For Startup Founders and Business Leaders
I am thrilled to announce the release of my book BEING Profitable: A Business Development Roadmap. It’s the product of decades of research and experience. It’s the resource I was desperate to find when I started my first business.
The Book Is A Response To A Persistent Problem
The book addresses a frequent misunderstanding about what sales and marketing are and how to approach them.
The misunderstanding I’m referring to is the belief that sales and marketing equals promotional tactics, like pitching products, building websites, posting on social media and advertising. This activity-based view of marketing drives people to “get busy”, executing tactics without knowing why or where the activities fit into their selling system. This Random Acts of Marketing approach is not a sound investment strategy.
Amplifying The Problem
Many leaders make their situation worse by hiring marketing managers or engaging suppliers to complete ever more random and hopeful tactics. The hope is that more reach and frequency are better.
Unfortunately, awareness does not inherently lead to sales. Sales are not intrinsically profitable. New clients do not automatically become repeat customers. If you want your sales and marketing tactics to deliver real business value, there needs to be a system in place for converting opportunity into profits.
If you have not defined your success criteria and built a selling system where you’re able to measure performance, you’re likely not receiving full value from your investments.
It’s more likely that you’ll keep investing in hopeful actions, thinking you’re doing everything you can to be successful.
Don’t Think You’re Alone In This Pattern
When I started my first company in the 90’s, I did not understand sales and marketing. I sought direction from many agencies, coaches, mentors and consultants. What I got was pitched. Everyone had their favourite tactic to offer. The focus was on selling me, not guiding me.
My response was to read every book I could find on sales, marketing and business development. Unfortunately, the books all focused on some specific topic out of context with a systematic approach. I was determined to find a systems view of business development.
While I discovered many great resources, I never found the big-picture roadmap I wanted. I needed to stitch all the program elements together as I went.
Fast forward 25+ years. What’s changed? Not much. Marketing conversations still revolve around activities and tactics. You have to dig deep to find conversations about systems that are not tied to some tool or software package.
What’s The Solution?
Reframe marketing as commercialization or business development. In this context, business development means designing and building your company’s capacity to grow.
The purpose of your business development system is to reach, engage, enroll, and develop client relationships to maximize earnings growth.
This system is what you build, manage and optimize to help you scale your business. Like any other system, it helps you improve consistency, increase quality, lower costs and improve return on investment.
What Will Your System Look Like?
There’s the crux of the challenge. Each business is different. The system I’m building for my business is different from the system you need. Sure, there are similarities, but cookie-cutter solutions don’t work well.
Where To Start?
Build a system that makes sense for your business. Okay, but where do I start? I’m just a small business. How can I afford that?
The problem for most people is they never break out of the random acts of marketing trap. They waste more on busy work than they would invest in building their system.
The answer is simple. You take on building a system the same way you do anything else of great importance. You get clear on your needs, make a plan and start working on it with the people who can help you make it happen.
The problem is not how to build your system. The problem is not knowing you need a system, understanding where to start and having a logical sequence to follow. Once you start building your system, it’s something you roll out as assertively as you can. The difference is you’re focused and purposeful versus scattering your efforts far and wide.
BEING Profitable Provides The Road Map
This book serves as your roadmap and guidebook. Ideally, you’ll read the book once for context setting. The first read helps you see the big picture and appreciate the journey and logical sequence to follow. Then, you revisit the book as you progress through the many stages of system development.
BEING Profitable divides your developmental journey into three stages: Design, Build, and Grow. Then it breaks your journey into 20 core purpose conversations for you to lead and dig into with your team.
The 20 conversations get you and your team clear on the purpose of each developmental step. They also show you how all the steps fit together to form your system.
What did Lao Tzu say? “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
The other saying I like is, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
BEING Profitable serves as your roadmap and guidebook to assist you along your journey.
The book is not about turning you into an expert at sales and marketing. It’s about helping you take responsibility for leading your team in the development of your earnings growth program.
Where To Get A Copy?
BEING Profitable is available on Amazon and Here on this website. I hope you’ll read the book with the intention of reevaluating how you approach sales and marketing.
