Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Marketing

Do You Know Your Target Audience?

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Are your sales not where you would like them to be?

With many new clients, I often find that the failure to aim narrowly at a specific target audience is

  • confusing clients
  • extending the sales process
  • demanding on salespersons
  • losing them business

Is your marketing strategy and plan truly promoting your goods and services to the right people?

Time and again when interviewing business owners, salespersons, and marketers, I find their marketing message falls short because of confusion over a target market versus a target audience. This simple strategic marketing mistake costs dearly as the customer is left confused with messages that speak at them instead of to them. Confused customers are less inclined to buy.

Conducting a target audience analysis identifies specific needs, wants, hopes, and aspirations.

When you speak the customer’s language it offers assurance that you understand them and know how to solve their problem. Their comfort that you can identify their specific problem draws them to a conclusion that you are more appropriate and capable of caring for them.

When you’re perceived to be a less risky purchase, then the value proposition tilts in your favor. More sales can follow.

Communicating in generalities leaves customers guessing.

Here are two examples of ads from home heating and air conditioning companies in a local paper.

Ad #1 reads: “We’re the number one HVAC specialists. Call us for all your needs.”

Ad #2 reads: “Has your home air conditioning system just stopped? Call and be cool soon.”

Advertiser #2 has invested a bit more time that speaks to the specific needs of his target audience. It may appear a more expensive and narrow strategy, but the real test is not the number of calls, but the number of qualified calls. What do you think, will #2 beat #1?

Follow this simple On-Purpose Business Person rule of thumb:Market in your self interest.

Now that you’re thinking about the concept, who’s your target market and target audience? Want to talk it out? We’re here to help you.

How Are Your Marketing Strategy and Plans?

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Tactical terror is on the face of many a business person these days thanks to the fundamental shift in marketing due to the internet, especially as it relates to social media. Despite all the change, the core of marketing remains much the same as it has for the past 50 years. 

In today’s On-Purpose® Business Minute, may I introduce you to the importance of purpose in your marketing strategy and plans?

Purpose brings the power, spirit, or juice to the business model and marketing plan that engages employees, customers, and shareholders alike, yet each differently.

Before you design that new website or write that new brochure or ad, please give the fundamentals of great marketing the investment of your time and energy on the front end. It will save you a ton of time and money on the back end.

Having the fundamentals of marketing in place provides a higher probability that your goals will be met or exceeded.

  • Regardless of your company size, do you feel overwhelmed, confused, or frustrated with your present marketing strategy and plans?
  • Are you facing the tactical terror of chasing your tail and not getting the results you want?

Please place On-Purpose Partners  CMO Services on your mind to help you order, focus, build, and expand your business so it can go to the next level of performance. If you need help, please drop me an email at kwmccarthy@on-purpose.com.

As promised, here is a link to the Marketing Mix concept by Jerome McCarthy, the author of Basic Marketing (and who is not related to me).

Salesperson Turnover? Why it matters.

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Salesperson turnover is a consistent problem in businesses small and large.

Being a salesperson is a tough profession. It is typically hard work requiring a variety of skills that can often be contradictory within one person. For example, one needs to be persuasive and a leader, yet also a good listener and a servant. The On-Purpose Approach reconciles many of these qualities by placing purpose first and foremost.

Today’s On-Purpose® Business Minute explores 3 important elements to set up salespeople (and solo owners) for success and avoiding salesperson turnover.

  1. Culture of belief
  2. Marketing
  3. Sales training

Salesperson turnover costs everyone. Rolled up paper money of various dollar amounts.After decades of advising thousands of business owners, the patterns of poverty jump at me. If you are a business owner, sales manager, or a salesperson, then pay close attention to this message. Benchmark yourself against my comments and see how well your selling system operates to support your field. Perhaps there’s a reason why you can’t find and keep good salespeople!

If you are a Solo Owner, then benchmark yourself against these three measures.

Being the salesperson and the production person presents a unique challenge. Far too often I see small business owners veering into the realm of thinking, Yeah, I think I can do that.

Instead of staying with what one does best and finding clients who truly value your services and where you are expert, we drop down the learning curve and grab work for the money instead of realizing we’re losing profitability and diluting our brand by confusing our target audience. It is a dangerous cycle of being money-driven instead of being on-purpose.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin TOPBP_cover

 

Want to learn more?

