For example, Realtors whose commissions depend on successful loan transactions don't buy institutions or products; they buy mortgage professionals who make transactions and commissions happen. Understanding this fact is the first step in realizing the value of personal marketing.
If you succeed, it is more often than not, because you are marketing yourself continually and effectively. If you are not attaining the levels of productivity you want, you are somehow failing to market yourself, or not doing it continually. This fact points out the value and benefit of a Personal Marketing Program.
A Personal Marketing Program will help you become an effective relationship builder, someone who can target, develop, and maintain relationships with a referral base of business that will keep you and your institution in business. Use it to make yourself more productive and successful by using proven techniques to market yourself. It is a process that provides value by developing, and sustaining, a professional image of you.
Marketing Isn't Selling
Traditional selling is taking an existing product or service and creating a need/want [demand] for it. It is a 'ready-shoot-aim' process that takes a shotgun approach to prospects, the more you shoot, the more likely you are to hit someone. Most sales professionals use this type of approach. They "sell" their products, price, services, etc without any real knowledge of their prospects' needs. By pushing the product, price, and service, they hope they will create a "need".
Relational selling and marketing, in contrast, requires determining what people (your target audience) need/want [demand] and creating a product and service to fill their "need cap". It entails aiming before you shoot and is a much more surgical and focused approach. It is understanding first before trying to be understood.
Marketing is a great way to begin to differentiate yourself from the competition. The good "marketer" continually produces greater sales results than the "product pusher".
As you read on, be aware as we describe the whys and hows of marketing and how your approach differs, or might benefit. You will begin to see specific areas that, by developing a marketing approach, you can create an image that clearly is more professional than your competitors and will create new inroads for you.
A key aspect of personal marketing is knowing what people want, and designing a vehicle to fit that need. At the beginning of the article we noted that Realtors want completed loan transactions and the commissions they generate . . . but, they want relationships first as the vehicle that produces those closed loans and commissions. The want mortgage professionals they can work with time and time again: who make things happen, provide value-added services and help them succeed in their part of the business. Being that proactive business partner and letting the right people know who you are, is key to your competitiveness and productivity.
Marketing is good because it makes you take a strategic look at:
- Where you are and where you want to be. What volume and kind of business do you want and from whom? So often sales professionals head out to the field and begin to make their calls. There usually is not identification of where they want to go with their call activity, other than to get more business. A purpose, by the way, which allows for one's focus to shift to money instead of helping the client. A marketing plan allows you to identify where it is you want to go: a direction created by your vision, supported by a series of tasks.
- To whom do you need to talk in order to reach your target prospect? To produce more business, we must focus our efforts toward producers who will generate the greatest amount of business for us. To do this requires networking with existing clients as well as industry "scouts" that can point us in the right direction. Once targeted, how are you going to create an image that will allow you to gain access?
Even if you are pretty successful, as you define it, you need to consider a Personal Marketing Program because these are tough times that may not turn around soon.
The economy is slowing things down, especially consumer spending. Your competitors are getting hungrier, which generates more danger. Your edge will come from being more valuable to people than the competition. Being more valuable means knowing what they want, and that means relational selling and marketing.
On the brighter side, marketing is a powerful discipline, regardless of economic conditions. It involves a planned, strategic approach, marketing maximizes your effectiveness. It enables you to direct your energies into the areas that will be most productive. Therefore, your thinking is more focused on enhancing the value-added nature of your services. It's hard not to win big when your clients' success is what drives your thoughts and actions.
Marketing yourself is probably the most powerful thing you can do to increase your business. We are not talking about price sheets, topical fliers, and business card distribution. Marketing needs to be an ongoing campaign that through various vehicles promotes you in the marketplace as different, unique, doing things differently, while providing more frequent and more effective value to your potential prospects.
Marketing is integral to the relationship building process with a client. It sets the stage for the relationship because your marketing effort positions you as someone with whom they want to do business. With that in mind, think about the tremendous differentiation that will result when, through a marketing program, you can reduce, if not eliminate, the need for cold calls and begin working by appointment. Think about what it would be like after three months of your marketing program when a client calls you and says, "Could you meet with me today, I would like to explore the possibility of doing business with you."
Like a Business, It Starts With a Plan
Marketing is a planning-driven function, which is why it directs your efforts in the most productive ways. Just as you wouldn't start a business without a business plan, you wouldn't start marketing, especially personal marketing, without a plan.
Consider this excerpt from 'Alice in Wonderland':
"Cheshire-puss, would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a great deal on where you want to get to," said the cat.
"I don't much care where. . ." said Alice.
"Then is doesn't matter which way you go."
And so it is with marketing. Think of your marketing plan as a map. It starts with an in-depth analysis. Included are considerations of where you are, where you want to go, the competitive picture, and marketplace considerations. Certain kinds of business are better than others - Some of your competitors are on the rise, some on the wane. The market is changing with the economy, demand, buyers' lifestyles, product types, and more.
What do you want your image to be? What specific things can you do to create that image? All this needs to be part of the planning process for your marketing program.
The plan will have several important dimensions that collectively produce an awareness that changes the way you do business. You will find that, if effectively implemented, a marketing plan can create momentum for clients to call you instead of you calling them.
I am not suggesting that you not call them. I am only suggesting that with a marketing plan implemented, the call has dramatically better odds.
Given the above, you can isolate problems and opportunities, and set measurable objectives. Those are the goals of your Personal Marketing Program.
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