For businesses to succeed, it is has to undertake aggressive marketing. Other functions are support. If you do not market, you won’t have income. You will incur costs but unable to meet them. For any firm whether in manufacturing industry, consulting services, audit or fast moving consumer goods, the core function to do is aggressive marketing as much as possible. If you don’t market, few, if any, will get to know about your services.
As they say “it does not matter how beautiful a lady is, if she is in darkness, no one will notice her.” To be appreciated, she must be seen. This is possible only when she is in the light.
How do you measure your marketing effectiveness?
One of the most important things for businesses is the point of revenue generation. You get it from customers using delivery channels. But also deciding to which geographies you will be selling to them. As you market, ask yourself how do you maximize profits with a minimal marketing budget?
The bottom line in any endeavor is the ‘theory of constraints.’ You have limitations yet you also have objectives to attain. Brilliant people will use the least of the resources to gain maximum revenue.
You have seen many people who get loans from banks but later fail to service them. It is because they do not know how to use the loans. Most of the time they will complain about cash flows. Their expenditure exceeds revenue.
Marketing should be a priority for your business at any stage of its life cycle. As we have seen in the previous series of Guerrilla marketing, instead of concentrating on the number of proposals delivered, traffic and revenue made, for Guerrilla marketing profits is the only yardstick you can measure success. It is all about the money you remain with after deducting all the expenses. Just like in a football match, regardless of the number of goals you score, once you concede more, you lose. Even the same rule applies to business. It doesn’t matter how much revenue you get. What matters is profits: how much money do you keep? How much do you invest to generate sales.
If you look at the financial statements of banks, they make huge sums of money but only retain just 5-15 per cent of their total turnover. That is not good enough.
High costs of sales indicate inefficiency and lack of priorities. The same thing comes to marketing. For any investment in marketing, you must be able to articulate how much money it brings visa-via the costs you incur. At an individual salesperson, how do you manage this?
Most of the services or businesses are all about creating relationships. How do I create relationships? You create relationships by trying to understand your target market. Guerrillas never send proposals without the following;
1. Common ground
This is the first step in proposal writing. When you just write a proposal without having taken time to find out what the customer needs, you are wasting resources. What does the customer want? What will be the value they will get from effective implementation? Until you are able to speak the language of the buyer, you have failed. The problem with most salespersons do not put the time and imagination. They want to sit in offices and think things will workout by themselves. You need to find a common ground with your prospect.
2. Creating a relationship with your prospect
The next thing is building relationship. Knowing the major achievements of the customer is a milestone in building a relationship. What makes them happy? What does the customer hate most? Looking at your free services that you offer, what do you think can benefit the prospect even before you sell to them? Once you do that, find the conceptual agreement. You can now agree on the fees, services they need, urgency so that by the time you write the proposal, it will be accepted first time.
