My company, Technology Marketing Toolkit, has a marketing-powered approach to selling, and I want to explain how to let your marketing do the heavy lifting instead of doing a lot of hard-core selling and negotiating. I typically say that the order should be marketing then sales, because marketing happens before sales, but the thing to understand is marketing cannot get the entire job done. When you’re selling to existing clients, whether it’s managed services, VoIP, or advanced cybersecurity solutions, marketing can’t get the entire job done. There still needs to be you, or somebody from your organization to answer that phone, respond to the email, get on a call with that prospective buyer, meet with them, and get a check out of them. Marketing can’t do that job in and of itself.
Read how this company added $400,000 in under 6 months.
Sometimes a salesperson looks like a champion, but it’s because the company had really good marketing. This is why it is important to have good marketing that does the heavy lifting. If there are no testimonials or there’s not a good website, then there’s no good reason to buy. They have to be very sophisticated and savvy salespeople in order to make that sale because there’s no marketing supporting them. They have no brand recognition. Nobody’s ever heard of them before.
Good Marketing That Does The Heavy Lifting Will:
1. Attract Customers That Value IT
2. Pre-Sell Products and/or Services
3. Help With Fee Resistance
4. Drive Inbound Leads
5. Keep A Prospect Warm
BUT it’s not sales, meaning you still need a salesperson to make the sale. Now with that said, a lot of salespeople are out there using brute force sales strategies (brute force meaning there’s no marketing) and there’s no positioning, there’s no shock and awe, there’s no real good website, and there are no good testimonials. There’s nothing supporting them. They are trying to get what feels like a check out of a rock because they are unable to convince this person.
Utilize marketing in combination with a good sales structure and your results will be exponential because marketing makes sales easier and can help a mediocre salesperson be a great salesperson. And it’s true, this is 100% true. And in fact, when you’re hiring salespeople, if they are top performers where they are, one of the things you want to ask in the interview is, “were you the only top performer and what were they doing for marketing and support?” Because sometimes a salesperson looks like a champion, but it’s basically because the company had really good marketing. You take them out of that. The marketing is not as strong, the branding is not as strong, the awareness is not as strong, and they can’t generate sales.
The best clients are those that started as prospects that actually value IT. Don’t blame them for being “cheap” when the real problem is the inability to properly persuade the prospect. This is why good marketing is key and will do the heavy lifting for sales. When sales is marketing-powered, you attract customers that value IT, pre-sell products/services, help with fee resistance, drive inbound leads and keep prospects warm.
Want to predict how to add $6-$10k MRR per month? Join our FREE livecast to get the systematic approach to close 67% of deals – more than 2 times the industry standard. This model will guarantee you hit your sales goals and then some.
