Three Reasons Why Your Marketing Strategy Is Failing

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It can feel pretty defeating when you’ve put your oh-so-valuable time and energy into planning and executing a marketing plan, only to barely see a difference in your bottom line. It makes you want to throw in the towel and give up on this seemingly useless time-sucking endeavor that every business publication keeps promising is your silver bullet. Well, guess what – you’re not alone.

According to a report by SBI Research, it’s estimated that as many as 71% of marketers are falling short of their revenue targets by adopting the wrong marketing strategies. That’s right, not only are you not alone, but you’re in the majority! So, let’s put our past marketing grievances aside for a moment and determine what went wrong.

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About the Author

Molly JacobsonMolly Jacobson is the owner and founder of Jacobson Strategy, empowering small businesses to grow their brands with the strategy, support and expertise of online marketing coaching. For more information, visit www.jacobsonstrategy.com.

For the love of sales, not the love of money.

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Do you love sales?
Do you love what you do?
Do you love your product?
Do you love your company?
Do you love your customers?

These are not questions I pulled out of the air. These are questions that directly affect your productivity, your attitude, your income, your success and your fulfillment. Not to mention your longevity at your present job.

Many salespeople are reluctant to come to grips with “why” they are in sales and “why” they’re in their present job. Some salespeople will respond, “I’m in it for the money,” others will respond, “I need the money,” others will respond, “I have bills to pay and debt to overcome,” and even more will say, “I have a family.” Not many will say, “I haven’t got enough saved up to go to what I really want to do” and even fewer are willing to take the risk.

If you don’t love what you do, you’re doing no one a favor by staying in your present position. Your attitude and morale will be negative, you’ll be complaining about everything, and you’ll be blaming everyone else and their dog for your unhappiness and inadequacy.

And there’s a bonus: Your boss will be all over you to increase your numbers, your customers will be upset for lack of attention and in general, you will rise to a level of mediocrity.

What are you thinking?

Some salespeople hate their job, but stay because they “make a lot of money.” CLUE: The worst reason to keep a job is because you’re making a lot of money. When money is your motive, then its all about making the sale without regard to building the relationship. A formula for long-term disaster.

Oh, you may have some short-term success, but when you go home at night, you’ll be drowning your misery in television, beer, and in general anything but preparation for the next day.

You can even get away with it for awhile, but in the end you’ll be looking in the paper every Sunday, or posting your resume on-line hoping for a better opportunity.

It’s most interesting to me that the salespeople looking for a “better opportunity” are the very ones not looking in their own backyard (see Russell Conwell’s Acres of Diamonds for the full lesson). Most salespeople fail to realize that by building themselves into the best person they can be, that they will attract the right offers rather than seek them.

Let me flip back to the positive side. The purpose of this article is to give you a formula that you can to use to figure out if you are in the right place, or how to find the right place.

Here’s the formula: If you’re in sales and you love sales, first ask yourself, “If I could sell anything, what would I sell?” If the answer to that question is not what you’re currently selling, therein lies part of the problem. However, this formula is not about switching jobs immediately, this formula is about becoming the best salesperson that you can in each job you commit to. If you’re going to leave a job for another job, why don’t you set the company record for most sales before you walk out the door?

Selling is a lot like running a road race, you don’t have to win the race, but you do have to achieve your personal best each time you run one.

If your numbers are low or mediocre at one place, what makes you think they will be better someplace else? You see, part of the formula is not just love what you do, it’s also possessing the skills (or dedicating yourself to getting them).

So far we’re at: What would you love to do and dedicating yourself to getting the skills to master what you love.

The third part is believing. Belief in company, belief in product, belief in service and belief in self. If you believe deeply that everything is “best,” then your message will be so enthusiastically delivered that others will catch your passion. A deep self-belief will create enthusiasm and a deep self-belief will create passion.

LOVE TEST: You MUST believe the customer is better off having purchased from you. And you can’t just believe it in your head – you must believe it in your heart.

The final part is internalizing your attitude. Attitude starts from within. It’s the mood you’re in when you wake up in the morning, the mood you stay in all day long and the mood you’re in when you go to bed.

But attitude is not a feeling. Attitude is a life long dedication to the study of positive thought and the character/charisma/happiness that you display as you interact with others. If it’s not internal, it can never be external.

