This blog entry is part two of a four part series from Kevin Simpson entitled The Ultimate Sales Process Dissection: Divide to Multiply for Results. In today’s business world the sales process is being more and more skimmed over as more and more companies rely upon digital marketing to bring customers all the way across the finish line. However, we have identified 4 main components of the sales process where we are seeing serious companies focus serious effort into maximizing every last drop of the content and context in the customer journey. Enjoy.
In my last blog I discussed both the importance and the failures companies are having with their lead generation databases, and the limits of not having a robust and maintained CRM.
I want to start of this blog with a simple example I thought about after watching my wife master the art of making San Francisco sourdough bread. Having tried to bake myself I know how hard it is, but making bread is different than simply baking.
There is a more simple yet complex science to it. And it takes a while to master.
On paper it looks easy. Yet, there are only three core components.
Yeast
Flower
Gas to heat the oven
Too little yeast – the bread doesn’t rise
Too much flower – the bread becomes a brick and is inedible
No gas, well this goes without saying
So back to your own marketing efforts around lead generation. What is your recipe – and what the hell does yeast have to do with marketing anyway? As business coaches we spend a lot of time making proverbial bread with our clients and there is one thing we have learned that is more important than anything else, it is this:
YOUR MARKETING CONTENT HAS NO YEAST
In the simple recipe of bread, yeast is 1/100 the quantity of the floor – almost nothing – but without it you have nothing, the bread won’t rise and even if it starts it will simply and eventually collapse on itself. In your marking content your yeast must be your message. It must be bold, powerful and it must be finely tuned to what your audience what’s – even if they don’t know it yet. No message, no message, no message, no message – keep saying that to yourself until you find something that inspires you, because if you can’t inspire yourself by your own message how do you expect your potential customer to ever be inspired?
We spend too much time on the flour – the content – we worry about how much we have, how much we need, the mass of it, the details. But with out the yeast there is nothing to kick-start the process and for sure nothing that reacts and interacts with the audience.
Here are three simple rules to making sure you have yeast in your marketing content:
1. It feels like you fired a gun to start the race when you read it. It breaks the silence. Be bold. Be real. This is more Don Draper than Walt Disney. Challenge your audience. Don’t be afraid they won’t like it – those people are not your customers anyway.
2. Ask your raving fans to rate your message. Go to the people that already love you. Don’t simply ask them “do you like it?”, ask them to remember the time before they knew how much your product or service would impact them and ask them to look at your message through those eyes. Thank God they are already clients – thank God! Simply just ask them -“forget about what you know and how you feel about us now – would this message been the right one, or been on point enough to catch your eye, to inspire you enough to lead you to us – to get you to where you are with us today?”
3. It should be 1/100 in volume to your content. If it takes more than a teaspoon it’s not good yeast and it won’t work
The flour will come. Most of you are already good at creating content – just make sure it is error free and actually reinforces the message you planted. Don’t go overboard. Think about the personality types of your typical customers. Are they creatives who won’t read more than 5 lines and would rather see a video? Are they cognitives that need details, graphs and testimonials, or are they decision makers that want the cold, hard and raw truth. Fast without any sugar coating.
DO NOT forget about the gas. This is your true marketing budget. Don’t think clever writing was ever enough to get your message heard. Establish a budget and make it a real number. Ask yourself ‘is this an investment or am I just sticking my toe in the water”
If you can’t answer this one question:
Is my marketing making me money or costing me money??
You are not there yet and need the help of a good marketing person, a business coach or both.
The Beatles went from relative nobodies in England to one of the world’s top acts because Capital records spent a small fortune during that time in marketing money to promote them. They went from 0 to viral in 6 Weeks. What are you prepared to spend to do that?
Getting your marketing message right is hard. Just like baking the perfect sourdough loaf like my wife does is hard. Be glad. Celebrate that. If it was easy there would be a bakery on every corner.