Lie #5: 'You have to pay your dues now, but in only 2-3 years you'll have enough customers and referrals that you won't have to cold prospect hardly at all.'
There are two things wrong with this statement: The first part, and the second part. First let's talk about 'paying your dues.'
There's a traditional salesperson's version of this -- and then there's the guerrilla marketer's version. The marketer's version of 'paying your dues' is vastly more productive, as I shall explain.
The sales version of paying your dues is 1-3 years of brutal grunt work, until your client base is big enough to let up on the cold calls. Good marketing can eliminate the years of cold calls in the first place. But here's how the marketer's version works:
You polish and refine your sales message, on paper, or the web, or in some kind of media, until it's razor sharp - and then you test it inexpensively until it's effective and profitable. (Web traffic is often the fastest place to perfect this, by the way.) THEN you roll it out to the big world and put big money in - and big money comes out immediately.
It's a HUGE leap frog effect, and you don't think of it as 'paying your dues' --- you think of it as TESTING. 'Testing' is WAY better than 'Rejection.' It's a fascinating learning process instead of a gauntlet. It's also a way of growing a company fast without a ton of investment capital.
Once you've tested a marketing campaign to the point where sales or sales leads come in at an attractive Return On Investment, THEN you can invest heavily and watch the profits come rolling in.
OK, now for the other part of the lie - the part about not having to prospect any more. You ALWAYS have to prospect, IF you do not have a marketing system in place. Always. No matter how long you've been around.
Note: If you provide such an outstanding service and customers are so delighted that they eagerly refer others to you, then you won't have to prospect anymore. But referrals themselves are still a marketing system! And there are many things
you can do to stimulate still more referrals.
In any case, if you you switch from brute force prospecting to shrewd Guerrilla Marketing, you'll never again be a victim of Lie #5.
Original Source: Perry Marshall
There are two things wrong with this statement: The first part, and the second part. First let's talk about 'paying your dues.'
There's a traditional salesperson's version of this -- and then there's the guerrilla marketer's version. The marketer's version of 'paying your dues' is vastly more productive, as I shall explain.
The sales version of paying your dues is 1-3 years of brutal grunt work, until your client base is big enough to let up on the cold calls. Good marketing can eliminate the years of cold calls in the first place. But here's how the marketer's version works:
You polish and refine your sales message, on paper, or the web, or in some kind of media, until it's razor sharp - and then you test it inexpensively until it's effective and profitable. (Web traffic is often the fastest place to perfect this, by the way.) THEN you roll it out to the big world and put big money in - and big money comes out immediately.
It's a HUGE leap frog effect, and you don't think of it as 'paying your dues' --- you think of it as TESTING. 'Testing' is WAY better than 'Rejection.' It's a fascinating learning process instead of a gauntlet. It's also a way of growing a company fast without a ton of investment capital.
Once you've tested a marketing campaign to the point where sales or sales leads come in at an attractive Return On Investment, THEN you can invest heavily and watch the profits come rolling in.
OK, now for the other part of the lie - the part about not having to prospect any more. You ALWAYS have to prospect, IF you do not have a marketing system in place. Always. No matter how long you've been around.
Note: If you provide such an outstanding service and customers are so delighted that they eagerly refer others to you, then you won't have to prospect anymore. But referrals themselves are still a marketing system! And there are many things
you can do to stimulate still more referrals.
In any case, if you you switch from brute force prospecting to shrewd Guerrilla Marketing, you'll never again be a victim of Lie #5.
Original Source: Perry Marshall
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