Marketer, Sell Thyself!

There’s a lot of confusion about just what constitutes marketing. Is it advertising? Yes. Is it pricing? Yes. Is it selling? Not often enough.

A lot has been said about all the new ways of marketing and how businesses have to change to reflect a new focus on customers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s by no means the complete story.

By this point in time most businesses have worked out their branding, their pricing, their promotions, and most of those other things that attract customers to their place of business. What is so often demonstrated to the dissatisfaction of prospective customers is that businesses still have a lot of work to do on their selling techniques.

When companies look for profits they often don’t look in all the right places. They look for efficiencies in what they’ve done, and forget that if they can do something better — something as basic as selling, they’ll have more dollars heading for the bottom line to be efficient with.

Whether the structure of the enterprise is a department store or a website, the ultimate aim of its being there is to sell something. All the glitz and excitement of marketing is wasted if the customers come and nobody buys. What’s even worse is how many customers would have bought something if they’d had just a little bit of encouragement to do so but departed with their needs unsatisfied.

Think about it. How many times have you wanted to buy something, entered a place where it was probably sold, but walked out without buying it simply because you weren’t given the right sales approach?

And worse – how many times have you wanted to buy something but walked out empty-handed because nobody even acknowledged your presence or bothered to say “hi” to you? It’s amazing how often this scenario occurs.

Even more amazing is how hard it can be to make a purchase from some very expensive websites where everything looks so good you can taste it. Just when you’ve made your decision and you’re trying to buy the thing it all gets too hard and you conclude you might as well buy it from a traditional “bricks and mortar” retailer.

Marketing is of course an essential part of the whole selling package. Marketing sets up the conditions for a sale. But it’s only when sales and marketing work together that customers actually buy something.

Before they walk through the door potential customers have assimilated a huge range of external influences and messages that have caused them to go in a particular direction. This is where marketing comes in; it creates a “propensity to buy.” However, as soon as a prospect begins to physically interact with a source of what they intend to buy, marketing time is over and selling time has to begin.

If there’s an immediate need — say, a man with a runny nose wants to buy a box of Kleenex, it might not be too important if the counter attendant at the first drugstore is having a bad day and isn’t very helpful. He buys a box anyway.

What might the options be? A bigger box of Kleenex, a box of fancier Kleenex — even at this micro level a bit of selling can add to the bottom line. Admittedly this is only a difference of a few cents but over a few thousand transactions it starts to really add up.

If the need isn’t quite as immediate, say a family is out shopping for a new washing machine, selling skills are critical to determine which retailer gets the transaction. The family will “comparison shop” but eventually they’ll make their purchase.

The ability to sell is even more crucial for big-ticket products like automobiles and boats where the product’s source and even the pricing depends to a large degree on how the product is sold.

All that the marketing has done is to get the prospective customer to the point of purchase. The purchase itself is determined by someone’s selling ability, and this is where too many businesses let themselves down.

Staff development, training, up-skilling — it goes by a lot of names. What it means is giving the people who make the sales everything they need to be better at what they’re there to do. Any business that spends money on marketing and forgets to invest in developing the selling skills of its sales team members is wasting both its dollars and the opportunities that marketing creates.

Copyright 2004, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.