What is Your Limiting Factor?

What is Your Limiting Factor?

Welcome to SalesFish Brand Marketing & Sales, the most strategically biased B2B Marketing Agency, telemarketing services, telemarketing companies (sales agency) and digital marketing companies, serving Orange County, Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento and the Pacific Northwest (Bend, Portland, Seattle). We gladly serve California and all 50 United States!

Are your sales needing a boost? Are you having trouble generating quality leads? So often, when companies need sales to pick up, they look for a method or system to pick them up. They try every trick and strategy in the book and, the needle doesn’t move. Maybe they’re approaching it wrong.

In biology, there’s a concept known as the “limiting factor.” It is the idea that the health of an organism, its ability to thrive, could be held back by the lack of something it needs. Take your lawn for example. If it is lacking sufficient iron, it will have trouble greening up and won’t grow well. Iron is its limiting factor. You can water more, add more nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium—you might spend big bucks on all kinds of fancy “cures” and potions—but see no improvement. But once you take away the limiting factor by adding iron, your grass will suddenly spring back to lush, verdant growth.

So before you go scour the Internet for articles like, “Seven Strategies to Lift Your Sales,” or you hire a high-dollar consultant, go back to the basics. The following items may seem simple, but if they are deficient or out of date, they could be the limiting factor holding back your sales. Ask yourself these five questions:

  • Is my website pulling its weight? A website should be a lead-generating machine, not just an online brochure. It needs to be the hub of all your outbound marketing, the place you’re driving your audiences to. Do you have dedicated landing pages with specific calls to action for specific campaigns or offers? Is your site optimized for the search engines? It may be time to get a website audit to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your site and so you can be equipped with effective website lead-gen strategies.
  • Am I tracking and using the data? If you can’t answer this question in the affirmative, you need to speak with a professional who can show you how to set up data tracking, interpret the results and change your approach accordingly.
  • Do I have a lead-nurturing sales funnel? It’s fine to offer an eBook or give a webinar, but those are just lead magnets. You need to have a long-term lead nurturing strategy that leads people from that initial contact, to interest, to the sale. For example, if you lead a webinar, it’s fine to offer an eBook as a takeaway, but if you haven’t gotten them to opt in their email address, you’re missing a chance to keep the conversation going. Work with a marketing professional to help set up automatic drip email campaigns, pay-per-click and other strategies that will help fill the funnel. Make sure those campaigns are based on solid, skilled sales content.
  • Are my online and offline media integrated? Make sure that your offline strategies like direct mail, advertisements and even vehicle signage link back to your online strategies so you can get them into your funnel.

Yes, these seem like elementary concerns for a business, but too many people overlook the opportunity to dial in the fundamentals. Sometimes, getting your sales growing strong again is just a matter of providing that limiting factor—and it may be a relatively easy fix!

Call SalesFish today and our high-touch, dedicated team will assist you in assessing your strategic sales goals, and the marketing and sales tactics best suited to your specific needs. And, yes, we will also advise you on the best A.I. tools that actually work and complement the real people in your business!


Stay tuned for more relevant content on creating world-class digital marketing strategies and B2B telemarketing sales strategies. We at SalesFish Brand Marketing & Sales thank you for joining us in our commitment to unwavering strategic planning, B2B brand marketing and B2B sales execution.

Call today and our “high-touch” dedicated team will assist you in assessing your strategic sales goals to tailor our marketing and sales tactics to your specific needs.

SalesFish B2B Telemarketing Services

SalesFish Net of Sales Services:

  • B2B Direct Sales, Channel Sales and Marketing Strategies
  • On-Site B2B Presentation, Negotiation and Sales
  • B2B Telemarketing and B2B Telesales Services
  • Cold Calls and Appointment Setting
  • Online Presentations and Webinars
  • Product Awareness and Announcement Calls
  • Primary Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Surveys
  • Experiential Event Marketing
  • Pre and Post-Event Calls
  • Audience Acquisition, Exhibit Sales and Sponsorship Sales

The Screwtape Emails, Part X

Welcome to SalesFish Brand Marketing & Sales, the most strategically biased B2B Marketing Agency, telemarketing services, telemarketing companies (sales agency) and digital marketing companies, serving Orange County, Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento and the Pacific Northwest (Bend, Portland, Seattle). We gladly serve California and all 50 United States!

