Time to plan for the 1st quarter of 2023!
Time to plan for the 1st quarter of 2023!
FRONTLINE Sales Advisors develops marketing strategies to assist with the growth of small businesses. Our focus is to work with firms that have limited marketing & sales expertise.
With many components of sales and digital marketing, we help identify the best solutions to enhance the growth of your business.
Many firms started by word of mouth without much need to invest in sales or marketing. It was the skill of the owner that helped secure new business. That skill is also essential in keeping accounts.
After the business has some stability, normally the owner is busy with everyday office functions. They don't have the time to do the work it takes to manage marketing to help keep the current clients and to create sales plans to acquire new clients.
Today's technology offers unique ways to communicate with clients and new prospects. Social Media, whether it be Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, can be great marketing tools if used properly along with a creative sales plan, often times including email and a newsletter.
However, to create these marketing posts or campaigns takes time and they should be consistent, not just a one off effort that won't produce results. You want these to be an extension of your business that captures the interest of your clients and prospects.
For many businesses just having the time and resources to dedicate to selling can be extremely difficult. It can be hard to focus the effort necessary that is typically required to find and close new business. It takes considerable time to just to follow up many of your old leads and previous prospects.
Questions like is it the right strategy, has it worked in the past and will it be effective going forward? Is there a pre-sales process and how are opportunities being managed? Has the business done any type of sales assessment to evaluate both the inside and outside sales efforts?
Campaign management is another critical area – are you using compelling emails and are your phone and voicemail scripts getting the results you need? Do talking points resonate with potential clients and are you doing the research to make sure the right people are targeted?
Lead generation is probably one of the more difficult areas for any organization. Even with a dedicated sales team, finding new business opportunities can be incredibly challenging. For smaller businesses, with key employees being pulled in many different directions, putting in enough time searching for new prospects and having an outbound prospecting strategy can be almost impossible.
Many business people hate picking up the phone and cold calling and can find setting appointments to be difficult. Investing the time required to understand how to best approach a prospect, plus keeping track of contacts and calls can be overwhelming. Key components business owners need to consider:
Current Capabilities – Where does the business stand within the current market, what is the brand perception regarding the organization, and what capabilities can and should you capitalize on?
Future Aspirations – Where do you want to be in the next three months, the next 12 months and what about the next five years? Your marketing plan must consider your future goals to create a realistic roadmap for you to get there.
Customer Markets – Who do you want to target? Do you have exposure to your target audience? What are the problems that you currently face with consumers? What do you want to say to them but more importantly, what do they want and need to hear?
Competitive Landscape – This is an overview of the entire industry. Consider barriers to growth, obstacles that you are likely to face, impediments to entry and exit, and more. Also, consider how your competitors fare across similar areas
Write it down – Develop a written playbook for both sales and marketing to standardize best practices. Have a tool that will be the go-to-approach for getting things done. A document that outlines tactics and strategies to use for business sales situations and marketing content development
S.W.O.T. analysis – Whiteboard the current business situation, do an in-depth analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that the company faces both short term and long term. Set actual goals for the sales and marketing business teams.
Refresh information – Update older marketing and sales support materials, bring up to date customer and prospective client databases. Do a thorough analysis of competitors and lost business by product category and geographical location.
Close business – Identify new target markets and develop new marketing campaigns. Drive website visits through increased branding efforts with greater focus on social media, email and direct mail promotions.
The FRONTLINE Sales Advisors principals are professional sales & marketing executives that have considerable experience having worked in sales, business development, and marketing roles for multi-national corporations, small businesses as well as start-ups companies in business equipment, healthcare, information technology, Software as a Service (SaaS), data analytics, financial services, pharmacy, and medical imaging.
We have an in-depth knowledge of tactics, the sales process, and have the skills required to help any type of small business owner or start-up entrepreneur learn new sales approaches, generate leads, and develop a better marketing & sales strategy.
Our role is to work alongside you, helping to identify, programs to help you market to current & potential customers.
8878 Covenant Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Fax: 412.373.1080 Phone: 412.609.3997