In Y2011, we find ourselves striving to take advantage of Social Media Marketing (SMM). Today its all about looking for the “best” marketing strategy to connect with a company’s target audience. So, recognizing this flow of progress, we might ask ourselves, really how much has marketing really changed in the last twenty-five years? From the beginning, the basic objective of every successful marketing strategy has been the same – establish or develop stronger connections or relationships with people.

There is no entrepreneur or senior level executive I know of that hasn’t experienced serious stress during the course of their business career. Certainly there are times when the pressure builds and builds and builds – forcing executives and line personnel alike to struggle just to keep up!

Stress causes all kinds of problems – more often than not compromising the individual’s ability to concentrate and get work done. Certainly the costs of neglecting stress in your business can be very high. And, strangely, stress is sometimes overlooked as a health and safety issue by small businesses. Yet the unexpected absence of just one member of staff can affect productivity, and efforts to secure cover can be costly and time-consuming.

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!

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

Once upon a time a small boy and girl were building a sand castle on the beach. They spent hours building towers, walls, and a moat. As they were building the castle, the tide slowly kept creeping in closer and closer. Finally after working on this castle for most of the morning a big wave came in and wiped it all away. An adult who was watching all of this was at first feeling sorry for the children because of all the work they had put into building the castle. The adult then saw the children hold hands and run together laughing down the beach. It was then that the adult realized that although it is fun building empires, the lasting fun is having friends with whom you can continue to laugh and be with after all that you have spent your life building has washed away.