| When is it Marketing and When is it Sales |
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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly The Good - The easiest way to determine whether you need marketing or sales help is by the task at hand. If the hire will need to have direct contact with the customer and can take the order, it's sales. Anything else is probably marketing or a subset (PR, branding or advertising). The Bad - Finding someone who can really do this well is difficult. Most entrepreneurs want to use a 100% commission model. Sadly, you get what you don't pay for. Any salesperson that has a solid network that can convert sales is working for a very specific industry with a salary + commission or bonus, benefits and an expense account. Offering equity is pretty well known by the smart sales people to be a desperate attempt at getting someone to pay-for-play. Your product better be the next Android platform for equity to attract the big dogs. The Ugly - The outsource sales model only works at the pre-sales levels: telesales, seminar sign-ups, affiliate click-through, appointment setting, etc. You will not get someone savvy to be your sales team unless they have been laid off or black-balled by their industry. Okay, maybe someone wants to break out of their industry but now you are taking the risk. You need to plan carefully for this first person to succeed. And, it may take many tries at that "first person". Ray of Hope - By combining the talent of the outsource sales model at your lower levels (usually handling leads created by marketing) and then growing the direct sales talent at you newest internal level, you can replicate the system. Automation and leverage is important to massive growth. Be sure you have a solid reward system in place for both sales levels - even beyond the 100% commission. Kickers - as they are best known - motivate sales beyond regular performance. Quarterly incentives for something more always work. Try it. At some point you must dive into one area: marketing or sales. If you can't afford to hire a professional marketing team yet, do you best with the vendors you trust and prove your sales model. If you've been a good little entrepreneur and did your competitive and market analysis in the beginning (hint: it should be in your marketing plan) you will know who to target and where. When the sales and revenue come you can back-fill the marketing outsource and even the formal pre-sales (usually directed by marketing). It's not a perfect demarcation, but it should help those of you who just can't put your finger on where to start.
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I had the pleasure of hearing from an ongoing prospect today. He and I have talked, proposed and talked before. He brought a potential project to me that I had to deny because it was in the "sales" bucket, something Pollock Marketing Group doesn't do. I gave him my best advice for meeting this need and we bid each other farewell in hopes of working together soon. Stay Connected!
