Marketing or Selling?

Most of the small business and microbusiness clients I work with want to talk to me about Marketing. It may not be in the very first meeting (it usually is, in fact), but eventually they want to get around to it, and usually sooner rather than later.

Everybody seems to believe that Marketing is the key to small business success...at the very least, Marketing is the key factor in driving revenues. Entrepreneurs frequently ask about the best ways to market...as though there are normative answers to those questions. I think it comforts people to believe that there is some direct relationship between marketing dollars spent and total revenues. People want to think that if they spend big money on the right combination of media (print, internet, radio, etc...), they are guaranteed to have a great revenue stream.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

In Marketing, I can promise you that there are no magic bullets. I can not help you discover that one, super easy, inexpensive key to success...that one small thing that you haven't been doing, but as soon as you start, all your revenue goals will be met.

In fact, it depends on the business, but more often than not, I end up talking to the entrepreneur about the difference between Selling and Marketing. In my opinion, for many if not most small businesses and microbusinesses, Selling is a FAR MORE important success factor than Marketing.

And yes, there is a difference between the two. Selling involves one-to-one communication, whereas Marketing communications are one-to-many. There are some other differences, as well, but many will follow from this basic distinction.

The thing is...Marketing is actually very easy compared to Selling. Lots of entrepreneurs have some instinctive ability to understand Marketing...maybe even design it...certainly to evaluate it. I mean, we ALL see roughly 3000 Marketing messages per day, every day. So it's only natural for us to have certain thoughts about which messages resonate with us and even with others.

So it's tempting to rely on Marketing to drive your revenues. It's tempting to think that we can be creative and we can place a few ads in the yellow pages and the newspaper...and then all we have to do is sit by the phone, wait for it to ring, manage our business, and grow filthy rich.

That's easy.

Selling is hard.

Most of us don't LIKE to sell. We really don't like salespeople, either. Marketing is...well, disengaged. We draw a picture, pay somebody to print it, and we wait. Selling, on the other hand, is a full contact sport. We're not used to it. We're uncomfortable with it.

And I hate to be the one to tell you, but it might...just might...be a critical skill for the success of your small business.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are situations in which Marketing is great. Marketing works if you are trying to build a brand. Marketing works when the purchasing decision is simple. If you're standing in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store and you know you want some cereal that tastes GGGGRRRREEEEEAAAAAAAATTTT!, well, Tony the Tiger has been telling you for years that you want Frosted Flakes.

But again, that's an easy purchasing decision. Do you want this box of cereal or that one? Pick. Many purchasing decisions, however, are more difficult. Mazda can put commercials on teevee every day that say "zoom zoom zoom" but I'm not going to walk around the car lot, put my hand on the hood of a car, and say, "I'll take this one!" A car has to be SOLD. You have to be able to ask: What are the safety features? What are maintenance requirements? Does this thing get good gas mileage? Can I special order it in silver?

In fact, I'd ask you to think long and hard about the purchasing decisions that your clients make. Are they simple purchasing decisions? Or are they pretty complex? It's my experience that MANY small businesses have customers that are facing more difficult purchasing decisions...decisions in which their Selling skills are actually IMPORTANT.

Let's say you are a contractor...let's say you build decks on peoples' houses. Classic microbusiness, right? Well, you can spend a LOT of money on marketing, and you may have clever, catchy ads. The most those ads get you is an opportunity. So let's say Mrs. Jones calls you because you've got a big yellow pages ad...or maybe she finds your web page. So you go to Mrs. Jones's house and you get out of a beat up, crappy looking van...and you've got a couple of tats crawling up out of your collar and creeping up your neck...maybe even "love" and "hate" across your knuckles (not that there is anything wrong with that...I have tats). Maybe you're smoking a cigarette...maybe you show up 5 minutes late or even 15 minutes late.

I don't care how pretty your advertising was. Marketing does NOT win you that job.

But let's say your neighbor or your friend tells Mrs. Jones about me. I don't run ads, but I get referrals. How? Well, Mrs. Jones calls me. I show up ON TIME. I look and sound like a guy that Mrs. Jones feels comfortable with. She feels like I can work on her house...whether or not she is home. Furthermore, I show up on time. I take measurements. Instead of some crappy bid sheet scrawled in crayon or wax pencil, I put my measurements in a nice, readable excel spreadsheet and I produce an easy-to-read bid on paper.

Then I sell. I send Mrs. Jones the bid. I call her two days later and I say, "Mrs. Jones, I just wanted to follow up and make sure you got the bid I sent to you. You did? Great! Do you have any questions I can answer for you?"

If it's your personality, you might even engage in some selling techniques, such as assuming the close ("Would you like to schedule the deck build for the second week in January?") or even simply asking for the job.

Yes, Selling is more difficult. It's full-contact. But the beauty of it is that YOU control the means of follow-up. You control who sees your message, exactly what they see, and when they see it again. With Marketing, there are two main variables, scope and frequency. Personally, I believe frequency is the more important of those two, but that's admittedly subjective and situational. But with Marketing, you can't really control who sees the newspaper or who listens to the radio...not even who opens your direct mail piece. With Selling, though, you deliver the message and you can even devise a series of messages using different media. When you follow up, you can remind people of the messages they have already received.

Plus, you can see by the above example how excellent Selling leads to FAR more referrals...ESPECIALLY if you build it into your process to ASK for referrals.

Marketing frequently begins with a scattershot approach. You may, if you're lucky, have SOME idea of your potential customers...but how do you reach them? Which advertising medium will work? But Selling begins with prospecting. Make a list of the top 30-50 people that would be your best customers or best linking relationships to your customers. What would you say to them in 30 seconds?

Now say it!

For most small businesses, the best way to improve their top line is to focus on Selling.

How do you get better? It's not easy...again, no magic bullets. One website that I refer people to is www.justsell.com

You can learn how to prospect...how to qualify prospects (so you pitch to decision-makers, only)...how to ask open-ended questions...how to overcome objections...how to CLOSE deals. These are the things that drive your top line. Make no mistake about it.