Simon Sinek’s revolutionary book, Start With Why, is a fantastic inspiration as you begin to build your plan. If you haven’t read this book, check out Sinek’s TED Talk.
Inspired leaders all think from the inside out.
Most people start with what they do and never get to the why. This is easy to do in the routine of daily business life. As a company that builds websites and executes online marketing programs for office technology resellers, it’s easy for us to get enamored with the latest gadgets.
The world of social media and online marketing offers all kinds of new bells and whistles every day. And while it is important to stay on top of our craft, it’s critical to remember why we exist. This is true for us and it is true for your business as well. If you are a copier dealership you have a full suite of hardware, software, and solutions. You have a service team and you have great technology partners. But so does every one of your competitors…
People don’t by ‘WHAT you do’ they buy ‘WHY you do it
Why does someone pick your dealership over the competition? How do you develop loyal clients? The answer comes from the inside: Why are you in business?
As I reflect on our business, Dealer Marketing, I think back over my career in the office technology industry that has been so good to me. From my early days as a territory sales rep selling copiers in 1993 to participating in the digital revolution as a DSM for Toshiba (Don’t Copy, Lead.) to teaching sales reps how to sell document management solutions, my journey through the evolving technology world has been very interesting. But these days as I lead a team of online marketing professionals, my “why” has become crystalized around the evolving buyer:
We help copier dealers stay in business by helping their sales teams succeed in the new buying process.
Studies published in the Harvard Business Review show that buyers are 57% of the way through the buying process before engaging a sales rep. This sea change presents an existential problem to traditional sales reps who used to have control over the entire buying process. Having spent 10 years in field sales and now 11 years in online marketing, I have a unique perspective on the convergence of sales and marketing.
The bottom line: to succeed in this new world dealers must become excellent at:
- Engaging with buyers online
- Nurturing leads
- Smoothly handing them off to the sales reps
If our clients don’t get good it this their sales teams will find themselves in an increasingly downward spiral.
Our “why” is driving us to a lot of things:
- Experiment and find new ways to engage with buyers doing online research.
- Try new things and build new partnerships.
- Rethink how we do things.
- Passionately educate the channel on why we need to get serious about online marketing–and what do about it.
Why are you in business?
Let that drive the way you do things (how) and the very things you do (what). As you do this, you’ll find yourself more differentiated from your competitors and more aligned with your clients.
