Marketing vs. selling: what has the biggest impact on your business?
Ed Chan
Founder & Non-Executive Chairman, Chan & Naylor
As you strive to acquire more (or better) clients, grow your practice, and ultimately increase your revenue, it is crucial to know what activities will turn the needle.
One common area of confusion is understanding the difference between marketing and selling. And further to that, understanding why, or if, you should invest in either.
As I like to put it, marketing is about fertilizing the soil. While selling is about sowing the seeds. If you fertilize properly, they will germinate and grow, making it easier to sow them.
The more your soil is fertilized, the less work you have to do to germinate the seed.
Marketing in a business sense is about building awareness. And there are two key things that you need to build awareness of:
Your brand. Because familiarity in your brand builds credibility. Credibility builds trust. And trust leads to more sales.
Your products. Because if your client doesn’t not know what you do, then they won’t know to ask us for them.
Remember, the more effective your marketing is, the less you will be required to do in the sales process.
In fact, you may have already experienced this.
Have you ever had a new prospect act like they have known you for many years, when in fact you only just met them?
On occasions like this, you probably found the sales process became a mere formality. This is because you had already established trust.
To help Chan & Naylor grow, the marketing activities we have carried out to achieve this awareness and trust have included:
Digital marketing such as Google ads
Sending newsletters
Attending conferences
Conducting seminars
Alliance partners talking about us and referring their clients to us
Seminars with alliance partners
Our articles that appear in our alliance partners newsletters,
Social media
The effectiveness of our website
Publishing our own books
The IP we have developed around property investing
By becoming familiar with our brand, trust was established amongst our prospects. By achieving this, the sales process was made so much easier when we got in front of them.
On the flip side, the less marketing that is carried out, the more that's required in the sales process.
If a prospect has no familiarity of our brand, there is no trust and therefore no credibility. In this occasion, the sales process is much more difficult, expensive and labour intensive.
Simply put, it's much more cost effective and scalable to invest in Marketing so that by the time the prospects see you, it's simply "order taking".
No selling required.
No sales skills required.
So, to turn the needle of your business, where should you invest the most money?
The answer obviously is in marketing, which begs the question: why do so many businesses do so little of this?