The Sales and Marketing Imperative

As I sit and write this blog I can’t think of a single business that does not need a constant stream of new orders or customers. I know of none that can rest on their laurels.

Nevertheless, in the six years that I’ve been working as a coach and consultant I have in the past come across some exceptions: businesses (including my own) that were enjoying a totally full order book and quite literally could not take on any more work. However, for each of those businesses (again including my own) that idyllic situation turned out to be rather temporary and they subsequently found their sales pipeline to be rather thinner and weaker than their business needed to maintain a buoyant or even profitable position.

Unfortunately, for those businesses the unhappy realisation that their sales pipeline was insufficient was rapidly followed by a panic inducing realisation that it would take months to refill the sales pipeline back to an acceptable level, and that there was little or nothing they could do in the short-term to turn around the up and coming paucity of sales.

So if even the most prosperous businesses must give constant attention to their sales pipeline to ensure that feast is not soon followed by famine, what does that mean for the vast majority of businesses who in this new and rather unappealing economy are probably suffering a weaker pipeline than they would prefer?

In very simple terms in means that sales and marketing must be the top priority in the vast majority of businesses, because it is an awful lot easier to do everything else you need to do to develop your business when you’re not short of sales.

So if sales and marketing are legitimately not your top priority I love to know why not.