Ever wish you were better at sales and marketing?
Let’s face it, the world as we know it has changed. With technology progressing at lightning speed, today’s customers are inundated with information and choices. Traditional forms of promotion like newspaper ads and mass mailings aren’t working. Technology has trained consumers to expect more – they don’t want to be bombarded with generic one-size-fits-all advertising. They expect the businesses they buy from to know them, and to deliver relevant information to them when they want it and how they want it. To succeed today, small businesses must adapt and change the way they market their products and services.
For salespeople, it is getting harder and harder to reach prospective customers and develop new business using the traditional means of prospecting. It is almost impossible to reach decision makers via cold calls or prospecting over the telephone. Attendance at trade shows and networking events continues to decline. The internet has increased competition and forever changed the way customers buy. Being “introduced” is a necessity today, whether that introduction comes from a client, a strategic partner, social media or your marketing programs. The business development strategies and tactics that were effective just a decade ago simply no longer work today.
Why is it so hard to market your small business?
You don’t have to look far to understand why this question plagues so many. It really has to do with why people get into a business in the first place. The typical small business in America is started by someone who knows how to do something. It might be how to prepare taxes, how to assemble a certain type of gizmo, how to wire a ceiling fan, how to administer a network, or how to plan a wedding. Almost never does this know-how include being able to market a business that does those things.
Although sales and marketing are the lifeblood of any business, marketing strategies for small businesses and selling skills are rarely taught in schools and universities. The marketing strategies that are taught are designed for large companies with big budgets and plenty of room for error. Without the right guidance many small businesses go about it all wrong, wasting thousands of dollars and countless hours in the process, commodities that are already in short supply for the typical small business owner.
Regardless of what you do, you are in the marketing business!
What if I told you that, no matter what your business claims to do or provide, you’re actually in the marketing and selling business. Think about it. Can you really have a business or a practice without being able to reach out and invite someone to become your client?
You are in the marketing business! Marketing is an all-encompassing outlook that must inform every activity of your business. It isn’t just a department within your business. When you discover this outlook, marketing your business gets really, really easy.
Successful companies are built around systems
Successful businesses are not built by extraordinary people but by ordinary people doing extraordinary things. But for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, a system – “a way of doing things” – is absolutely essential in order to compensate for the disparity between the skills your people have and the skills your business needs if it is to produce consistent results. The most successful businesses are dependent upon systems, not people.
You probably have a system or a process for running every other aspect of your business. Businesses operate according to systems in order to save time, reduce mistakes and maximize effectiveness. Almost every business has a system for operations, production, distribution, accounting, etc. Yet when it comes to sales and marketing many companies simply “wing it”. To be successful, a company should also have an effective system for marketing and sales.
Our system for marketing is Duct Tape Marketing™, the nationally acclaimed step-by-step road map that any business, regardless of size, can use to create a powerful marketing plan that brings outstanding results.
Our system for selling is our own, a straightforward, collaborative selling process using the best practices and strategies available today. We call it Client Builder Selling™.
Proven, practical systems for marketing and selling
The small business that uses the Duct Tape Marketing system comes to define marketing as “getting people who have a specific need or problem, to know, like, trust AND contact you.” Getting a hot prospect to actually pick up the phone and seek you out is the dream situation for most small businesses and sales professionals. A fully functioning Duct Tape Marketing system is the key to generating more leads.
Once you have a qualified lead, the last thing you want is to squander it by failing to guide that opportunity from the interest stage to where a client actually buys your product or service. Using the systematic application of our Client Builder Selling process you can quickly and effectively qualify your prospect and facilitate the sales process to the point of closure in the optimum way. Using both the Duct Tape Marketing System and the Client Builder Selling Process our definition of marketing goes beyond getting people who have a specific need or problem to know, like, trust, and contact you. It evolves to where people try, buy and repeat the purchase of your product or service AND ultimately refer you to others who have this same need or problem. That’s the value of proven systems: they deliver the keys to greater success every time.
Marketing and selling strategies that work together
Most firms that specialize in providing sales and/or marketing help focus on only one side of the client development equation. Marketing specialists help small businesses find new ways to generate leads. Sales trainers teach business owners and their employees how to convert those leads into new business through sales techniques and tactics.
Unfortunately, many marketing specialists do not understand selling and fail to create processes that tee up a sale properly. Conversely, sales trainers often feel that marketing is a crutch that top salespeople shouldn’t need. As a result, the leads generated by marketing are often ignored or squandered by ineffective sales efforts. Left on their own, salespeople waste their time on outdated, ineffective methods of prospecting – time that could be better spent selling qualified leads.
Sales and marketing are both necessary and equally important to the success of a small business. At Client Builder Marketing, we not only help companies implement marketing strategies that generate more leads, we teach them how to convert those leads into new clients and more business.
Programs designed specifically for small businesses and independent professionals
The three biggest obstacles faced by most business owners when it comes to marketing and sales are: (1) lack of knowledge, (2) lack of time, and (3) lack of money. Small business owners frequently tell me they want a way to access guidance, know-how and support they can afford to help them overcome their sales and marketing challenges and grow their businesses by design, not by accident.
Our programs are specifically designed for small business owners and independent professionals that want to take their revenues to the next level, but don’t have the in-house marketing or sales support they need to make that happen. We provide a combination of coaching and other resources dedicated to sales and marketing that gives you, the owner of a small business or professional practice, a way to:
- PLAN your marketing and selling strategy
- CREATE your marketing material
- DESIGN your system for marketing and selling your products and services
- BUILD the components of your ongoing sales and marketing systems.
- IMPLEMENT your lead generation and selling strategies so as to generate a steady stream of new leads that ultimately become customers.
- MEASURE and MAINTAIN the results of these sales and marketing systems.
Plus, you can be certain that every strategy, tool and technique that we provide and help you implement has been tried and tested on the street to ensure that it really works the way we say it does. Our greatest strength lies in our ability to “walk our talk” and apply the strategies and tactics we teach in our workshops to the context of each client’s specific situation.
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