If You Build It, They Won't Come

Have you ever had a salesperson pitch you on a product or service for your business that they claimed was going to have people knocking down your doors wanting to do business with you? There is a myth in business that if you brand yourself well, have a fantastic product or service that no one else has, that customers will come to you in droves begging to buy from you. 

We fell in the trap of falling for passive marketing techniques I talked about in Episode 1 when we should have been focusing our time on active methods. In a nutshell, passive marketing is marketing that is general in nature, like a billboard ad, sponsoring some event or sign at a stadium or something that is difficult to measure your return. It is completely reliant on your customers to see that ad, then go out of their way to contact your business. Most people barely see this kind of marketing, and it’s really challenging in B2B to direct those ads to the right people.

Every entrepreneur or sales person would love it if their customers just called them and said please take my money. That sounds ridiculous, but this idea of “build and they will come” just isn’t reality. It’s important to have a great product or service, but there are tons of failed businesses out there that had great products but fell for this idea that the product will sell itself. It's just not reality unfortunately. 

We made this mistake years ago when we changed our company name, got a nifty new logo, paid a lot of money for a fancy website with professional actors for video, and tried to optimize our website for search engines. It was an abysmal failure because we fell for the myth that our customers would find us, based on advertising and would convert based on our fancy website.

Even though B2B company owners and top executives may act more professional or dress in a suit, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aggressively marketing to them. 

In addition to increased revenue over time, the other benefit of aggressive marketing and prospecting is that you are in control of your business instead of waiting around for customers to find you.

Resources Mentioned: 

Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.

Website: https://www.salesdouble.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble