Revenue Journal®

The president of a small company recently sent me an email. "We've done well in a lot of areas of business, but what we haven't done is sorely inhibiting our growth. We need to master marketing and are committed to doing just that. Will you point me to the best learning tools?"

I'll bet you can guess where I pointed him…right back to his own customers. Here was my reply:

Well, my next book would help you. It will be out next year.

But here is the short and blunt answer: you need to call your own current customers and find out why they bought your product/service, what they say when they talk about your product/service, what trends they see in their market and your market, what their biggest challenges are, etc. Then after you've talked to about 10 customers, you will be able to CLEARLY see what you should do to grow. There is really no other "guaranteed" way to do it. Everything else is just blind flailing that won't result in more sales.

If you really want to master marketing, that is where you would start. If you don't do this, you will be learning a lot about a complex discipline - and it won't end up helping you one bit. The problem with marketing is that "everything" works - in a certain situation - but not in all situations. And you don't know which is which until you've spent too much money and most of it has failed.

Even though I have been in marketing and sales for 35+ years, and I teach CEOs how to do it, and I know exactly what to do and how, I NEVER help a client until I have interviewed their current customers. The results of those interviews then tell us all WHICH marketing methods, messages, and vehicles will work. Otherwise, trust me, you will end up studying, and spending, and you will feel like you are doing something. But you won't get the results you need. And you will have wasted precious time and money for nothing.

Your customers will tell you why they bought. What was important to them. What their buying process was. Who else they looked at and why they picked you.

If you listen carefully, they'll even tell you the actual words you should use in your marketing materials so you don't sound like everyone else and so your words resonate with future customers. They will tell you how you should be selling to them. They will tell you what makes you special and what you need to fix in order to gain more business. They will tell you exactly what you need to do in order to succeed.

Doing what I suggest takes courage and persistence. It takes character, in other words. You have to have the guts to get on the phone with your customers. You have to keep calling until you get through to enough of them to see trends (2 to 5 phone calls won't show you trends, it will only show you bits of info that are incredibly interesting, but not conclusive). It's only after the 7th phone call to a given type of customer that you will start to see trends - and those trends are BANKABLE. They will lead you in the right direction and be valid for six months to a year. After talking to 10 people of a given type, your course will be very clear.

There, I've just given you priceless advice. All you have to do is follow it.

It pains me that so many entrepreneurs and CEOs struggle with sales and marketing - when the answer is only a couple of phone calls away.