A Duck is a Duck, even if you don’t want it to be

It’s time to let it go. Ineffective sales and marketing approaches are not going to morph into success while you sleep. It doesn’t matter how much money you have put into it; if it doesn’t produce now, it won’t produce ever. I’m talking about marketing campaigns, sales systems, sales training, or any other tactic you are engaging. The longer you hang on to it, the further in the hole you will go. There is no doubt that these decisions are difficult. Especially when you were sure that “this” was going to be the driving force you were looking for. I know. Everyone got behind it and you were all sure that it would work. But it hasn’t. It won’t. Move on.

The hardest thing to do in business is convince everyone that a new tactic will work, and then have to convince them that it is time to move on. Continuing to put resources into a mediocre or worse program will ultimately cost you market share. There is no silver bullet and there is no magic wand. Hard work combined with smart and strategic planning is the only way to affect long term growth. Increasing market share requires a foundation of support for your sales team coupled with a highly motivated and skilled sales force. No buzz word driven strategy has ever succeeded in the long run and no “catch phrase of the day” is sustainable. If it can be seen in a seminar, the tactic is already antiquated. Companies like Defiant sell cutting edge strategies to corporations and leave the seminars to the terminally unskilled. The bottom line is that growing market share is very much like losing weight. Millions of “new” approaches come out every year, but at the end of the day, there is no substitute for eating right and exercising. That’s right; feed your sales staff good, qualified leads and make sure they are working them. Accomplishing this is exponentially more complicated, but the premise is very simple. Failure to do these simple things will stop a new campaign before it even gets off of the ground. After all, the only reason to engage in marketing is to drive interest in your products and/or services.

Even the best marketing is rendered useless without a system to engage and sell the prospects it creates. That is why it is important to understand that throwing precious capital at a new tactic without a solid foundation will only help relieve you of that capital. Instead of gambling on a new approach, build a system designed to generate, qualify, and close leads.  Seems overly simplistic but an evaluation of your current sales flow will probably reveal a kink in the system.

Addressing these kinds of problems is less expensive and a lot more effective. Committing resources to a trendy approach while ignoring the fundamentals is cost prohibitive and completely counter productive. When was the last time you did any real statistical analysis on your sales staff? Do you know what the rate of return of each member of your team is? How about their conversion rates, closing percentages, escalation rates, contact rates, etc…? Without this kind of knowledge, how do you know which reps are productive? How do you know who is working their leads to the fullest extent possible? If knowledge is power and you don’t know then you are powerless. Right?