How involved are you, personally, in your company’s sales efforts?
I’m going to guess not nearly enough.
But your business is “different…” This type of thing would never work for your business… After all, you consider the “thing” you sell to be something pretty boring.
You might say something like, “we sell a product or service with a very long and sophisticated sales process.”
It comes as a shock to many of the CEOs, Owners, and Presidents I talk to when I’m suggesting they need to take a much more active role in their sales and marketing efforts.
They’re surprised, frankly, when I’m telling them that even though they’re dealing with the day-to-day issues that come up with running 10-50-100M+ companies, they still need to be making the time to actively market their companies.
And, I’m suggesting THEY are the driving force of those sales and marketing efforts.
[tweetable alt=””]You need to build, foster, and perpetuate yourself as the leader of your organization.[/tweetable]
Taking such a role can build your business better and faster than ANY other approach, because people are ALWAYS more attracted and interested by fascinating people. They’re also, ALWAYS, far more inspired by dynamic people as opposed to boring companies, institutions, products, and services.
Think simple steps first.
It starts with the CEO, who picks up the phone to call customers every day. Calling on new customers, existing customers, and lost customers
It’s the CEO who puts the pen to paper to publish a provocative blog or write and email her own “Tuesday Tidbit.”
Or the CEO who hits record on the iPhone camera to record and post an interesting piece of content.
We can find these examples in the most successful companies.
Benioff from Salesforce.
Jobs from Apple.
Disney from Disney.
Buffett.
The Colonel from KFC.
Edison.
The character of your company can become heroic, legendary, significant, and fascinating in your industry, and most importantly, to your current and prospective clients.
CEOs, Presidents, and Owners willing to do this, who study this, and emulate those who’ve done it before have an opportunity to skyrocket and overtake competitors – even those competitors with greater expertise, credibility and capabilities.
Just because you sell janitorial supplies, door hinges, accounting, IT security services, or auger compactors, doesn’t mean you can’t claim ownership of your industry.
Let me clarify one last point.
I’m not suggesting, that as a CEO you need to become a charismatic superstar – especially if that’s not who you are.
I talk to CEOs all the time that are shy, quiet, and introverted, yet they’re successfully running powerful and dominant companies.
The key here is simple, it’s still up to leadership to foster the type of environment where the COMPANY can be charismatic, fascinating, and interesting. [tweetable alt=””]Nobody likes dealing with boring companies.[/tweetable]
Will you take this opportunity to become the undisputed thought leaders of your industry?
