Have you ever encountered something in life that was just… backward? Sometimes it’s intentional and not awesome, like the bright orange, Kriss Kross pants I wore backward in middle school. Those dudes were hipsters before it was hip to be a hipster. Did I just date myself? Bueller? Moving on. Sometimes it’s intentional but still pretty cool, like dessert before dinner. Why can’t we eat ice cream and then eat our vegetables? We can and WE WILL.
But sometimes, it’s unintentional and detrimental to the success of your business, like focusing all of your efforts on marketing or social media before your operations, sales process or customer service is on point.
I had two separate conversations this week with unrelated clients, both with the same issue: getting potential customers to their websites without having those sites set up to be laser-focused on getting customers to purchase something.
Imagine it’s Saturday. You’re casually walking down the sidewalk in a trendy little shopping village. You just happen to have a ridiculous amount of cash in your hot little hand. There’s a woman outside one of the village shops, wearing a sandwich board, ringing a bell and giving you [insert Godfather voice] an offer you can’t refuse. Eager to claim your “too good to be true” purchase, you prance into the store, ready to make it rain.
You enter the store and it’s empty. Some shelves on the wall and a checkout counter with nothing on it. No cash register, no products anywhere, no visible signs of life except one other confused guy in the corner who’s just pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself about how this is why he pays for Amazon Prime.
You scratch your head (because that’s what confused people do in all the movies) and walk back outside. The woman outside sees your perplexed look and the wad of benjamins clutched in your hand, and says, “I just opened my shop last week. I was told that marketing is important so I’ve spent all my time focused on that and I haven’t had a chance to set up my shop. Eventually I’ll get around to displaying the merchandise and setting my prices, but for right now, I have to get people in my door.”
Annnnd…. SCENE.
Bass-ackward might work in hip-hop pants and treats before eats but in business, it’s less than ideal.
Your business plan probably shows your projections and P&L, and maybe a birds-eye view of things like what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, the current landscape of the market and maybe some marketing ideas like, “I’ll have some social media accounts.”
Marketing at this point is a good way to get you some mediocre Yelp reviews and a Ramen-noodles-for-every-meal income. Don’t put the proverbial marketing cart before the sales horse.
Now, and moving forward, the fortune is in the details. Do you have an operations plan? A sales process? A customer service manual that your employees can refer to for direction? Once you get all of these things in line and your machine is more well-oiled than the bowling alley when you step over that damn line, only then are you ready to put on your sandwich board and start inviting people to the success party that is your business.