As many of you know, I am a reserve deputy and in addition to working uniform patrol in various cities in Orange County, I also work special events. Last Friday, I worked at a music festival where various bands were playing all types of music, (rap, metal, rock) entertaining the masses. There were young people, old people, families and every race and creed across the spectrum.

The headlining band, was a very popular metal band (think Corn) and they were late getting on stage. Unfortunately, the city has a strict noise moratorium and we were going to be required to literally pull the plug if they attempted to play past 11pm. As the hour got closer, the band attempted to turn down the amplification of the music hoping it would solve the problem, but the crowd began to get restless as they could not hear the music. Crowd control can be a dangerous environment and our command staff decided we needed to prepare for an ‘unruly’ assembly, so all of the deputies gathered back at our command post (away from the view of the concert-goers).

As we were putting on our helmets, putting on our gear and lining up in our stand-by positions, our commanding officer said the following:
“Remember, 90% of the people out there are good, law abiding citizens who we want to protect and ensure their safety.” Immediately after, one of the deputies replied, “Agreed. Now, let’s go get the 10%!”

I laughed, as this reminded me of the Pareto principle and how it frequently manifests in the business world. I am sure everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle (80% of the effects are a result of 20% of the causes) and how it is incredibly accurate with regards to aspects of business, especially sales and marketing. 80% of the sales are brought in by 20% of the salespeople, 20% of your marketing efforts, create 80% of the opportunities, etc.

We need to remember on a daily, weekly and monthly basis that not all of our efforts will result in success. If I told you that only 20% of your efforts would result in success, some people might not get out of bed!  The secret is to continue to build a pipeline of prospects and marketing initiatives and remember that activity breeds opportunity. You never know which of your efforts (only 20%) will result in bringing in the results (80%), and you won’t “find” that 20% unless you get out there and make things happen.

Lately, I have been speaking with a lot small/mid-sized business owners and it is apparent that the current economic woes are affecting everyone. It does surprise me that many are looking for salespeople to be their “knight in shining armor.” What is more surprising is that 90% of these business owners are not able to articulate their current marketing strategy.

When I look to create a sales and marketing strategy, I want to create a system where warm leads will come into the business on a daily or weekly basis. Once I have that system in place, I know I can go out and hire the best salespeople (the best want to close deals, not cold call) and from there my rainmakers will be able to bring in revenue on a consistent basis. Everyone is happy!

I have spoken with a number of small business owners lately and had some interesting conversations with regards to investing precious dollars towards marketing.

The first thing I do when looking for more information on a company is to go to the internet and specifically, their website. A company website tells me a lot about how they view marketing and frankly, whether or not  they using it to the fullest capability. If I do not see a prominent area on the home page where it requests a name and email address from the site visitor, I cringe.  You want an opportunity to give the website visitor something of value (a free DVD or report), as well as the chance to correspond with them in the future. The marketing law of seven, states that you need seven ‘touches’ with a potential customer before they will consider buying from you. If they leave your site without any way for you to reach out to them, how are you going to get the other six ‘touches?’

Playing sports throughout my life, there are many lessons I learned that pop into my head on almost a daily basis. My college football coach once told me, “My job is to put you in the best possible position to succeed. The rest is up to you.”

Are you putting your salespeople in the best possible position to succeed? Do you give them the necessary tools:
1) Solid leads, with accurate contact information, in your target market.
2) Marketing/advertising to ensure the “Rule of 7″ (7 contacts between buyer and seller before buyer feels comfortable purchasing).
3) A CRM system or method to easily track leads and the entire sales process?
4) “Clear the hurdles.” What is in the way of your salespeople or hindering them in making sales and closing deals?
5) Have a clear strategy for growth and an executable plan. Athletes need coaches to build the strategy so they can execute. Do the same for your salespeople!

How do you manage salespeople?  Better yet, what is your philosohpy?

Do you have a bullet-proof system that you can implement with an average salesperson where all it takes is constant pressure, activity driven demands and micro-managing to achieve results? Or do you fall on the other side of the fence, where you believe in hiring talented, driven salespeople who have track records of success and then stay out of their way, support them when necessary and remove all road blocks so that everyone achieves their goals?

