Guerrilla Marketing For Hi-Tech Sales People. Guerilla Marketing to Attract New Customers

"I'm Too Busy To Do This."
"Will this system work for my business?"
"Your System is Too Expensive."
"This is too expensive to implement."
"I have more pressing problems-marketing just isn't a big priority right now."
"My Staff is Too Busy."
"I'm uncertain about the Return On Investment I'll get from this system."
"I'm offended by marketers in general."
"This is too complex."
"How much help and assistance will I get?"
"But my product is so great, it sells itself."
"I can just buy some marketing books at Barnes & Noble instead."
"I like your system, but I can't get other people in my company to buy into it."
"What if this works TOO well?"

"I'm Too Busy To Do This."

If you're like me, you're incredibly busy. Tight deadlines. Multiple conflicting priorities. Demanding customers. Technology that feverishly, relentlessly races forward. Five hours of sleep last night, more overtime finishing an already-late project. (As I write this, it's 12:11 a.m., the crickets are more awake than I am, and this Q&A sheet is one of my late projects.)

Certainly you've got no time to take a few hours every week out of an already overbooked schedule to implement "marketing on autopilot" or to get free publicity for your business.

Right?

Well, back when I had my "Dilbert Cube" job, and I was National Sales Manager for a growing, struggling hi-tech company, I did not have extra hours laying around. I wasn't surfing the Internet or checking my non-existent stock portfolio. And I didn't have the luxury of locking myself in my office and doing marketing projects all day long. El Presidente always got real nervous and started pacing outside my office any time I wasn't talking to customers on the phone. I was handling all the incoming phone calls, managing a bunch of reps and distributors across the US and Canada, and it always seemed like we were right in the middle of some crisis.

But I knew that anything my marketing didn't do for me, I had to do myself-with manual labor.

And yes, it was going to take some time to "fix" our marketing. But Marketing On Autopilot was the only way our business could continue to grow without hiring more people-and we couldn't afford to do that.

So I came in the office at 6 or 7 o'clock several days a week and worked on marketing projects. Every day, before the phones started ringing, I would work on press releases, or magazine articles, or web pages-whatever it took.

Well, I can assure you that in the long run, I accomplished more by focusing a few hours a week on marketing than the 50-60 hours a week I spent selling. The typical sales guy, the average sales manager, has a "hand to mouth" or "hunter" mentality. The solution to every problem is simply to make more phone calls and see more people. But the smart guerilla marketer knows that he's building a machine that will feed him for life.

If you read the attached letter, you know that our tiny company made a huge splash in our industry, we got enormous marketing and publicity exposure on a pittance of an advertising budget, and sold the company for $18 million. I would not attempt for a nanosecond to take all the credit for that success-it was a team effort. It took the contribution of every single person in the company, even the people I didn't particularly like. But I can look you in the eye and assure you that without my marketing system it never would have happened at all.

Now the advantage that you have-which I did not have then-is that you can use the examples and templates I've already created, from successful marketing campaigns, and in many cases just about "fill in the blanks" and quickly adapt existing material to your situation.

You'll be amazed at how quickly "Marketing On Autopilot" can become a reality in your business-and how much more lucrative and less stressful your life is when a marketing system does most of your selling for you.

"Will this system work for my business?"

Everybody asks me that. A couple of members who sell machines to dairy farms asked me that before they joined. A member who sells graphic design to big companies asked me that. A guy who sell laundry equipment to hotels and hospitals asked me that. Software people, I.T. people-everyone wonders if my methods apply to their unique situation.

If you sell computer hardware or software, Information Technology, automation or process control equipment or integration services, medical devices, OEM components, contract design or manufacturing, audio/video, professional staffing or Customer Relationship Management-if you sell a complex product or service to institutions, banking, education or other sophisticated customers, then the Perry Marshall Marketing System is suited to the nuances of your kind sales like no other system.

I have successful students and clients in an wide array of industries - from industrial, technology and software companies to graphic design firms, legal and financial institutions, and even churches and non-profit organizations. In fact, I use the exact same marketing and publicity model in my work for a homeless shelter in Chicago as for my clients who sell industrial equipment and computer networking products.

