Business Sales Courage
Big sales volume begins
with courageous owners!
Company management that fails to deliver wholehearted commitment
to sales and marketing efforts to win new business
fails to win new business.
In my experience (with many hundreds of all-size businesses), the problem originates not with inferior marketing or sales. It is the product of the top people in the organization who have personal or leadership defects best characterized as ignorance, incompetence, or naivety.
What else could make people so threatened to justify keeping themselves at arms-distance?
Look at it this way: The marketing people develop a new creative approach for attracting sales prospects that represents a new, possibly “outrageous,” departure from industry norms.
What they’ve come up with may seem a bit too risque or intrusive to top management, but it is well-supported by both primary (focus group study) and secondary (database evaluation) research that clearly reinforces the potential and appropriateness of the message and format.
Sales management loves it and can easily see the prospects of high impact. Yet something about the new approach makes the boss(es) nervous, and prompts a “Get back to the drawing board!” response.
The daring approach is inevitably scuttled in favor of something more tame and more in line with the boss’s(es’) gray-flannel-suits-with-white-shirt-and-dark-tie mentality.
This new toned-down approach fails. The marketing people are fired and the sales leader(s) –now shrouded in skepticism– are being kept around until less-rebellious replacements can be found.
Does any of this sound familiar? Of course it does. I can name a hundred companies off the top of my head that have failed or are presently failing solely because they have had indecisive, unimaginative, non-visionary, chicken-livered wimps in the driver’s seats . . . start with those that were innundated with bailout tax-dollars!
Weak-kneed, do-nothing, glad-handing, back-patting politicians are running this country at every level of government. Why should private business owners and managers be expected to simply not follow suit?
Isn’t it, after all, a whole lot easier to just not make waves? Isn’t it simpler to merely buy into the “blame game” instead of a “roll-up-your-sleeves-and-make-things-happen” leadership role?
You know what? Beside that we have a federal government with no business abilities or experience, it takes genuine courage to take reasonable risks in business. It takes genuine courage to act out beliefs that are based on facts and deductive reasoning and experience.
It’s a whole lot less work and aggravation to take the low road, to be a wussy spewing out meaningless messages of hope and change, to make mediocre decisions that produce mediocre marketing, which results in mediocre sales.
If you work for someone like this, get your resume updated. (Try www.classicresumes.com)
If you ARE someone like this, get yourself inspired. It’s a choice. Give yourself a day off, dress down, and visit some crowded places where you think your target-types of customers spend time (College or university campus? Hospital lobby? Grand Central Station? A boatyard? A racetrack? A stadium? A nursing home? A church or community event?)
Observe. Listen. Ask questions. Take notes. See what you can learn about the kinds of people you need most to reach with your sales message. Decide what you can do differently. Go back to work and dare to be different. You might surprise yourself!
Support those who endorse free market competition healthcare and REAL job creation tax incentives for America’s entrepreneurs!
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931.854.0474 Hal@BusinessWorks.US
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
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