Producing 'gold medal' marketing results

In music, sport and art the top performers usually became great as a result of years of practice and often with some helpful coaching and advice along the way. Photo / Thinkstock

I watched an interesting interview with life coach Shannon Graham a few days ago.

Shannon made a comment that many people in business would like to achieve the equivalent of an Olympic Gold Medal in their business results.

However they want to get this 'Gold Medal Result' quickly and without a lot of effort.
Shannon noted that in music, sport and art the top performers usually became great as a result of years of practice and often with some helpful coaching and advice along the way.

Yet many of us seem to think that we can achieve amazing success in our business results without having to put in the training and practice to get really good at what we do.

I liked Shannon's comments because they reminded me that 'Gold Medal Results' in sales and marketing don't happen by accident. They happen for a reason.

And that brings me to the purpose of this week's marketing message.
If you would like to enjoy 'Gold Medal Results' in your sales and marketing activities here are two words that I guarantee will help you.

The two words are 'Get Serious'.
I had the opportunity around 25 years ago to meet dozens of the most successful sales people in the country.

(I was selling motivational seminars and courses at the time and many of these top sales people became clients.) I've always been curious about why top sales people do so much better than average sales people.

So I asked many of these top sales performers a simple question.
When did you start to do really well in selling?

I got a lot of different answers back when I asked this question however there were two words that cropped up in most of the conversations.

The words were "I started to really well when I finally decided to 'Get Serious' about selling."

So what does 'Getting Serious' really mean in marketing?
I think that first of all it means making the decision that you are going to get very good at the key areas of marketing that are important to your business.

For many of us in business a key marketing area is lead generation.
In other words we want to have interested, qualified prospects to talk to who are genuinely keen in buying the types of products and services that we are offering.

So my suggestion here is that over the next month you try 3-5 different ways to generate qualified prospects for your business. Then continue using the ones that work well and try to make them even better.

Here's an example:

I worked with a business coach recently who wanted to get new clients for his coaching services.

He had done a few things like sending out letters, making cold phone calls and advertising his services in different media outlets. He had also joined some networking groups.

I suggested he try 3-5 brand new lead generation systems and try them for at least a month to see whether they worked or not.

One of the lead generation systems I suggested that he test was to send a short one page letter by courier to at least five businesses a week that he would like to work with.

Each letter contained an Instant Kiwi Ticket with the opportunity to win over $100,000 and mentioned that the business coach would phone them in three days to discuss two ideas that might be useful to improve their business profits.

One letter was sent by courier each day and then a phone call was made three days later. These were now 'warm' calls and not cold calls because of the interesting letter that had first been sent out.

My client found that a number of the businesses he phoned were keen to meet and discuss his business coaching services.

And he quickly gained some highly profitable new clients as a result of testing this new lead generation system.

Now in your business it may not be lead generation that is your key area to 'get serious' about.

Your area might be sales conversion.
Or your area might be repeat and referral sales.

The key is to make the decision that you are going to get very, very good at the areas of marketing that are important for your business.
In other words you 'Get Serious'.

Once you make that decision it's amazing the helpful ideas, resources and people you will come across that will allow you to get really good in those key areas.

'Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely.'
Charles Dickens

Action Exercise:

Which key areas in marketing in your business would it be helpful to 'Get Serious' about? What are you going to do differently over the next month?

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. You can download his 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage' Ebook at no charge from www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com