The Nine Great Lies of Sales & Marketing – Part 6

Posted on September 11th, 2009 | No Comments

This post From Mr. Marshall is closely related to Terry Petrovick’s post regarding “getting it right the first time.”  http://bit.ly/3Q7EAi

Lie #6:

‘Winners never quit, and quitters never win.’

~~~

Dear Kevin,

I can directly attribute this lie to five solid years of misery and failure in my own life.

In my early 20’s, I was a network

marketing junkie, and I was hearing this one every day.  And I believed it passionately.

But eventually, slowly, I began to realize that this statement was nothing more than a way of manipulating me (via guilt) into sticking around for yet-another-month of doing something that absolutely was not working at all.

Let’s get something straight:  Some businesses don’t work.  Some enterprises aren’t worth doing.  Some products are so weak that nothing can save them.  Some ventures are doomed from the start, and even if they *appear* to be worthwhile.

Even if some people are capable of making them

*look* successful, you must submit them to rigorous testing (as I discussed yesterday) and find out if they’re fundamentally profitable or not.

When you figure out that it ain’t going to work, DITCH IT and move on!  That’s quitting out of STRENGTH.

Here’s the REAL issue:

Are you quitting out of STRENGTH, or are you quitting out of WEAKNESS?

If you quit because you’re just lazy or not willing to learn, then you’re quitting out of weakness.  Too bad for you.

If you quit because you’ve determined that you’re headed in the wrong direction, then you’re quitting out of strength.  And you should quit as fast as you possibly can, so that you can WIN at something else.

So here’s the REAL truth:

Winners never quit out of weakness, and quitters never even get far enough to quit out of strength.

Just like everything else I’ve been

talking about this week, shrewd marketing uses real numbers and results to judge winning and losing propositions and get down to the real truth.

Back to my life in M L M: I bought a toolkit from Dan Kennedy and thankfully started using direct marketing to build that business.  Actually, that approach DID work.

BUT – I also discovered that the cost of acquiring a customer was way too high and the return took so long.  Simply put, there were many other businesses where the numbers were vastly superior, and required far less ‘manual labor.’

When I was building that business via shoe leather, the true cost was hidden from me, and I thought it would be worthwhile in the end.

But… when I reduced the acquisition of a new customer to a *dollar figure*, though, it became obvious that I was making a mistake.

I quit. Out of strength.

After that, my next adventure was

actually in a traditional corporate job

in a small company.  It was a lot of

fun, and eventually, very profitable.

Tomorrow I’ll attack Lie #7:

‘People need to see your advertisement

6-12 times before they’ll remember it.’

Peace.

Perry Marshall

http://www.perrymarshall.com/renaissance

The Nine Great Lies of Sales & Marketing – Part 5

Posted on September 11th, 2009 | No Comments

It’s been a minute but here is number 5—This stuff  is so thought provoking.

~~~

Lie #5:

‘You have to pay your dues now, but in only 2-3 years you’ll have enough customers and referrals that you won’t have to cold prospect hardly at all.’

~~~

Kevin,

There are two things wrong with this statement:

The first part, and the second part.

First let’s talk about ‘paying your dues.’

There’s a traditional salesperson’s version of this — and then there’s the guerrilla marketer’s version.  The marketer’s version of ‘paying your dues’ is vastly more productive, as I shall explain.

The sales version of paying your dues is

1-3 years of brutal grunt work, until your client base is big enough to let up on the cold calls.

Good marketing can eliminate the years of cold calls in the first place, and as you know, I’m totally against cold calling for a whole series of reasons that you’ve already heard.

But here’s how the marketer’s version works:

You polish and refine your sales message, on paper, or the web, or in some kind of media, until it’s razor sharp – and then you test it inexpensively until it’s effective and profitable.

(Web traffic is often the fastest place to perfect this, by the way.)

THEN you roll it out to the big world and put big money in – and big money comes out immediately.

It’s a HUGE leap frog effect, and you don’t think of it as ‘paying your dues’ — you think of it as TESTING.

‘Testing’ is WAY better than ‘Rejection.’

It’s a fascinating learning process instead of a gauntlet.  It’s also a way of growing a company fast without a ton of investment capital.

Once you’ve tested a marketing campaign to the point where sales or sales leads come in at an attractive Return On Investment, THEN you can invest heavily and watch the profits come rolling in.

OK, now for the other part of the lie – the part about not having to prospect any more.

You ALWAYS have to prospect, IF you do not have a marketing system in place.  Always.  No matter how long you’ve been around.

Note: If you provide such an outstanding service and customers are so delighted that they eagerly refer others to you, then you won’t have to prospect anymore.  But referrals themselves are still a marketing system!  And there are many things you can do to stimulate still more referrals.

In any case, if you you switch from brute force prospecting to shrewd Guerrilla Marketing, you’ll never again be a victim of Lie #5.

Tomorrow I’ll attack Lie #6:

‘Winners never quit, and quitters never win.’

Best of Success to you,

Perry Marshall

http://www.perrymarshall.com/renaissance

The Nine Great Lies of Sales & Marketing – Part 5


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