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Ask and
ye shall receive
One of the fundamentals of advertising
and marketing is that you have to ask for the sale.
Indeed, a wise – and very successful – sales person
once told me that the secret to his success was that he always
asked for the sale.
Sounds pretty basic, but if you look over 10 advertisements,
at least half will fail to ask for the sale, known in the
ad trade as the “call to action.”
I bring this up because we continue to run
into companies that believe it is not necessary to ask for
business. Typically, these companies have done little or no
advertising. They have no sales reps or staff with marketing
responsibilities, and rely exclusively on “word of mouth”
advertising. There is nothing wrong with “word of mouth”
advertising. In fact, it is the best form of advertising.
But it is highly dangerous to rely on it exclusively.
Here’s why. When you ask these non-advertisers
about their existing customer base, you almost always hear
this: “we have a few loyal customers who account for
most of our business.” Dig a little deeper and you discover
that they get very few inquiries – and most, if not all,
of these inquiries are very low quality leads, meaning they
are typically from bottom-feeders looking for a deal.
Now what happens when one of the big accounts
goes away? It’s going to happen and it will usually be
for reasons completely out of the control of the supplier
(i.e. bankruptcy, merger). Since there is no existing stream
of leads, there is no candidate to replace the account.
Worse still, the elimination of the income from the prime
account means there is also no money to start prospecting
– and no time to go through the process of prospecting,
qualifying the leads and, ultimately, winning the new business.
A sad, but all too common, picture.
So what do you do? Start by looking at
your existing budget and identifying those expenditures
that are less important than advertising and marketing.
It should be a pretty long list, particularly when you consider
the real value of marketing and advertising and the critical
role it plays in generating leads. Then make the decision
to shift funds from some lower priority funds into advertising
and marketing. Finally, call in some ad agencies and ask
them
for proposals on what they could do with your available budget.
Pick whom you like and get started. It’s not that hard,
really. And imagine how well you will sleep when you know
that you are – at last – asking for and getting
new business.
Next time: how to be a wise buyer of ad
services.
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