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It's Only Common Sense: Don't Believe in Sales? Shut Up!

If you don't believe in sales just shut up. If you don’t think that advertising, marketing, branding, sales tactics, and even salespeople work, be quiet. You're wrong and we don’t really want to hear your opinion. After all, what does an operations guy know about sales? What does an engineer know about sales? In fact, what do they know about dealing with sales and marketing people period?

Now I know there are some who do, but, from my experience, that number is perhaps one in 10 and that's being generous.

In our industry we have lost approximately 1,500 companies in the past 20 years. If things keep going at this rate we'll lose another 50 in the next 12 months. These companies don't disappear because of China, or regulations, or the government, or even IPC. These companies are lost because we are an engineering-based industry with engineers and operations people running the show. These folks, by their very nature, do not understand sales and thus “don't believe in sales.”

This is, of course, completely irrational thinking. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. The fact is that sales and marketing is not some religion that you have the luxury of believing in, but a system that works. Saying you don’t believe in sales is like saying you don’t believe in arithmetic, or geography, or manufacturing--it's sheer time-wasting nonsense to even talk about it.

Sales works, marketing works, branding works, and, yes, social media marketing works if you are dedicated. If you don’t “believe” in it, hire someone who does and get the hell out of their way. By hiring dedicated salespeople you will do well despite what you think.

Marketing, like anything else, is only as good as you make it. If you have no interest in marketing, if you don’t care about branding, if you think social media is for kids, you’re right--these things will not work for you and your company. They won't work due to one simple, basic reason: Your personal prejudices will sabotage any effort within the company to make it work. You’ll be so busy telling everyone in your company why these things don’t work that you'll actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will make the failure happen and then what will you have? It might make you feel good, it might make you feel that you were right all along, but we’ll see how you feel when your company goes down.

The most important thing you can do to prevent your company from closing in the next year is to grow your sales. No one goes out of business because they have too many orders. People close shop when they run out of business. In this economy, in this modern world with closings, consolidations, and subcontracts, even your best customer can disappear, and it may  be completely out of your control.

You can deliver on time, you can have the highest quality, you can give a customer everything he needs, but if he goes out of business you’re out of business. If that customer is bought by a large company that believes in subcontracting manufacturing so their CEM will not be buying their boards you’re out of business. If your customer decides he will be better off by going offshore you’re out of business. Customer attrition rates are through the roof right now. Look at your own company’s customer list of today and compare it to your list from five years ago--I guarantee that you will be shocked at how much it has changed and probably through fault of your own. For this reason you should always be selling, always filling the pipeline.

I like to look at it this way: It’s as if you have three fields in which you're growing a customer base. In the first field you're just planting the seeds--lead generation and prospecting if you will. The second field is where the new customers are growing and with your care and tending they are getting bigger. This group consists of your future major customers. The third field is your true crop, where the majority of your business is right now.

If you're not concerned with sales and marketing, it's as if you only have one field--the third one. What happens when that solitary field is finally harvested and bare? With nothing to fall back on, you'll wish you had tended and worked those first two fields of possible and future customers. When the third field is "dead" so is your company.Solely focusing on operations and engineers is a big mistake. How could you not believe in sales and marketing, branding, salespeople, and trade shows? Without this facet of your company, the pipeline will dry out and you may be one of those 50 companies going out of business this year. It's only common sense.