Sales and Marketing Basics
Succesful Sales and Marketing people recognise that what they are doing is working through a logical process one step at a time.
Any business needs a certain number of sales worth a certain amount of money to make it's monthly target. In order to be sure of closing that number of sales you need a larger number of people and companies that you're talking to who are ready to buy - because as we all know, not all selling activity ends with a sale.
Depending how good you are and your product you are likely to need between 2-4 times as many sales pending to make sure you will close the ones you need.
To generate this you will need a rather larger number of enquiries to keep your prospect bank topped up - perhaps 5 or 6 per prospect. And to generate these you will need to generate enough marketing effort so that you get the enquiries you need.
This will be a lot. Research shows that on average customers need to be contacted 7- 8 times in one way or another before they will buy.
The problem we have as small companies is getting the balance right between selling and producing. You can't be working for a client when you're out selling and you can't be selling when you're busy fulfilling orders.
So what can we do? We think that since you probably don't have time to do more than do your work and close your live prospects, the answer is to automate the prospecting process by relying on the power of the internet to deliver the stream of enquiries you need.
Our research shows that companies who do this do well. The process is best described in the words of one of the lawyers that we interviewed. "At the beginning of the year I work out how much money I want to make and I have a discussion with my (outsourced) marketing manager. We take into account what the conversion rates of all the lawyers who work for me actually are. They range from 16% to 74%. So the best is converting most enquiries into work while the "worst" (who is actually a better lawyer) is closing 1 in 6. Then we work out how many enquiries she has to generate to feed the machine and that's what she's targeted against."
The problem for most small business owners is that they've never worked in a real sales environment. So they find it difficult to estimate how much promotional work to do, and they don't systematically measure what they do. If you know what your own ratios are it's much easier to hold sales people that you may need to employ as the business expands to account.
So the telling it face to face part of 1Man Brand focuses on this and helps you put some system in and the other parts help you focus on telling your story on-line. Other tools we have which might help you are the Market On-Line e-book and the Punch Above Your Weight Workshop. You can find out more details at these links.
