Remember How You Buy

It seems as though Marketing & Communications departments (and budgets) have been pared down now that workloads are on the rise. But one fact is clear: The show must go on! The programs and projects are piling up!

In fact, companies have suddenly remembered that retaining and re-selling existing customers is not enough; winning new customers is the focus. And that creates urgency in marketing. It is up to the marketing professionals, then, to leverage this urgency and regain the budgets and resources needed to do the job.

Now, marketing professionals are "selling" internally as much as they are externally!

Sales guru Geoffrey Gittomer says, "Forget how to sell, and remember how to buy!" This applies as much to selling budgets as it does to selling products. Here are some proven approaches:

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

Associate your program with some earlier successful campaign and incorporate into your proposal the same ROI metrics or tracking so everyone can be assured they will be able to understand and compare the measured results.

To the person with the purse strings, this creates an immediate association with a proven success. If this is guilt by association, sign me up. You are allowing team members and managers to "buy" your request for budget by "selling" them something they have already agreed to in the past.

THE SAUSAGE GRINDER

I grew up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood and spent many Saturday mornings in the corner deli watching fresh meats prepared. Making sausages is not pretty, so most people don't watch and they don't realize that sausages are all basically the same except for one or two key ingredients. It's the minor ingredients that completely change the nature and flavor of a given sausage.

So, if the butcher is making a batch of Italian pork sausages, and the neighborhood is celebrating St. Patrick's Day, he dumps in allspice, sage and cloves and -- voila! -- Irish Sausages!

The same approach works in companies. If there is a worthwhile unfunded marketing or communications program, throw in some other ingredient that ties it in with the high priority corporate initiative of the moment.

For example, if you want to justify a customer sales event, but the only thing getting budget is corporate image marketing, then propose a corporate image event with customers invited!

Like sausage, it's messy, but it's delicious!

SILO! SILO! IT'S OFF TO WORK WE GO!

All big companies are familiar with the concept of partnering with other companies for marketing and promotion. HP and Microsoft, for example, work together to promote software and computers -- sharing expenses, coordinating their sales efforts, etc.

When you think of it, though, lots of big companies act like a series of smaller companies. These "silos" of marketing and communications are aligned at the highest levels, but often uncoordinated at the program or project level.

To win the resources for a worthy program or project, enroll some other department in another "silo" to share the costs and benefits. Partnering with another department on items like printing cost, graphic design or program coordination may reduce the overall budget and the "bi-partisan" collaboration will increase the exposure to your program.

Remember, for any project the internal sale can be tough -- perhaps the toughest part. Get your internal audience to "buy" your program and you won't have to "sell" it.