Nothing Happens Until The Sale Is Made?

'Nothing happens until the sale is made.'

I have heard this one before. It is a comment refecting the importance and obvious personal pride of many sales professionals. Yet, I am left with a question. Is it really true?

They're the one's creating the opportunities and closing the sale through superior techniques, training, personal selling skills, etc. Of course, there is more than a little truth to this. Much of what we associate with corporate value, the company's intrinsic worth, can be boiled down to a magic number called sales. And many companies are completely lost without the dilligence and effectiveness of personal selling in all its forms.

Yet it leaves me wanting for more, as it does many others who concern themselves with marketing. Harvard's Ted Levine puts the counterpoint in succinct terms: "The goal of marketing is to make sales obsoete." Which sounds a little harsh (even to me). Must these two points of view exist in such stark polarity? Sales... Marketing... Sales!, etc. Each proponent quietly suggesting the other needn't make so much of itself. In many companies the two disciplines fight it out during every budgeting.

My own take on it is to say that we all exist on a vast ocean of economic activity which contains many fish, many shades of coloration and type. Lots and lots of species and organisms, thriving or not depending on the conditions of the hour. One such company completely depends on sales activity to generate its bottom line; anothr seeks it through effective marketing with far less attention paid to having a salesforce to differentiate itself. There are so many ways to see this happening, in the vast expanse of so many companies, selling B2B or B2C, through intermediaties and channel partners, with high tech goods and services which require a lot of presentations to simple products offers sold direct. Way too many fish to categorize so easily.

Yet sales can be misplaced in making the point of emphasis that nothing happens until a sale is made. Because it is the outcome that everyone wants, it becomes a fixed center in how the thinking is done, where the thinking starts and how people imagine their 'sales and marketing.'

I have come to appreciate Ted Levine's famous line, i.e. marketing if done effectively will sell the product so well you won't need a sales force. The product sells itself.

Mere Sales

As mentioned in my previous postings, I have spent a long time before the mast in marketing. I want this blog to say more things, or convey more thinking, apart from incessant handwritten notes I have kept for years.

In summary what have the preceeding two posts conveyed? EEOS... Energy, Excitement, Opportunity, Sales? It sounds too jingoistic to be serious. Yet, it seems the effort we put into the creative, in the strategy and everything else, that a marketing program has to produce a strong benefit. And for the millionth time as we dutifully sound the note, "increased profits and growth"... well how many times can we say with a straight face? Is it truly all about money?

I think it actually goes further than this. I've come to think that if anyone asks me what they should expect from a successful marketing engagement, I would say: "You should feel a strong uptick in the energy level inside your company. The program should produce excitement in your staff and customers. It should be timely and real (there's got to be a market for the product or service). With these things in place, you should feel confident about sales (though nothing is inevitable or guaranteed).

It may not rank as high as theoretic physics, quantum mechanics, or anything so noteworthy. It isn't very profound. Yet, when they ask what to expect, tell them: Energy, Excitment, Opportunity, Sales.

See if there isn't a spark of recognition. Perhaps a smile?

Next up Excitement, is also part of the EEOS

And so it would go, that after Energy, the enterprising marketer would look to have some excitement from her marketing. The next rung, or step on the acronym implies a relationship to the Energy put into a program or marketing initiative. Hopefully this is a reasonably creative effort, so something new or innovative is going on. Otherwise it's tough to find any Excitement, "Hey, we're doing some advertising today!" ???

Well maybe not. Let's try something else. An enewsletter? A Blog?

Okay, perhaps we're getting little bit warmer, a bit more exciting with this. We think there's also a sequence here, an emotional connection, or cause and effect, or formula: "If we put in a bit more Energy into this marketing (which can be quite broadly defined to include the product development stuff), and we do it in the right way so our investment of Energy pays off with a good idea, or a special insight into something our customers will value, we'll see this right away in a quality or tangible product feature that's differentiated in its benefits. It will be exciting to see this or discover it."

Then the marketer can go off and really celebrate this discovery. Feel some excitement.

Of course, it could also just be a really good marketing idea. Either way, the Energy is an investment (did we say that this could also be the dollars we have put into it. Money is a latent form of Energy) that pays off in the Excitement generated by the idea.


Opportunity

Now we have the very next part of our sequencial acronym: 1. Energy, 2. Excitement, 3. Opportunity...

Well, let me come clean here. This is not that serious is it? I'm just having fun after all. Yet, thirty years of marketing before the mast (the creative side of marketing communications and advertising) provides me with a decent enough excuse or cover for having some fun. And, maybe it makes some sense as well.

I believe the first two emotional connections, the investment of Energy, and the Excitement one feels on making a discovery, means very little if there's no Opportunity to match it or moment to be seized. There has to be some connection to a market of people who trade, buy or sell. If not, the Excitement dies down in a big hurry.

You have seen this. So have I. You present your idea to the prospect, client or partner and they say, "Yeah, but...." You feel the exciting atmosphere of the moment drain away in seconds. An Art Director stated this well (I can't recall the citation, please let me know if you recognize this one), after a particularly brutal meeting when his ideas were shot down: "Lions three Christians zero!"

Opportunity is a nautical phrase, "opposite the port," O Puerto, etc. You can imagine the chance of making the port to the leeward side with a fresh wind, a captain who calls it too late and you're suddenly past the point where you can sail into the harbor. Wait, there's a storm coming, oh shit!

I think that's the relationship to the Opportunity in businss and marketing. We've all had ideas. Some of them very good ideas. Yet without the capital (either money or human resources) the Energy isn't there, the excitement of waking up one night saying, "hey, this just might happen" doesnt' gel. No one is really getting it. the Excitement doesnt' spread.

How many ideas are like this? A passing fancy that one person thinks is great, but won't go anywhere. No real energy is generated. No excitement spreads.

Just one hand clapping.

What Do We Mean By EEOS?

I'm still trying to figure this one out. Though we've said it for some time. Our Agency, R.N. Johnson Creative Marketing has been using this acronym: "Energy, Excitement, Opportunity, Sales (EEOS).

It's not just the underlying physics or meaning for the word Energy, (although that may be enough to catch someone's interest). Energy is a by-product of successful marketing. It works both ways on behalf of customers and marketers. A good idea brings some energy with it. People work harder, etc. And, it can reach the customer via many points of subtle perception.

You've got to like marketing to think of it as imparting energy to a company or an organization. It has to be fun for someone to think of it in this way. Ben & Jerry's? The infamous Google? How many celebrated companies inspire their employees and stimulate their customers? A few good ones certainly. They almost all have very resolute marketing.

Then, this work Excitement comes in.