Why Invest In Marketing To Your Target Market When They Aren’t Buying?

When they are getting no bites, sales people can get discouraged and stop selling even to prospects they already have in the pipeline. If you or your sales and marketing team resist reaching out to clients and prospects more, it may simply be that you’ve used up your repertoire and need two things:

I.            Suggestions on HOW to reach out in new more effective ways and

II.          Reinforcing reminders of WHY it’s important to market consistently even when prospects are not responding.

You are the best sales person for your business. Lead by example to set the standard. Your team may be staff, commission based sales people, independent distributors or even affiliates. To keep your pipeline filled, teach your team:

1. To stay front and center visible on their prospects radar – especially if you target the corporate market. Create reasons to reach out, create added value to build the relationship stronger and deeper that does not cost you anything (e.g., a whitepaper of your expertise)
2. To increase their prospects awareness of you as the company, the brand, the only solution they’ll consider
3. To bring attention to you/your product/service – educate the client to maximize all the features of your current offering and how they can benefit more from those features.
4. To highlight the added value you offer. The more you/your team show how much you care about the client, only then will they care how much you know.
5. To generate a desire in customers and prospects to continue to hear what you have to say. Make each contact so valuable, the client will always take their call.

What kind of marketing can you do when no one is buying?

• Use this time to plan and schedule all marketing strategies for the next 6-12 months. Then get them scheduled and booked.
• If you will be a conference speaker in September, establish a timeline for drafting the speech, shipping handouts to the location, developing the PowerPoint presentation to go with it, the press release, website promotion, travel arrangements, etc.
• If you will introduce a new product, service or program in November, work out all the details for the most thorough and effective rollout with enough lead-time to implement all the pieces, or identify gaps to be filled in a timely fashion.
• If you have some free time because ‘the phones are quiet’ – this is a great time to develop fresh relevant promotional pieces or hire contractors/freelancers to develop them for you.
• If you have a 2010 goal of increasing visibility in a new vertical market, a new demographic niche, or a new country, now is the time to bone up on the nuances and implications of this marketing goal to prepare successful penetration strategies.

What else can your sales team do when no one is buying?

• Your team does not need to be idle during a sales lull either.
• Your sales team can use this time to research growth opportunities for the company, their channels or their territories.

Sales staff can use this time as an opportunity to follow-up every sale made in the past 12 months with a brief visit or a phone call: to personally say thank you for the business; to ensure continued satisfaction with the product, service and the salesperson’s work; and to bind client loyalty with strong personal rapport.

• In addition, each client contact is a great opening to query them about their plans for the next year; to identify client needs which your product/service can address in the next 12 months – i.e., scouting for 2010 – 2011 add-on sales; and ask for referrals.

In one marketing job I had, when I did a survey of
magazine production managers already using our
hardware and software, I identified an additional
$2M in add-on sales just waiting for our sales reps to call.

• Sales staff can also take time to study and research the market and their territory vis-a-vis the company’s reset goals and start developing or refining sales strategies and tactics to achieve your plan for the company and reach their own quotas and incentives. If you give them the motivation and training, they will produce more, even if ‘no one is buying’.
• Sales staff can use this period for supplemental (internal or external) training to refine their craft. As the master sales person for the company, you can invest time and training to share your mastery with them.

When you invest in the tools and skills you and your marketing and sales people need, both you and your team will stay engaged, productive and committed to achieve new more prosperous goals.