A guest post from Pierre: (is it a guest post if he also works here but doesn’t write?)
As a co-founder at Wild Pursuit, I get to talk to companies struggling with their sales and marketing all the time. Those conversations often remind me of the pain I had in some of the companies I have owned in the past. How does one grow sales without any leads?
My Confession
As I strove to increase sales growth and widen profit margin I would put the squeeze on suppliers and apply carrot/stick to my sales people. My confession is that this was the wrong thing to do, and not one of the ideal ways to increase sales. Squeezing suppliers is good fun but beating the sales people until morale improves just wasn’t the right thing to do.
I should rather have been focused on making sure that the companies marketing was producing leads for the sales team to act on. A sales team with no leads is not a very effective tool.
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Take the following story which proves the point.
We recently spoke to a company that specialise in sales training courses. They have trained over 140 000 people over the years and their facilitators do all their own selling. It’s an understatement to say that these guys are excellent sales people.
In fact, we liked what they had to say so much (or was it their selling skills) that we sent David (the other co-founder of Wild Pursuit) on their course. Needless to say it wasn’t long before they became a customer of ours!
This was not so much because David applied his new found skills so well on them, but rather a case of they know that a sales person without leads is like a sail boat without wind.
And this is where we come in.
We do “marketing stuff” to get leads. Simple as that. If your sales are declining or your growth has dipped, we can help you.
There are two ways to approach the problem of “Not enough sales enquiries”:
- Consider Google AdWords Advertising. An affordable route, and applicable for most businesses.
- Look at Inbound Marketing. A deeper strategy solution that produces leads and warms them up at the same time. (It’s a marketing solution and a sales solution all in one but is only applicable to certain types of companies.)
The real question is: Do you want help finding the sweet spot of lead generation for your company?
I am inviting you to let me know how you feel about your lead generation process? Where are you struggling? What parts are going well? David and I will be answering your specific questions, so send them over!
If you’re not already doing Google AdWords (everyone should be as a minimum) then please get in touch urgently and we will happily give you advice.
Remember my confession though:
Every time you look at your sales figures and want to lash out at the sales department, remind yourself that if you’re not giving them sales leads then don’t expect them to give you sales.
