I
s your company practicing "sales prevention?"
It could be that your company is afflicted with that
malady but is blithely unaware of it. So warns Megan
Smith-Gill, owner and president of Gill Marketing
Group, who discussed the subject in a seminar at the
Atlantic Region Energy Expo held May 12-14 at the Taj
Mahal in Atlantic City.
Gill Marketing Group is a full service, strategic and creative
marketing agency, working primarily with companies in the
energy industry, helping them better understand their business
growth goals and how to achieve them, Smith-Gill said. "That
requires examining processes and procedures that may be getting
in the way so that we know where we need to make changes,"
she said in an interview with Fuel Oil News following the Expo.
"People come to me wanting to put together highly effective
marketing plans and campaigns," she said, "and, while that
ultimately is what we do on behalf of our clients, we have to look
at the whole business before we can implement the marketing."
Marketing's "job" is "to make the phones ring, to drive sales
leads into a company," Smith-Gill said, "but far too many com-
panies fail to think about what happens once that lead comes in."
It's not uncommon that companies spend a lot of time, money
and thought on how to get the phone to ring, and not enough
time, money and thought on their sales process, Smith-Gill said.
"The sales process is what's going to convert those calls into new
accounts," she said. "Marketing is not magic," she emphasized.
"It can drive the leads, but sales has to close the loop." Or, as she
sometimes puts it using a sports metaphor, "Far too many com-
panies fail to take the ball from the red zone into the end zone."
Some companies unwittingly engage in "sales prevention,"
Smith-Gill observed. The processes and procedures they follow
are "not ideal" for prospective customers. "A lot of times they're
ideal" —i.e., easier—"for the company," she said.
Companies that have "an outside sales model"—retaining a
sales company to close sales—are sometimes, though not always,
susceptible to "sales prevention," Smith-Gill said. In such cases,
a marketing plan can be working well, driving sales leads. Phone
calls come in from prospective customers, but opportunities
are bungled because the people fielding the calls haven't been
prepared to close a deal "right then and there," Smith-Gill said,
when the caller "is raising a hand saying, 'I want to do business
with you.'"
30 SEPTEMBER 2015 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
What Ails Your Sales?
Good marketing makes the phones ring—now someone has to nail the sale
BY STEPHEN BENNETT
IMAGE
©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/FRANK
MERFORT.
