I was at a Sales and Marketing conference this week and it struck me that here we have a bunch of people that are moving the same old, same old levers to try and be better than the competition.

Think about it.  We do the same sales and marketing activities year after year, we just add an inflation uplift in terms of budget.  I've seen the same presentation deck used year after year, with little changes.

Reusing the same plan year after year, or just doing the same thing year after years means that you will ...... just do the same.

Grab a pen and paper and write 4 columns, write down your company name and the names of your 3 main competitors.

Now write down, what you and they spend on marketing underneath those headings.  Now write underneath those figures how many sales people you and your competition have.

You should now have a comparaison of you, against your competition in terms of sales and marketing.

Those are the levers you have.  The only way you are going to be better, bigger, have more market share, is move those levers.  Increase your marketing spend, or increase your sales people.

Or of course, you could decide to rip that up and disrupt!

This is where a Growth Transformation Office (GTO) comes in.  Sounds scary?

Read these two books:-

"Smarketing - How to Achieve Competitive Advantage through Blended Sales and Marketing"

This book provides you with the steps you need to take to look at Sales and Marketing not as two separate silos but as a close knit machine, working together.

The second book is

"Social Selling - Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers"

This book will give you the tools and techniques to transform your sales and marketing, from the legacy methods of the past, to engage with the modern internet, social media, mobile enabled world of today!

You can read those books at the weekend, there is no need for you to start spending political capital.  Once you have read them, it will be time to hatch your plan.

It's up to you.