Getting customers is the real game for a company

CEO: forecasting and budget

CEO’s of companies make business plans.
Making plans for the future is great.
Forecasting can be a waste of time as you are busy not selling.
The CEO defines the budget for revenue and spending on operational expenses.
This will become the targets for the organization.

Marketing: lead generation

Marketing spends money on market research.
Marketing and Product management define the new products.
Marketing defines the the advertising campaigns.
Marketing hires a public relation team that tries to influence or get interest from the media.
Marketing organizes direct mail and emailing campaigns.
Marketing updates the website.
Marketing organizes presence on trade shows.

All the efforts of Marketing should generating leads, which is the best starting point for getting sales.

Sales: getting the customers

Whatever management and all other departments do like defining, creating and developing products, forecasting and budgeting, getting the customers is the real game.
This game is death serious as the future of the entire organization depends on this.

There are many hurdles in this process of selling as plans have been made while during the same time:
- The market has been changing
- Technology has changed
- The attitude of buyers have changed
- The buying process is changing
- The competitors are changing
- The offerings of competitors changes too.

Getting customers is the hardest part or the real game, as all plans, efforts and budgets can falter when the salesmen don’t get paying customers.
Thus the most important of all in a company is selling and getting paying customers.

Still selling is a process that requires a human touch, a personal approach and cannot be automated in most cases of B2B.

Sales: getting repeat customers

Sales have one more challenge: getting repeat customers.
Having one time customers is fine, but expensive.
Having repeat customers allows to depreciating the invested customer acquisition costs over several purchases.

How important are the salesmen in your company?
Are they appreciated above all or not significantly better than any other employee?