How well your company rebounds this year depends on the strength of your company’s marketing and sales culture.
This is not the time to rely solely on referrals: When the economy drops, so do your leads.
Strong marketing and sales-oriented companies don’t have this problem, even now. They have marketing engines and strong sales systems in place to drive growth.
How about you?
To help you figure this out I have created a checklist for you.
The idea for this checklist came from my recent conversations with companies across the continent.
I have been asking every company owner I speak with, “Where do you expect your revenue to end up this year, as a percentage of last year?”
What I am seeing is a patchwork of responses, depending on where their company resides and based on the strength of their marketing culture.
CHECKLIST: Ten Questions To Determine the Strength of your Marketing and Sales Culture
1. Does someone in the company besides the owner wake up every morning and go to bed every night thinking about sales?
In the smallest of companies, it can be the owner, but in a company with any ambition, this needs to be a full time employee(s), i.e. a salesperson or a sales manager or both.
2. Is someone calling on your clients, no matter the season?
Even during the pandemic, even if your offices are closed, someone should be calling on clients.
For example, I spoke to a client who was hunkered down waiting out the pandemic, he didn’t want to upset his clients. I told him now is the perfect time to call on clients and architects and builders, “because they are sitting around bored and would welcome the distraction”.
“Now” is always the answer to the question, “When is the right time to call on our clients?”
3. Do you engage in both online and offline marketing?
Having a strong marketing culture means that you have figured out what works in both online and offline, and you measure your results in both. It’s second nature: Invest, measure, tweak.
4. Do you have an active marketing plan to stay in touch with existing clients?
Your goal is to keep yourself top of mind and to keep clients aware of what you sell and what they need and to upsell and cross sell new services.
5. Does every existing client have at least one dedicated employee (non-owner) to maintain and strengthen a relationship?
Having a strong relationship allows your client to give you grace when you make a mistake.
6. Do you involve non-sales people In the identification of sales opportunities?
Are office and field employees incentivized to contribute to the sales process? Everyone is a salesperson, or can contribute to the sale!
7. Have you updated your website recently?
Things change every 2-3 years. How old is your site? Are you coasting on past success?
8. Is someone dedicated to network on the company’s behalf, besides the owner?
Or does it all fall back on the owner…not a good place to be.
9. Do you pay sales commissions to your salespeople?
If you don’t, it’s a sign you don’t have hungry salespeople on staff.
10. Do you stretch yourself in terms of how much you try to sell to current clients?
Frank Mariani and I both agree that 150% is a good stretch goal (as measured by the amount of enhancements sold as a percentage of their maintenance agreements).
How do you hit that target? It includes sales opportunities that are handed off internally to your design/install department.
Your Challenge: It’s quite simple, strengthen your marketing and sales culture so you can finish the year strong, and make next year even stronger!
