21st Century Sales and Marketing

We'll start with the word Marketing.

What does the word Marketing mean to you?

My preferred definition is that:-
Marketing is the entire process of gaining and keeping customers who pay you, so you make a profit

This therefore means that Sales is part of Marketing, that Product Choice is part of Marketing, that Business Development, Account Management and Customer Relationship Management are all parts of Marketing. Far, far wider than the correct, yet incomplete, idea that Marketing is Advertising, or Web Sites, or Mail Shots.

Whether your business is large or small, B2B or B2C, product or service oriented, all your customers need to take a journey, and they can only take that journey if you have made the path available and obvious.

All prospective customers start by being totally oblivious to your existence. Hopefully most end up being so enthusiastic about the good you've done them that they want to scream your praises from the roof-tops. So how can we help them get there?

You can think of the customer journey as being like a series of stepping stones across a river. If the stones are too small, or too slippery or too low in the water, or too far apart then the prospect will fall in the water and not reach the other side. So we need to put the right stepping stones in the right places.

The first stepping stone on the customer journey is Consciousness - They need to hear about you for the first time.

The next is Acquaintance - They need to hear about you several times, and quite likely in several ways.

Third is Distinctiveness - Only once they are Conscious of you and Acquainted with your existence, can they start absorbing what is good about you in particular.

Even at this stage they need have no particular inclination ever to buy from you. It is merely that if they did ever have a problem, they know whether you are likely to be able to help them solve it, and how to get in touch with you to talk about the possibility of providing help.

It follows then, that the fourth stepping stone is Interest - Not necessarily a strong interest, and not yet a commitment to purchase either. A Sales enquiry is an Interest in buying.

Like all sets of stepping stones, it is highly unlikely that you can miss any out and still not fall in the water! It is important to realise that even if a prospect appears to instantly jump from Consciousness to Interest, or any other leap for that matter, they have still hopped and skipped across the intervening steps, even if they spent precious little time on them.

To be continued ....