Revenue Journal®

Entrepreneurs, listen up. You may feel like you are alone in your struggle to increase your sales. You're not. Every single entrepreneur struggles with the same issues. And every conversation I have with an entrepreneur follows a similar pattern, and has a similar happy ending, once I show him where his solution lies.

The first conversation always starts out with the entrepreneur telling me what he has been doing about marketing and sales, and what he thinks he wants to try next. His options always involve decisions about marketing vehicles ("Should I do PR? What about my website? Should I follow the advice of this person selling direct mail services? What about this local agency that is trying to get me to run radio ads?")

I listen until he has given me the whole picture. It doesn't take long, because 35 years of selling every type of product helps me fill in the blanks--if he's selling direct, I know what his business model looks like; if he's selling through partners, I know right away the problems he's having in that area.

After asking him a number of questions - including "Are you interviewing your customers on a regular basis?", I can see why he is struggling with his marketing decisions. The problem is, he's focusing on his selling process.

As long as he does that, he will be at the mercy of every marketing vehicle salesperson who comes along - the agency owners, the website designers, the email campaign companies, the PR houses, the direct mail vendors, the search engine companies, the link-building companies, etc., etc., etc. I have watched these vendors sell their wares to a long line of CEOs and entrepreneurs over the years, causing the waste of many millions of dollars on campaigns that didn't work. Why? Because they were focusing on the selling process, rather than the customer's buying process.

The beginning of the turnaround

Once we've established the problem, we start to work on the solution. I help the entrepreneur see the selling process from the customer's point of view. We map out the customer's buying process. The entrepreneur realizes that he hasn't been supporting the customer's buying process. He is not making it easy for the customer to find him, see how the product will solve a problem, and then buy from him. Once we start to focus on his customer's buying process, everything starts to make sense. He's not at the mercy of those marketing services salespeople anymore. He is back in control of his marketing process. Marketing and selling shift from a vague and conflicting set of concepts to something he can understand and master.

He can learn how to interview customers. He can make calls and find out how his customers actually buy his products - how they search for him, the questions they have when they find him, and the answers that will satisfy them. He will know which vehicles he should invest in. He will know what the copy should say. He can understand what they need in order to buy, and he can help them move effortlessly from first contact to closed sale.

You don't have to fall prey to the latest marketing fad. You don't have to be the next easy mark for vendors selling marketing services. You don't have to spend money blindly, hoping that your next campaign will generate enough sales to keep going. You can know exactly what do to, how to do it, and when to do it, if you stop focusing on your selling processes - and instead focus on supporting your customer's buying process.

Yes, you will end up buying marketing services, but only after your own buyers have told you which vehicles will work best, and which messages should go into those vehicles.