Last week, I got a call from somewhere in the midwestern United States from a business owner who wanted me to coach him and his partner.
Their problem was that while they were building a business together, there were several parts to the business, one of which was an advertising business, that were struggling.
While the partner who was running this part of the business, Alan, had years and years of success as a marketing executive in corporate America, he had little experience running and owning his own business. His business had gotten off to a great start in the fall, but after Christmas sales slumped and his once eager customers had fallen away.
What should they do?
Like many business owners in trouble, Alan decided he needed to focus on more marketing. As he told me, he was building a funnel to get more customers to reach out to him so in turn he could send them his information.
Alan was building the biggest, best website. He had bought a phone list of his prospective customers, and had a telemarketer call these people (with little success), to see if he could send them his information. He was making marketing materials that would wow his prospects.
When I asked him why the business got off to a great start, he said that he began the business with a salesman who was pounding the pavement and reaching out to customers on a one-to-one basis.
He had no "marketing funnel" at that point, just the salesman who had been motivated by a rich commission. I asked him if he had any salesmen now and the answer was no. It took a few minutes for this to sink in.
In business and life, we sometimes forget the keys to our success, we think like Alan, that we can change the model and still get the same results.
This rarely happens.
There is a difference between marketing and sales.
Marketing is meant to reach out to potential customers, attract their attention and then call them to action. Sales, on the other hand, are built on relationships. Yes, you can sell without much of a physical relationship over the internet, or through advertising, but this takes much more work than one might expect.
Like Alan, I have built marketing funnels. My experience after spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years on advertising, is that you can advertise until you are blue in the face, but if you don't have the right people developing relationships with your customers, when they reach out to you, you will fail.
It's nice to think that customers will fall in our laps but the truth of the matter is that most times we will have more success in our business if we get off our marketing butts and go out and talk to our prospects.
Marketing and sales in business go hand in hand. Great marketing provides great leads for our sales team. Our sales team can make our marketing departments look great.
Sales people typically cost much more than an ad in the newspaper or on the internet and it is essential that we train our staff how to engage and sell our product with our prospects when they contact us.
Wasting time and money on marketing can be easy as Alan discovered. However, when we get the right mix of sales people, and marketing strategies, we can have a business that is truly successful and profitable.
Dave Fuller, MBA, PBCA Canadian Business Coach of the Year 2017, is the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Dave would love to hear your story and help you move forward. Email [email protected].
