I had a pretty animated conversation with a friend recently about the topic of sales and marketing. He made the case that all the MBA studies suggest that “sales” is a subset of marketing.
I don’t have an MBA and I don’t agree. I think sales and marketing are distinguishably different from one another. Marketing is an indirect attempt at selling. I personally think it’s easier than selling and respectfully recognize that there are a whole lot of marketing managers who might disagree. Selling is a direct action where individuals ask others to buy their stuff. The direct act of asking for the order can be, and is often, met with rejection. Rejection is hard even for those with very thick skin.
Can marketing support sales? Sure. Can a good sales person create business without marketing? You bet. Can a sales person spend a lot of time participating in marketing efforts only to miss sales opportunities because they were indirect in their contact with a potential buyer? Yes-Yes-Yes!
So what’s the answer? I’m certain I do not have ALL of the answers. I do believe when you spend millions of dollars opening a beautiful new facility that it makes perfect sense to have professional marketing materials that support the things you sell.
I also believe you must participate in a social media marketing effort; and that your social media must be managed with equal professionalism on a daily basis. Marketing through social media gives us the opportunity to connect with our customers every day. I’ll take it one step further to say that social media may be the first form of an indirect marketing effort turning into a direct contact or conversation with a customer because of the engagement between you and the customer, and the customer’s engagement with one another about your facility.
Finally, I feel that creating a well-trained inside and outside sales team devoted to the direct effort of selling your facility is THE single most important thing you can do to perform significantly better than you performed in the past. If you want to be the leader in your industry, you must run a great operation AND create a strong sales team. Gone are the days of “build it and they will come”… they may come once but competition is great. Our attention spans are short. You must market and sell your facility on a daily basis.
EVERYONE in you facility participates in the direct effort of selling you product or not. I walked into a bowling center in west Texas last week. After waiting patiently for a couple of team members to quit talking to each other, I asked if I could get some information about booking a birthday party. The young woman at the desk said nothing but turned her back to me to get an unprofessional copy from a notebook. The “flyer” (and I use that term loosely) was tucked away from the eye of the customer. It seemed like I was interrupting her in order to get the information. Note: There was nothing going on in the center. Not one lane of bowling was happening. The sales associate said NOTHING to me about booking an event. No questions about the birthday person. No information at all, she just handed me the sheet.
I then asked if she had any details about booking a group event. Her short reply was, “The manager handles anything like that.” This was a random stop. Though it’s not a random event.
Are your people product experts? You can’t possibly know all the sales you are losing because you don’t have a system for selling in place. I think you have to be ready ALL of the time to perform the direct act of selling if you intend to succeed at the highest level.
Wow, it sounds like I’m preaching this week…the business is out there.
How much of it are you getting to the bottom line? How do your sales and marketing systems stand up to the competition? Where are you spending your time and money when it comes to growing sales? Let us know in the comments section below!
