Defining key business objectives to establish your company’s primary direction and creating a market strategy that outlines your value to the marketplace are foundational components for energizing any marketing plan. In this article, I’ll discuss my observations from reviewing good and not so good marketing practices. A great marketing plan fulfills the key business objectives and market strategy goals. It provides clarity and direction for sales organizations to market successfully.
Often, when I ask a dealer how they market their company, besides getting a blank stare, they often point at the sales bullpen and say, “With my sales reps!” If your sales reps create the only approach to your marketplace, don’t be surprised when they walk away with customers once they’re through working for you.
An excellent marketing plan introduces and anchors your company to the senior management of prospects and customers; this approach helps to protect your opportunities and account base from walking away. Still, I’m amazed at how little marketing execution is going on out there. It’s foundational toward creating the value that someone pays for, as well as creating the differentiation that sales reps scream for.
So what does “marketing” do for you? A marketing plan breathes life into your business and creates (from intense research, preparation, and process), every step your company takes toward satisfying sales objectives. The best marketing teams want real-time data about the results and will require accurate and timely feedback. Revitalizing success doesn’t happen by accident, so it takes solid processes and expertise to drive it forward. It’s not free, but when done right, delivers one of the highest ROI values for the money. It doesn’t matter whether it’s internal or outsourced, just as long as your marketing team completely understands their mission and your objectives.
If you think you can’t afford it, think again. You can’t afford not to have a solid marketing plan. If cash is tight, build a smaller sales team and shift dollars to marketing. Drive your team with excellent marketing and sales execution, and when the timing is right, hire a new senior sales professional, bringing them into a positive, fast paced environment.
A marketing plan reviews and prepares everything so there is nothing left to chance. I’d like to highlight a few areas that are often ignored or left unanswered: the development and delivery of your value proposition, campaigns and communication, sales process and accountability, and sales compensation.
Value Proposition
Often in a sales boot camp, I’ll ask attendees to share their value proposition and what their company does that the competition doesn’t. The answers would amaze you, and in most cases, they have no idea what I’m talking about. Obviously, these sales reps could be the problem, and they simply haven’t been listening during their sales training. However, my follow-up interviews uncover that marketing is “missing in action,” and it does not exist in their company. A value proposition should come from the owners through marketing. If you leave your company’s value proposition up to the creativity of sales reps, you’ll probably find yourself in situations you can’t fulfill. I’ve seen it take some dealers as long as a month to come up with a true value proposition. When someone asks, “Why should we do business with you and your company?” you should have the answer.
Creating your value proposition is marketing’s responsibility, and it’s invaluable to your company. It should share your understanding of successful business execution and why you’re the best possible choice for partnership. And it should be true! Telling someone you’ve been around for 30 years is not a value proposition. While it’s a great thing, it has less to do with the perceived values most clients find acceptable. Your value proposition defines values that a prospect would seek and want to receive once they do business with you. It’s about them; it’s not about you. It is about you knowing them better than anyone else and reflecting that knowledge into values they’ll want to receive.
Campaigns and Communication
When you speak about marketing campaigns and communication and everything that entails, it forces one to ask the question, “Who do I want to tell – what?” Proper communication, whether through campaigns or other methods, is definitely marketing’s responsibility. The root of communication comes from key business objectives (what you want) and market strategy (what they want) polished by your value proposition. The way I look at it is, the communication component owns the value and strategies, and the campaign component owns the execution, timelines, and process.
When we help a dealer set up marketing communication, few really understand what an undertaking it can be. To deliver effective sales and account management communication, know who you want to communicate to, what you want to tell them, what are the possible outcomes, and what follow up actions are required.
The diagram above shows how large and complicated the marketing campaigns and communication tasks really are. If we divide the business between non-customers (prospects) and customers, you can immediately see the paths of communication required. Once you’ve defined all of the people you want to communicate with, establish what you want to tell them and how often. For this type of communication, I recommend a service such as www.funnelmaker.com. It’s not important that your marketing communication go out to everyone right away. Most marketing groups will prioritize, and most business owners agree to “protect the base.” Consequently, that is where I would recommend you start. You can phase in all campaigns of marketing communication later. When sending marketing communication to customers, it can be in the form of newsletters, technical advancements, etc. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about helping your clients become more successful using the advancements in technology that you deliver.
Sales Process and Accountability
Rarely do I see sales and marketing leaders working together in the development of sales process and accountability practices. I often find that sales leaders like running their own show and don’t necessarily realize the value of their marketing counterpart. Engaging marketing in the development of sales processes completely aligns every action and presentation your sales team makes to key business objectives and market strategy. This creates clarity for the entire sales team. The sales leader now can manage specific goals and practices and, thus, hold everyone accountable to a defined process and activity level. This refinement and definition seems to be a strong motivator for most sales reps, as they now know what the company wants and how they can make money.
Compensation and Marketing
In closing, I want to include a quick thought about making sure that marketing is involved in the creation of your sales comp plans. In our engagements, I get to see successes and failures tenfold, and one of the biggest deterrents of success is when a comp plan doesn’t align with the key business objectives and market strategy of a company.
For example, when a dealer tells me they sell managed services and their comp plans are based on a 30-day, equipment gross profit plan, I know there’s a problem. Talk about a revolving door! They go through sales rep after sales rep not realizing that it’s the comp plan that makes it impossible for them to succeed. This disconnect wastes money and can injure client relationships. Managed service deliverables have a longer sales cycle than a single month. Many deliverables, due to the assessment process associated, drive 120 days or more. Sales compensation must be based on reality and offer the best possibility for success, aligning with your company’s desires; you won’t starve your sales team into success. This issue is wide spread in our industry and is one of the most popular requests we deal with at MpsandIT Sales Consulting.
I believe the marketing skillset is “missing in action” in most distressed sales organizations. The insight gained from a true marketing professional is invaluable. If you can’t afford one, let’s connect and I’ll help you find your path. This is most important; marketing isn’t just blasting your social media pages and sending emails. It’s much deeper than that. When I see a business owner, a marketing guru, and a sales leader in a room with a white board, I know success is on the way!