Inner Circle members range from one-person startup businesses to companies with hundreds of employees, from manufacturers to service providers, distributors and independent representatives. The testimonials from my students give you an indication of the variety of companies who are successfully using this system.

It will to help you differentiate yourself from all others and reach a much wider audience than you're reaching now. It will help you eliminate marketing and advertising waste, acquire new customers for less money, make more money from your existing customers, and accomplish all these things with less stress.

But my system cannot be all things to all people. The other day a financial planner called, ready to purchase my system. I declined his order and referred him to a different system. (He was incredulous that I was serving his best interests and refusing to take his money!) If you're in another type of business, please visit www.perrymarshall.com/othersystems to learn about packages that would be easier for you to apply to your situation.

In theory, you could use this system for just about any business in existence, because the principles are universal. Like I said before, I use the exact same methods for non-profit organizations like homeless shelters and orphanages. But realistically, if you're in real estate, or the mortgage industry, financial planning, network marketing, a retail store or some other type of business-to-consumer sales, there are marketing systems available from other people specifically geared for those industries.

All of the other systems we recommend use similar underlying principles, but with different techniques that are specific to that particular industry.

"Your System is Too Expensive."

Inner Circle member Rob Northrup of Norcross, Georgia sums it up this way: "With the high costs of postage, ad space, sales collateral development, field sales calls-it is imperative that the marketing materials and marketing plan be done correctly. I purchased Perry's kit and gained a number of unique ideas from it that were worth far more to me than the cost of his kit. I can't imagine anyone in business that would not benefit from these approaches."

If you are spending money on any kind of marketing at all - printing brochures, sending out mailers, buying any kind advertising space whatsoever, or even building a simple website - you'll spend many hundreds of dollars at the absolute minimum and likely many thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This system will slash your marketing costs and ensure that you never waste money on marketing programs that don't work. Everything I teach is organized around results-accountable, measurable and efficient use of marketing dollars - replacing brute force with marketing intelligence.

If you're printing brochures or product literature, you'll learn how to craft a message that penetrates the clutter in your prospects' mind and clearly communicates your uniqueness. If you're using direct mail, you'll find dozens of practical, bottom line tactics for multiplying the response rates of everything you do. If you're buying advertising space, then you want to make sure that you squeeze the maximum value from every square inch of space you buy.

If you're building a website, you absolutely must not make the same fundamental errors that 96% of all other B2B websites make. If you're buying web traffic, you need to know how to optimally convert your visitors into qualified leads and sales. If you're vying for publicity in magazines and newspapers, you need to know the things that annoy editors-the do's and don'ts of making press people your allies. The modest investment in this system will pay for itself easily just by improving your results in even one of these areas.

If you're "just a sales person" or if your company is not doing any marketing right now, then please know this: A sales person whose efforts are not supported by marketing is like a factory with no machines: Everything you do is 100% manual labor. When you stop, productivity stops.

If you visit a country like Mexico or China, you'll find thousands of primitive factories like that-there are hardly any machines, everything is made by hand. It's no coincidence that the workers in those factories only make 50 cents per hour.

Many sales people here are in the exact same situation. If you're a commission-only sales person, then you only make money when you're presenting your information to qualified prospects. The rest of the time, you're not even making 50 cents an hour - you're losing money.

If you are a company president or sales manager and you pay your sales people a salary, you're losing money any time they're not in front of qualified prospects who are interested in hearing what they have to say. It's imperative that you have automated processes doing the hard grunt work of generating sales leads and sorting through unqualified prospects.

"This is too expensive to implement."

How much does it cost you to make a sales call? How much does it cost just to set up an appointment? How much does it cost to drive to that appointment and meet with a customer? Do you have to drive to the airport, get on a plane, go to another city, rent a car, sleep in hotels and eat in restaurants? How much money does that cost?

Do you know exactly how effective your advertising is? How much of your current marketing budget is being wasted? What if you improved the effectiveness of your advertising by just 25-40%? How fast would that recoup your investment in this system? What's the Return on Investment for your website, the literature you mail out, the trade shows you attend, or the phone calls you make?

The bottom line is, an investment that pays you a positive return on investment is not expensive. On the other hand, any investment that does not give you that return is too expensive. The Perry Marshall Marketing System is simply about getting the most from your investment of time and money.

