Ken Krogue

I don’t normally like to do shameless self-promotion of my company on this blog, but Steve Watts, one of my chief marketing gurus, posted something interesting today on the InsideSales Insider. He brings up an article from CopyBlogger discussing Chet Holmes’ book, The The Ultimate Sales Machine.

Having read Chet Holmes’ books for a number of years now, I was interested to re-read the principle of the “Desperate Three Percent,” and immediately associated it with “The 15 Time Wasters of Marketing and InsideSales.”

The “Desperate Three Percent” are the three percent of buyers—in any product category or market—that are specifically ready to buy.

But as CopyBlogger points out, there’s a whole bunch of people not ready to buy who can be nudged into buying with the right approach and strategy.

And one of the ways you can start “nudging” is to stop marketing broad and shallow.

Here’s what I mean.

In “The 15 Time Wasters,” I talk about the fact that when you market yourself broadly, it becomes too hard to differentiate yourself in all of your target markets. It’s better to serve one market fantastically well than to serve 10 or 12 markets “mediocre-ly.”

The solution is instead of trying to reach 15 different markets and verticals, start with one, and conquer it.

Narrow but deep, not broad and shallow, wins today’s marketing battles.

Whether that market is a physical location (“I own the city of Billings”), or a specific vertical market (“I’m the number one solution for road bike enthusiasts”), the principle is the same—word of mouth flows from market leadership.

When you own a market, people naturally gravitate to you. It means you’ve proven that you can solve one real, specific problem for that market.

And if you can solve one problem, people assume, it means you can solve more than one.

Low motivation usually arises from one of the problem areas previously mentioned (poor strategy, mis-hiring, unclear objectives, unfair goals, complex priorities, and slow feedback) as well as from poor leadership, lack of discipline and accountability, and a win-lose or lose-lose pay plan.

Salespeople want to sell as much as possible as easily as possible. They will be quickly demoralized when obstacles that are outside of their control prevent them from succeeding.

These things tend to dampen sales teams’ motivation:

1. Pay plans that reward actions and events beyond the employees’ control.
2. Pay plans that take too long to reward success.
3. Lack of immediate recognition.
4. Lack of clarity about expectations.
5. Goals that are set too high.
6. Lack of leads or good lists.
7. Products or services the salespeople don’t believe in.
8. Working for a Sales Manager who isn’t perceived as fair.
9. Poor communication of what is good and bad.

Best Practice: Ask your salespeople what motivates them, do your homework with the experts, make a list viable incentives and get started.