It seems that one thing we can get wrapped up in when it comes to sales and marketing campaigns is overthinking the automation, the ease of use of new tools and technology and then depending on those things to do our work for us.
We developed some new content for a campaign in May and called in our design partners. Well, with everyone having more highly prioritized items on their plate a month later we haven’t been able to get the email out the door yet. Keep in mind this is supposed to be going to a strategic list of 500 people that are good prospects for us. If we get the industry average of 2 or 3% we might get 1 or 2 people to fill out a form and maybe 10-15 to look at the email.
When we stepped back and took an objective view and considered likely outcomes, the time it would probably take to close a deal and the aggravation of dealing with all of the inevitable tire kickers, we felt this was a tremendous amount of energy and time wasted for what would be very minimal results. Making a few phone calls to past clients and old prospects took 1/100th of the time and yielded more results.
Ok, to be fair we also decided to replace the MA system that we were using in favor of something that included basic instructions and works well. The previous system was so cumbersome that no one could take the time to learn it well enough that we would be confident in execution.
Recently, a major software company told us that their primary goal in marketing was to get more proactive and that they were going to meet with us to get ahead of the revenue curve. As it turns out, they had to abandon that goal (for the day, anyway) as they couldn’t attend a meeting with us because they were being pulled into another meeting.
Another call had our client’s agency estimating 5 weeks to deliver creative, data and start to execute an email campaign. This was a simple email. The pace of doing things right is very important but the more costly price is doing nothing especially if you look over your shoulder and you see your competition doing it.
We think it’s time to return to fundamentals. We use the Urgent and Important model now and scuttle the rest of the projects that we will never get to. Get your lead generation under control so you can try to develop predictable revenue. Think about what’s really worked for you, dependably, and look at what you’re doing now. Should you get back to fundamentals?
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