This is a series of articles in which we provide you with four, crucial steps for achieving better sales and marketing results. This series is for small business owners and the sales and marketing professionals out there who serve these brave souls. We are on a mission to help build businesses by helping you learn how to build and lead high-performance marketing teams and the campaigns that fuel real sales results.
So far we have addressed the first, three steps which include …
1. Have a plan of action, a Roadmap, you and your entire team commits to using.
2. Appoint a Pathfinder, someone who is qualified to lead your team in sales and marketing, if possible for one person in your organization. Larger organizations require more than one, senior executive to lead both sales and marketing.
3. Share your Vision for your organization with your entire team including every single 1099 and W-2 employee you have on your payroll.
The fourth step for you and your team to focus on in this process of planning and taking appropriate, directed action steps is to define the single, biggest purpose you and your team have for doing what you do. Purpose is often lumped in with Mission in the strategic planning world. Your mission is a specific task, goal or victory you define for some point int the future. For us and the purposes of the planning we do in sales and marketing, purpose is bigger than mission, although closely tied to one another for sure. You are clear because you know your purpose; the why that drives you. That drives clarity of your mission and what specifically you want to get done.
There are two aspects of defining purpose. The first is all about your business. The second is all about the individuals on your team. Their purpose and your purpose must align as much as possible to keep people performing at the highest possible levels, especially when it comes to aligning sales, marketing, people and technology disciplines to impact measurable financial results. The bottom line is what counts, right? All of these disciplines and the people who get the hard work done want to perform at their levels. We need to enable this, foster it, coach it and love it to make it happen consistently.
Investing the time to work “on” your sales and marketing is the same discipline Michael Gerber writes about in his E Myth work. Working on the business, sales and marketing lets you and your people actually think about and discuss openly how you all feel and see the world when it comes to purpose. Purpose may seem a bit too “woo woo” for some readers. But, clarity of purpose leads to alignment in more ways than one, such as values, commitments made and kept by everyone on the team, and how happy people are while being productive in new ways. These are the key elements of sustainable success.
Have you ever worked with anyone who absolutely hated their job? Why did they hate their job so much? It was likely because they did not feel any meaningful connection from a purpose standpoint. Why tolerate this? Chances are you are the person responsible if you own the business or lead the team. Take a hard look at your own purpose. Are you clear? Do you share this with others so they have a chance to align with you?
Purpose drives the storytelling power we need to craft highly-engaging content to attract more of our ideal prospects who then get nurtured to becoming paying, super-freak-happy customers. No purpose, no story, no flow, no sales, no business. End result is getting a day job? Every great marketing person or branding person should ask you about purpose so they can learn your brand, your story and how to craft great content marketing.
If you are clear on your purpose for being in business the next step is to make sure everyone on your team and in your organization must be able to see, know about, understand and buy into your purpose. Anyone who is does not know about the purpose of your company or what’s driving you deep inside will have less opportunity to align with you and help you get what you want.
Small businesses and the people who own, lead and work in them need a clear purpose and a solid plan of action that everyone will be held accountable to each and every week. That’s the way we run the ship around here at CME. Same is true for our clients when we take them through The CME Sales and Marketing Success Builder action planning system. Key word is “action!” Alignment comes when we talk about stuff like Vision, purpose and all the exciting elements to follow in this series.
Are you working “on purpose?” If not, what would that look like for you personally, your organization next and then, your team. Each and every person on your team should align with your vision, your purpose and the plan of action you laid out and follow each day and week.
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