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Buildup to Breakthrough – Your Sales & Marketing Flywheel

Guest post by: Kerri Salls

Article Overview: To start making changes, you only have to pick one area and make one change. But it’s the consistency with which you apply the new strategy that will have an impact. Then you add one more change, or one more approach. With each tool or resource you put in play, the flywheel builds momentum, without any extraordinary effort on your part, until there’s a cumulative breakthrough.

Buildup to Breakthrough – Your Sales & Marketing Flywheel

Change can be hard. From a standstill, it takes great effort to build momentum. That’s where the concept of a flywheel comes in.

Here in Lowell, MA, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, at the National Historic Park, there are great textile mills based on the physics of the flywheel. To get one started takes great effort just to nudge it forward an inch. As you keep exerting that same effort, it moves a bit faster. With your continued great effort, it begins to make full rotations, then each push results in multiple rotations, until sheer momentum hurls the flywheel forward based on its own massive weight. Think of your sales and marketing program as a flywheel. What are you doing to build momentum?

I’ll get back to that flywheel in a minute. From one of the newsletters I read, I followed the links to an interesting article by Dave Kahleentitled: Are You Hindered by Formerly Effective Sales & Marketing Policies? Sounds like my flywheel at full rest.

The point he made was that the core principles of your business used to be enough to build a thriving business. Those same core principles either don’t work anymore or aren’t enough for business in the 21st century. Core principles such as quality, competitive pricing, good service, delivered with discipline and conviction, used to be enough to bring in the clients to maintain a thriving business just from word-of-mouth marketing.

Dave Kahle says: “The business principles and policies that were sufficient on which to build a business [before] today are not. At one time, you could distinguish your business from others on the basis of these and other FIP (Fine in the Past) principles. Now, however, the bar has risen. Because there is so much churn in our marketplace and the competition is so fierce, the kinds of service and quality that were sufficient to distinguish yourself from your competition are no longer sufficient. Your customers expect previously outstanding levels of service and quality from every supplier. What was sufficient a few years ago is still necessary today, but no longer sufficient.”

To stand out today:

• You can’t keep doing the same thing expecting different results.
• You can’t just build a better mousetrap and expect the world to beat a path to your door.
• You can’t just depend on outside straight commission salespeople alone.
• You can’t rely just on “‘on-the-job” training to get the most from your salespeople.
• You can no longer hire salespeople with experience just because you feel good about them.

If these “Fine in the Past” principles sound familiar to your approach or your team, it may be time to rethink your sales and marketing plans for next year using 21st Century thinking and strategies.

Back to my flywheel analogy for marketing and sales. To start making changes, you only have to pick one area and make one change. But it’s the consistency with which you apply the new strategy that will have an impact. Then you add one more change, or one more approach. With each tool or resource you put in play, the flywheel builds momentum, without any extraordinary effort on your part, until there’s a cumulative breakthrough.

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Article Tags: flywheel, marketing, momentum, sales



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012 - Breakthrough
niche forum categories - I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]... Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here... Just a few thoughts: Better Blogging Developing Info Products Internet Marketing Presentation Skills More How to's Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?
Different Hats - CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company Strategic Vision 10 Alliances & Growth Strategies 10 Hiring & Managing People 8 Mentoring 8-9 Strategic Planning for Clients 10 Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty) Financial Management 9 Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0 Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff) Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!) Speaking 10 (so I have been told) Self Promotion 9-10 Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+) Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have) Great topic Kevin!! Jude


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