It’s not possible to run a successful business by yourself. It’s about bringing in complementary skills.
Recruit someone who has the skills that you don’t have in your team. Focus on doing the things you are good at and get someone else to do the things you are not good at.
You will be more productive in what you do if you’re good at it, and therefore you’ll end up enjoying and will be eager to accomplish the task.
Running a successful business requires many skills and bringing all those complementary skills together may achieve synergy and scalability. What skills or department should you invest in?
- There is the Vision/Direction
- There is the Strategy
- There is the Marketing
- There is the Sales Process
- There is the Production
- There is the Delivery of the final goods/services
- There is the collection of the invoice
For this article, let’s focus on marketing and why it’s essential that accounting firms invest in Marketing.
To put it simply: the more marketing that is done, the less is required in the sales process. The less marketing, the harder the sales process.
It’s much more cost-effective and scalable to invest in marketing so that by the time the prospects come to see you, it’s simply “order taking”.
No selling is required.
Thus, the better your Marketing systems and brand, the less sophisticated the Salesperson required. Without effective Marketing and Brand value, the harder the Sale and the more sophisticated the skills are required of the salesperson.
That’s what I have discovered at Chan & Naylor.
Prospects come to see us and whilst I have never met them, they act like they have known me for years. Naturally, they have been exposed to our books, newsletters, seminars, and conferences which have built up a lot of credibility and therefore trust.
In our industry, it’s all about Trust.
Trust is built from Familiarity.
You build Familiarity through Marketing and doing great things in a consistent pattern.
Familiarity leads to credibility and credibility leads to sales results.
Hence running a successful business is a complete process and we need to invest in every part of that process for it to be successful.