The Death of Personal Marketing ?

What's so hard to understand that it takes a superior marketing program, a superior sales system and an unlimited amount of prospects to attain a 7 figure annual income?

Never mind these statistics. Why waste your time trying to figure out what the underachievers fail at?

Geeez guys, sales is the million dollar skill regardless of what you sell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluenote

What's so hard to understand that it takes a superior marketing program, a superior sales system and an unlimited amount of prospects to attain a 7 figure annual income?

Never mind these statistics. Why waste your time trying to figure out what the underachievers fail at?

Geeez guys, sales is the million dollar skill regardless of what you sell.

You’ve missed the object of the survey. It wasn’t intended to find out why the vast majority of salespeople are not earning superior incomes, it was looking at how people react to marketing.

The questions about whether people took cold calls or read direct mail were important, but the questions to us that were most important were the ones about whether or not the respondent had bought anything in the past year from a contact made through the particular marketing method. How many people will accept cold calls or will read direct mail or will read fliers is interesting, but somewhat immaterial. What is material is how many actually buy something based on a contact through that media.

The object wasn’t to analyze what salespeople do but to look at what consumers do. But by understanding better what consumers do, we can also understand better ways to communicate with and market to consumers.

The marketing individual salespeople do is much different from the marketing corporations do. Corporate marketing has been studied to death. Hundreds of millions of dollars a year is spent on studying corporate marketing. Very little has been done in studying the impact and consumer response to individual salespeople’s marketing.

For instance, the direct mail individual salespeople do is very different from the direct mail corporations do. We tend to take the metrics derived from corporate direct mail marketing and apply it to the direct mail of individual salespeople because corporate metrics are really the only ones that exist. But the marketing itself is very different. The direct mail piece the individual sends out is usually much less sophisticated than the corporate piece. Obviously, the quantity the individual sends out is just a tiny fraction of a corporate mailing. And the message itself is very different.

Is it reasonable to assume the metrics for the two are going to be the same? No. But the research hasn’t been done because of money. Corporations spend hundreds of millions each year on their marketing research. Individual salespeople don’t get the same information because they don’t have the bucks to have the research done.

Our survey didn’t tackle that problem either. We looked at direct mail as a group, not breaking out the mail from individuals. One reason was time, another was we were dealing with such a small sample of people.

But even within our survey there is actionable information. For instance, the numbers on cold calling. From a pure numbers standpoint, the survey simply confirmed that cold calling is very inefficient. Nothing new there. However, if one does want to cold call, there is information that is of value. First, they know that only 8% of the people they call will even accept their call and that only 2% have bought anything over the past year from a contact initiated by a cold call. On the other hand, they also know that of the people who will accept their call, 25% have bought something in the last year from a contact initiated by a cold call--they have bought via this method of introduction within the past 12 months.

Did the survey take time and money? Yes. Was it worth it? From my perspective, yes. From yours, no. That’s fine.

But companies like mine, Jacques’, Sharon Drew’s and many others are trying to help understand how consumers buy, how they react to marketing, how they make the decisions they make and many other aspects of selling. We are all small companies. We can invest a few thousand, some maybe even a million or two in a really “big” project. But none of us will be able to do the multi-million research projects that are funded by corporations. But we all contribute our little bit to the understanding of how individuals sell and how consumers deal with our efforts to sell.

These small surveys and research projects have changed and will continue to change the sales industry and the process. Some will find one survey or research project to be of value, others won’t. And certainly lots more needs to be done. The focus of this survey needs to be studied much more. This is one survey with only a small sampling. It would be very interesting to have others do it and compare results. It would be very interesting to see a much larger sample taken. It would be very interesting to see a detailed survey on just individual direct mail. There is a ton to be done and very little time and money to it because the companies that are doing it are doing it with their own money and their own time.

Thanks for taking the time and giving a detailed explanation Paul.

Paul,

Thanks for your clairification of what you were writing about in your article. Much clearer now.

Chuck

How would the results of your survey change, how would people react differently-how many would actually buy someting, if it was a highly skilled sales and marketing professional conducting the campaign?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedRacer

How would the results of your survey change, how would people react differently-how many would actually buy something, if it was a highly skilled sales and marketing professional conducting the campaign?

You're asking an almost impossible question--one based on trying to randomly survey the marketing activities of only highly skilled salespeople.

Now, it is more than reasonable to assume that some of the calls these 225 people received were from highly skilled salespeople; and they received direct mail from highly skilled salespeople; etc.

Based on their average of 11 cold calls a week received, that's a total for the group of 128,700 cold calls. Very high chance that highly skilled cold call salespeople made some of those calls. Direct mail is more difficult as it was a mix from individuals and companies. But with a combined total of 1,017,900 direct mail pieces, there is an excellent chance some of those were from highly skilled salespeople.

