Do you need to make your phone ring and your cash register sing in these next four months? Sure you do.
The fourth quarter is here, the revenue pressure is on and you need to make things happen. Labor Day is an appropriate time to get refocused on marketing your business. Agree?
So let me start by asking whether you are ready for the sprint to the 2009 finish line and onward to 2010? Yes, Jan. 1 is closer than you think and the marketing decisions you make now can impact short-term revenue gains (or losses if you do it wrong) and, more importantly, position you for a healthy business year. Go for a strong finish with a tuneup of your marketing system.
With that preamble let me point out the obvious: the dog days of summer are gone and it’s time to get back to business. You most likely spent them sketching your business plan on the sands of Mayflower Beach on the Cape, on Footbridge Beach in Ogunquit, maybe Cocoa Beach or somewhere else, right? The waves came crashing in on your sand doodling before you could snap a picture with your Blackberry and all of your brilliant marketing ideas went out with the tide.
I know that’s not really the case, but with summer gone it is now time that you decide to act on those brilliant ideas and address your most pressing marketing challenges in the month of September.
You are ready to put your marketing back into high gear, aren’t you? The plain truth is you must become a masterful marketer if you want to keep your funnel full of leads for your sales team. You can’t put the pressure on the sales team without giving them good marketing support, not if you want maximum sales performance.
Start with doing the marketing basics better than anyone else in your industry... or throw in the marketing towel and simply grab the low hanging fruit while it’s within reach. Marketing is hard work, and it’s the one business function that pays back in dividends when done right.
Surely you have a marketing game plan to make certain you generate and nurture leads, retain customers and cross-sell the heck out of everything you offer.
Here’s a quick checklist to guide your September-December marketing action plan:
Client retention strategy in place
Lead generation system in place
Cross-channel communication plan in place
Cross-selling and up-selling strategies in place
Clear marketing messages to differentiate your value
Win-back campaign to bring back profitable inactive customers
And, here are seven questions you need to ask your crackerjack marketing team:
1. Have you established a deep connection with your customers? Are you in rapport with your key customers and potential key accounts? Establishing a deep connection with them is not unlike the connection you establish with the people most important to you in your personal life. Be there for your customers, as you would be for the people in your life.
2. Are you focused on the real needs, wants and desires of your client or prospect? We all want the same basic things in life. Maslow documented that for us. Yet we all have our unique needs, wants and desires. (I have compiled a list of 25 of them, which are yours with an e-mail request.)
3. Do you know why your best customers continue to purchase our products and services? Why do those good customers keep coming back? What are the real reasons? Do you know, or are you guessing? Do we know why these customers are loyal to us?
4. Do you have a collection of recent testimonials from your raving fans? The language they use to telegraph the benefits they realize reveals a common thread in your value proposition.
5. Are we doing win/loss analysis to discover how to improve our sales "batting average" and win more proposals? Do you know why customers are leaving you or say no to your proposals? A combination of better sales support, sharper marketing communication and a stronger message can increase sales performance. This is an often overlooked area, even by the big players.
6. Are we applying the psychology of influence and persuade our best prospects and customers to comply with our requests to make a purchase? Do you know what moves people to take action and open their wallets? Examples surround you every day.
7. Do we know the real, underlying benefits that our customers really enjoy as a result of doing business with us? I call them the "benefits of the benefits." As a result of the primary benefits your products and services deliver, what do those benefits then enable that contribute to the quality of your customers’ lives?
Marketing is, as I mentioned, very hard work. But is work that you cannot afford to do poorly. As I have shared with clients over the years: YCBABSOYA (You can’t build a business sitting on your arse). Marketing is a broad topic yet it is the one business function that you cannot delegate or place on autopilot. Sure, it’s easy to forgo or delay your marketing decisions, or spend your marketing budget elsewhere. As I said before in this column and in seminars, "the best marketer wins."
If you have any marketing questions you would like answered in this column, or would like to be featured in a story about your marketing success, let me know.
Bob Martel is the principal consultant at JMB Marketing Group in Marlborough. He can be reached at bobmartel@jmbmarketing.com.
