Grow Your Company with Strategic Marketing Analysis
by Chad Lane, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
One of the most vital services I offer my clients is a strategic marketing analysis. This analysis answers the question, “How are we going to market this company?” It looks at the company’s strengths and opportunities for growth with the goal of developing a plan to guide the company for the next six or twelve months. That way, the company’s management is not distracted by momentary ups and downs of their sales or the market, or some flashy new medium or technology.
I often start by looking at the basic statistics of the client’s marketing and sales. How many prospects are they getting? How many of these close? What’s happening to their website traffic? Is it being utilized or wasted?
I look closely at areas of potential loss to devise solutions which convert the losses to wins and income. Being external to the company, I can offer an objective analysis that’s not tangled up in day-to-day challenges, personnel issues or company politics.
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule is always a vital part of this analysis. As we often hear, most companies get 80% of their profit from 20% of their clients. How can they expand the business they get from this 20%? Are there missed opportunities to provide better service to these clients or meet their changing needs?
What are they communicating to this 20%? Are they saying anything of value? Has the company kept the 20% informed of updates, new products or service offerings?
When a company optimizes their efforts toward this 20%, this can start to make a big difference, fast.
The Value of an Objective Observer
Our strategic analysis allows an experienced marketer and administrator to review a company’s marketing from one end to the other. This external view can find gaps in marketing operations that have been overlooked for years. But those gaps could be costing the company plenty.
Here’s a great example to illustrate this point. I was doing an analysis for a fashion house. The company did everything from concept through manufacturing and delivery of any type of clothing. They supplied some of the biggest businesses around.
Their marketing seemed frozen. They had in-house salespeople but the person responsible for closing the majority of sales was the CEO. Their supply lines were a mess because of quarantines. Their outside reps weren’t getting anywhere. They didn’t know what was wrong or how to kickstart new sales.
I interviewed the CEO and salespeople and looked over the history of sales and various statistics. Then the answer fell into my lap. And it triggered a solution that increased the viability of the company.
The CEO had a standard pattern to his sales process. When he was working with a potential client, if he liked them, he’d invite them to his fabric library. This library contained 30,000 samples of different fabrics; one of the biggest collections in the country.
He’d tour a person through the facility, including the fabric library, and in the process, would close them on working with the company. The value that he brought to the process was his 3 decades of experience in the industry – something that couldn’t be matched by anyone else in a sales process.
How Do You Solve a Situation Like This?
If no one else could give these tours and cultivate the interest of these potential customers, how do you expand this operation?
You take those salespeople and outside reps and you change their focus. Instead of demanding that they close deals, we instead developed a pattern whereby they invited prospects into the facility for a tour and consulting. This service was quite valuable to the potential customers and one that they were willing to pay for.
Well, this was an offering that reps could easily sell. And once this potential customer was in front of the CEO, he would help them understand how they could improve their product or supply line or whatever they had a problem with. In the process, many prospects decided our client’s company should do their manufacturing as well. Because that really solved the problem they were there to discuss.
So the company now has a new source of income from consultations and this then leads to sales of all of the company’s other valuable services. The salespeople have a great way to feed the CEO viable prospects. The company is now thriving at levels higher than any previous year.
Support All the Way Through Implementation
Our goal with each strategic marketing analysis is to offer a company a plan to guide their efforts for the next six months to a year so they aren’t buffeted by marketing changes. Part of the service is helping them implement our recommendations.
There could be questions or personnel changes needed or adjustments as the client puts the plan into effect. We’re there until the plan produces results. Because that’s the reason for analysis in the first place.
We love offering this service to our clients so if it sounds like something your company needs, let us know by completing this form.