Keep your marketing and sales on track

Not all marketing tools are equal. Each tool has a specific objective, and each has one or two purposes. One of the initial marketing tools might be advertising. The purpose of advertising is to take a group of people and inform them, moving them from “unaware” to “aware.” The purpose of a webinar is to move a customer from “aware” to “informed.”

The objective of a sales call is to secure work from a customer who is “convinced.” Using a sales call to move a customer from “unaware” to “aware” is not only expensive, but it is also tough on your sales team. Sales people sell the most effectively when customers are either “convinced” or “aware” of who you are and what your company does.

Sales calls work very effectively on moving a customer from “convinced” to “preferred.” Of course, operations also have a role in moving a customer from “convinced” to “preferred.” Customers that prefer your organization to the competition have had successful projects working with your team.

Other marketing tools might be presentations, participation in associations, direct sales, direct mail or radio advertising. List all of the possible tools and think through their potential impact. The key is touching a customer with multiple marketing tools at the right time in their progression down the tracks. Choose the correct tools to achieve your desired objectives.

Most Effective Marketing
The most effective marketing takes place between two groups of people: the customer and the provider. Both groups need to have mutual respect for each other’s capabilities and clearly believe that they will be better off as an organization by doing business together. This enables customers to understand their own needs and enables you to assess your ability to satisfy those needs. It creates good reasons for doing business together. That is why waiting to educate a customer until after a project hits the table is so difficult.

The railroad tracks outline a marketing and selling process that gets the right tools to the right customer in order for you to achieve your vision as a firm (see Fig. 1, right). It takes a selective group of customers and moves them from “unaware” to “aware,” to “informed” to “convinced.” It is a process of matching their needs with your capabilities. Not every customer or potential customer will make it all the way through the process, let alone in a timeframe that fits your business plan. You need to ensure that you have sufficient customers that you are working down the tracks.

Conclusion
The marketing and selling process is the systematic approach of taking all of the targeted customers in your market down the track from “unaware” to being “convinced” that you are the best service provider around. Picking the right tools for the right segment of the track is critical. You need to be clear on what you are trying to accomplish and only then pick the marketing and selling tools that best fit the objective. Too often companies fall in love with a tool and overuse it. They frequently expect their sales or business development teams to call on people who have never heard of them and find a project on which to compete. The best you can hope for in such a situation is getting the chance to compete on price.

Effective use of tools will get customers and prospective customers to recognize your value and select you accordingly. Of course, you still need to have a sensible price. In today’s market, the difference between being selected solely on price, versus being recognized as adding value, is the difference between making a profit this year and needing to lay off additional staff.

Cynthia Paul is a managing director at FMI Corporation. She may be reached at 303-398-7206 or at cpaul@fminet.com. Hoyt Lowder is retired senior vice president. He may be reached at 813-636-1242 or at hlowder@fminet.com.