When I was a kid, my dad was a minister. Money was very tight. We drank powdered milk, and grocery items like cheese and lunchmeat were a luxury. We always cleaned our plates, and every time I complained about eating broccoli, my mom would lecture me about all the starving kids in China.

So I'm a very frugal person by nature. I hate to waste money. I can't stand to watch companies blow thousands or millions of dollars on lousy marketing and advertising. I get a real serious buzz out of stretching seemingly impossible performance out of every single dollar bill.

Nearly every concept in my system can be reliably tested for only a few hundred dollars, and in some cases, pennies. In the November 2002 issue of my newsletter I'll show you how I used real-world, real-life testing to determine the best name for a new product-a definitive test that only cost two dollars and seventy-three cents. And it only took one day.

From now on, you will only spend significant amounts of money after you've quickly and inexpensively tested it, and your are certain that your investment is going to pay off.

That's exactly how a guerilla marketer "bankrolls" a massive, highly effective marketing campaign without having to go to the bank or ask investors for money. When you become a guerilla marketer, you employ inexpensive ways to test and prove marketing ideas before you spend big bucks on them. Then every dollar you invest in marketing comes back to you in multiples.

"I have more pressing problems-marketing just isn't a big priority right now."

Yes, you've got lots of things to worry about: Making payroll. Keeping your investors happy. Having a personal life outside of your business. Dealing with employee problems. Keeping new product development programs on track. Putting up with late-paying customers. Handling taxes and government regulations. Getting your property manager to fix that leak in your roof.

But please understand: You can have the best operations in the world, but all it amounts to is a few percentage points of cost savings. You can have the best quality control in the world, but it doesn't matter if the product is sitting on a shelf in your warehouse. There's far more leverage in improving marketing than in any other aspect of your business. Your profit margins, the degree of control you exercise over your business (vs. how much your business controls you), and the morale of your employees, all these things have more to do with marketing than any other factor.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young software programmers clamor to get jobs at Microsoft. Is it because it's really that much fun to spend 60 hours a week debugging thousands of lines of bad code? Is it because their products are so superbly engineered? Is it because Bill Gates is such a wonderful human being, and such a pleasure to work for?

Of course not. But a position at Microsoft is a coveted thing because Microsoft dominates its industry. Their marketing strategy is without equal-the highly calculated way that their products integrate with each other, the partnerships they form with hardware manufacturers, the control they have over their own destiny.

Yes, at Microsoft, it's all about the marketing. That's why Microsoft is a company that its employees are proud to be associated with. And the fact that Microsoft is hated by so many other companies only raises the bar even higher.

If your marketing is good, getting new customers is not a problem. Maintaining strong profit margins is not a problem. Competitors are not a problem. And when these problems are solved, you can afford to solve just about any other problem you have. But if your marketing is inadequate, then every other problem in your life becomes that much more difficult.

Listen up: Marketing is simply the arithmetic and psychology of getting and keeping customers. Therefore, if you're the president or CEO of a company, marketing is not a department that reports to you. It's your primary mission in your professional life.

"My Staff is Too Busy."

That's probably the biggest reason why my clients hire me to do projects for them. If you'd like me to look at a marketing project, contact my office and we'll take a look at what you're doing.

But in larger companies, there's often a huge chasm between sales and marketing. Sales is on the first floor, marketing is on the fourth floor, and there's almost no relationship at all to the marketing dollars that go out, and the sales that come in. It is very rare for marketing to be held to the same standards of accountability that sales people are, and that's a fundamental problem that must be solved. The Perry Marshall Marketing System is all about solving that problem.

Have you ever heard these words around your office: "Why is it that we never have time to do things right the first time, but we always have time to do it over again?" Build your marketing message right the first time, and your staff will have all the time they need to do whatever really matters most.

"I'm uncertain about the Return On Investment I'll get from this system."

Every dollar you spend on marketing should come back with friends attached. Most companies don't know what kind of Return On Investment they're getting for their marketing dollars; they don't know how much of their sales peoples' time is wasted on low-value activities like telemarketing; and most of their advertising is ineffective.

