Let’s Keep it Simple: Small Business Marketing and Sales
Ever heard the term Marketing and Sales Funnel and thought - no thanks, moving along?
I get it. After over a decade in sales, the funnel and I have had a love-love ~ damn you to hell relationship.
Simply put, the funnel is a way to organize and prioritize how you are getting clients, who you should focus on and how much money you can estimate is coming your way. Without some sort of organization and a general process, overwhelm and confusion leads to frustration, procrastination, wasted time, no clients, no money—you get what I’m saying.
Sales and marketing can be blurred together at certain points and people will argue until the end of time on which is more important. To me, marketing, sales and customer service together are all very important to creating advocates.
Advocate: Those clients who refer you, talk about you at parties, share your posts on the regular and provide testimonials, all because of their experience with you. Think of brands or people you are advocates for and why. There might be some gems in there you can adopt into your business.
Let’s keep it simple (Part I):
Marketing = Awareness/Visibility
Sales = Getting Hired/Purchase
Shared Goal: Bring in money to the business. Sales and marketing do this through activities or action that you are taking.
Example of common Marketing Activities: Posting to Instagram, Facebook or your blog
Example of common Sales Activities: Following up with possible clients, discovery and pricing calls
Let’s keep it simple (Part II):
Ask yourself
What activities will I do to get people to learn about what I help solve?
What activities will I do to guide the people who are the right fit to hire me?
Schedule equal time in your calendar, weekly, to do both activities!
Disclaimer: This is in no way, shape or form an exhaustive list of what marketing and sales can entail. We’ve laid out the basics but these activities can vary on many degrees depending on you and your business. Ideally, you’ll continuously be cooking up new methods and techniques for building your sales and marketing funnel!