"Is your business making these profit killing marketing mistakes?"

“IS YOUR BUSINESS MAKING THESE PROFIT KILLING MARKETING MISTAKES, AND STRUGGLING TO GENERATE HIGH QUALITY SALES LEADS?"

I really just don’t get it.

How can so many businesses be missing the boat by such a long country mile?

Billions of dollars in profits, squandered!

Just because of 7 innocent, yet deadly, tactical sales & marketing errors. Its nuts!

Now before I continue, let me just say that some of you who read this might find it upsetting.

I’m going to reveal some controversial ideas here. And yes, some of them are likely to fly in the face of many of the things that you’ve probably read & heard, and come to believe.

But I urge you to keep an open mind.

Weigh this article without prejudice. When you’re finished, I give you full permission to thumb your nose, and go back to doing sales & marketing the way you’ve always done it.

“7 Sins”

#1 Sales & Marketing on Separate Floors

Marketing guys in an ivory tower, pontificating about image & branding, and coming up with award winning creative mambo that amounts to nothing more than glitzy gloss & pompous chest beating.

And everyone waxes poetic about how good the company looks, and finds excuses for justifying the money pit with the orders that some dialing for dollars sales guys brought in against the latest “marketing promotion”.

Nobody seems to notice that the marketing “campaign” is lame, and that it’s the sales force that’s driving sales against the “promotion”. And sales stay flat, because the promotion is just another way of packaging a discount.

Meanwhile, salespeople are spending 80% of their time leaving messages, and showing up in lobbies unannounced. Why? Isn’t that 6 or 7 figure marketing campaign supposed to put them in front of pre-qualified prospects?

FACT, a real marketing program actually does this.

Salespeople are expensive. They should only be interacting with prospects that are already pre disposed to doing business with you.

Marketing’s objective should be to automate the top two thirds of the sales funnel.

How much more profitable would your company be, if your salespeople were 5 times more productive?

#2 “Content” Websites

Maybe you’ve heard the expression “content is king”. Allow me to debunk this popular myth.

Do you want to make your web site a really cool place for your prospects to hang out & push buttons, or do you want them to respond to your sales message in a meaningful way that advances the sales cycle?

Forget about cluttered web pages. If you want to rock your prospects world, give them one clear & compelling message at a time; one that they can focus on without distraction. Ask them to do one or two things per visit. Simple.

Format the page like a letter.

#3 Giving Away Intellectual Capital

Many businesses publish whitepapers, ROI calculators, etc., and make them freely available on their web site.

All a prospect has to do is click on a link. Good Golly, Miss Molly, what a huge mistake!

Isn’t a dose of your expertise worth having them tell you who they are?

While they’re at it, have them subscribe to your newsletter, or an email tutorial. Don’t let them leave without introducing themselves. Good grief.

Sometimes it takes several exposures before people will come forward and make personal contact. But when they do, you’ve got a live one!

A prospect that convinces themselves that they need to talk to you by reading your problem solving story, is more than twice as likely to buy than one you’ve cold called. Savvy?

#4 Boring, Hard To Read Copy

Some people say don’t use a lot of words on your web site. Poppycock.

A real prospect will read & read & read until they’re red hot & ready to talk to you, if you know how to engage them.

But if you bore them with product features, or vain puffery about your company, or just plain poorly written bafflegab loaded with techno-speak drivel, forget it.

Grab them with a benefit riddled headline, jab to the solar plexus with a trance inducing opening, and bam, down they go, straight to your meaty emotional appeals & supporting logic.

Black type on a white background, text that’s easy to read, and plenty of spaces works best.

The more you tell, the more you sell.

#5 No “Soft” Follow Up

Hi, it’s Sally Sales, ready to buy yet? Is this your idea of follow up?

Don’t you just love to hate this annoying little voice on the other end of the phone?

Keep the prospect coming to you. It’s a huge psychological advantage!

Nurture & care for them with effective direct response follow up mechanisms. Things like newsletters, courseware, special reports, offers, and tutorials.

When you continually give your prospects information that’s genuinely useful to them, and that helps them to better understand the implications of the problem that you can help them to solve, they’ll call you when they’re ready.

#6 Selling “Product” Too Early

If you want to differentiate yourself, and turn your hopper into the horn of plenty, don’t sell product too soon.

To catch infinitely more fish, drive potential prospects to your web site, and pitch problem solving information.

Your prospects are interested in your experience & expertise. What better way to demonstrate it, than with a well-written whitepaper?

What your prospects are really looking for are results, not products. It’s the “How To” that they crave.

#7 Lame Publicity

Few businesses take good advantage of publicity.

People are searching trade publications right now for problem solving ideas. They should be reading your articles. They should be exposed to your press releases, announcing the availability of your whitepapers.

Just don’t make the common mistake of doing these things without a carefully planned system for harvesting contact info & permissions.

A highly choreographed publicity system is stealth marketing. It slips right under the prospects defenses.

But rare is the marketer that knows how to do it.

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