This subject has taken me a while to publish. It’s not that talking about how the three different entities (customer, marketing organization and business owner) in a sales transaction have their own motives is hard to discuss.
The challenge was finding a way to explain the differences so readers could really grasp how each entity has its own motivation to be involved in a transaction. It would be naive not to acknowledge that each entity-the consumer, the marketer and the business owner-have their own reasons to be in a transaction.
The other reason why I decided to publish this piece is to differentiate my company, 321 Biz Dev LLC, from how many of our prospects initially perceive our services. 321 Biz Dev LLC is not a marketing company. We offer consulting and business development services. I will close this post describing how 321 Biz Dev LLC is 180-degrees different than a marketing company.
How Consumers View Marketing
Most consumers have a straightforward perspective about marketing. They believe companies want to sell them products and services. Less than 5% of consumers in a target demographic respond to marketing and advertising campaigns. When consumers have interest in products or services, they make inquiries to ask questions and either buy or not buy.
Most consumers are not offended by marketing, per se. But consumers are often frustrated with unprofessional salespeople who do not put consumers’ interest first.
How Small Business Owners View Marketing
In general, small business owners feel they have great products consumers should buy. So, business owners look for the most effective methods within their budgets to communicate their products and services to the public.
Small business owners have one major obstacle: competition.
It would be great if one business owner had a great product where only he or she could sell to the public. I purposely used the word “sell”. If a business owner has a unique product or service, there’s really not a lot of marketing required to make sales after the initial exposure to the public.
It is fair to say that marketing is not only about communicating products or services to the public. Marketing also means having a better communication method than the competition.
Another challenge is most small business owners do not have marketing experience. 321 Biz Dev LLC primarily supports attorneys, CPAs, dentists, plastic surgeons, insurance brokers and real estate brokers.
321 also helps individuals start home-based businesses. I can honestly tell readers that neither white-collar professionals nor individuals trying to build network marketing teams have marketing and sales skills. This is the number reason small business owners turn to marketing organizations for business development support.
How Marketing Organizations View Marketing
Readers may be scratching their heads right now with this third section about marketing.
Yes, there is a marketing industry whose job is to promote small business owners’ products and services. The reason why people might be a little perplexed with this third section is because large corporations like Apple, Amazon, Honda, United Airlines have in-house marketing departments.
Consumers never see or hear about the people who work in these jobs at these major corporations. These marketing people are employees. Most get paid whether the marketing campaign is a huge success or the campaign was a flop. The marketing department does not want too many marketing failures.
Marketing is also an art and a science. Marketing’s main purpose is to influence consumers to buy using emotional triggers.
Unlike huge marketing departments with multi-million dollar budgets and deep pockets to lose on a few marketing campaigns, independent marketing companies exist to serve small business owners, performing the same functions as big, in-house, corporate marketing departments.
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Independent marketing companies have one distinct requirement that corporate marketing departments are not concerned about:
Independent marketing companies make money regardless if their small business owner clients see significant sales or not.
Most of the time, small business owners do not achieve their sales goals using independent marketing companies. But the independent marketing company still gets paid.
If a small business uses an independent marketing company, it should NOT be considered a rip-off or a scam if the marketing campaign does not deliver sales objectives.
Business owners should keep in mind that they are hiring independent marketing companies to solely promote products and services via radio, print, tv, social media or website marketing. Independent marketing companies only need to fulfill their contracts by promoting products or services on the radio, running ads on television, posting on Facebook or Twitter, and/or writing SEO code during website development.
Readers might be able to see an independent marketing company’s motivation to be in business…which is to simply promote products and services…and get paid.
And yes, there is a lot of talent and skill to develop eye-popping ads or social media posts, create exciting radio ad copy and/or develop slick websites to capture leads. Just about everything we buy as consumers were influenced by some type of marketing activity.
I just covered how each entity looks at marketing and each entity’s motivation.
True Business Development…the 321 Biz Dev LLC Approach
Our company is extremely careful not to appear as a marketing company because we know we cannot promise any small business owner a guaranteed number of sales.
But 321 does is help small business owners learn sales systems so business owners can participate more, themselves, in finding more clients and customers.
For terminology purposes, a client is someone who has a short-term relationship with a business owner…sort of how an attorney, plastic surgeon or real estate agent helps people with transactions. A customer is defined as an ongoing relationship with the family dentist, a family using the insurance agent for 10-20 years or a CPA handling the accounting affairs for a small business owner.
Because 321 Biz Dev LLC is not a marketing company, nor can we guarantee any new sales, we choose to help small business learn how to improve contacting, prospecting, appointment setting and closing skills.
Because we at 321 Biz Dev LLC know these skills take 1,000 to 1,600 hours to develop proficiency, we work with business owners by initially performing the contacting, prospecting and appointment setting sales functions for our business clients. Then, we train business owners how to professionally close. 321 Biz Dev LLC has long-term relationships with our customer-clients.
The 321 brand of business development is old-school and it’s how small business became successful before social media, websites and digital marketing.
Using the 321 approach, small business owners have more control in adding new clients to their businesses.
With the ongoing COVID-19 business disruptions, small business owners will need to return to more proactive efforts using interpersonal skills to grow their operations.
Please be sure to revisit this post in a few days to hear the podcast episode version