Stop Comparing Apples With Bananas!

When you’re buying a car, most people know that the higher the spec and the more premium the model, the bigger the price tag. This is a given – right?

You wouldn’t walk into a Lamborghini showroom with ￡10K in your pocket and expect to walk away (well drive away) with a shiny new Lamborghini would you – no – because that just isn't realistic! However, when buying a service, this expectation seems to get forgotten.

When buying a service, levels of service, output and delivery can vary considerably and in most instances, you’ll get what you pay for!

If someone is offering something much cheaper than others, chances are they are either cutting corners or will ultimately provide an inferior service or sub-standard results. This rule of thumb applies to most things in life, so it still amazes me that people continue to compare apples with bananas; believing that taking the cheaper option will generate the outcome they are looking for.

I’m not saying that opting for the most expensive option is right either, but let’s just say, you have 3 quotes in front of you and one of them appears to be ‘too good to be true’ – chances are, that’s exactly what it will be - too good to be true!

Take our new business prospecting and website development work for example. People come to us looking for an agency to generate new business or to create them a new website that will generate leads for their business...

If the company is looking for a low quality, low budget solution, then they should not be looking to engage with a company like Magnetic BD. If they are looking for a mass-volume, overseas call centre approach or for 'tele-canvassers’ to call aimlessly with no targeting strategy or planning in place and no real understanding of the organisation and it's ideal target audience, then again we are not the right agency for them.

Equally, if they are happy with a cheap, homemade looking website that has absolutely no chance of EVER appearing on page one of a Google search, or a website or designed document (even a business card or letterhead) that could have been designed by a chimpanzee wearing a pair of oven gloves - then we really aren’t the right agency for them either.

On the other hand, if a company is looking for their business to be professionally represented and for the level of preparatory work and service delivery to be carefully considered and expertly executed, then this is our sort of client. Given what goes into our work, the level of output is actually very fairly and competitively priced.

Clients are becoming ever more demanding and in doing so are squeezing the life out of quality products and service. Over the past 12 years our prices have actually gone down in recent years, despite our continued investment in skills, talent, software and processes. This squeeze on the bottom line can’t realistically be sustained unless standards slide - and I simply won’t allow this to happen – yet something has to give and that something has to be for people to stop comparing apples with bananas!

Many of our clients have a complex product or service offering that they struggle to articulate in a concise manner. Many of our clients look to target CEOs or very senior individuals within major corporate and blue-chip organisations. This is the level we are comfortable working at and achieve significant, consistent results - our 12 years in business and long-standing clients are testament to this!

From the outset of taking on any new client, we work hard to ensure that we fully understand their business. We very carefully identify their ideal target audience. We make it our business to identify the benefits their product or service can deliver, and it is only once armed with this information and a clearly defined targeting strategy that we begin to forge relationships on behalf of our clients or begin to design an effective website or marketing materials.

All our websites include full SEO – I made the conscious decision some time ago not to sell websites that hadn’t been fully optimised for search engines – I made this decision because in my view, what is the point of having a great looking, informative website if no one can find it!

Our prospecting work is about building relationships, it isn't about mass volume, low quality cold calling or a scatter-gun approach in the hope of striking 'lucky' and it certainly isn’t about an aimless email blast! Every prospect is hand-picked because they fit the agreed target profile and each one is contacted in a professional, personal manner. We never sell over the phone, we have intelligent conversations and forge positive relationships with people who are most likely to have an interest and a need for the service or product we are introducing. After all, people buy from people and genuine relationships are what lead to new business!

Outsourcing your sales function or establishing ‘sales as a service’, or ‘marketing as a service’, should be an efficient approach to sales and marketing. A proficient business development agency should come to the table fully equipped with the skills needed for success. They shouldn’t require hand-holding and should in fact cost far less than an in-house sales or marketing person who could achieve comparable results – not to mention the many hidden costs that come with an employee.

If you are looking to grow your business in a professional manner, we would welcome a conversation with you. We offer flexible contracts and with the added-bonus of being equally capable of managing both sales and marketing, we always bring more to the table than expected!

Feel free to contact us to discuss your business objectives [email protected] www.magneticbd.co.uk 01323 345000