Let's first talk about how most companies and sales and marketing organizations screw this up. A politically incorrect but nevertheless truthful analysis of what's going on out there.

1) Most sales people spend 90% of their time in the first and second phase, wasting their valuable time and your resources. The first and second phases should be automated as much as possible. Phase One and Phase Two can run on autopilot, in almost any business. This frees the sales person to spend his or her time selling instead of chasing non-buying prospects. And unless you're selling something really expensive and extremely complicated, phase three can often run on autopilot, too. Now you can go 100 mph. Phase three and especially phase four are where most people would start to differentiate marketing from sales. However, I want to make a large distinction between marketing and advertising.

Advertising is something you can do if you are IBM, Coca Cola, or Nike. Advertising helps build and maintain brand awareness. However, you must understand that this type of advertising is very expensive. For a small to medium sized company, this type of advertising is a huge waste of time and more importantly - money.

For small and medium sized companies, marketing should be defined as "salesmanship in print". You need to be able to test the results of your marketing, and know what your costs are. For every dollar you spend on marketing, you need to know what return you receive for that dollar in terms of leads, revenue and/or profit. If you cannot measure your return in this manner, then you are wasting your money.

2) Problem/Product Gap: Many people feel that the game has changed over the past ten to twenty years. Mostly, these are sales and business people under forty who were raised in the era of order taking, especially in the technology marketplace. In the 1980's, the PC was born, and most companies were clamouring for them. Many marketing and sales reps only had to sit by the phone and take orders, or show a customer that their PC's had more bells and whistles than the other PC at a little cheaper price, and they got the order. This practice carried through right into the 1990's. The same story was very true for software vendors also. The new PC's needed software that reached right down to the end user. This was a completely new group that needed to be empowered with new software tools. In the last few years of the 1990's, everyone scrambled to get ready for Y2K. Sales reps couldn't fill orders fast enough. And if you were lucky enough to be in the IT placement business, you couldn't find enough COBOL programmers.

There was also a huge spillover into other industries, as these new technologies needed other peripherals to help them run smoothly. As an example, office furniture had to be changed to fit the new PC into the workplace, and make a workspace more ergo dynamic.

When I started my business career with IBM in the 1970's, we learned that the only way to sell was to find the customer's problem, and then fit your solution so that it satisfied that problem. There is now a resurgence of this method, which is a method that never really died, but seemed to go into hiatus for two decades.

This is really the only way to sell, and many selling "gurus" are now espousing this fact, as if they invented the method. The real key here is that many sales and marketing reps, and even business owners, have not been exposed to how this method works, and how they can put this method into use. They need more training in this methodology.

They need training in differentiating themselves from their competition. They need to understand how to engage a customer in talking about their problems, and not spouting product features as a way to gain more sales.

Many business owners, and sales and marketing people need to learn how to work through the five phases. They need to know how each phase works, and what methods work best to connect them with their customers.

3) Advertising and marketing is all about the first and second phase, but companies rarely put first- and second-phase messages in their advertisements. Let's look at this for a second: If the first phase is agreement that there IS a problem, then advertising should be specifically and deliberately designed to identify prospects who have a particular problem to solve. Nothing else. Pick up any magazine or newspaper or look at almost a

Advertising is something you can do if you are IBM, Coca Cola, or Nike. Advertising helps build and maintain brand awareness. However, you must understand that this type of advertising is very expensive. For a small to medium sized company, this type of advertising is a huge waste of time and more importantly - money.

For small and medium sized companies, marketing should be defined as "salesmanship in print". You need to be able to test the results of your marketing, and know what your costs are. For every dollar you spend on marketing, you need to know what return you receive for that dollar in terms of leads, revenue and/or profit. If you cannot measure your return in this manner, then you are wasting your money.

2) Problem/Product Gap: Many people feel that the game has changed over the past ten to twenty years. Mostly, these are sales and business people under forty who were raised in the era of order taking, especially in the technology marketplace. In the 1980's, the PC was born, and most companies were clamouring for them. Many marketing and sales reps only had to sit by the phone and take orders, or show a customer that their PC's had more bells and whistles than the other PC at a little cheaper price, and they got the order. This practice carried through right into the 1990's. The same story was very true for software vendors also. The new PC's needed software that reached right down to the end user. This was a completely new group that needed to be empowered with new software tools. In the last few years of the 1990's, everyone scrambled to get ready for Y2K. Sales reps couldn't fill orders fast enough. And if you were lucky enough to be in the IT placement business, you couldn't find enough COBOL programmers.

