I ran into a gentleman on the golf course recently who I found, after about four hours of playing terrible golf with him, was beginning a business which he felt he only needed a good marketing and sale team to make it work.
I have lost count of how many people I have run into online and offline who have been told me, very emphatically, …
…if you do not focus on marketing your product/services then nothing else matters.
As I can agree marketing and sales play a huge part of a business it should not be the total focus. A business’ operations should be the first matter of concern when starting a business. Building the tools needed to deliver the product or provide the service should be the first thing a start-up should do. Once the foundation of a solid operations is set up then the marketing of the product can be set up on what the operations can supply.
Too many times new business people who have the knack for gab will sit down and envision how they could sell something as a business. This dream quickly builds into an attempt to make it happen and some people even get to a point of going out and attempting to sale what it is they dreamed up. About ten minutes after they start into the sales pitch they quickly realize they have not created the product or service they just sold and the business crumbles in despair.
The first time I ran into someone who actually thought marketing and sales solves all problems I figured I had just run into the only loser in the world. However, over the past five years I have run into this ‘Sales Only’ attitude more times than I can remember. There are many people with this vision of becoming wealthy from selling something.
When you track down the root cause of this attitude you will eventually find the ‘sales only’ person either comes from a large marketing firm or corporation where the operations of the business product is taken care of by someone else. These people realize they have to have a product or service to sell but do not realize (or will agree) they need to produce the product or service before it can be sold.
What would seem to be a simple solution to offer would be for the sales people to partner up with an operations manager from the beginning. However, after spending a few years of looking around the business communities there are not very many operations managers available. This lack of available operations executives only confirms the value of having a partner who oversees the day to day operations of the business.
So, why are there so many ‘Sell At All Cost’ business people loose on the street? I am stumped on this one. Maybe you know. Let me know how I can help.
