You can't wait for business to come to you

Posted on 02. Feb, 2009 by Craig Killick in Marketing & Sales

As promised, another comment on my recent visit to the recent Basingstoke Business event. Two different people were bemoaning the fact that they weren’t aware of initiatives going on in Basingstoke. This includes marketing support, as well as tender opportunities that are available to everyone.

Tim Coleman, County Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses made a cracking comment (paraphrased) in response:

“if you are sitting waiting for work to fall on your desk from the sky, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

Forget marketing, some small businesses and their owners seem to expect the orders to come to them! What happened to good old fashioned sales?

It reminds me of the time I built someone a website back in 2000 and he wanted to sue me because his phone didn’t start ringing the day after his website went live.

The thing is, there is work out there. There are sales to be had even during a recession, but we need to go out and find the leads. We need to be tenacious and chase them down… hard.

Any business owner who goes bust during the recession (or during anytime) will no doubt want to blame anyone but themselves, but really, they’ll only have themselves to blame.

Time to look in the mirror everyone, but not for too long. Best to start looking outwards for those opportunitues that do exist… before it’s too late.

Tags: marketing, sales