Sell or die
Commons Sense Idea 5. Sales in Marketing. Marketing in Sales.
In so many organisations, I hear people say marketing is different from sales; sales should be separate from marketing. This is usually said by VPs of marketing who are trying to protect their empire and not be found out by salespeople, who are getting on with the selling. These are the people who justify their jobs, their budgets and the size of their team with academic modelling, sprinkled with the latest in brand buzz words. People who spend a lot, but don’t earn a cent.
If marketing isn’t actually selling something, then what is it doing? Good marketing people should always be selling – an aspect of their brand such as a value, a story or a personality – or, better still, getting an actual sale. Our marketing people at 42 Below were expected to sell not only the story, but a case as well. Often the whole company would hit the streets to do so. You learn a lot about how to deliver a message that sells when you are on the street, selling. You also learn how important good marketing is when you are a salesperson. At the very start of 42 Below, when no one knew a thing about our product, my best day selling on the street was a few bottles. Three years later, when marketing had done some of its job, my best was 23 cases.
Good salespeople need to be able to sell the brand, too, telling the brand story in a way that will start great word of mouth. Our salespeople at 42 Below, with their see-through briefcases, outrageous T-shirts or old-school cars, could always start a story that would help spread (sell) our brand. They would slip in a story on the awards we had won or prestigious bars around the world that were great marketers and they used word of mouth as their medium. To go and sell only a case, not the story that goes with it, is a wasted opportunity.
My mate Dave Poole once said, ‘Guess what all the most successful people in the world have in common, whether they be presidents, lawyers, heads of industries, peacekeepers, leaders of charities? Answer – they can sell. They all have to be able to see something: their message, their cause, themselves. And they are good at it.’
All great marketers need to be great salespeople. And vice versa.
Common Sense Idea 6. Pitch it high. Sell it wide.
In the early days, I was precious about where we sold 42 Below. I thought if we were seen in a bargain bin, then our brand would be seen as bargain basement.
This fear is reasonable, but it started to restrict where we would sell 42 Below. Thanks to Grant Baker’s push for sales, what we started to do was go for almost every outlet (not quite the low end of town), without ever discounting on price. If people didn’t want to pay our price to stock our brand, then it wouldn’t be at their outlet. Easy. It became our self-regulating distribution policy.
We figured if Moet or Veuve Clicquot could be sold at a corner store, then so could we. The only proviso other than price was that all our public appearances must be super schmick: all our pitching would be to the high end of town.
At the start of 42 Below, we also couldn’t afford ads. And then thanks to some press we got following an award, we realised that this was pretty valuable in building your brand and sales. When I could afford a few ads, I would run them but nothing seemed to happen – unless they got picked up by the press and they commented on them.
Angela Barnett was the first to tell me ‘PR builds brands; advertising maintains them.’ I nodded, then forgot. But time and again I was reminded of this through the cause of our PR compared with the average effect of advertising. It’s true of all the businesses I have since been involved in.
What you read in the newspaper or see on the TV or hear on the radio has more credibility than any ad, because it is said by a third party – an ‘independent source’ who knows what they are talking about. It can also be much less costly or even free.
- This information is provided by Geoff Ross:
www.ecoya.co.nz
