Specialization Doesn’t Have To Be Scary

There is a really interesting discussion going on in a group I belong to on LinkedIn about how to bring together Marketing and Sales.  It is really interesting how separate these two functions can get and yet they are vital  to one another.  For most of my clients, it is impossible to have marketing and sales separate because it is all managed by the same person.  But even here, the message can be lost.

One of the biggest areas where this happens is specialization.  You spend a great deal of time working out your niche market making sure your value proposition is clear and straight forward.  You put your message in the places where your clients are, and you go to work generating leads.  And then, it happens.  The sales part of you starts to stress that you are “missing out on sales” because you are too focused or only focusing on one aspect of the message.  And then sales tweaks the marketing and it becomes confusing.

Specialization works. Period. Everyone knows it.  But it is one of the hardest things for a small business to do.  Some get around it by specializing in “manufacturing” or “families” etc.  But these broad categories don’t give a person a “like me” feel – sure, I may be in manufacturing or have a family, but how can you meet my needs when you lump all those other people in with me?

The best way to get sales and marketing on the same page when both are in the same person or couple of people is the use of buyer personas.  A buyer persona is where you sit down and create a profile of a specific buyer.  The more detail the better!  You can have more than one buyer persona and you should.  These profiles help you tailor your messages to those specific audiences.

The reason this works is because when the sales part of you rears up, you can see the other buyer personas in your arsenal so you aren’t excluding people you want as customers.  And each message is tailored to a specific group so the messages generate the “like me” feel in the customer.  So aligning sales and marketing is key, but make sure you do it in a way that both sides are answered.