In marketing, you can throw money and brute force at problems-or you can focus on intelligence and finesse. My marketing system will give you a crash course in results-accountable, response-based marketing. And it will probably pay for itself just by getting you one customer you otherwise wouldn't have gotten.

How much does it cost you to get a new customer? Probably hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars. Do you know exactly? If you don't, that's a sure sign you need this system.

"I'm offended by marketers in general."

I'm just like you-I have zero respect for people who use great marketing to sell lousy products. There's a lot of folks out there who over-promise and under-deliver. People who use slick advertising to sell diet pills and business opportunities, but who never deliver what's being promised.

Those people offend me and they offend you, too. But the people I admire are those who build innovative, profitable businesses by selling superior products, people who invest their profits into building a better and better company. (Starbucks comes to mind.)

But at the same time, know that if you legitimately succeed in life-if you build a strong, profitable business, somebody's not going to like it. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch-all of these successful people are disliked by others, and they're OK with it.

If you want to build a successful business that you can be proud of, there are two fundamental issues you must address: 1) the outside perception of your business, and 2) the inside reality of your business. A truly great business has a great inside reality that is matched by the outside perception and awareness.

Most of my Inner Circle members are people who genuinely have a "better mousetrap" and a superior product, but the world doesn't know about it. They're frustrated because they have this great thing to sell, but nobody's beating a path to their door. So they have to work on the outside perception first. And I'm here to help you do that.

But my marketing system is not just about the outside perception. It's about discovering what your customers truly desire-and evolving your inside reality to match those desires, transforming your business into a formidable opponent that your competitors can't match.

"This is too complex."

A business that succeeds through good marketing is always less complex than a business that succeeds purely through superior operations or solely on the merits of a better product.

Let's talk about Wal-mart for a minute. Wal-mart's primary competitive advantage, and in fact their main marketing message, is low prices. Their marketing per se is comparatively simple. Under the hood, though, Wal-mart is an unbelievably sophisticated operational machine. They have one of the largest computer systems in the world, and most of their vendors have to locate dozens of employees in Bentonville, Arkansas, just to serve Wal-Mart's needs. The pressure to cut waste and improve efficiency there is relentless, because the profit margins are razor thin. There's almost zero margin for error. Doing business with Wal-mart is very difficult and quite unpleasant for most of their vendors.

Now that's a complex business. Do you really want a business like that?

On the other hand, a business that focuses on value instead of price-with leadership that is focused on "getting and keeping customers" rather than shaving pennies-naturally has fatter margins and is more forgiving of mistakes. If you have a 50% gross margin instead of Wal-mart's 12% margin, you make the same amount of money with a business that has one-fourth the size and complexity.

I teach technical companies to replace product marketing with Information Marketing. You create problem-solving information before you create problem-solving products. While it may take months or years to develop a new product, it only takes days or weeks for Information Marketing to tell you whether to should go ahead and spend thousands or millions of dollars on product development, or save your money and do something else.

Now is that more complicated, or is it simpler?

Realistically, once you've implemented the Perry Marshall Marketing System, you're going to have three to six major mechanisms in place that steadily bring you lots of new customers - mechanisms that run on autopilot and do not require constant intervention and attention from you.

Is that complicated, or is it simple? I think you'll agree, it's simple.

"How much help and assistance will I get?"

All systems come with a generous amount of hands-on assistance to ensure that you're able to implement the Perry Marshall Marketing System in your unique business. How much help you get depends on which package you purchase.

Physically, the Basic, Gold and Platinum packages are fairly similar, but they add on progressively more help in the form of phone consultations and marketing material critiques. The Basic system includes six free phone consultation days per year, vouchers for two twenty minute phone consultation sessions, a one hour fast start session, and several critique coupons.

The Gold System adds additional consulting credits and email access to Perry Marshall; the Platinum system further adds a comprehensive review of all your marketing materials and a two hour sales & marketing review.

The consulting aspect of the membership does two things for you: 1) It helps you identify the most productive moves you can make right away, so you minimize wasted time and energy. It brings outside perspective from an acknowledged authority in the field of technical marketing. 2) Sometimes it's very hard to clearly see solutions inside your own business, because you're too close to it.

