Strategic Sales & Marketing Consulting

For Startup Founders and Business Leaders

Accrue is a strategic sales and marketing coaching and consulting company helping business leaders make strategic sales and marketing investments.

Sales and marketing tactics are frequently confused with strategy.

A tactical focus is attractive because it is tangible and feels like progress. The unfortunate result is business owners often spend their money on what amounts to busy work. What feels productive is often a bunch of random and siloed activities with an unclear purpose.

Random tactical activities are rarely additive, meaning they don’t work together to produce results. They are often well executed and technically sound, even beautiful, but they’re often ineffective. Why? Because the tactics tend to focus on a narrow set of objectives and are rarely aligned with the rest of your efforts. More often, it’s “To Do List Marketing”. It’s the equivalent of building the roof of a house before pouring the foundation.

Starting With The End In Mind

Sales and marketing strategy is about clarifying the needs of the business, the needs of your target audience and the processes necessary to achieve objectives. It results in a plan that makes sense that you understand and can commit to prototyping, refining and operationalizing.

Recognizing The Symptoms

The most common complaints about sales and marketing include:

• We’re spending money on SEO, content, social media, advertising, etc., but it’s not working.
• We’re selling and networking like crazy but were getting “the blank stare” look from people.
• We’re getting sales leads but are not closing new business, or our sales cycle times are too long.
• We’re unsure why our conversion rates are so low.
• What KPIs? We don’t get any performance feedback.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What’s The Solution?

The solution for most problems starts with getting clear on your objectives. It involves stepping back, looking at your marketing from a customer’s perspective and identifying the barriers to yes. What’s stopping people from inquiring or buying? What’s the cause of your poor performance? Once the challenges are clear, we address the core problems.

While this might sound obvious, a solution focus is less common than you think. Pitching different tactics and hoping for different outcomes is much easier than addressing underlying challenges.

Our approach is to:

• Assess the situation and get clear on your goals
• Determine what success looks like in terms of KPIs
• Understand your customer’s needs and the competitive landscape
• Evaluate what’s working now and the obstacles to success
• Assess which promotional channels are viable for your business
• Develop a pragmatic plan
• Ensure everyone is clear on the plan and engaged in purposeful activities

We don’t pitch technologies or marketing tactics. We focus on getting you clear, committed and into purposeful action. It’s about building a sales and marketing program that, at minimum, makes you easy to find, relevant, compelling and easy to buy from.

What “End In Mind” Is Guiding Your Sales And Marketing Program?

If you’re looking for strategic sales and marketing consulting, we’re pleased to offer you a Free Consultation to discuss your goals and assess fit.

Is A Marketing Coach A Better Fit?

Sometimes, people look for consultants when a sales and marketing coach might be a better fit. The main differences are who is doing the work, the speed and cost. Consultants cost more because they’re engaged to get things done quickly and effectively by doing most of the work for you.

In most cases, coaching costs less because you’re doing most of the work yourself. Projects generally take longer due to your learning curve, but you’ll learn more from the experience. You have to weigh the opportunity costs into your decision.

Coaching is often the only financially viable option for startups, whereas larger firms tend to be more motivated to get things done quickly. Something else to consider as you evaluate your options.