Eric Gagnon graciously sent me a complimentary copy of his book, The Marketing Manager's Handbook, recently. While it is geared toward product-oriented businesses rather than professional service firms, I plan to read it.
In skimming it, I found eight steps important steps that he stated lead to better marketing and marketing execution which will improve sales in almost any situation. Several of them rang true to me. I list them here with a few thoughts from the perspective of a professional services firm marketer.
DEVELOPING THE EXECUTION MINDSET
If you can't sell your best prospect over the phone, you don't have a business. Eric says to forget branding, focus groups, and fancy logos, and instead call your 10 best prospects and if you cannot convince them to buy your company's product, something is wrong. In PSFs, we don't typically call our best prospects and convince them to buy an audit, business valuation, or legal service (or whatever the service provided). Usually, when the prospect needs us, they contact us. The key is to be top of mind with either them or their advisors (our referral sources) when they need our services and we do that in several different ways (relationships, website, newsletters, blogs, advertising, articles, speeches, etc.). Maybe the question for a PSF is when you contact your 10 best prospects and/or referral sources, are you still at the top of their list.
Do you suffer from "brochure paralysis"? Eric states that if you can't get a brochure produced in two weeks, you've got a problem. I agree with him here. See my prior posts on "Your Happy Line" and "Print on Demand."
Where's your phone number? According to Eric, you should tack your company's brochure to a wall and walk 10 feet away. If you can't read the phone number from that distance, your prospects can't see it at arms' length. This brings up a pet peeve of mine which is making it hard for people to contact you. In all our materials, we strive to make it easy for people to find a phone number or e-mail address or some other way of contacting one of our professionals. See Burnett + Company's website. Notice the phone number right at the top. I like that.
If you can't send your brochure out the same day, you'll never fill the order. Sales information must be sent out in response to an inquiry the same day. Eric also suggests sending a PDF sales sheet within two hours of the call. I heartily agree. Again, see my prior post on "Print on Demand" as well as an older one talking about the power of PDFs.
Your best market may not be the one you're in now. Eric claims that marketers must test to determine if there are better markets. This is true for PSFs. We must constantly be searching for the next market not only to increase our sales and our reach, but to also immunize us, if you will, against market downturns. See Suzanne Lowe's post on playing defense as well as the comments.
Why didn't the mailing go out? Delays kill marketing execution per Eric and he's right. This not only applies to direct mail but to all other forms on marketing tactics. My problem is that I often allow too many things to happen at the same time which is our current situation. We have a self-published book and a website redesign due by the end of the year and it's the middle of October! Yikes!
Too many eyes can kill your company. Eric advises you not to run marketing copy and ideas past 27 different people. He claims there are only three people that should review copy - you, your sales manager, and your best current customer. For a PSF, that translates into you, the partner in charge of that area, and your best current customer in that area.
"Creative" people will hose you every time. Eric says to beware the high-dollar consultant who claims to have the magic answers. I agree with him to a point. We don't often use consultants, yet when we do, they add value. You have to communicate clearly with them your expectations and make certain that they can meet those expectations. There is nothing wrong with creative people. We have several here. But remember: if it doesn't sell, it's not creative.
List excerpted from Eric Gagnon's The Marketing Manager's Handbook (Internet Media, 2003), p. 7.
Thanks for doing the leg work on this book, Barbara. Too often we PSF marketers wait, wait, wait for relevant information, and miss out on the stuff that actually applies for us too.
Posted by: Suzanne Lowe | October 20, 2006 at 07:14 AM