There are different kinds of marketing mistakes and one of the most serious one is failing to execute internal marketing goals, before trying to implement outside. When seeking growth, companies often look outward, instead of inward. They may focus on finding new prospects with additional salespeople, direct mail, web marketing, trade shows, advertising and others. Due to the tendency of continuously using traditional methods, it is possible that waste will begin to creep inside our company. In this case, marketing efforts should happen in both sides. We could also find many opportunities inside to generate additional profits, sales and cash.
Sales pitches and marketing discussions should be highly effective. When a prospect enters the sales process, he/she needs to get our full attention. The common method is choosing a prospect, present him/her with information about our products and then, closed. However, if the process is continuously repeated, we could actually accumulate a significant amount of waste. As an example, the marketing process may not be effective enough that the wrong prospect could be brought in the sales process. In this case, the prospect is not fully qualified and anything we do afterwards can be quite wasteful.
After removing all waste, we often can find hidden sources of new sales. It means that understanding what’s inside our company is more important than what’s going on outside our company. In order to reduce or eliminate waste, we may need to choose non-traditional approaches. Creation of prospects should be a deliberate process and aimed to reduce waste whenever possible. All resources should be leveraged to the fullest and this will ensure maximum profitability. These should also be a system that can help us uncover serious waste sources. By identifying these sources, we should be able to look for ways to eliminate them and this should be an easy thing to do.
Excess waste in marketing process will slow down the overall growth of our company. In fact, business owners should regularly check their marketing plan, so they are able to get more prospective customers. Any marketing effort, such as telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows, web marketing and advertising can be improved significantly whenever possible. Although it is a good idea to increase the overall number of prospective customers, we should make sure that they can really be turned into qualified long-term customers. This may not be an easy thing to do, but it’s obviously important.
Without having a good standard on good prospects, we will only accumulate tremendous waste. There are metrics to measure whether our marketing efforts are efficient enough. When marketing assets are optimized, waste should be minimized. In turn, this will enhance sources of cash and sales can be improved. Loyal, recurring customers have higher worth or value. Waste may also be minimized if we have unique selling proposition, it means that better customers are more likely to be interested in our products. As an example, we could make a stir in the local market, by promising 30 minute pizza delivery or FREE!, as our unique sales proposition.