There was also a huge spillover into other industries, as these new technologies needed other peripherals to help them run smoothly. As an example, office furniture had to be changed to fit the new PC into the workplace, and make a workspace more ergo dynamic.

When I started my business career with IBM in the 1970's, we learned that the only way to sell was to find the customer's problem, and then fit your solution so that it satisfied that problem. There is now a resurgence of this method, which is a method that never really died, but seemed to go into hiatus for two decades.

This is really the only way to sell, and many selling "gurus" are now espousing this fact, as if they invented the method. The real key here is that many sales and marketing reps, and even business owners, have not been exposed to how this method works, and how they can put this method into use. They need more training in this methodology.

They need training in differentiating themselves from their competition. They need to understand how to engage a customer in talking about their problems, and not spouting product features as a way to gain more sales.

Many business owners, and sales and marketing people need to learn how to work through the five phases. They need to know how each phase works, and what methods work best to connect them with their customers.

3) Advertising and marketing is all about the first and second phase, but companies rarely put first- and second-phase messages in their advertisements. Let's look at this for a second: If the first phase is agreement that there IS a problem, then advertising should be specifically and deliberately designed to identify prospects who have a particular problem to solve. Nothing else. Pick up any magazine or newspaper or look at almost

There was also a huge spillover into other industries, as these new technologies needed other peripherals to help them run smoothly. As an example, office furniture had to be changed to fit the new PC into the workplace, and make a workspace more ergo dynamic.

When I started my business career with IBM in the 1970's, we learned that the only way to sell was to find the customer's problem, and then fit your solution so that it satisfied that problem. There is now a resurgence of this method, which is a method that never really died, but seemed to go into hiatus for two decades.

This is really the only way to sell, and many selling "gurus" are now espousing this fact, as if they invented the method. The real key here is that many sales and marketing reps, and even business owners, have not been exposed to how this method works, and how they can put this method into use. They need more training in this methodology.

They need training in differentiating themselves from their competition. They need to understand how to engage a customer in talking about their problems, and not spouting product features as a way to gain more sales.

Many business owners, and sales and marketing people need to learn how to work through the five phases. They need to know how each phase works, and what methods work best to connect them with their customers.

3) Advertising and marketing is all about the first and second phase, but companies rarely put first- and second-phase messages in their advertisements. Let's look at this for a second: If the first phase is agreement that there IS a problem, then advertising should be specifically and deliberately designed to identify prospects who have a particular problem to solve. Nothing else. Pick up any magazine or newspaper or look at almost

There was also a huge spillover into other industries, as these new technologies needed other peripherals to help them run smoothly. As an example, office furniture had to be changed to fit the new PC into the workplace, and make a workspace more ergo dynamic.

When I started my business career with IBM in the 1970's, we learned that the only way to sell was to find the customer's problem, and then fit your solution so that it satisfied that problem. There is now a resurgence of this method, which is a method that never really died, but seemed to go into hiatus for two decades.

This is really the only way to sell, and many selling "gurus" are now espousing this fact, as if they invented the method. The real key here is that many sales and marketing reps, and even business owners, have not been exposed to how this method works, and how they can put this method into use. They need more training in this methodology.

They need training in differentiating themselves from their competition. They need to understand how to engage a customer in talking about their problems, and not spouting product features as a way to gain more sales.

Many business owners, and sales and marketing people need to learn how to work through the five phases. They need to know how each phase works, and what methods work best to connect them with their customers.

3) Advertising and marketing is all about the first and second phase, but companies rarely put first- and second-phase messages in their advertisements. Let's look at this for a second: If the first phase is agreement that there IS a problem, then advertising should be specifically and deliberately designed to identify prospects who have a particular problem to solve. Nothing else. Pick up any magazine or newspaper or look at almost