One of the first things that sales and company executives ask us when we meet them is; “We need to grow our sales, what can you do for us?” To that we always respond, “If you’d share with us some of the processes that you have in place now for the sales team to follow – we can then take a look at them and see if there might be a way that we can help.”

“I don’t care how many degrees you have on the wall, if you don’t know how to sell, you’re probably going to starve.”—George Forman

A lot of business owners think they are selling, when really all they are doing is marketing. Do you know the difference between the two? It will cost you a lot of time, energy, and money if you don’t.

Every morning, as I stand in line (with way too many other people by the way) for a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts – I hear it over and over again: “Anything else?” asks the woman behind the counter in her somewhat broken English. Another customer, another “Anything else?” as she’s ringing them up. Finally, it’s my turn – “I’ll take a large French vanilla ice, skim milk, one sugar – extra light”, I shout over the 3 people in front of me. Even as she’s walking away, she’s asking me those wonderful two words – “Anything else?” She doesn’t care if I’ve purchased a bottled water, Coolatta, or a dozen bagels – even if I’ve said no a thousand times before, she keeps asking and I absolutely love it.

It’s a proven fact, today, that social media marketing has become one of the most important marketing tools influencing buying habits, company/brand visibility, and the size of the client/customer universe.

This news is NOT NEW! For larger companies, social media marketing has been aggressively pursued for years – ever since Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn came into being.

WHO IS EFFECTIVELY USING SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MARKETING TOOL?

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!