Purchase your copy of The On-Purpose Business Person. Click on the book cover to order.

Just Because We Can, Do We?

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Spread way too thin?

Does your “To Do List” look more like an “It’ll Never Get Done List”?

Welcome to my world where I have

  • more ideas than time
  • more projects than production capacity
  • a willing work ethic that admittedly tends toward workaholism

Who in your life is asking you this question: “Just because we can, do we?”

As a business advisor who develops deep strategy and designs businesses, I’ve seen far too many entrepreneurs and business owners confuse their capacity to perform as their reason to perform.

“We can do that!”

Having the ability to do something isn’t necessarily a sound reason for actually taking it on. I’ve been learning to be far more judicious about what I do. I also keep an “Ideas” file. Placing my scribbles and thinking into notes and notecards tends to discharge the energy or the immediacy and provides a cooling off period where perspective can be gained and better judgments made about what matters most.

Admittedly this is easier to write about than to live into.

The phone rang from a new business advisory client. I took the call. The business was in a revenue freefall.

  • Sales had dropped from $220 million to $70 million.
  • The business fundamentals had changed.
  • The unexpected death of the co-founders created chaos and confusion.

The young new family ownership was unprepared to lead or manage a business of this scale. Something had to change—fast!

The business had many functional strengths in operations, finance, facilities, brand, and such. Tremendous business capacity resided with relatively very sound infrastructure. They could do business, but could they remain in business?

Business is an inside-out reality.

What’s happening within the business is reflected outside the business. Customer engagement is important; however, it is leadership and management who create the means for that engagement to shrivel or thrive.

Marketing, in this case, had never been strategic. The deceased owner had a knack for it. Today, no one was at the helm with a feel for the business. In short, the company was in the midst of a very costly identity crisis that affected the internal culture and marketing. The customer experience suffered and very predictably, sales plummeted.

Working with the new owners and the hired president, we crafted a heartfelt purpose, vision, missions, and values. Then we partnered to develop a business plan. It rippled into a renewed marketing plan, sales plan, sales tools, sales training program, and field train-the-trainer program.

Let’s just say, probably a million dollars was invested in the entire project by the time we were ready to launch.

The relaunch date of the company was set. Company-wide months of thought, effort, and resources had been poured into this push to reinvigorate the business. A special convention was called to unveil the months of planning and preparations.

The week before the big relaunch, the company president attended a technology conference extolling the opportunities to be found in that industry, an unrelated business. The president, however, figured, “We have a loyal customer base and the capacity to attempt this. They’ll follow us.” This was true, but not wise.

Over my and his managers’ vigorous objections, he hurriedly hijacked the conference agenda, threw together a presentation of his vision, and launched a business concept (no support in place, mind you, to execute) to his 500-person sales force flown in and housed at the company’s expense.

Need I say more! The sales force wasn’t just confused, they were red-hot angry. It was as if a “bait and switch” had happened right before their eyes. The owner was playing around willy-nilly with their livelihoods.

The day after the “announcement,” the engagement with On-Purpose Business Advisors was mutually ended. The company could pursue what eventually proved to be—no big surprise—a very costly tangent that killed trust and momentum … and eventually put the company all but out of business.

Of course, this client had a host of people telling him not to do what he was doing. He just refused to listen and paid with his family’s business.

An idea alone, even a great idea, is never justification or rationalization for starting new initiatives, projects, or companies. In most cases, investing the same effort to launch something new is more wisely invested in updating, upgrading, and deepening what exists already.

Let the simplicity of the On-Purpose business approach guide you: Do More of What You Do Best More Profitably. A great exercise for new projects or businesses is to use The Service Model to design and develop your idea.

By capturing the essence of your thinking with a consistent approach, you will be more realistic.

Then file it away and give yourself a cooling off period. Later pull it out and evaluate it against the other opportunities, projects, and ideas you have.

Personal/Team Discussion: Show and read this On-Purpose Business Minute to your team and ask the following: Considering the many projects and opportunities on our plate, assess each against … Just because we can, do we?

