In the continually evolving world of online marketing and sales, it is those experts and websites that share reams of content with their audience around common areas of interest that are the most successful. Hands down; no contest.

It would be difficult to find a more succinct definition of how this works than in Brian Clark’s new report, Authority Rules. Brian notes that “Many people think the main barrier to online marketing success is a lack of traffic. But it’s really a lack of trust.”

Brian was one of the early champions of the “Teaching Sells” philosophy and is now one of those authority figures in successful online marketing. If you’re just meeting Brian for the first time, you will do both yourself and your company a favor by spending time on his website trolling through the hundreds of pages of knowledge that he willingly shares with his audience.

P.S. Educating your customer is selling.

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As I’ve listened to the presenters at the Executive Publishing Conference and Expo this week, it occurs to me that in all this talk about the recession and who is navigating the economy well and who is still on the sidelines trying to figure out what to do, that there is a real cost to fear and uncertainty.  And, in addition to real costs of inertia or non-engagement that there are also opportunities lost along the way.

Someone said yesterday, “if the new up is flat, then we’re up.” It’s a bit of black humor that gets to the heart of today’s business climate and that is, if you haven’t lost ground, then you’re doing pretty well. After listening to publishers’ experiences these last two days, it seems to me that even jumping into the fray, investing-scrapping-reinvesting yields more benefits than inertia. The worst outcome for a company is losing relevance to its community while sitting on the sidelines.

Josh Gordon, sales expert and speaker, cited studies that found that both fear and uncertainty light up the “fear” center of the brain. It also lights up when running against the crowd. The way to overcome this fear and uncertainty from a sales perspective is to provide more proof, reassurance or guarantees. Isn’t that what we all are really looking for? Some guarantee that things are going to be fine? That we will all navigate troubled times and find ourselves leaner but stronger at the other end?

Students of business history know that companies that continue to market during economic downturns fare better than companies who don’t.These companies can move into their industry’s lead position during this time. It takes courage and conviction to continue to invest in your business when you can’t predict the outcome.

But the real risk in non-engagement is not losing sales during the span of the recession (although that is certainly a reality), but putting the company’s relationship with its community at risk during a time when the community needs reassurance from its leadership that things will, in fact, be fine. It is that relationship and relevance to the community that is the more extreme loss to a company, because the community has already moved on to some other industry leader that stayed the course and provided some level of assurance by the way they continued to operate that all would be well in the end.

Understanding both your core business strengths and your value to the community you serve is a key element in mitigating the cost of fear and uncertainty to your business.

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This interesting question is posed by David Brock here. He tells of one company that has made it a policy for their salespeople and their sales are up 10% this year.

As I’m heading into three days of a trade show with a client, it will be a great opportunity to observe and practice this attitude. Brock is right that customers still need to have what we sell, so it’s up to us to make sure that we are astute enough to uncover their real objections and not just chalk up their non-purchase to the economy.

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Does your organization see the recession as a sales problem or a strategic business opportunity?

Josh Gordon, a well-known sales coach and author, posed this essential question to a group of sales professionals, and his findings are available in a new white paper that is free with registration.

Here is a summary of what he has to say: Read the rest of this entry »

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 In most small companies sales and marketing is the responsibility of the same person. Often the person in charge has been with the company for some time and what they know about sales and marketing has been learned on the job. Sales and marketing are joined at the hip. In fact your strategic sales plan should be an outgrowth of your strategic marketing plan. Although there are multiple marketing objectives such as investing in customer relationships, building community, establishing your company as content expert in your field, etc., the fundamental purpose of marketing is (drum roll, please) to create sales opportunities.

It is amazing to me how many companies operate without full understanding of the answers to the following questions. So what are the key questions that should be answered for successful sales and marketing to occur?

1. Who is the customer?
2. What problem does our product solve for the customer?
3. How do we reach the customer? Read the rest of this entry »

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