or this blog I’d like to take you in a different direction. Like me you will have had a long week, read lots of ‘how to’ guides, ‘5 ways to do this’, and ‘3 tips to do that’, so today I’ve decided to go with a story (and please forgive me for allowing the romance novelist in me to come out a little).
For the purposes of confidentiality, lets call my main character Mr S.
I’m going to tell you a story about a hugely successful sales manager I Know called Mr S. He’s a talented, charismatic guy who’s exceptionally good at his job (he really could sell ice to an Inuit). Mr S is thirty seven, he’s funny, he likes fast cars but only sees the V8 he dreams of in magazines. He has many, many friends and loves spending time with them and his family when he gets chance. Mr S has a passion for sport but rarely has the time to see any of the action live. He gets a natural buzz from sales and an energy burst from strong, Americano coffee.
Charm and charisma will only get you so far in the sales world.
Ultimately you have to be selling to people who want or need your products or services and Mr S knew this all too well.
The economic climate was insecure, organisations were being careful with their budgets and Mr S’s sales figures were average at best. He certainly couldn’t push the marketing team any harder; they were already working overtime. The outsourced telemarketing company were overstretched and the marketing budget was at its limit and wouldn’t allow for any further advertising campaigns, exhibition stands, e-marketing campaigns or even mailers. In two and a half months, it was already preying on Mr S’s mind that he would be presenting to the board his YTD figures and that against his forecast figures he knew they were below par.
Interlude: Now before you start playing the violins let’s jump to the present day, where Mr S spends more days on holiday than he does working. He chooses when to work and only does to help others get to where he is today. He sees his wife and children more than most and his work life balance is idyllic.
So now you’re asking yourself how did Mr S go from stressed to success without a lottery win?
While Mr S was having his usual lunch of Maltesers and catching up on his social channels, he was attracted to a blog post written by one of his favourite digital marketing agencies. He had a rare light bulb moment while reading. The simplest of things occurred to him, if he put all of the questions that his sales leads asked him every day and gave answers to those questions for everyone to read in his blogs it would save him a huge amount of time. Mr S tells his marketing team to stop what they’re doing immediately, he stops the telemarketers and calls everyone into the conference room and presents to them the blog that he’s just read. He tells his team that they have two and a half months in which to prove that this is the right direction to take the company.
Mr S saved time answering sales queries as he wished but he began to spend all of his time receiving sales enquiries. Most importantly all of these customers were immediately ready to buy having had their questions and reservations addressed through reading Mr S’s now extremely popular social posts. It came to the point when the entire office were constantly answering calls. Having blogged about all the common questions he was often asked Mr S progressed to sending out surveys to discover more questions that he could then answer in his future blog posts.
Two and a half months later, Mr S enters the boardroom at his company and his CEO is sat as usual at the head of the table, the finance director to his right, and the marketing director to his left and there’s a resounding sound of applause. The CEO asks Mr S how in two and a half months his sales had achieved record figures, something that he had not witnessed in his entire thirty four years heading the company. To which Mr S replied, “I read a blog…
…and this is the blog he read.
Inbound Marketing Stratford upon Avon
Inbound marketing is the fresh approach that turned Mr S’s company around. If you are looking for that light bulb moment to kick-start your sales, grab our free guide to inbound and get started.
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