. Sales is a classic rivalry, but it needn’t be if the process is engineered together. Our pipeline analysis and gap/dam analysis could do wonders to make marketing feed sales and sales thank marketing. Email me if you’d like to discuss your situation. After all driving sales is a lot easier when all the parts of the racecar are working together.

SLE

Happy New Year!

Labor Day is behind us and the National Football League begins this week. Must be fall coming, so why “Happy New Year”? If you’re like me, September, back-to-school time, and even the NFL seems like a fresh start. Yes, January is the start of the year, but after 16 years of schooling and now with school-age kids, this time of year is the “new year”.

I seem to sense people feeling that in business as well. Although economic indicators continue to be troubling, I find a fresh perspective in many of the business people with whom I’ve been meeting. To that end – what should your organization be considering regarding marketing at this “new” time of year?

If you’re like a lot of organizations, 2009 has meant a lot of changes to budgets to support marketing tactics and probably the measurable results of those tactics. This is a great time to reconsider your strategies and tactics and develop a plan that will prime you for 2010 and beyond.

So what to be thinking about? If I were working with you and your company, I’d make sure we discussed these things:

Assessing Our Tactics – A couple weeks back, I wrote a post about “The New Normal” describing the possibility that the economic shifts of the last year have fundamentally re-set the way business decisions are made; i.e. how businesses of all sizes look at cash, credit and purchases.

• How are our strategies and tactics stacking up against this new reality?
• How much marketing do we need to do?
• What types of tactics will work?
• How do Social Media Marketing and other new interactive techniques fit in?
• What message and call-to-action will work in this new normal?

Tracking Our Process – The process is key for making our marketing tactics (direct mail, online, telephone, etc.) as effective as possible.

• Do we know how sales are really made?
• How do suspects turn into prospects and prospects turn into customers?
• How do our marketing and sales fit together?
• Are there gaps letting potential sales slip through?
• Are there dams that are causing prospects to leave the pipeline?
• How do new tactics we try get tested and integrated into the process?

Finding New Opportunities – With any change, new opportunities arise. In a downturn, market share (gaining a larger share of the available business) is almost always up for grabs. Conditions in the marketplace can also create opportunities for selling more to current customers.

• What opportunities exist with our current customers?
• What do our best customers look like and how can we find more like them?
• Am I missing part of the profile for new prospects because I really don’t understand the reasons customers buy?
• Can we create loyalty and more sales with some new offers to existing customers? Or packaging our products/services differently to meet a new/changing need?
• Can we create new target segments?

Sure, there are more than these three that could bring benefit, in fact it was tough to get this list down to three! However, embodied in these three items is the way to get control of your marketing and make it as effective as possible as quickly as possible.

If you want to hear some of the other ideas that were close but didn’t make the list, email me (genius at geniusmarketing.com). Also send me a note if you’d like to discuss how to get these things done, I’d love to talk to you further.

SLE

Word of Mouth Marketing

“I’m just trying to get out more. Meet more people, raise our visibility,” said the business owner when I asked about his recent increase in attending networking events.

Word of Mouth marketing is one of the top ways for businesses of any size and type to gain new customers. When you think of word of mouth, what comes to mind? I asked my business owner friend this question. His response was right on:

“Word of Mouth marketing is people who know you or your customer telling people you don’t know or aren’t your customer about you and your product.”

Right on! And hopefully they’re telling you about their exploits so you can ask for an introduction or follow up with the referral.

So, what is your word of mouth marketing plan? Are you doing the things you need to do that will prompt “people who know you or your customer telling people you don’t know or aren’t your customer about you and your product”?

Too often those responsible for gaining business (owners, partners, management teams, salesforce) focus on meeting prospects. They aren’t networking, they are on-the-spot direct selling. We can get so focused on our goal of new customers that we are only interested in networking with (or perhaps better stated “finding and targeting”) customers directly.

When was the last time you went to a networking event looking for someone who could refer you to prospects?

Yes, that’s a lot more work and takes time. It’s a lot easier to go to an event, only talk to people who fit your target customer and when you find one, dump your sales pitch on them. It is harder to take time to listen to people, investigate who they know, who their customers are and then build a relationship that might end in referrals.

I wonder which is more effective in the long run?

Prospect Hunting

. Going to events to find your target prospect.

. Once found, convincing them to buy from you (or at least give you a chance to quote!).

. Successfully going through the sales cycle to close and get a sale.

. Rinse and repeat.

Referral Partner Seeking

. Going to events without a quota.

. Engaging other professionals about their work and goals.

. Meeting people who work with or know your prospects...but don’t compete with you.

. Build a partnership for mutual benefit that provides an ongoing source for referrals.

You’re right, you might need to do both...but I’ll bet you’re only doing the Prospect Hunting right now!

When did I become an expert on word of mouth marketing? When I met Michelle Donovan of The Referral Institute here in Pittsburgh. We work together...I can help integrate the word of mouth marketing plan into the overall marketing process and strategy. She provides the best (and I mean that) advice, techniques and coaching available for word of mouth marketing.

You can buy her book on her website, or email me (genius at geniusmarketing.com) and I’ll introduce you. You won’t regret it!

SLE