Members | Support This Site | Logout

Home   Newsletter   Tutorials   Columns   Articles

Mistakes I've Made in Sales and Marketing

"Justin, You're off like a shotgun, all over the place, losing opportunities for business growth because you are always looking the other way." An early mentor said just that to me, it was 1996. This statement really hit home because ...

Back in the 90's, I'd take any customer that could pick up the phone and call. Usually answering on the second ring, but ready to run across town to make my pitch. Business was great, or was it.

I'd jump on a plane, fly across the country, and spend 2 hours with someone who didn't buy. And, I made the best of my time by setting appointments around where I was visiting, however, I was out of pocket.

My IT consulting firm (Open Systems Networking Inc) served government contractors, industrial, medical companies, and then the Dot.Com's. Clients included small, medium, and large firms. Basically anyone who could sign a check was good enough.

And many industrial and technical service providers, government contracts, and consulting firms make the same mistake. They are all things to all people, doing what every work they can get a "contract" signed. It's one thing to provide a customized solution, yet another to be a "jack of all trades."

My early mentor, a wealthy man in the insurance trade, might as well slapped me across the face physically because those words hurt so much. I don't know what hurt more, how he said it or the truth of the statement. To say the least, I was confused.

I thought, this is what it's means to be in business. You do what customers want, they pay you most of the time, and you keep doing what you can get paid on. I thought, because customers were paying for something that I should do it. After all, Aren't we in business to get paid in exchange for labor?

My mentor insisted I take a look at my business, literally forcing me go through each contract over the last couple of months line by line. Here are the mistakes he found, which I'll help you avoid in the next couple of letters.

• Overhead dealing with unqualified prospects was more than half my profit. Then consider general overhead, marketing, and taxes, I hardly made a dollar. To solve this my mentor suggested ...
• Most customers weren't sending in those checks they promised. Many times I'd start work at close of contract, invoice late, and never see my money because I was also making two other mistakes ...
• There was no one thing my company did and almost no two clients had the same work done. Because of this, it was difficult for clients to know what I could do for them, this lack of focus also caused ...
• Margins for some types of contracts were negative, while others were five times my average. Three simple tools were revealed to me that identified good margins, reduced marketing costs, and ...
• More than 12 proposals a month were produced, some as long as 45 pages, with only 2 closing on average. What's worse is that many of these proposals were created from scratch, a simple formula using ...
• Everyone on staff was working 50+ hours, yet still not following up on calls for 4 days. Worse, many projects took me away from selling efforts for weeks until my mentor showed me ...

I'm thankful for my mentors, this one in particular told me "You must focus on being great at one thing that a specific group of buyers will pay top dollar to have; ignore everyone else." Through making these mistakes less frequently, I was able to grow my business rapidly, however, much of the damage was already done as you may discovery later.

© 2008 JWH Consolidated LLC, All rights reserved.

Justin Hitt helps selling professionals create and keep more profitable customers through proven strategies for the industrial and technical business-to-business service firm. Learn about a consultation at https://www.justinhitt.com/

By Justin Hitt at January 15, 2007 12:36 PM  Subscribe in a reader