With social marketing, it can be difficult to understand how to sell in a world when you are told NOT to.....
Don't sell just create great social marketing; you understand the advice but reasons don't pay the bills!
So how do we reconcile - 'marketing great reasons' with actually 'selling' to keep your business going?
Here is how I like to think about it....
In years gone by, we had two functions...marketing and selling. One gave the reasons and one built the relationships so those reasons were heard.
Now we have the web and the web replaces the miles of driving up and down the motorway delivering those messages.
We don't need a car, we need a content strategy to define the right road to the right customer!
So does that mean that sales is dead? Should we put all of our resources behind marketing? No.
BUT we do need a mindset change.
- We need to think about teams of people, rather than functions, teams who create the ideas and the reasons why your are different and why people should buy from you.
- We then need to 'sell' these ideas and reasons to our internal teams so they understand, and buy in to, the real difference your product or service makes to the market. The best way to do this is to communicate in person, have honest open discussions that link the concepts to your business mission, your business plan and the goals of those individiuals.
- We then create content that travels up and down the motorway!
- Each time a potential customer interacts with us they sense our passion, they sense our message, they sense a unified brand. So
- IT creates a website that reflects the message.
- HR recruits talent that buy into the message.
- Finance develops reports to show not just the numbers but the measurement of the objectives.
- Production search for ways to improve the efficiency, quality and speed of the core elements of the service or production.
- Credit control act as problem solvers. They highlight issues which are causing issues to the customer, they don't accept credits as part of the business they work tirelessly with the business to remove excuses not to pay.
- Choose your department - they don't do a "job" they are on a mission to use the skills of their department to help strengthen the reason to buy.
- You then leave the selling element to the customer. The customer WANTS to buy - it is just that their inner mind is looking for reasons not to! The more you remove the problems, the more you give reasons why they SHOULD buy, then you remove their inner resistance and get them to convert their own mind.
- You follow up, you make every transaction the same so that the customer then acts as a referral engine to their friends. They are not the sales people for your brand as some would say....they are your marketers. They give reasons why their friends should convert THEIR inner mind to buy.
We must get away from marketing and sales as functions and start thinking about marketing internally and externally, leaving the customer to convert themselves!
Watch out for an upcoming interview with John Jantsch when we explore this idea further on The Engaging Brand podcast.
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