One caveat, though: I'm extremely busy with client projects, and memberships come with critique certificates and consulting coupons, which must be used when redeeming consulting time. In general I only accept phone calls from paying clients, and I don't give away consulting sessions for free. On one occasion I terminated a membership because the guy had grossly unrealistic expectations-somehow he had gotten the idea that his membership made me his personal marketing assistant. He blitzed me with emails, sent me multiple revisions of numerous documents for review without ever using his critique certificates or consulting credits, and inundated me with phone calls. And he complained incessantly about the most trivial, silly things. I tried to resolve the problem but his expectations just continued to grow out of control.

So I refunded his money and withdrew all of his membership privileges.

You should fire your worst problem customers, too. (And you know exactly who they are, right?)

But that's only happened once. I genuinely enjoy hearing about my students' progress, and I love seeing you grow and succeed. My newsletter in particular is an open forum in which we discuss your challenges and opportunities. It's a place where we showcase the very best of what's going on.

"But my product is so great, it sells itself."

The world's basements, garages and warehouses are stuffed with great ideas and products that never saw the light of day. In fact maybe somebody should make a museum of great inventions that nobody ever bought.

Seriously, if you've got a great new idea or product that has the potential to "change the world"-or turn your industry on its ear-then you've got a mountain of a problem in front if you. It's always an uphill battle, and it's a mistake to underestimate how difficult this can be. Hundreds of thousands of people have spent their entire life savings on promising, exciting ideas that never caught the wave. You can't afford to suffer that same fate.

But you don't have to. My system shows you how to test the viability of product ideas at very low cost; how to use publicity and lead generation methods to find out if your new idea hits "nerves" in the marketplace. In most cases you'll figure out that you're basically on the right track, but with a few "tweaks" you experience a quantum leap in response.

I'll show you the hidden motivations behind your customer's purchase-why their reasons for buying are usually different than what you think they are.

Bottom line: If you're selling new technology to change resistant markets, there's no book you can buy, no seminar you can go to that will walk you safely through the minefield like my system.

"I can just buy some marketing books at Barnes & Noble instead."

If you ever find a book-or even a collection of books-that show you what this system shows you-then I'd sure like to know about it. I've got hundreds of books and newsletters and thousands of tapes and CD's on sales & marketing, and most of them only give you a little piece of the puzzle. In particular, most books have good ideas but they don't give you street-savvy how-to examples and templates. And you know as well as I do that many books are written by people who have great sounding ideas but zero experience applying their ideas in real business situations.

If you took most of the authors of most marketing books and put them in a lean, low-budget startup company-which is probably the toughest business environment that there is-that would be like running down to the nearest dojo, grabbing a guy with a brown belt in Karate, and sending him into a knife fight in an L.A. Biker Bar.

He'd get slaughtered. And most of those book authors would, too.

For example: Remember In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters? Now there is word that Peters "faked the data" cited in the book. Or let's take Zig Ziglar. Now I love Zig Ziglar. I love his values, I love what he stands for, and I love listening to him speak. He's got more fire and enthusiasm at age 76 than most guys have at 26. He's an awesome motivator, and he's literally the best in the world at what he does.

But I speak from personal experience when I say that having a tremendous attitude is not nearly enough in today's business climate. More than ever, you must succeed through shrewd marketing intelligence. And especially if you're in a small business, it only takes two or three major mistakes to put you out of business. My system will ensure that you never make a major marketing mistake.

I couldn't find a guerilla marketing system for technical sales anywhere. I discovered a number of great marketing models but they didn't really address the nuances of technical or Business to Business marketing. So in the process of 5 years of blood, sweat and tears, I created my own. And it's got more usable, street-savvy applications and tools than any other system I know. It consists of all the very best ideas and material I've gleaned from hundreds of tapes, books and seminars, and presents you with only the stuff that really, actually works.

"I like your system, but I can't get other people in my company to buy into it."

I had the same problem. I was just a 29-year-old punk who went to engineering school, whose last job was at a manufacturer's rep firm.

And you know what?

I never had the luxury of having a "marketing budget"-I had to ask for every dollar I spent-and never, at any time, was I ever given more than $2000-$3000 to invest in any marketing campaign. Ever.

