Value Stream Marketing

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How do you go about creating sales channels and making them not competitive with each other. It is a pretty tall order in today’s world and one that really takes quite a bit of time so that they and yourself are not competing with each other. The Channel Advantage is a good book to start with and can be found at bargain prices. Let me give a couple of suggestion from the book and a few places on the web that you can find information.

If you are trying to find the best way to take your product to market there is a U.K business link that you can take a survey to Identify Potential Sales Channels and it will give you a set of recommendations. It is only a 5 minute exercise and well worth it.

The Channel Advantage recommends using a 4-step process to evaluate and manage each channel.

Sales Channels 

It looks straight forward but in today’s world I think it is missing one component. There should be 1-block on the bottom saying consumer and final price. Distribution is so good these days that the channels cross over so effectively that the consumer has to see the same price. Many times even when there is value added services being included. So, how many sales channels do you have and do they all end up with the same price to the consumer?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, a lot! Since, I am what I would say wired into the social community I see a lot of information about:

  1. We should be ignoring the recession.
  2. Build community.
  3. Pull marketing versus push.
  4. Social media.

All of this being the soft side of marketing and selling. But we will make it through the recession by doing this?  I believe that marketing is changing towards the items mentioned above but I also question can it effectively put food on the table today.  I have been pulling out some old notes from years back just to see what was being said and what I was believing in tougher times. I saw a good mindmap of mine on Lead Generation , I just had to share. Look it over and see if it can help you.

We marketers spend our time discussing target market, ideal client, core message but do we really listen to it! Do we take our own advice? That is the question I see many prospects questioning. We preach(ok, speak), give webinars, and even write books on the subjects. But do we ever not friend someone or hesitate about adding someone to our social media list. They might just become a client. So, we just say how can we help you and cram them into our funnel.

That says many times we just did not qualify them. Sound better! HowSales funnel ever, I think we should put another hole in our sales funnel. Just not at the bottom, maybe in every section. Accept the prospect, and than see if he fits through our funnel. If we struggle keeping him in the funnel have a pressure relief valve that leaves him exit gracefully.

Wonder why we get bad clients? We are successful at cramming them through the funnel instead of leaving gravity do its job. You can provide an easy path and even accelerate it but stop trying to overcome objections, just provide answers to them and leave good old gravity take its course.

P.S. There is another way of getting people out of your sales funnel, it could be overflowing.

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