Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Divide Your Marketing/Sales Pie Differently

I talk to a lot of agency owners and I ask them the same question: how do you plan to grow your firm? The answers I almost always get are these:

• “Do a better job of marketing”

• “Hire a marketing director”

• “Win more new business presentations”

• “Get more referrals”

• “Make the agency an account”

Now these answers aren’t totally wrong – they are just not the right one.

What agency owners and CEOs should be saying is. “We have to do a better job of sales.”

After all isn’t business development all about selling and winning?

So why don’t I get the right answer? I think it is because many people are confused about the difference between sales and marketing. So here are my definitions:

Marketing: The process of making a “universe” of potential business prospects know more about your firm and how you think

Sales: The process of persuading a potential customer to buy your services

Now where would you put the emphasis?

From now on divide your sales and marketing “time pie” differently – 75% of your time on sales and 25% of your time on marketing.

Making the time commitment is only the very first step of the sales challenge. I’ll be addressing other challenges and offering potential solutions in future postings.

1 comment:

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