I know where I fall….where are you?

If you are spending a significant amount of time cold calling, take it as a sign that your sales and marketing process is not effective. You need to be “out there” with your value proposition when your prospect is searching for an answer to their problem; Branding, referrals, internet marketing, trade shows, advertising, blogs, etc are all methods that can be used to spread your value proposition so that prospects can find you. I would rather fire a shotgun in a tree with lots of birds than to hunt with a sniper rifle in a forest full of trees. Cold calling is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Warm calling is fishing in a pond stocked with fish. Marketing is having 100 fishing poles in the water, waiting for the hungry fish to bite.

An interesting (if not, borderline inappropriate) question, that I overheard at a networking mixer. It was apparent that the consultant was attempting to get to the root cause of what seemed to be a constantly changing sales and marketing strategy.

He went on to ask this sales executive about his short term vs long term strategy and asked him to define the timeline for each. How often does your strategy change and what do you think is a reasonable time frame for short-term and long-term strategies? I define a long-term strategy as something that will take at least 6-12 months before seeing the fruits of your labor. A short-term strategy is more like an initiative, that can take anywhere from 1-6 months. Making adjustments to your strategy along the way is crucial and important, but should not take away from the primary focus of your initial gameplan. Commitment to a strategy is imperative for long-term success, but remember that short term “wins” along the way will keep cash flow coming and allow you to carry on towards attaining your long-term goals.

What is it about the topic of “cold calling” that always seems to generate a tremendous amount of interest and passionate opinions?

I don’t think you can define “cold calling” without additional information.
1) Have you clearly defined your target market to ensure that the prospect can utilize/benefit from your product/services?
2) Have you taken the extra effort to “warm” the prospect with timely and pertinent articles, mailers, emails, marketing pieces?
3) Do you have a clear and concise message to convey so that you do not waste the time of the executive/prospect (and can differentiate yourself from your competition)?
4) Do you have a system/CRM in place to capture key information from your prospect so that you can follow up at a different time (next week, next month, next year…timing is everything!)?

With those questions answered, I think “cold calling” is not as “cold” and an important piece in the sales cycle.

A recent discussion with a prospect along with a post I saw on one of the LinkedIn group discussions has reminded me that some businesses have let their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) get out of control. The purpose of a CRM system is to make the sales and pipeline building process easy and repeatable.  However, I have recently seen and heard of businesses, mid-sized to corporate, who have allowed their CRM systems to become too cumbersome, complicated and over-bearing.  When that happens, look out!  Remember, information/data is only as good as the quality of the information that is initially pushed through the system. Typically, sales people are responsible for updating and maintaining the input process and if I have learned anything about salespeople (I include myself in that group!) when it comes to tracking data, if it ain’t easy, it ain’t getting done.

A CRM system should be easy to access, easy to use and set up to capture no more than 10 ‘critical bits’ of information. Frankly, I think most businesses can narrow it down to 5 critical bits of information. What are critical bits? They are pieces of information that can be triggers for your prospects that will open themselves to your products or services. Of course the obvious critical bits would include contact name, address, phone, email, website. But you already knew that!  If you are selling insurance, critical bits would be renewal dates and current carrier information.

Don’t over complicate the system or the amount and type of information you collect.   To use the over-used management mantra, keep it simple, stupid!

During a conversation with a client, regarding the reallocation of resources of his business and outsourcing, he asked me to give him working definitions of ‘core competency’ and ‘non-core competency.’  Here are the definitions I provided him:

Core - an area of proficiency in which you have a competitive edge in the market place and a profit driver in your business.

Non-core - those non-critical or administrative areas of your business in which you are not proficient and drain your valuable capital and human resources.

Is your business clicking on all cylinders and eliminating all potential costs savings?  Can you clearly define your core competencies and re-focus your resources on those areas of your business?   In addition, have you outsourced all of the non-critical areas of your business where you can realize cost savings and then reallocate your human/capital resources?