I was just the sales manager. I didn't have any "marketing experience." Nobody was seeking me out for advice. At the same time, others would spend $30,000 or even $50,000 on trade shows and other stuff. Heck, one manager spent $14,000 running some ads and forgot to include our phone number.

But every dollar I spent had to come back with friends attached in 90 days-or else.

No credibility. No budget. Plus I had a gun to my head-I had to make my sales numbers every month. But in hindsight it was a tremendous advantage to have those limitations, because I didn't have the ridiculous luxury of throwing money at problems. Everything I did had to work, and it had to happen on a shoestring budget.

Here's what I discovered: Everybody else craves control of the glamorous stuff. They want to design pretty ads and websites. They want to chair the committee that designs the trade show booth. They want to hold a big fancy press conference and pontificate about their great accomplishments.

But you know what? None of that stuff really brings in sales, or makes money. What works in marketing is the un-glamorous stuff like writing press releases that actually get published. Making your campaigns measurable so you know which ads work and which ones don't. Watching the traffic on your website and figuring out how many visitors are actually telling you who they are and asking for information. Putting together reports and white papers that educate customers about the things they really want to know. Talking to customers and figuring out what they really, really want and need.

No, none of that is glamorous. But it's the stuff that actually gets results.

You and I both know that there are plenty of VIP's and Harvard MBA's at big companies who don't bother with any of that. Their heads are stuffed in a cloud, they have fat expense accounts, and they're paying off huge student loans. But they really don't know anything about anything.

(Enron and Andersen Consulting were generously staffed with people just like that.)

Stick those guys in a startup and they'll get slaughtered, too. Just like the brown belt in the biker bar. Just like authors of most "marketing books."

Here's the point: You don't need to be in charge of everything to be a successful guerilla marketer. Everybody else is going to fight over what they think is important, while you go ahead and do the important stuff. They won't hold you back.

And mark my words, you'll hit a home run. You'll pull off a brilliant guerilla marketing campaign that generates hundreds or thousands of sales leads, opens doors at Fortune 500 accounts, and makes you the hero. Suddenly everyone will want to know how you did it. El Presidente will finally realize you know what you're doing.

That's exactly what happened to me. My first "home run" was when I sent out an email blast, against the wishes of my boss, that got a 27% response from a lukewarm list. Another time was when I wrote a press release, run by a single magazine, that got us into Ford, Honda and Anheuser-Busch. Document templates for both of those are included in the system. I did this stuff with virtually no money, and if your budget is tight, you can, too.

There's an audio program in the system that specifically solves this problem. It's called "Fast Strategies for Resellers and Lone Ranger Sales People," and it's for people who have responsibility-but not complete authority-and still have to get results anyway.

Oh, and by the way-this system is not just for people on tight budgets, and it's not just for people who don't have total control of the purse strings. I've got consulting clients who have six and seven figure marketing budgets, running very profitable businesses. And the bigger the budget, the more amazing the difference is. I can walk into any company and quickly identify all kinds of "fat"-marketing and advertising money that's not doing anything for anybody; it's just being wasted.

Well if you've got a $2 million marketing budget and half of it's being wasted, what happens when you take the $1 million that's going to waste and apply it to something that works? You double or triple your sales growth! The point is, I'll show you inexpensive mechanisms to test what you're doing and make sure it works before you throw big money at it.

"What if this works TOO well?"

That's a distinct possibility. But isn't it a great problem to have? Really, it's nothing to worry about. Because there's no rule that says you have to grow your company any bigger than you want it to be.

If your marketing takes a quantum leap, there are several ways you can respond:

1. You can raise your prices and fatten your profit margins.

2. Become even more selective about taking on new customers-specifically, if you have enough "deal flow," then you only have to take the ones that perfectly match your capabilities, treat you with respect, pay on time, and do business on your terms.

3. A true marketing system is always adjustable-you can always increase or decrease the size of your marketing "funnel" according to your current situation.

Wouldn't that be great? It's happening for my other students-see the testimonial page-and it can happen for you.

Don't put it off any longer. My marketing system will eliminate advertising waste and cold calling drudgery. It will make your business more systematic and predictable. If you're struggling, it will put your feet on solid ground. Fill out the action response form and let's get started!

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