The drive to make money and the capacity to produce are not predictors of customer acceptance. What lessons or stories do you have to share about leading the organization?

 

Sales Prospecting or Farming?

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Sales prospecting and farming represent two modes of selling.

Be clear about which one works and works for you.

Over the years, clients have engaged On-Purpose Partners to assess and design their sales architecture, often with sales prospecting or farmingOn-Purpose® being foundational content. Such engagements demand a blend of

  • strategy
  • psychology
  • marketing
  • selling
  • curriculum development
  • business
  • and more

One of the first design decisions to assess is if the client’s business, mindset, and preference is for building a prospecting or a farming sales approach.

Many other company decisions and investments hinge on this simple differentiation.

As a keynote speaker to sales organizations at conferences and conventions, I’ve learned to psych out their leanings early. Whether it be an insurance, real estate, or direct sales organization, there are similarities and differences in their cultures and approaches; yet these two generalized worldviews on selling remain staples of the selling process.

Corporate executives set the tone but often a product or service defines the sales approach. Generally, if a company is in manufacturing or is technology oriented, they tend to favor the prospecting approach mentioned in this On-Purpose Business Minute. Customers are part of the “human resources” supply chain of logistics and transactions. Here people are deployed to meet business objectives by digging out customers.

Company executives who favor the farming approach, however, tend to focus more on cultivating relationships.

This longer-term view of people sees a long tail of repeat sales and referrals in the context of the lifelong value of a customer. It affects commitment and investment in planning, people, operations and, ultimately, customer service standards and training.

Salespeople as farmers or prospectors are typically engaged in very similar activities of making sales calls, gathering information, preparing presentations, and closing deals. Astute salespeople readily assess the best approach for a particular book of business. If you find yourself scratching your head wondering what the higher-ups are thinking, then there is a good chance they are (or you are) oblivious to the culture they’re creating in the field. They’re prospecting for immediate nuggets of sales while you’re growing a crop of relationships and caring for a soil of the relationship … or vice versa.

Be aware of which approach is best suited to the company, customers, and, frankly, your personal style that plays into your definition of success.

Years ago, a friend came to me ready to pull his hair out by the roots. He loved where he worked as an admissions representative at a private vocational college. The problem was he is a farmer and he was being measured as a prospector. Every phone call, email, and piece of mail was measured and accrued to his measurement system.

Together we designed a simple tool to engage student candidates into a conversation instead of an information session. At great risk to his metrics, his call volume went down, his mailings decreased, and his number of “contacts” declined. The first month, his boss was all over him for non-performance. However, by the second month, his admissions soared to the number 3 spot of all reps—an achievement he had never before attained. Within 3 months, he was leading all reps and out-distancing them. Soon two reps approached him and asked what he was doing differently. Within a month all three of them held the top 3 positions.

They had discovered farming versus prospecting!

This story isn’t to propose that prospecting is bad. On the contrary, it is to say that the culture and the sales culture didn’t match and the results were impoverished by comparison to a proper match.

By the way, the story gets even better. In time, the leadership altered the system to reflect a farming approach that was people-centric. Under the “prospecting” approach, student turnover (withdrawals from the college) was very high. With the “farming” approach, admitted students tended to stay in place. This was an unexpected bonus, but an intuitive result.

The point of this On-Purpose Business Minute for the executives, VPs of Marketing & Sales, and Sales Managers is to assess your industry, company, and culture. Decide which approach is best suited to creating the customer experience you wish to deliver. Armed with this information, evaluate your company language, alignment, and operations to see if you’re on-purpose or not.

Sales prospecting or farming? Now you’re a bit more informed to make wiser decisions.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Have You Had Your Profit Epiphany?

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Profit-making has a bad rap.

Too often we associate profit with greed.

Truth be told, greed is an attitude of the heart that is often revealed in business but isn’t inherent to being in business.

If your heart’s desire is to truly be of service to others, then greed is likely not going to be your problem. Your challenge is just the opposite—you run so far from the appearances of greed that you overdeliver and undercharge so often that your business is hanging by a thread. Check your mindset and see if I’m right!

This On-Purpose Business Minute may be just the message you need to hear to awaken you that it isn’t your marketing, sales force, or operations that needs the adjustment—it is your internal posture about profits in need of repair. 

