9 Tips for Being More Productive With Your Sales and Marketing Efforts

Not all sales and marketing strategies are created equal. Some require a lot of work and resources for very little reward. And others are actually optimized to get more done with less. Here are some tips from our small business community for getting more done with your sales and marketing efforts.

Make Sure Your Employees Are as Productive as Possible
In order for your business to accomplish its goals, you need productive team members. But there are some things you might be missing when it comes to making your employees as productive as possible. In this Planday post, Lisa Andersen elaborates.

Sync Up Your Sales and Marketing
Your sales and marketing efforts don’t necessarily have to be intertwined in order to be effective. But when they’re completely out of sync, it can be difficult to really find the right direction for your business. This post on the Your Guerrilla Marketer blog by Rick Verbanas outlines what you can do in that situation.

Win More With Social Media
Businesses are increasingly relying on social media as part of their marketing and sales efforts. But you need to make sure that your social media strategy is going to be one that actually helps to sustain those efforts, as Martin Zwilling details in this Startup Professionals Musings post. You can also see commentary on the post over on BizSugar.

Create a Winning Value Proposition
You can’t hope for any of your sales or marketing efforts to be effective if you don’t have an effective value proposition. In this SUCCESS Agency blog post, Mary Blackiston explains the importance of having a great value proposition and offers some tips for creating one.

Create Epic Nurture Campaigns

Getting new customers is an important part of sales and marketing. But nurturing your existing customers is just as, if not more, important. So this Marketing Land post by Mary Wallace includes some tips for creating epic nurture campaigns.

Use These Tips for Instagram Stories

Instagram stories is a relatively new social media platform that businesses can use to share narratives and behind the scenes shots. This Divahound post by Shannon Huppin includes some tips and ideas you can use to make your Instagram stories memorable. And BizSugar members share their own thoughts here.

Get the Most From Your Board

If your business has a board of directors or any other type of leadership board, they can also be instrumental in making sure that your business runs as efficiently as possible — and this takes in the areas of selling and marketing too. In this Biz Epic post, John Southwell offers tips for making sure that you get the most from your board.

Benefit Your Business With App Store Optimization Techniques

If your business uses mobile apps of any kind, then you need to be able to optimize those apps for app stores if you want to get the most out of them. You can learn more about some of the most effective techniques in this Techlofy post by Ashfaq Ahmad.
Use Twitter Video to Attract the Right Followers
Having the right followers on social media is absolutely essential for making your strategy as effective as possible. And Twitter video is one way that you can work to attract the people who are going to be most relevant to your small business, as Svitlana Latysheva explains here on Post Planner. And the BizSugar community also shares input on the post here.

Does everyone have a business in them?

"It's not beyond anyone but it certainly doesn't work for some people. It's strange isn't it that Business Link have an introductory section on their site which is headed 'find out whether you can work for yourself' that somewhat suggests they doubt it works for everyone."

"You have to have the fire in your belly to even consider starting up your own business. By the evidence, the vast majority don't have it. There are sacrifices and extra worries and responsibilities you take on which I don't think many are prepared to entertain. The allure of the 9-5 set time set wage every week is too easy to go along with."

"I think the potential is there for everyone to create their own business - although of course the quality of each will vary significantly. That said, can everyone manage to successfully run their own business for a significant length of time? Well, given the right tool set and the desire/ability to utilise the right resources then perhaps. Do most people want to? I don't think so at all.

"At the end of the day, I think many people would create a business where they simply attained the position of a high ranking employee, rather than as a dynamic business owner with the urge to expand and grow. Nothing wrong with wanting the security that that would bring, but the loss of drive could lead to catastrophic failure in the long run."

"I think you will find that going by 80% of the threads on this forum that most people obviously don't. Reasons? I would take a guess at lack of common sense seconded by lack of courage. Get those two together with some finance and you are on your way, for better or worse."

"Who created this daft idea? Is this supposed to encourage people to go into business? And in this current economic climate? How irresponsible. The ability to run your own business is one thing, to make a profit while doing it, is quite another. Maybe the powers that be are looking for extra revenue in tax and VAT."

"Short answer no. Not everybody, not even a majority. Most people can do any job but not all have what it takes to run their own business. It's not just about having some knowledge to carry out the business, but most importantly it's having the grit and determination to keep going when most have given up long before. You can learn just about anything, but you cannot give people a backbone, and sadly some just don't have it in them."

"No, not everybody has a business in them, and this is a political move to try and get people to start new businesses rather than just accept redundancy/the sack and claim benefits. It might be seen as a cynical ploy, but despite higher failure rates of new businesses in recessions, if at least some startups are attempted and become successful than we have at least those successes, which we might not have had. There are those who start the fire and at the other end of the spectrum there are those who tend them. All provide value in some way, but at the moment we are trying to get as much value from the fire raisers as possible because the market for fire carers is getting smaller. We need the startups by fire makers despite high failure rates."

"Has everyone got it in them to be a a employee? Not in my experience. To even suggest that everyone has the ability to run a business is just plain daft. The vast majority of people like security or at least the perception of it which is what a job is, but that perception is better than the chaos of running a business. Look at the failures of business as it is and that is from motivated people who want to do it. Having having said that, the future of being an employee is very limited in western countries so creating a life you are in control of as much as possible is to be encouraged but you have to want to and want to a lot as well as having the ability to do so."

In my humble opinion I don't think business is for everyone. There are many key skills that are needed to run your own business - whether you are doing something like cleaning or offering a bespoke service. When an individual has a job, they are focussed on the tasks that they are responsible for and may have absolutely no idea what it takes to run and manage the whole business whether large or small. Running your own business you have to wear many hats, cleaning, management, determination, accounting, customer service, planning, cash flow, making a profit not just turning money over, H&S ..... I could go on! There are many people who enter business and fail very quickly as they really don't understand what it actually takes to make profits and soon realise they don't possess the skills or determination. Entering or starting a business should not be taken lightly."