In your business, whatever business that is, there will be times when you need to sell your ideas or products to customers, or even others within your company.

In order to be successful though, you need to know how to sell. It is crucial to understand that there is a chunk of marketing with every job, and good marketing is a must in any successful career.

With the understanding that you must be a marketer to succeed in any position, you can’t be content with basic knowledge and know-how: you must advance. You must complement your talents with the skills and tools of a marketer. In other words, you need to be able to utilize social media, outline a plan for ideas, and identify/obtain prospects for your company’s business. An inability to do this can be disastrous because, without advancing your strategy, you will fall behind.

As an example, take a look at the history of the railroad companies from the early 1900s:

The railroad industry dominated land freight shipping in the early 1900s, much as print newspaper and magazines dominated access to potential prospects of advertisers decades ago. And just like the railroads, newspaper and magazine publishing was a capital-intensive business that severely limited any new competition.

Yet by the 1970’s most railroads had gone bankrupt.

If the railroad leaders had thought of themselves as transportation companies instead of railroad companies, they would have bought or built truck and airline systems to complement their rail infrastructure. They would have seen how these emerging technologies could significantly improve their ability to deliver on their customer’s real need.

The use of social media is, like it or not, essential in our day and age, especially for the marketer. Social media is the tool that guides all businesses to the public eye, and obtains the most new views on their websites. Effective use of such tools will become your greatest skill in your ever-growing marketing training. Utilize a marketing plan to increase your value and talents for your company, and then use social media to complement and circulate the plan. The process could look similar to this:

  1. Contact to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) rate
  2. MQL to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) rate
  3. SQLs that become identified Opportunities
  4. Opportunities to close
  5. Average sale value
  6. Customer marketing return on investment (MROI) = campaign cost / client revenue recognized

Yes, it will be difficult to train yourself in something that you have never done. However, if you want to increase your ability to perform and boost your value to the company, it is absolutely worth it to advance yourself as a marketer.

Source via HubSpot.