There are right and wrong ways to go about marketing, and the pitfalls are many. A lot can be learned by seeing how not to manage your marketing. This original blog series weaves together an entertaining story that will help you navigate 21st-Century marketing with a view from “the dark side,” as “Screwtape” teaches his apprentice “Wormwood” via email how to sabotage your marketing. Enjoy…

PART TEN:
To: Wormwood
From: Screwtape
Subject: Heading Off Headlines

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” David Ogilvy

My dear Wormwood,

Read and re-read this quote by the “Father of Advertising”; feel the cold shiver run down your spine. The power of the headline to stymie our mission of mayhem cannot be overstated. It is the content equivalent of Thor’s hammer, smashing through the cognitive filters by which people ignore most advertising. There are no words more critical in marketing content. With just a few words, an audience can be hooked—with the end result that articles, blogs and other content stand a good chance of being read, shared and talked about.

So I thought it prudent to share some things the patient must not be allowed to do:

  • Devote significant time to crafting a creative headline…first.

It’s usually a mistake to start writing advertising content before one establishes the flavor and theme of the piece with a good headline. That’s like mixing ingredients before you determine what you’re baking! The Enemy suggests that in many cases, he spends most of his time on the headlines when he is creating a content marketing campaign.

  • Focus your headline on values

We just love headlines that tout features of products or services because they are sure to turn people off. People aren’t buying products or services; they’re buying the end result. They don’t want a laptop with an X38T core processor; they want a faster computer that’s lighter in their computer bag. So a headline like, “We Taught our Laptops to Fly” would get more attention than, “Introducing the New X38T Processor.”

  • Be Compelling


Compelling headlines make readers curious. They lead readers to click or keep reading to find out more. Questions often make good headlines. For example:

Can Your Laptop Fly?

Compelling doesn’t always meet clever. Many a clever headline may get a chuckle (or an eye roll), but fail to stir the curiosity to find out more. The best headlines are both compelling and clever.

  • Expand on the Headline

Expanding on the laptop headline, this might look like:

We Taught Our Laptops to Fly

20% Faster, 50% Lighter—The New MacBook is Going to Fly Off the Shelves.

The headline should be short, attention grabbing and focus on value to the audience. The subhead can start introducing specific benefits and features. Do not talk about yourself till you have first highlighted the value of your offerings to the client. Starting out with features and talking about yourself is just asking to be ignored. Start your piece by answering the question, “what’s in it for me?” (“Me” being the reader.)

Of course, Wormwood, there is much more to say on the topic of headlines, but focus on preventing these few actions, and you will successfully keep the Patient’s content campaigns from getting off the ground.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

Call SalesFish today and our high-touch, dedicated team will assist you in assessing your strategic sales goals, and the marketing and sales tactics best suited to your specific needs. And, yes, we will also advise you on the best A.I. tools that actually work and complement the real people in your business!


Stay tuned for more relevant content on creating world-class digital marketing strategies and B2B telemarketing sales strategies. We at SalesFish Brand Marketing & Sales thank you for joining us in our commitment to unwavering strategic planning, B2B brand marketing and B2B sales execution.

Call today and our “high-touch” dedicated team will assist you in assessing your strategic sales goals to tailor our marketing and sales tactics to your specific needs.

SalesFish B2B Telemarketing Services

SalesFish Net of Sales Services:

  • B2B Direct Sales, Channel Sales and Marketing Strategies
  • On-Site B2B Presentation, Negotiation and Sales
  • B2B Telemarketing and B2B Telesales Services
  • Cold Calls and Appointment Setting
  • Online Presentations and Webinars
  • Product Awareness and Announcement Calls
  • Primary Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Surveys
  • Experiential Event Marketing
  • Pre and Post-Event Calls
  • Audience Acquisition, Exhibit Sales and Sponsorship Sales