Breaking news: Check out this Audio Interview where Patrick explains to the Central Valley Business Times the war between marketing and sales.

Host: This is the Central Valley Business Times audio interview. And now, to today’s interview. Patrick, when you mention sales and you mention marketing, to the average person, they sound the same, but there’s a big difference, isn’t there?

Patrick Valtin: There is a big difference and that difference is actually getting bigger for the main reason that a lot of companies have that experience with their sales team. What has happened over the last five to eight years is the return on investment with the sales force has been going down against the return on investment with marketing efforts. We can talk about the reason about that in a few minutes, but yes, there’s a big difference and then fortunately, that difference is not perceived properly by a lot of small businesses.

Host: Well, let’s see if you will for our listeners, define the differences as you see them.

Patrick: Well, you know, when someone does a marketing campaign, he or she hopes to basically attract potential customers. The purpose of marketing is to create a desire in the eyes of the customers. When you put a piece of promo in a magazine or in a paper, when you put an ad on radio or on TV, the hope is “I hope this customer remembers my product when he thinks of buying it.” Problem with marketing is you may actually create a desire for that kind of product, but they never tell you that it creates the desire for yours. Now, that is where salesmanship comes in, and that’s where the big difference is. The job of a good salesperson is to make sure that the customer having been invited, having been attracted by your great marketing campaign is going to remember that it should be YOU that he chooses when he makes up his mind.

Host: Well, that certainly sounds like the ideal world, but I would imagine many of our listeners say, “That isn’t my business.” What are some of the problems that you see?

How to EDUCATE sales people

Patrick Valtin: I tell you what, the first problem is – and that’s one thing that I’ve personally observed in the US market as well as in Europe – how to educate the salespeople. I understand we’re talking about small businesses, and in many cases, the best salesperson in the business is the business owner, right?

Host: Well, sometimes. At least the owner will tell that.

Patrick Valtin: Yes. Well, when it comes to getting other people do the sales job, the big challenge to do that is to really educate people that selling has nothing to do with your product anymore. I mean, the key to getting the buyer to buy your product – and I want to re-emphasize this – is not related to your product or to your service. Selling has nothing to do with your product. Marketing has everything to do with your product, but selling has everything to do with something else that unfortunately too few people are aware of. I’m guessing you when you ask me the question…

Host: Exactly. What exactly are you talking about here?

The HUMAN FACTOR in selling

Patrick Valtin: Well, you’re going to tell or you’re going to think that what I’m going to say is not really new. But, what is new is the answer is that we need to put on that factor which is the human factor. Whatever people sell today, there’s always someone else on the market who can do it cheaper. Whatever best argument a sales person is going to present to sell his product, you can bet that there’s always someone else who can do the same argument even if it’s not 100% true. Today, the most important buying criteria – I’m not talking about the selling criteria – for customers, the first one, more than ever is, “Can I trust the guy who’s selling me his stuff?” Because of the competition, because of the market being what it is, there’s so much choice today in finding what you need and want. Because of that, the customer, unfortunately, is more and more, I would say, confused or diluted in his choice. He does not know what choice to make. You and I, when we have to buy something, the question is not, “What am I going to buy?” But the question is, “Where am I going to buy it?” The rule tells me that I’m not going to get screwed because I could have found the same kind of product cheaper or with a better guarantee in another place. So, market conditions, competitive conditions basically have developed a state of mind, a frame of mind of the customer that makes the buying decision more and more difficult.

Host: If a small business has to make a choice of allocating its resources between marketing and sales, what is that choice supposed to be in your mind?

Allocating resources between marketing and sales

Patrick Valtin: All right. Now, that question deserves two kinds of answers. First of all, if there’s a wrong marketing, you cannot have a good sales. The best salesperson cannot do anything with the wrong marketing, we all agree with that. What needs to happen though is a much better, much stronger coordination between the marketing message and marketing effort and the salesmanship attached to it. Marketing can attract a lot of leads, Doug, but I know a lot of customers, too many of them, who cry for losing the leads. I don’t know if you have experienced that, but there’s nothing more frustrating than spending a lot of money on good marketing to find that your leads are “unqualified”. Now, one thing that I always say in my lectures, if someone gave you, for example, his mailing address or his e-mail address, he is not unqualified. Nobody today is going to give you his e-mail address or his mailing address if he’s not qualified. Curiosity by itself is a qualification, and a lot of small businesses don’t understand that. Now, the point is, there needs to be much stronger coordination of efforts between marketing, marketing strategy and salesmanship. I can give you some examples, for example, when we help our customers doing their marketing campaigns, they get a lot of leads. They get very few closes, and the first reaction is, “Patrick, those needs were not qualified.” We need to do a better e-mail marketing campaign. So, I started to dig into those bad leads, and what I found out is it was a salesmanship problem. A lot of those small businesses, they are not so savvy with Internet marketing, e-mail campaigns. So, they basically give a lot of money to “experts” who will indeed give them the tools to do a good Internet marketing campaign. Guess what? As long as someone has not sold something, nothing happens in the business. So, I think that we need to give back a little bit on the basics of salesmanship and make sure that those marketing efforts are indeed properly followed up, knowing that there are new rules in the market today. There are rules that did not apply five to eight years ago or they do not apply that much. Now, not only they apply but they are hurting us. They are hurting small businesses because a lot of them still operate their business as they would have about five or eight years ago. I would tend to say, Doug, to give a good word for salespeople, I would tend to say that they need to put some basics on salesmanship and realize that in today’s society where electronic commerce dominates, some salesmanship basics need to be put back in. The most important basic is, even if you do business on the Internet there’s the human touch that needs to be present, and unfortunately, in the current marketing campaigns that I see, people basically, they rely too much on this marketing message. Again, I want to focus on this. Marketing can attract people, it does not close them, it actually sometimes will close your potential customers to buy the product from your competition, and that’s dangerous.