So there’s the formula, No, I’m not going to summarize it. If you want it bad enough, you’ll reread it. Love moves mountains – and students.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The 7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation

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Sales force transformation can be the key to driving market-leading profits and top-line growth. But it is not for the faint-hearted, as we outline in our stories and lessons learned in our book, 7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation. A sales transformation fundamentally changes how a company sells, and it radiates across the business both vertically (e.g., align to, and drive, corporate strategy) and horizontally (e.g., must include other functions). It permeates a company’s overall growth strategy, how it recruits and hires, and the types of sales conversations it has with prospects and customers.

What is a Sales Transformation?

We define sales force transformation as one that fundamentally changes the way a sales force sells. This is a big deal, and it’s not going to happen overnight. Typically, these sales transformations take longer than a year and must involve other functional areas – sales cannot succeed as an ‘island’ in the organization. Transforming a sales organization to consistently deliver insights requires new value propositions, case studies and collateral from Marketing, new competencies, skill development, recruiting profiles from HR, and alignment with Operations to refine products and services. A sales transformation is not a tweak, such as changing your sales training curriculum or implementing a new proposal generation application; it’s more like a “rewiring” of the company “house.” It’s multi-dimensional and holistic.

What are the Key Steps?

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About the Authors

Warren Shiver and Michael Perla are the authors of 7 Steps to Sales Force Transformation: Driving Sustainable Change in Your Organization (Palgrave MacMillan). Warren Shiver is the Founder and Managing Partner of Symmetrics Group and has more than 20 years of sales, management and consulting experience. Michael Perla is a Principal with Symmetrics Group, and has more than 20 years of sales effectiveness consulting and strategic marketing experience.

Using Follow Up Effectively

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Do you attempt to follow up with prospective buyers because they haven’t contacted you when you thought they should? Do you know what is stopping them from contacting you? Or where they are along their decision path – their steps from idea to consensus, from change to choice, that buyers must address – while we sit and wait, hoping they’ll close?

With a focus on understanding need and placing solutions, you may have no idea what stage they are at: did you originally connect when they were first considering possibly fixing something? Or when they were comparing your solution to an internal workaround or their favorite vendor? Were they just seeking information to share at a planning session? I bet you don’t have all the data on this.

Buyers Don’t Want Us Even When They Need Our Solution

We tend to think buyers need our solution, but that’s only a part of the issue. They don’t really want to buy anything, merely to solve a problem. And they always start out by trying to find a way to fix the problem themselves (When we think they are stalling, this is what’s going on that we don’t see.); it’s only when they realize that a workaround isn’t sufficient, or their internal folks can’t resolve the problem, or their regular vendors aren’t around, or or or… are they willing to buy.

But they have work to do before they are ready – and cannot not buy, regardless of how great a fit your solution is with their need, until these steps are completed (and all sizes/types of solutions require some form of these):

  1. They must assemble anyone who will touch the final solution, (not obvious)
  2. get buy in and consensus from both decision makers and influencers, (not easy)
  3. manage any change a solution will bring. (complicated, even with a small sale).

Price is not the issue. Competition with other providers is not the problem. The problem is how they will manage the internal change your solution incurs (separate from the benefits of your solution). Read my article on the complete list of steps buyers must take before they can buy.

If you want to facilitate their decision making, and your prospect is aware they need your solution and they seem to be stalling, call with these questions:

  • What would you and your decision team need to address to manage the types of change that would be required by purchasing our solution?
  • How will you and the decision team know that an external solution might be more effective and efficient than an internal workaround?

I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to use in conjunction with the sales model to give you the tools to help buyers manage the necessary steps to be ready to buy your solution. Use your follow up contact to help them figure out how to resolve any of these issues that might cause them to be stuck. Your solution is perfect for them; they just need help getting their ducks in a row so they can give you the order.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is a visionary, original thinker, and thought leader in change management and decision facilitation. She works as a coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant, and has authored 9 books including the NYTimes Business BestsellerSelling with Integrity. Morgen developed the Buying Facilitation® method (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) in 1985 to facilitate change decisions, notably to help buyers buy and help leaders and coaches affect permanent change. Her newest book What? www.didihearyou.com explains how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She can be reached at [email protected]