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Business Growth is not in tandem with the marketting cost

Tigon88Tigon88 subscriber Posts: 3
edited September 2006 in Marketing
Hi:
I own a small consulting company and our marketting strategy is using
direct personal marketting. Mass selling is not feasible because our
main selling point is to differentiate ourselvs with competitors that
sell services based on mass market model.

Our problem is that the sales cycle is normally very long because it
takes time to develop customer realtionship which then leads to
"services trial" activity and lastly going through the lengthy
procurement process.

Problem is, this long sales cylce has incurred very high cost and our business does not grow fast enough to cover this cost.
Do you have any experience on how we can turn things around?





Comments

  • amacgi1amacgi1 subscriber Posts: 2
    What purchases or vendor decisions sit downstream from buying your consulting services for your clients?
    Perhaps there are some joint venture / distribution channel opportunities?
    Let me know.
    Andrew
  • Tigon88Tigon88 subscriber Posts: 3
    We thought of partnering with established vendor that package their
    consulting services with their  equipment sale. They have
    developed good executive relationship with key decision makers over the
    years.
    This is indeed a good move if we are worried about the high cost
    inccured from marketing cost. Only concern is that, profit margin will
    be driven down and harder for us to develop our brand name that later
    might help our other services.

    There is another action that we are considering that is to raise
    another round of funding for this marketing campaign but we aren`t sure.





     
  • JeffRJeffR subscriber Posts: 0
    Andrew I am in a little different situation .  The company I work for has national Account Managers whom establish the relationships on the procurement side (corp)  when that is defined my consulting services begin and I begin to consult my clients on what they need to purchase to make their properties improve their quality assurance scores.  I can however create opportuniteis with manufacturers who would help expand our sales and consulting arena to our clients nation wide. 
     
     
    Jeff
  • amacgi1amacgi1 subscriber Posts: 2
    My guess is that if you`re not experiencing a strong ROI on marketing investment, raising more capital might be difficult and will be hard pressed to solve your problem. Finding an innovative marketing / sales strategy might make more sense.
    A good arena for discussing this and other issues is a peer advisory board. You might want to investigate vistage at www.peersightonline.com</A>. You can try it for 60 days free.
    Best,
    Andrew
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