I Think. I Share (My Thoughts). I Am – Want Sales? Don’t Sell. Market!

If our Sales Revenue strategy is predicated upon the efforts of our Sales efforts – It is highly laborious.

Imagine cold-calling one prospect after another.

Imagine hopping into one deal pitch after another, repeating the same set of slides over and over.

Imagine staring at different group of prospects and clients yawning at the exact same slide in the pitch deck.

Imagine attending to prospects and clients who wants their business problems resolved yesterday.

There is no need to imagine.

I have experienced enough to know that to be true.

It is tiring.

There must be a better way, you think.

Now.

What if there are feasible ways around this?

Would you, be interested?

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First, we have to understand that the act of selling is not just about asking for the deal. Sales is a process.

Many gurus say that Step 1 is to get ourselves into the door.

We hear this many, many times.

To avoid looking silly, we screamed in quiet desperation within us instead of directing our frustration at the person dishing out advice for free while eating his fried chicken wing.

You wonder.

Where is THAT elusive door people are talking about?

This is where marketing comes into play. Marketing, properly understood, opens doors of opportunities. How should we understand Marketing and its effectiveness in the Digital Age?

How can Marketing be relevant for us, for commercial purposes and to sell?

1. Marketing Establishes Trust – Use of Organic Contents.

I am a huge advocate of marketing via organic contents.

By organic, I do mean actual production of contents through our own effort. That is important because putting our own thought processes into words expressed uniquely in a way that no one else can replicate – We can create that Unique Selling Proposition.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that vast majority of the Products and Services we offer are not unique. There is always someone else with a similar offer out there ready to grab that prospect or customer coming along our direction.

What makes that prospect / client buy from us? Simple, trust.

So how do we build trust via organic contents?

The In-Principle orientation is simple. Focus on our values, our perspectives and how we interpret the environment around us.

• Believe in doing good? Use stories to tell that.
• Believe in animal-free skincare? Share your perspectives.
• Believe in bringing people to their next level? Shoot a video of your coaching session.

If we have an online content bank showcasing who we are and what we believe in, prospects and clients will be able to relate to us as individuals as they scroll through one content after the other.

Oh, and that prospect who wants us to solve their problem yesterday?  

No problem. Take out our phones and show them the contents we published last year.

“See, I have resolved it. Read it, it is free. By the way, how shall we move on from here?”

2. Marketing Allows Us to Build Our Own Doors – My Password is Open Sesame.

The way I see it, Persona Marketing will become mainstream.

Majority of the networking events today are predicated upon a certain profession, status within the Corporate World or any other forms of restricted access.

In short – Getting access to a closed-door event is highly dependent upon the effectiveness of our pitch to the event organisers.

Today, with the power of decentralised media right in our pockets – We can create our own networking events.

We can produce zoom webinars to Teach-a-Thing related to our industry. Or how to sell. Or how to prospect. Or how to create social media content strategy.

We can use social media livestream to produce interactive contents, where questions can be curated directly from the audience comments and be responded immediately.

Through the use of decentralised media, our personas can be protracted outwards via content distribution (apparently, that is free too).

“Hey, I like this guy. This consultant does a lot of trash talk and I can relate! Okay, let me contact him and seek his professional opinion.”

Prepare your close.

3. Marketing Allows us to Close in Advance – Let Them Call Me.

To call a prospect is to put ourselves in the position of a seller. Relative to a buyer, seller typically has low negotiation or bargaining power.

In that game, the buyer is in an absolute advantageous position.

There is no need to play this game all the time.

75% of my time is spent on Marketing efforts so I can deal with this issue. I prefer building my content bank, publishing articles showcasing my thought processes covering various aspects of business, making myself available for podcasts / webinar interviews and live-streams so that prospects’ / clients’ impression of my professional persona grow as the days pass.

When they know me before they know me and decide to call me and seek my professional expertise – I am no longer a seller. I am an expert.

That position is way better than a seller.

To call or to be called?

The choice, is yours.

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In summary, focusing on pure selling effort can be tough work.

Relying on the effectiveness of a Sales Close can be difficult, especially when trust is still lacking.

The purpose of effective marketing is to perform the heavy lifting such that we can focus less on the Sales process and more intensively into the prospects’ and clients’ needs during the closing discussion.

Life is way easier with trust.

So don’t just sell. Market!

About the Author:

As a finance and thinking enthusiast, I believe in making the complex simple. 

Because simplicity adds value. 

I do that through reflections (#ThrowbackSeries), building perspectives (#DecodedSeries) and understanding entrepreneurs (#ConversationWithEntrepreneurs). 

Simplicity helps us gain clarity, and clarity helps us to grow. 

And if we are not growing, then what’s the point of anything else?

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