Host: That’s more than dangerous, that’s rather disheartening!

Selling so that you don’t lose customers to the competition

Patrick Valtin: Yes, it is, and when I said that, you know actually, a lot of customers will recognize that they try to follow up on a customer who was reaching through a marketing campaign to learn a couple of weeks later, that the guy has bought the kind of product that they are selling from the competition. When you ask them, “Why did you do that?” Guess what is the first answer that comes out? “I was not properly followed up. I never heard from you, guys, when I needed it.”

Host: So, that’s lesson number one, the biggest lesson that every business should know. But what are some of the others?

Patrick Valtin: The first point is the human contact, the human touch needs to be put back in this age of electronic commerce. And the other thing that needs to really be emphasized, and for small businesses, this is very, very important. What makes the difference between your business and another one? Again, it’s not so much related to your product. It is again related to everything else. Successful businesses today don’t show off so much before the sales is gone, but they show off much more when the sales is done after. What you do after the sales will dictate if you are going to keep that customer or not. And a lot of people tell me, “Patrick, to make the first sale is so hard.” I remember 10-15 years ago, as a sales trainer, I used to say, “Listen, it takes five to eight times more to make new customers than to keep one.” Today, Doug, I tell you. It’s reversed. If you think it’s easy to make a new customer, it is actually pretty easy. But to make it again and to get the guy re-order and come back to you, you’ve got to really, really deserve it. So, in terms of marketing and money, there’s also some marketing money that is needed to keep your customers buying from you, to keep him coming back. Marketing money is not only to attract them, but you need to put marketing money to keep them coming back, to keep deserving them buying from you.

Host: Patrick, I wonder if you would take a move at this point to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your company.

About New Era Selling – the company.

Patrick Valtin: Sure. As you can hear, I was not born in America, I was born in Belgium. I’ve been a sales trainer with big companies and smaller businesses for the last 23 years, and I’ve been a sales trainer for business owners of very small businesses over the last 15 years in Europe and in America. What I do, I travel all over the world and what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to reconcile the conflict in businesses between the marketing team and the sales team. That has been my motto for the last 15 years. My forte is to really coordinate the efforts between the marketing money and the sales money. How do I do that? I work with sales teams, with business owners and what we do together, we really analyze what is going on in their specific market. My specialty I would say, is not so much on the product side. I’m not a product expert. My expertise is regarding the human relationship between the potential buyer and the salesman, and today, that human relationship has been changing tremendously. I can tell you just one hint about it, people are more motivated to buy something not based on what they want, but mostly based on what they don’t want. You and I, when we are about to buy something, we are looking at what we don’t want more than what we do want. The fear to make a wrong decision drives the buyer much more strongly than the desire to obtain something today. A lot of businesses don’t understand that, and proudly promote and advertise positive aspect of buying their product. Today, with the market conditions, with the competition, I tell you what, the customer is more driven by negative motivation than by positive ones. If you can understand that, you are going to use a lot of potential customers. That’s my specialty.

Host: Where can our listeners get more information about you and your company?

Patrick Valtin: You know, one thing they should do, in a few weeks, I’m going to host a marketing and sales workshop with PostcardMania, located here in Florida, and I work with them. They could go to www.PostcardMania.com. They will see what we’re doing. In two weeks, we are actually hosting in Orlando a marketing boot camp. They would get all the links to me and they would find out what I’m doing and how I’m helping people to make a lot of money and a lot of happy customers.

Host: Now, Patrick, you’ve been very, very generous with your time. But, let me ask this, is there anything that you want to emphasize or bring out that we’ve not talked about?

Patrick Valtin: Well, I tell you one thing. I’m assuming you are addressing small businesses, right?

Host: That is correct.

Patrick Valtin: OK. My advice to all the clients that I have who are business owners, I always tell them, you really have to reconnect with salesmanship. Marketing and new marketing strategies – and there are a lot of marketing gurus our there to give you great marketing tips, and it does work under one condition – don’t give up salesmanship. Put back some basics of relationship because per observation and surveys, everywhere in America where I go, the number one missing factor is the human relationship. You know, there was a survey done by the New York Sales Club a few years ago. They were trying to find out what was the main reason why you lose a customer. In 67% percent of the answers to that survey first reason is, “I got not in touch anymore with my supplier. We lost contact. Once they did the sales, they’ve forgot about me.” Sixty-seven percent, Doug. If you would actually just handle that one, you would actually recover maybe 50% of those you were losing. I actually proved that by working with a customer in Florida here, by just asking the customer to informally, every two weeks, call their existing customers to find out how they are doing. We hired a couple of young ladies, and the only criteria of hiring those people were, “OK, can they talk? Do they have a smile? Can they be nice with the customers on the phone?” By just doing that over six months, that company reduced the loss of existing customers by over 60%.

Host: You’ve been listening to an audio interview on CentralValleyBusinessTimes.com.

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