Sales and marketing can be time-consuming, counter-intuitive, costly and frustratingly difficult. This complexity is why you want a marketing coach to help you navigate and de-risk your investment.
It doesn’t matter if you’re managing sales and marketing in-house or hiring an agency. There’s a high risk of focusing on tactics you’re not prepared to benefit from.
There are three common reasons. The first boils down to URGENCY. There’s often a strong desire to get busy making sales. Any progress can feel better than feeling stalled or bogged down in research and planning. More often than not, the result of getting busy is waste. You end up squandering your limited resources on the wrong things or the right things in the wrong sequence.
The second reason is BIAS. Many people you ask for help need to sell you something to get paid. When you’re not clear on your needs, it’s easy to get sold on the latest and greatest fad tactics and other bandwagon-jumping activities.
The third reason is a lack of FEEDBACK. As a business leader, it can be extremely challenging to get useful feedback. People are either afraid to comment, or their feedback is cursory or too narrowly focused. Your coach is often the only one who’ll give you purposeful and actionable feedback and direction.
Your coach’s job is to get you focused on doing the right things in the right order to achieve target outcomes. It’s about getting you focused and effective in your efforts and investments.
The first step is to get clear on your goals and constraints, the situation, target clients, competitors, and the economics of your sales process. You and your marketing coach establish strategic objectives, define roles and a working rhythm that defines the collaboration.
Some people want a second set of eyes, advice and direction, while others want a more active and hands-on approach. Everyone’s needs and goals are different and we adapt our approach to fit your situation.
The easiest place to start is to reach out and have a conversation. There’s no pitching or high-pressure sales. Sales and Marketing Coaching is a collaboration and there needs to be a mutual fit.
One of the top reasons people don’t engage a marketing coach is cost. Many coaches are simply too costly for small business owners.
Our goal is to make coaching services affordable. Our coaching starts at $150 per month and adjusts to suit your needs. Our low minimum pricing makes coaching accessible when it can have the greatest impact in the early stages of business development.
It’s important to determine if you need a coach or if a Fractional CMO is more appropriate. The main difference is speed and cost. You engage a Fractional CMO when you have more to invest, higher risk, want to go faster and require a more hands-on approach. Marketing Coaches are ideal for situations with smaller budgets, or where guidance, direction and support are the primary goals.
For a quick primer on the topic, read Coaching + Marketing. If you want to understand our approach, read our book Mastering Marketing. It breaks the business development process down into a sequence of steps to follow. We also offer a series of free ebooks and helpful articles on our blog to help you take control of your business development process.
