Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: People Say the Darndest Things (to Avoid Marketing and Sales)

Here are some of the dumber things I’ve heard from people in our industry regarding marketing and sales:

1. I think I’ll place one ad in a trade magazine; do you think that will be worth the money?
2. I sent out 100 sales letters and only received 10 responses and five orders.
3. We made this offering to 1,000 customers and made 12 sales, but two people said they didn’t like the offer, so we have stopped doing it.
4. My husband doesn’t like ads with flags in them, so I don’t want to go with this graphic even if it is the Fourth of July.
5. I’m only going to do this once and if it doesn’t work, that’s it. I’m done.
6. What if we send this flyer out and hundreds of people respond? We could flood the shop with business!
7. We stopped offering that product because too many people wanted it.
8. If we delivered good product on time, we would not need advertising.
9. If we delivered good product on time, we would not need salespeople.
10. We’re going to concentrate on making the shop run perfectly, and then we’ll start doing some marketing.
11. Once we buy our LDI, we can start advertising.
12. We sent out a sales flyer and got 500 responses, but we cannot find the time to follow up on them.
13. If we don’t go to that trade show, people will think we are out of business.
14. There is no need to market; we have all the business we need.
15. Our customers are going to be with us forever.
16. We only want high-tech customers.
17. I told all our lower-end customers to take a walk—we don’t need them anymore.
18. We don’t deal with customers who are hard to deal with.
19. We don’t deal with customers who want special treatment.
20. Our business would be great if it wasn’t for those darn customers.
21. Everybody knows us; we don’t have to advertise.
22. All our customers know what we do; we don’t have to keep telling them.
23. We fired all our reps; they were making too much money.
24. We’re not bothering with social media. That’s just for kids.
25. I don’t need a website designer; the kid next door is doing it for me.
26. I don’t understand all this connection stuff; so what if someone across the country knows my name?
27. If we got rid of this global market stuff, we’d be thriving.
28. I know a good deal when I see it.
29. We’re way to busy right now to get out and get new business.
30. This worked in 1974 and I know it will work today.
31. Putting more than one part number on a panel is not doable.
32. Putting five part numbers on one panel is unethical.
33. Our boss decides our marketing message—it’s his company.
34. When it’s time to talk to our customers, we shove the salesperson out of the way and talk directly.
35. All anyone wants is the lowest price.
36. I’m not going to do that; it makes me too nervous.
37. What will happen if too many people want to buy from us?
38. I remember once in 1984 when we had too much business. I never want to go through that again.
39. We’re way behind in the shop, so we are going to stop booking business until we catch up.
40. Once we catch up, we’ll send the sales team out to get business flowing again.
41. Why should I read a business book? I’ve been out of college for 20 years.
42. We get all our business from word of mouth.
43. I hired that salesperson a month ago and all he has brought me so far are quotes.
44. I going to fire that new salesperson. It’s been five weeks and we only have two new customers.
45. I’m going to hire that salesperson; he will bring me all of his business from his old company.
46. I have my salespeople make 100 calls a day, every day.
47. No wonder sales are down; it’s a school holiday.
48. No wonder sales are down; we have a new president.
49. No wonder sales are up; we have a new president.
50. Did you see what the stock market did yesterday? That will boost our business.

And the dumbest thing I ever heard someone say about sales and marketing…drum roll please: Build it and they will come. 

It’s only common sense.