Forget age and early senility; the reason prospects don’t reach you is because you don’t have their attention. That’s it. Somewhere along the way, you made the decision to keep your organization and all of the positive attributes and unique selling propositions less visible and perhaps even obscure to prospective customers in your own territory. Yes, you probably had good reasons for this. You don’t have the money available to promote. You’re too busy to confront marketing strategy because of the holidays. Or perhaps you rely heavily on the creative work and effort put into the region by your sales team.
Well, none of those are acceptable barriers; none of them, because all they accomplish is marketing prevention. That’s the barrier built within your own organization that stands between you and the market share you desire. It’s the concession to your competition, and the willingness to keep successful actions like frequent promotional outflow turned off and hoping your light brigade of reps take the hill on their own.
Yea. This is a false idea that comes up quite a bit in just about every type of supply channel imaginable. In most small- to mid-sized independent resellers, a sales rep cannot be expected to effectively contact, reach and touch enough prospects in your territory to generate the level of influence and activity needed to advance expansion. They can network, charm and cajole to the best of their abilities and gain some very good traction here and there. However, without the air cover provided by marketing, they’ll be less effective in reaching targets and goals. No offense intended, people. It is what it is.
Shedding Light
Repetition and frequency are the essential ingredients to a good marketing mix, and if you’re not thinking with this, you’re keeping your prospects in the dark even if your rep or reps are the brightest beacons in their field. The light beam needs to move far and wide in order to be noticed, and one rep rowing diligently over a vast gulf will not make you stand out enough to be considered by new customers, especially those who are caught up in their own currents, routines and buying habits.
Think with at least the law of three. When you want to catch someone’s attention, what do you do? No, you don’t whisper, that’s an ancient perfume commercial. You stand up. You wave. You say “Hey, check this out!” This is the attempt to become real to that prospect. The second time around, you want to have the prospect recognize or understand what you’re trying to get them to look at. Then finally, you want to gain their acceptance or at least affinity and agreement to be in communication. It takes all three points on this triangle in order to nurture share of mind, brand awareness and positioning. It takes all three points sometimes just to get a dialogue going, and it takes time and persistence to change people’s minds.
One-hit wonders don’t work in promotion. Just ask anyone who tried to send out one direct mail piece or run one ad in the local media and see what they say about the traffic it generated. It won’t be a long conversation, I assure you.
Role of Marketing
Marketing is there to assist the sales effort. It isn’t there to actually BE the sales line itself. So when you step out of the way and allow marketing to run a program built on frequency and repetition of message, you’ve changed your operating basis in the right direction. Of course, you cannot break the bank, which is why you shouldn’t be too quick to commit to conventional advertising programs. They are expensive and – depending on the media available – can often come with unwanted audiences or consumers outside your B2B realm. You can still choose an affordable series of tactics and actions that will give you the multiple touch points needed to get your message out to your target audience often enough so that when your rep does come around to call, email or visit, that prospect has already seen your promotion, developed some basic reality on who or what you are, and now may be amenable to your story.
Time and time again, reps have reported seeing their company’s direct mail piece sitting within view on a prospect’s desk during their initial contact. That may sound old school, but it is true and where we don’t hear that, we do see more inbound site visits from repeat visitors who have been receiving emails or social media updates with enough regularity. And it isn’t because they saw multiple variations of the same message. It’s because they saw one message multiple times. Repetition and frequency did the trick and built some trust and credibility along the way.
What better way is there to have a rep begin a conversation? At this point in the cycle, or when an individual has no reality of who you are, no affinity for your company and no desire to communicate?
So don’t set your reps out to sea without giving them the support they need. Get your marketing momentum in pace with the rhythm of the marketplace and then set yourself up for a very interesting game with a lot of fun buttons to push.
