Do You Have This Misconception about the Difference Between Marketing and Sales?

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

I have found that career ads are a brilliant place to start looking for new consulting gigs. It is just a matter of writing a letter that gets attention and then at the interview I tell the head honcho that this problem can be better addressed through a short consulting engagement but there is no need for a full-time person.

The other day I sent a letter to a company that was looking for salespeople. You know, traditional old-fashioned sweet-talking glib peddlers who go around, pound pavements and harass people.

I had a discussion with one of the owners, and suggested to him that instead of chasing people, it would be much better to create "client gravity", so people would come to him ready, willing and able to do business with him.

He was plain outraged by my "idiotic" idea. The essence of his response was that no one would buy from his company unless his salespeople actively chase prospects, wrestle them to the ground and take their money. In his view this is how the world of commerce operates: "No one gives you money because you ask. You must be willing to take it by force. It's called selling."

I compare this approach to date rape. Get the "appointment" on the pretext that you want to get to know the person, and when your date shows up you get "what you want" while she is screaming "Nooooooooo!"

It was an eye-opening discussion. It turned out, he had had several businesses before, which he opened, made some money and then quickly closed them, so by the time his clients needed help and support, the company didn't even exist.

For so many businesses marketing is nothing more than pouring their money into campaigns that scream, "Look at how cute we are" (e.g. the hyper expensive "Got milk" ad that was a financial flop). So, they buy into the retarded view that marketing can't be measured by money, so ignore it. Just go out and sell. Or they do cute image advertising to "create awareness" and "make the brand known", so when the company's peddlers start hustling these poor souls, the names of their brands will be recognised. Well, of course it hardly happens.

Realistically, a peddler is a peddler. An uninvited pest, a common pain in the arse, some of the most hated creatures on the face of the planet.

So, now the company has paid a fortune for the dead ad campaign and is paying another small fortune for these "cold appointments". According to McGraw Hill, one cold appointment costs some $3-400 opportunity money per appointment. Of course the peddlers are on pure commission so, because the braindead business owner believes he pays only for performance. Not so. He pays a huge price for alienating the market from the company. Let's face it, people love coming to their conclusions about what to buy and when to buy, and hate being pestered by peddlers.

So, while the company can make some short-term sales, repeat and referral business is almost out of question.

Realistically marketing and sales are to be regarded as a continuum with one purpose...

...to Create New Clients

I would also add client service to this continuum to keep those clients for repeat and referral business.

And the result of the synergistic collaboration of these three components in this continuum, called business development, is getting and keeping more and better clients.

You can't send out a legion of peddlers to sell something nobody knows and understands. A confused mind can't make a decision. People need to be educated about your offer, and the more automated the process is, the better off you are. Remember, it's not what you make but what you keep that counts.

But that education process, also called marketing, doesn't have to be a black hole into which you are pouring your money without counting or checking the results.

That's the beauty of business development. It's a quantifiable process all the way from first contact to signed contract. It's like a feedback loop in a car. You press the accelerator, the car goes faster, but you feed a signal back from the wheels to the dashboard, so you can see how fast you are driving. So, you either press harder on the accelerator or ease off a bit. The instruments on your dashboard quantify your progress, so you know what to do to optimise your journey.

In marketing you have to have a similar dashboard. You must be able to see what's happening in your sales funnel at any one time. You must be able to monitor both your investment and the return on your investment.

And the most expensive investment, hell, let's call it a waste of time and money, is sending out peddlers on cold appointments, and hoping they close some deals. The impact on the bottom line is just as dismal as a mouse fart during a heavy metal concert. But the impact on your future, that is, perceived as a trusted source of specific merchandise, gets seriously undermined. Let's face it, people hate peddlers. The problem is that many business owners don't quantify how much it costs to do these cold appointments and continue losing time, money and market share in blissful ignorance.

As the experts say, good marketing is selling in print. Using sports language, you can regard it as the preparation for the big competition, and it takes some time. However, when a salesperson goes out to sell to people who know the stuff and understand it, more people are likely to buy without ramming it down their throats.

