Aggressiveness in Marketing

A sales friend of mine recommended the book The Ultimate Sales Machine, by Chet Holmes. If you can put aside the author’s strong ego, it’s an easy, enjoyable, and educational read.

The title might give the impression this is a sales book. It is that and more.

In this book, Holmes goes way beyond just teaching effective sales skills. He deals with the importance of time management, how to run productive meetings, becoming a brilliant strategist, hiring superstars, and of course creating marketing that works.

To a true sales person, marketing exists to generate leads. With such individuals, any discussion around marketing tends to focus on specific tactics, such as where and when to advertise, how to maximize your website to generate leads, and which trade shows to attend. While I personally take a much broader view on marketing (to me, it is the entire business), I don’t take offense when someone puts marketing in such a narrow box. It’s all about perspective.

So what did I learn from Chet Holmes’ book? There are indeed specific business environments where it’s helpful to embrace the value of aggressiveness.

The Value of Aggressiveness

As a differentiating value, Aggressiveness means being bold and enterprising; or showing determination. Holmes’ book deals with the second part.

Let’s address the first part first.

Many business leaders and marketers like to use military analogies. They talk about marketing warfare, establishing a beachhead, surrounding the competition, and stealth marketing, to name a few. They may be credited with being bold and enterprising after achieving a market victory.

Business leaders often buy a company in a strategic move to enter a new market or take a dominant position. Or they might hire some key people away from the competition to leverage their knowledge, expertise, and connections.

Such business moves are viewed as being aggressive, in an acceptable fashion. If they succeed, the leaders are viewed as heroes. If they fail, the leaders are ridiculed, and may even be fired. In other words, being aggressive is associated with taking risks.

The other kind of aggressiveness is about showing determination. This is what Holmes addresses in his book.

Pigheaded Discipline and Determination

Holmes is clear about his target audience: sales people. As he would say, everyone is in sales. It doesn’t matter whether you are an entrepreneur, business leader, or marketer, Holmes views your single mission is to generate sales.

That’s the end game. Sales.

In this book, the tools and techniques are heavily skewed in favor of business-to-business (B2B) sales. However, they can be applied and adapted to any sales environment.

A key phrase Holmes uses to instill the value of aggressiveness (though he doesn’t call it by this name) is: “Mastery is a direct result of pigheaded discipline and determination.”

Some think of discipline as “plan your work and work your plan.’ Holmes would say, follow his 12 key strategies and you’ll create success.

But the crux of Holmes sales plan comes down to this:

• Carefully select your top 100 prospects (he calls them your ‘Dream 100’).
• Apply pigheaded discipline and determination.

That’s it.

To Holmes credit, his model really does work. It even helped him sell a screenplay he wrote to a Hollywood production company.

But the ideal environment to embrace the value of aggressiveness is in B2B sales.

After you have your top 100 prospects, you start by really understanding your prospect’s needs and learning their business, including their competitive environment. Then you determine to find the key to crack open a door for an opportunity to help them, and grow the relationship from there. Most importantly, you never accept ‘no’ for an answer. You must believe there is always another way in.

That’s aggressiveness in action.

Is there an aggressive marketer that you respect? What are they doing differently?

How can the value of aggressiveness give you a competitive advantage?

Today’s value was selected from the “Confidence-Courage” category, based on the e-book Developing Your Differentiating Values.