Most companies are good at managing their production process. They’ve designed an organizational process that matches each task in the production sequence with a specific resource, whether it be a person or a technology. They understand what inputs are needed to produce the required outputs. They can adjust throughput to achieve the volume they want.
The same cannot be said for sales. Instead of an organizational process where each task is matched to the best resource, sales organizations deploy an individual process where the salesperson is responsible for nearly all sales tasks. These tasks include prospecting, selling, administration, solution design and customer support.
Since sales organizations leave prospecting up to the individual salespeople, they have little control over the inputs to their process (sales opportunities). Consequently, sales organizations cannot control their throughput rate. They find it impossible to dial up or down the number of sales they produce each quarter because they don’t control the sales opportunities that enter the sales process.
Why is that? Because most companies rely on existing customers and referrals for their sales opportunities. They inevitably lose some customers each year which erodes their primary source of opportunities. And since referrals come primarily from their current customers, this erosion in sales opportunities is compounded by the loss of their source of referrals.
What’s needed is another source of sales opportunities. If you could create a reliable source of sales opportunities, then you could control the inputs to the sales process. You could dial up the number of sales opportunities you produce each quarter as you need them, and dial them back down when production reaches the limit of its ability to service orders.
Justin Roff-Marsh’s relationship marketing method redefines the primary source of sales opportunities. With his method you cultivate relationships over time with a large number companies who are not your customers.
In fact our Relationship-centric Marketing methodology explains how an organisation should actively acquire and sustain intimate relationships with individuals who are not yet clients (prospects) and even some individuals who may never be clients (centres of influence).
With relationship marketing you can use your promotional budget to “acquire a constant stream of relationships with potential customers and centers of influence.”
Relationship marketing enables you to scale your sales production because you “have a clear cause and effect relationship between your sales inputs (promotional expenditure) and its output (sales).”