Us marketers have a real interesting relationship with bean counters: We use them the wrong way. In 2 areas:

(1) We FAIL to have bean counters tell us how much money our promotions and sales funnels are making for us. Seriously, most of us don’t have any “cost accounting” on our advertising and product sales at all. We shoot from the hip. Dumb.

(2) We let our bean counters scrutinize our reps, distributors and affiliates. “Hey wait a minute, I don’t really think you have to keep paying Jeff for that customer you brought him last year.” We amputate a critical piece of our sales channel and we kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

That’s backwards. It happens, by the way, because the cost accounting of #2 is a whole lot easier to perform than #1. Accountants are notoriously shortsighted about marketing and business strategy anyway.

Here’s how it should be:

(1) Our bean counters should be telling us, in dollars and cents, how much those promotions are earning. Most of us have products we should get rid of. (Myself included! As soon as I’m done with this email I’m gonna go fix this.)

(2) Our bean counters should not be allowed to make personal staff and sales channel decisions. They don’t understand the nature of the relationship.

Let’s get this right. Again, I’m guilty of this myself. Gonna change this.

Robert Serling created a document called The 8 Questions and one of my favorite sections is called “Meet the Captain of Your Ship – Fred in Accounting.”

There’s some real gold here and I think you’ll benefit from these 8 questions:

http://profitalchemy.com/the8questions/

Perry Marshall

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.