Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Do you fit this description? You have so much work to do, youtell yourself you have little or no time for marketing. A fewmonths go by and there's less work in-house, or maybeyou've completed a project. So you begin marketing heavily,doing everything you can think of for a few more months until thework starts coming in. Then you repeat the cycle all over again.You work for a while . . . market for a while . . .work for awhile, then market. By now you realize you've put yourself onan economic roller coaster. It's always feast or famine.
As I travel around the country, speaking to small- andhomebased-business owners at conferences and expos, I listencarefully to the challenges and problems they face. The question Ihear most often concerns an area that's vital to everysmall-business owner's success: "How do I create anoverall marketing strategy for my business?"
To develop an effective marketing strategy that will increaseyour income, you must do two things: First, begin a proactive andconsistent sales and marketing program, and second, create awell-rounded program that reaches the full range of qualifiedprospects for your business. But what constitutes a proactive andconsistent marketing program? Consider that, in the fastest-growingcompanies in the United States with annual sales of less than $1million, the company presidents spend an average of 40 percent oftheir time each week on sales and marketing. If you're startinga new business, you should expect to spend 60 percent or more.
A well-rounded sales and marketing program reaches out to yourtargeted prospects in three typical stages of readiness--cold, warmand hot. Cold prospects are companies or individuals you'vetargeted to become your clients or customers, but that have littleor no information about you. Warm prospects are those you'vefamiliarized with your products or services. With a little legwork,they'll eventually become hot prospects, along with businessesthat have come to you through referrals and current customers whocontinue to buy from you.
In the United States, businesses take an average of about eightcontacts with a prospect before closing a sale. That means ifyou've been contacting cold prospects and, upon meetingresistance, taking them off your list, you've been missing outon opportunities to grow your business. Think about your salescycle and these three prospect stages as if they were in motionlike the hands on a clock, with new, cold prospects continuouslymoving around the face of the clock. The cold prospects are rightaround 1 or 2 o'clock. They won't move forward until youturn up the heat. Warm prospects are anywhere from 3 o'clock to8 o'clock. Your hottest prospects are right around 9o'clock on the clock's face. They're moving along inthe sales cycle, getting much closer to 12 o'clock--the closedsale.
To get off the economic roller coaster and increase your incomeyear-round, adopt an overall strategy that combines sales andmarketing tactics. For example, sales tactics, including networkingand cold calling, can motivate even your coldest prospects whenused in combination with a variety of marketing tactics. Marketingtactics can include public relations, direct mail and advertising.As you turn your cold prospects into warm ones, your marketingtactics may continue as before, but your sales tactics shouldexpand and, depending on your type of business, may includefollow-up calls, individuals sales letters, direct mailings withcompany literature, meetings, presentations and proposals. Andfinally, personal selling will add the heat to close sales andconvert hot prospects into customers.
