Sales & Marketing for Small Business and Solopreneurs

I recently guest hosted the IRC Wealth podcast and interviewed IRC Wealth’s Joe Schum as trusted advisor. We talked about how solopreneurs and small businesses can align team, messaging, trigger events and more to help grow their businesses.

What is your vision for your business?

Whether you are a solopreneur or small business owner, it all starts with your vision. Define where you want to take the business. How do you want to be seen in your market? How will your business effect your lifestyle?  From here, you can begin to plug-in sales and marketing processes to make it happen.

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As the leader for your business, you are the guiding light for your team, your message, you product or service, and ultimately what you want company to look like. Forget about technology, tools and tactics for a moment. Think about who is listening, who can see and hear you (and how) out there  — ideally, while you are busy doing something else.  Develop unique content and messaging for these people at each stage of the buying process (from customer down to the person who just stumbled upon you).

You have 2 channels to consider and employ to reach them:

1. Non-human:  Electronic channels including website, social media, advertising free and paid. Develop these to build trusted advisorship.
2. Human: The people that surround you.  If it’s just you, it’s even more important to develop your electronic channel. If you have a team around you, what are they projecting? How are they carrying your message forward? From accountants to customer service, you want them to be ambassadors for your business. They should all be emulating your voice and your mission and should be able to spot opportunity for you.  And that comes from you as the leader.

With a defined message aligned across all channels, both human and non-human, your sales and marketing can work for you while you are doing other things.

Let’s assume your goal is to increase sales by 20%. What does that mean? Do you hire an extra person? Take the people you have and train them to a more effective sales conversation process? Do you employ technology that makes doing business with you easier?  Or do you go out and extend a whole social media and website branding process so people can find you? The answer is… it can be any or all of these.

At the end of the day, it’s all starts with your vision. Where are you trying to go? Map out your strategy, then go tactical and figure out the hiring, automation and tools part so your sales and marketing is operational for you while you are busy doing other things.