Marketing Not Selling!

Is This Your Biggest Mistake?

Is your business making this mistake? You believe your small business is all about selling products--a fatal mistake! Put your time, energy and money into this belief and you will not make any real profits! If you want your small business to succeed, your fundamental activity must be marketing. Putting time, energy and money into marketing activities will make you real profits.

The change from selling to marketing reflects the change in today’s world of business. Let me explain. Selling Selling is about you! When you concentrate on selling, you concentrate on your selling skills. How to get sales leads. How to build customer rapport. How to makes sales presentations. How to handle objections. How to close the sale.

When your selling activities don’t produce results, you put time, energy and money into improving yourself. You improve your motivations. You listen to sales tapes. You attend expensive sales seminars. This model of selling—persuading the customer to buy your product was the way selling was done 100 years ago.

The world has changed. Customers have changed. The rules have changed. Marketing Marketing is all about the customer! It means uncovering what the customer wants and how they want it. It means creating solutions that solve the customer’s problem. When you do these things, customers are drawn to you. It is your job to show the customer how your solution solves their problem.

Look at a different business model. You have a family doctor. Did he find you or did you find him? He is perceived to be an expert in his field. You sought him out because of his expertise. He did not use any sales techniques to get you as a client! What would your business be like if you drew customers to you rather than chasing them? What would it do to your sales, to your psyche, to your profits? I am not talking about rocket science.

Try this simple five step approach to begin market based thinking.

Step One--What does your market want?

I am not asking you to explain what you think the market needs. (That’s your judgment of what you think is good for the customer!) What is the pain in your market place? What bothers potential customers most in your market? What do they worry about? What motivates them to action? Find what’s hot in the market and go there!

Step Two--Understand your customer.

Who are they? What do they think? Where do they buy? Why do they buy? The key to Step Two is to uncover the conversation that is going on in your customer’s mind. If you can reflect this conversation in your marketing efforts, they will recognize you as a source for helping solve their problem.

Step Three--Carve out your own niche.

The market is a crowded place. Your potential customer will have many options to solve their problem. You must be different; you must stand out; you must have a unique selling proposition. If you are not unique, you will be lost in the crowd. If you do not have a unique way of packaging your solution, you will be left behind.

Step four--Fashion your message.

What do you want to tell people about your solution? How is your solution different? What will it do? What are the benefits your customer will receive from your product or service? How will it make their life better? Give them testimonials from others who have used your solution. What guarantees do you offer? Do you deliver what you promise day in and day out? These are the elements in your marketing message.

Step Five--Find a marketing medium.

You have a market; you have a message; now you need to identify a medium for matching the message to the market. Do your customers use TV, radio, internet, magazines, direct mailing, postcards, flyers, newsletter or other mediums? What is the best way to contact them? There are a variety of techniques for grabbing people’s attention. The point is to match the medium to your market.

Conclusion

These are not difficult steps. They do produce a different way of doing business. Do these five steps, write them down, put time lines to your activities and create a budget to match. You now have a plan that will help you eliminate the biggest problem of small business owners. You have a plan to change your small business thinking to market based thinking.

Your comments are welcomed…