Knowing how to improve the sales and marketing performance of a business requires context. There are literally 1,000 things you could do. The challenge lies in understanding which of these tactics will be right for your business.
However, some foundations should exist in every business, which I want to cover in this article.
Starting with the end in mind, you want systems and processes that attract good-fit leads, nurture these leads over time to build trust as they progress to their buying decision stage, and then automate the marketing-to-sales handover when the lead is qualified and ready to take action.
While creating these underlying methodologies to achieve this isn't easy, it can be simpler than you think if you have the proper frameworks.
I have spent a lot of time looking closely at this, thousands of hours in fact, as part of my development process for the Marketing Compass Accelerator. Here's what I found.
If you sell products and services that require the client to make a considered buying decision (i.e. you don't sell a commodity product that is an impulse purchase) and you focus on long-term client relationships, then there are 9 sequential steps that give you a basis for predictable and profitable sales and marketing performance.
I run through each of these in the video above.
9 Foundations For Improved Sales and Marketing Performance
Unless you have a sales and marketing framework to follow, it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to emulate another company's success by adopting the same marketing tactics.
This can seem logical at face value, but when you don't know what you don't know, you can be blind to reasons why this won't work.
This is why following the sequence of 9 foundations I cover in the above video is so important.
Let me give you an example. Foundation #6 is content marketing, and Foundation #7 is lead generation. Businesses typically start here without having the preceding components bedded down.
I'll skip the analogy of building a house without a solid slab and frame...
As a result, they spend a few months creating email campaigns, blog posts and social media ads, but don't get any traction and then begin to disengage. A few months pass and they have to start marketing again from scratch.
I've listed below the headline summary of the 9 sequential steps in the context of how we teach it to our clients in the Marketing Compass Accelerator program. You can see the more detailed coverage in the video at the top of the page.
In the video, I reference an audit exercise we take businesses through to help them identify their growth potential using our 9-step framework. You can learn more about this process and request your free marketing game plan session here.
#1 - Setting Your Targets & Budgets
Targets like how many leads, how many new clients, how much retained revenue, how much new revenue, and all the other sales and marketing targets you have for the business. This then relates to your budgets – the financial resources available for getting there. We help you set these important foundations so you are clear on what you need to achieve.
#2 - Aligning Your Sales & Marketing
You will unpack how to get these two functions of your business running in parallel as one unified force in pursuit of your targets. You will explore systems, frameworks and tactics to make this a reality by creating fluid business functions.
#3 - Building Your Buyer Persona
This is where you get clear on who your ideal customers are and who they aren’t; specifically, in a way that allows you to find them, connect with them, and avoid your negative personas.
#4 -Mapping Your Persona’s Pre-Purchase Process
We help you get clear on the thoughts, questions, actions, and behaviours which define how your target customers make buying decisions for the services you provide. You will map this out so you can orient their buying process to your business.
#5 -Defining & Living Your Value Proposition
You will unpack your core competencies, your value proposition, positioning statements and a broad range of frameworks, so everything from the services you provide, to your communications, and your processes are aligned to your buyer’s needs and wants.
#6 - Developing Your Content Strategy
You will take everything from the five previous modules into consideration to develop a content marketing strategy to guide the prospective buyers to you by positioning you as the preferred service provider - the thought leader in your industry.
#7 - Setting Your Targets & Budgets
We outline how you can increase your website traffic, convert that website traffic into leads and nurture those leads to be sales-ready, using the content you developed in Module #6.
#8 - Retaining Your Ideal Clients
Too often, businesses focus on getting new clients, and they don’t take the right steps to maximise the mutual value in the relationships they already have. We will provide insights to help you ensure this doesn’t happen and so that you can set tactics for increasing your customer lifetime value, which is what ultimately gives you a strong ROI from your marketing.
#9 - Resourcing & Implementing Your Plan
This is where you gain the insights necessary to resource the implementation and execution of your marketing plan. Whether you do everything internally or use an external partner network for a portion of your marketing – how you resource your plan is essential to its success, and we’ll help you get clear on what and who you need.
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