Let's first understand the true definition of marketing.
Marketing is not sales. Sales are an element of marketing.
But if your marketing is done right, you should never need
to make another sales call. You'll just be taking in orders
and shipping product. Or you'll just be accepting the jobs
you want to do. No more scrambling for work.
No more wondering how the bills for next month will be paid.
Marketing is not really selling at all. Marketing is the
process of putting bait in the water to attract leads, and
then putting your leads into a sifting and sorting system
that will allow you to identify your most likely customers.
You then keep putting yourself and your product in front of
your most qualified leads until they want to buy. You give
your leads great information in the form of newsletters and
emails that will keep them interested-not heavy-handed
sales pitches, but valuable free information that they look
forward to receiving. This, in summary, is how you
transform yourself from being an annoying pest into a
welcome guest in your prospect's home.
That's marketing, not sales.
Yes, sales are the end result of all your marketing.
Certainly you can't make a penny until a sale is made. The
sale is everything in business. The sale is the one and
only goal of all Business. But you are no longer a salesman.
You are amarketer. And there's a world of difference.
Good marketers are rich.
Salesmen are almost all
Poor and struggling, like Willie Loman in Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman. Not happy story. You don't want to be
Willie Loman. You want to be Bill Gates, Ross Perot, or
Donald Trump. These men are marketers. These men don't make
sales calls. And neither should you.
Even if you are in a sales position-say, selling cars or
selling houses-never think of yourself as a salesman.
The great salesmen are really marketers. They aren't
pounding the pavement and making cold calls.
Marketing is working smart.
Selling is working stupid. Be a marketer, not a salesman.
Study marketing. Live and breathe marketing. And your life
will be so much more pleasant and lucrative. Marketing is
your strategy. Marketing is your road map. Marketing is
your system. Marketing is all that goes into laying the
groundwork and establishing the preconditions that end in a
sale.
And if the marketing is done right, you don't really need a
sales force. What you need are customer service people and
order takers. What you need is a mechanism, a system, to
handle all the business that pours in, seemingly magically,
seemingly on its own, almost out of thin air.
Except it's not magic, on its own, or out of thin air. The
customers and clients that will line up at your door and
swamp your business are the result of careful planning and
execution of your overall marketing strategy.
