Get Your Marketing Right and You Don’t Need to Know How to Sell

Ask any Marketing Consultant whether they think marketing is more important than sales and of course they will tell you that it is. But ask any Salesman if sales is more important than marketing and guess what they will say?

So as a Marketing Consultant, I obviously think that marketing is more important than sales. However I also believe that when you run a small business and you’re responsible for bringing in new clients, even if your marketing is great, you still need to know how to sell.

For some people, selling is a dirty word. Why? Probably because they don’t like being sold to themselves and probably because most British don’t want other people to think that they’re being pushy, or ‘salesy’. So in this blog, I thought I would share with you how at Appletree, we combine marketing with sales, to make it easy to convert prospects into clients.

The Appletree Sales Process

Once the marketing has attracted a potential client and they’ve asked us for a meeting, to talk about how we can help, I ask them a series of questions.

Situation Questions – these are questions like ‘what business are you in?’, ‘who are your clients?’ and what marketing do you currently do – that either works or doesn’t?’ These questions allow you to find out a bit more about your prospect.

Problem Questions – next you need to find out about the problem your prospect is struggling with, that you might be able to help then with. This will help you behind to get an idea of the solution you can propose.

Implication Question – ‘What will happen if you don’t do anything about this problem?’ is the next question to ask. Most prospects will really sit back and think about this. It will start them thinking about how much they might need your help.

Urgency Question – this is when you can ask how urgently the prospect is looking for a solution to their problem. If they need a solution right away, you know that you need to move soon and not miss out on the opportunity.

Do you notice that so far, all you’ve done is ask questions of your prospect? You’ve not yet said anything about what you do.

Recognise the Opportunity – the next thing you need to do is help your prospect to recognise the opportunity of how you can solve their problem. For Appletree prospects, we might talk about how many clients they currently have, how many they want and therefore the gap between the two numbers. If a prospect tells me they have 10 clients and they want 22, that means they need 12 new ones. If they want to take on these 12 new clients over the next year, that’s just one a month – that’s a really clear goal.

Insights – finally, at this stage, you’re allowed to tell your prospect a bit about what you do. Do it by telling them how you’ve helped a similar business to overcome a similar problem.

Importance – ‘How important is this to you right now?’ is the next question to ask, to make sure that your prospect is still committed to solving their problem.

Present Your Solution – and eventually, this is where you can tell your prospect exactly how you can help them. Describe elements of your solution – how and why it will work. Make sure your solution is aligned with your prospect’s strategy (which you found out earlier, from asking them Situation questions). Think about how your solution will meet your prospects personal needs and tell them why your solution is the best one.

Engagement Question – this is the final question that you need to ask. ‘When would you like to start?’ is a question I love to ask at this point! Too many people don’t actually ask for the sale, so make sure that you do. If you’ve taken your prospect through a Sales Process, they could well be ready to buy from you right now, so don’t miss out on this opportunity!

So you see, sales can actually be quite easy and not salesy at all, when you follow a simple process and put the focus on your prospect and what they need.

Which do you think is more important – sales or marketing?