The Sales and Marketing Pillar

Where should you invest your sales and marketing dollars?

This is the first blog in a series of five that focuses on the business pillars that lead to a well run and prosperous business. In this blog, we will be discussing your sales and marketing pillar. If you think about the typical customer experience with your business, this is the first pillar they will encounter.

So, let us first define sales and marketing. Sales is all that you are doing to make offers as effectively as you can to close on an opportunity. Marketing is everything you are doing to bring awareness of these offerings to the right prospective customer or client under the best possible circumstances. This pillar is critical to business survival in the beginning, so plan on spending most of your energy on making it profitable.

Initially when it comes to small businesses, the owner is usually the best sales person. The owner created the business and knows the product inside and out. As your business grows and expands, the sales pillar will slowly be handed over to another person to lighten your load. This is where you will begin to rely more heavily on your marketing efforts. This is also where costly errors could be made. In the day of digital advertising and media, your marketing campaigns can have a very large reach for little cost. If done correctly, this reach will bring those prospective buyers right to your storefront and ready to make a purchase without relying heavily on sales. However, if done incorrectly, your marketing efforts will be wasted with little sales to show for it.

So, how do you know where you should invest your sales and marketing dollars? In order to quantify your ROI, you’ll need to track all stages of the sales and marketing funnel in order to close the loop on your analysis. This will then give you good data to determine whether specific marketing campaigns are worth the investment. Things to consider when analyzing your marketing and sales pillar…

How much time in your day are you selling?
How many sales opportunities do you close a day on?
What are you doing right now to market your business to reach the right prospective customer?
How much do you spend on marketing each month?
What is your customer acquisition cost?
Where are your qualified leads coming from?

I would love to hear about your sales and marketing pillar. Is it weak or strong? What are you working on to strengthen it? You can reach me at jason@storenfinancial.com to share your thoughts. And click here to follow along with our other pillars of prosperity discussion topics. Or click here to learn more about our business coaching and advisory services.