Why do You Need a B2B Marketing and Sales Machine?

Our tagline (or Brand Promise if you prefer) at Fusion Marketing Partners is “Creating Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machines.” So what exactly do we mean by this term and why did we choose it as our company mantra? And why do you need such an animal as a marketing and sales machine?

There are a lot of terms used to describe marketing and sales activity. You can call what you are doing a program, campaign, initiative, plan, outreach, launch, test, rollout, etc, etc. However, while all of these terms are accurate in describing a part of the overall marketing and sales effort, a machine is something more powerful and encompassing.

The following characteristics must be present to qualify as a true “B2B Marketing and Sales Machine”:

1. A marketing and sales machine is quantifiable. It is not based on creativity, or how you feel about it, or whether the senior management team gets goose bumps when they think about it, but rather on how it performs in driving awareness, leads and revenue.
2. A marketing and sales machine is predictable. Since every company has its own product set, target audience, pricing, etc., it takes some time to get the model right. But once you do this, performance can be predicted fairly reliably. For one company, we were able to reliably estimate both their quarterly quantity of leads and cost-per-lead within a range of about two percent.
3. A marketing and sales machine is relentless. Once you get it going, the machine takes on a life of its own. You put fuel (time and money) into one end of the funnel and revenue comes out at the other end of the funnel.
4. A marketing and sales machine is constantly improving. If you set up the marketing and sales operation correctly, you can usually find ways to tweak it over time to produce better results. For example, if you are paying $90 to generate trial customers this quarter, your goal should be to get that number down to $85 next quarter and so forth. This will work until you exhaust your primary and most responsive prospect base, then you repeat the process with a new target audience.
5. A marketing and sales machine is more effective. When you compare how a machine compares with a collection of uncoordinated marketing and sales activities, you will find it to be a much more effective way of driving business. The sales and marketing teams will start appreciating and liking each other and peace will prevail everywhere (not sure about the last part).

Not only is Creating an Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machine a great tagline for our company but I wrote a book with that title. You can find the details at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.

Best,

Chris Ryan