This is a more intelligent approach, but in my case with that business owner, I think his greed far outweighed his intelligence. When I asked him to show me his marketing plan, he just laughed, "Man, I need money right now to pay the bills and marketing plans don't make money. I make money by taking it from other people's pockets whether they like it or not."

The key is to create an environment in which your prospects make the first step towards you because they are predisposed to doing business with you. And different people reach this point at different times. So, it is as obvious as a ham sandwich that you are there when they are ready to buy, not when you are desperate to sell because you need the dough to pay for the office rent or the Internet connection.

The old school of selling says, "Always ask for the order." Great but what is more powerful? Your asking for the sales or the prospect's asking you for being accepted as a new client.

Do you know doctors and lawyers who ask for the order? I don't. Yet, interestingly they are pretty highly regarded as professionals and pretty well paid. Have you added up one plus one? Asking for the order may not be the best way to go. If you have good marketing in place, there is a preponderance of people asking you for accepting them as clients. You don't have to beg for orders. This whole order-asking mindset comes from the past when not taking no for an answer was the norm. When the idea was to turn everyone into a client.

And here is the other thing to consider: Why would you waste your time and effort talking to people who are not ready to take action. This is about 97% of your prospects. Yes! At any one time some 3% of your prospects are ready to buy. The others are collecting information, but well over 50% are tyre-kickers.

So, what is the easier way of disqualifying these tyre-kickers? Using salespeople or an automated system? Well, people can argue until they are blue in the face and dead flat broke, but, maybe because I come from an engineering background, I vote for the system.

Do you know any encyclopaedia salesperson who outsells Amazon? I don't.

And remember, regardless of what you are selling, principles are principles, and they apply to each and every industry.

Some people may say, well I'll just keep up with my cold calling and cold appointments and at least it doesn't cost me money. It is the same as saying that, well, I just keep banging my head against the brick wall, and although it hurts like hell, at least it doesn't cost me money.

It doesn't per se, at least not in a visible way. It is costing you opportunity money. Besides rather sooner than later each and every brick wall in town will hate your guts.

You end up in the NFL league. NFL meaning, "No Friends Left." Your whole target market will turn against you because of your retarded sales strategy.

Since we are talking here about productivity and profitability, look at McKesson Corporation, the leading provider of healthcare supply, information and care management products and services designed to reduce costs and improve quality across healthcare. In the 2002-2003 fiscal year, with only 500 employees, Mckesson produced $7 billion in gross revenue. That is a very impressive $14 million per employee. (USA Today - 14 June 2004). Do you really think they achieved this by running the world's biggest group of peddlers? I dare to say, they used their brains as well.

In contrast, look at most companies that are pretty peddler-heavy and marketing-light. Most of them barely make $150,000 gross sales per employee. Take away the salaries, bonuses, operating overheads, and what is left as profit. Almost nothing.

The answer is not hiring more peddlers and make your sales quota using more brawn-driven brute force and grunt work. The answer lies in using your brain and figuring out how to apply finesse and market intelligence to have qualified prospects, who are hungry for your products, services and ideas, come looking for you, ready willing and able to buy your stuff.

If all this makes sense to you, you may feel like the mosquito in the packed scout's camp. You know what to do but not sure where to start. So here are some options for you to develop a systematic approach, that is a business development system, whose efficiency is not person-dependent, but consistent and predictable. So, here are some great and cost-effective...

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Stanford Graduate School of Business once asked this question, "What kind of doctor would you be if your patient was bleeding faster and faster, and your only response was to increase the speed of the transfusion?"

Paraphrasing his words I ask you this: What kind of business owner are you, if your answer to increasing profits (not merely increasing sales) is just hiring more peddlers and sending them out to pound pavements, bang on telephone dial pads, tear down more doors and harass people in any way they can?

I really hope you have a better answer.

And remember! Don't sell harder. Market smarter. Both you, your employees, your clients and prospects will find it more enjoyable, profitable and attractive.

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