Marketing Materials: What Marketing Can’t Do for You
Marketing Materials: Jul 3, 2012, Tom Searcy
Sales people use marketing as the scapegoat to many of their sales issues. Here are a few solutions when your marketing materials are not helping you to sell.
Image courtesy of Flickr user rtgregory
If a proposal, a website or a brochure can generate a contract or a sale, then a company does not need sales people.
Sales people often complain about their marketing materials–they are not current, not visual enough, not digital, wrong case studies, wrong information, and so on–as if they can’t sell without them. A constant battle I hear in companies is over the quality of the leads that marketing generates. There is often an undercurrent of complaints as to why sales are not higher by sales people aimed against marketing. Maybe all of the commentary is true. No doubt it is frustrating. However, it is a terrible excuse for why a sales person can’t get a sale or even generate a lead.
Don’t let bad marketing materials get in the way of generating new leads or sales. If marketing materials could sell something then it wouldn’t be called “selling,” and your company wouldn’t need sales people.
Here are a few things you can do:
1. Pictures
Do you need pictures of products, examples, materials, people, whatever? Take them. You have a smartphone, use it. If you have done a good job talking about your product or case study, then the pic doesn’t sell it, the pic confirms what you have described.
2. Testimonials and Case Studies
Next time you are with a happy customer, use your smartphone or a flip video camera to record a two minute interview testimonial. I have done this with transactional customers up to CEOs of billion dollar companies–it is easy and can be fun.
3. Product or Service Description
http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/what-marketing-cant-do-for-you.html
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To Discuss how these Solutions will add value for you, your organization and/or your clients, Affinity/Resale Opportunities, and/or Collaborative Efforts, Please Contact:
Tom McDonald, tsm@centurytel.net; 608-788-5144; Skype: tsmw5752