This was a mix of highly skilled to probably the newest of the new. To try to isolate only highly skilled contacts is virtually impossible. First, you'd have to rely on the consumer identifying who was and who wasn't highly skilled. Since 92% won't even take the call, that'd be impossible to figure out even if you had the confidence the consumer could make the determination accurately enough to differentiate the two.

Or, you'd have to get the lists from salespeople identified as highly skilled and call those lists, not knowing whether or not you could get cooperation from the consumers, meaning the time and dollar investment could be considerably higher since instead of getting cooperation from random consumers you'd have to get cooperation from a specific list; you'd have to get cooperation from a sizable group of specific salespeople identified as highly skilled--in each individual area; you'd have to merge the lists; etc. A fairly expensive and time consuming operation.

On the other hand, if an individual salesperson wanted to do their own survey they certainly can. All they need do is keep the records over a period of a year. Their numbers wouldn't be the same of course. Instead of knowing how many people said they would or wouldn't take a cold call, they'd know how many of the people they called actually took their cold call, etc. I wouldn't be a usable survey for anyone but themselves, but they would have much more valuable information than a general survey.

How would you expect the results to change? I would expect the results to be dramatically different. The more skilled the individual the better the results. This begs the question is the problem with the method or the individual?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedRacer

How would you expect the results to change? I would expect the results to be dramatically different. The more skilled the individual the better the results. This begs the question is the problem with the method or the individual?

Expecting is if fine--but all it is is suspicion. That's far different than knowing. The only way to know is for the salesperson to keep accurate records over a sustained period of time.

Suspecting can lead to false beliefs.

Let me give an example. One of my coaching clients had been doing three types of marketing before we got together. She cold called, she networked through an organization that had a good number of prospects for her, and she worked some of the orphan files from her company.

When we started working together she expected very definite results to be revealed about her sales business. Cold calling was by far her best marketing method and the orphan files were a total waste of time.

When we sat down and analyzed her numbers over the past year, we found that she did, in fact, get the majority of her clients from cold calling. We also found that she spent the vast majority of her time cold calling. However, her closing ration with cold calling was only in the high 20 percent range.

When we looked at her networking through the organization, we found that the number of clients she had developed was only about 11% of her total but her closing ratio was a little over 50%. She spent very little time working within this organization.

When she worked the orphan files, her closing ratio when up to almost 65%. But she spent almost no time on working orphan files because it seemed to take so long to go through the files and find viable candidates to call.

It seemed that cold calling was her best source of new clients because it "felt" that way. After all, that's where most of her clients came from.

In reality, spending more time on the boring work of going through orphan files and then working those for referrals has increased her production by over 100% this year. She still "feels" like she is wasting a lot of time. But the numbers prove otherwise. Although it takes time to shift through the files, she can uncover far more viable prospects with the orphan files than she can in the same amount of time cold calling.

Of course, she still does some cold calling and she is still involved in the organization. She has increased her participation in the organization and is seeing an increase in business there also. She is spending more time on those things that actually produce a higher close ratio--and more business, even though she suspected they weren't performing as well as cold calling.

The percentage of business she has closed this year from cold calling is down from over 75% last year to just over 20% this year. Yet, she more than doubled her production. An increasing amount is coming from referrals and from her interaction in the organization and less and less is coming from cold calling and even from the orphan files.

One of our objectives was to get the referrals kicked in because the orphan files aren't going to last forever. She probably has another 5 or 6 months of orphan files to go through then that well will have run dry. So she is positioning herself to be prepared for that.

Sometimes our suspicions aren't very accurate.

Do you think it's too far of a reach to expect that someone highly skilled in self-marketing will outperform someone who is unskilled in self-marketing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpeedRacer

Do you think it's too far of a reach to expect that someone highly skilled in self-marketing will outperform someone who is unskilled in self-marketing?

Certainly I would--but how much is the question. One and half times? Twice? Three? Four? Unless they keep accurate records they'll never really know what they're actually doing. And knowing what is actually working and how well is a key to making a lot of sales.

My coaching client would have continued to emphasize cold calling and blowing off the orphan files if she hadn't seen the numbers for herself.

Do I think a more skilled salesperson could have taken the orphan files she is working and closed more business than she has? I would certainly expect so--but we really wouldn't know without keeping accurate records.

And the common "knowledge" in her office was that working the orphan files was a waste of time, just for the desperate. That common knowledge proved costly for many of her co-workers because they could have done the same thing she is doing--except everyone knew it was a waste of time.

The Death of Personal Marketing ?

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