 

What Do You Do? (The “Do Do Dialogue”)

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You’re at a business or social event and the inevitable question arises, “What do you do?” Now is the time for your “Elevator Speech” to kick in and smartly sell your product or service. Or is it?

Most often we tell the inquirer our job category (e.g., I’m an accountant, plumber, salesperson … ) or job title (VP, realtor, sales representative) and where we work. At this point, the conversation often goes relatively quiet as they offer an unknowing, polite, or perhaps perfunctory response about your work, “That’s nice.”

If you dislike your work, perhaps ending the conversation about your job plays to your advantage by avoiding a disheartening conversation. It may also be that the person was simply making polite conversation and has no real interest in your business.

The other extreme is the canned elevator speech where your tightly crafted unique selling proposition is flawlessly presented worthy of a Toastmasters’ award. You’ve rehearsed it over and over so now you’ve said it. What do you get in return?

“Oh! That’s nice,” again. Then the person walks away for fear of being sold or bored by a rehearsed jerk with robotic responses. You were insensitive to the person.

No one likes to feel stupid or feel like they are being sold. Under either approach, at best they only have a shallow concept of what you really do and how you truly make a difference for your clients or customers. In short, you’re either putting them to work figuring out what you do or you’re working them over with your sales pitch.

The Do Do Dialogue takes a bit of thinking on your feet mixed with some advanced preparation. The goal isn’t to sell or present. Rather it is to discover how you can help them, how they can help you, or what a referral or recommendation looks like for either of you. (Yes, some of us actually think that way from the start).

Assuming, however, that you are an on-purpose business person working in an on-purpose position, then you truly are interested in the on-purpose business approach of Doing More Of What You Do Best More Profitably. If that’s the case, then your response to their question just short-circuited an organic opportunity to earn a new client or gain a source of referrals or just make a friend.

Instead, what if you had a respectful and relevant response that actually got the person interested in what you do—or at least more interested—while providing a clear understanding of your on-purpose customer? 

In either a business or social setting, before you show up, think about where you’re going to be. Who you’re going to meet. This gives a huge clue as to appropriateness of response. If you’re at a neighborhood block party or the Chamber of Commerce Lunch, then you’re walking into different settings. Be wise to that.

Here’s the social setting response when asked, “What do you do?” I quickly assess whom I’m speaking with: a retired person, a young mom, an unkempt teenager, or a man in his working years.

“Do you know how many (retired persons, moms, teens, or working adults) often feel that their life is meaningless?”

Their response is typically, “Yes.”

Then I say, “I help my clients write their purpose in life and make decisions that are aligned with it so they are on-purpose rather than off-purpose.” The next question from them is typically, “How do you do that? Are you some kinda life coach?”

My response isn’t to directly answer their question, but to probe a bit further. “Why do you ask? Do you know someone who is looking to know their purpose in life?”

At this point they’ll talk about themselves or someone they know. Now I can probe further. “Tell me about that.” So rather than telling them I have a company that “does life coaching,” I model it for them by becoming interested in them.

In a business setting, I’ll assess the person but unless I know otherwise, I always assume they are a P&L business leader because that’s my clientele. I want them to get someone in mind who needs my help.

I’ll say, “Do you know how stressful it is for (business owners, sales people, executives) who are charged with making (a profit, sales, a budget)?”

Their response is typically, “Yes.”

My next “do question” is likely to be, “Does someone come to mind?”

Again, they’ll either self-identify or get someone in mind. Then, I probe further, “So what’s that story?”

Each of these series of questions has the potential to open up a powerful conversation about either the person or someone they know and just might introduce you to. 

Learn the “Do Do Dialogue” and you’ll transform small talk into engaging opportunities. Who knows, you might just gain a new client or a referral and truly do more of what you do best more profitably.

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Free Business Tips, Ideas, & Advice for Running (& Starting) Small Businesses and Leading Your Life!

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The challenges of being in business by yourself need not be a burden you carry alone. May I come alongside you for 2 to 4 minutes per week to offer sound business advice and mentoring via a free subscription to the On-Purpose Business Minute and On-Purpose Minute?
 
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