There’s marketing and there’s sales, and each has its pros and cons. To ensure your marketing and sales people work in concert with one another as teammates, like they should, you need a Marketing Machine.

A Marketing Machine combines the strengths of marketing and sales to create a powerful business development system – a combination of technology and process!

Marketing Pros & Cons

Marketing allows you to deliver compelling communications at the lowest possible cost per impression to a large audience via a variety of different media. Through repetition, marketing can build brand awareness and increase the odds of reaching a prospect with the right offer at the right time.

But marketing generally doesn’t consider the sales cycle; it hits target audiences all at once with the same communication. Many salespeople wonder what marketing really does to help them sell. Yet, when marketing does its job, salespeople can do a better job!

I LOVE MY BUSINESS: If you’re an entrepreneur, you know the joy of having creating something – your business – and made it successful. You put in the long-hours – worried about your “baby” (your business) days/nights and even weekends during challenging times. And, you watched it overcome these challenges and prosper. It has been much like having another child — your business (child) — and you love it because it is part of you as much as your son or daughter.

Yes there were rewards – the sense of accomplishment – the pleasure of surrounding yourself with the managers and line staff you found, trained and together built the successful business. And there were financial rewards, too.

While that was nice, maybe it isn’t as important now after years in business as it was when you first decided to go into business for yourself. Today there are days when you are just plain “tired”. And other days you wish you could spend more time with the children and grandchildren and not have to come in every day.

The 1/3-1/3-1/3 rule is defined as a formula that is used by many professional service firms – legal, accounting, etc. to give structure and incentive opportunities for their professional staff.

For many companies in the field of management consulting, the reward system mimics this well established and proven compensation program.

Beyond what happens within the management consulting firm is what firms do when outsiders – affiliates or sales professionals bring in new business. In my research on this topic, compensation varies from a straight “finder’s fee/commission” to a percentage of the project on a on-going basis. Inbetween is any number of permutations and combinations.

S

On the surface, it’s probably hard to think of a few good things that came out of the economic meltdown. You probably faced declining sales. You probably did more work with fewer resources. But if you think hard enough, you probably also learned a thing or two about managing your expenses.

Inc.com posted a great story last week: How to Run a One-Person Business. The gist of it: Owning and operating a business with a team of one requires determination, discipline and fearlessness. But those three qualities can be difficult to muster when the only person you have to rely on is you. So how do you manage?