PIVOT TO SMARKETING
THE PIVOT TO SMARKETING :
A FULLY INTEGRATED
MARKETING STRATEGY
BY : ANDY BUYTING
I
It was May of 2019 and I had just done something I never thought I would do . In a single afternoon , I had fired my entire sales team . At that time , our sales team had represented over half of our company . This was a scary moment for me and for everyone else involved at Tulip Media Group , but , if we wanted to go all-in and pursue a SMarketing strategy , it was a step we had to take .
Let me take you back 18 months to when this idea started to formulate .
In early 2018 , I was participating in my business conclave meeting in Boston . At this particular meeting , a fellow member stood up in front of the class and talked about how he had completely turned his go-to-market strategy on its head . He owned a home construction and renovations company based in Denver , Colorado , and his business had been struggling to meet its growth objectives using a traditional sales approach .
For years , this colleague had struggled to meet his targets using a mobilized sales team . Then , one day , he walked in during an annual planning session and let the entire sales team go . He and his partner had decided it was time for the company to pursue a SMarketing strategy .
You see , what he found was that the salespeople would bring customers in , but it was the designers who would really get the customers excited . He realized this was because the designers weren ’ t focusing on the sale , they were focusing on creating something for the customer . Once they had reached this point , the customers no longer felt pressure to buy and had really begun to enjoy the process .
Conversely , as soon as the relationships were handed back to the salespeople , they would feel smothered by the pressure to close the sale and shut down again . The company lost a number of sales this way .
After observing this , my friend decided he would leave it entirely to his digital marketing strategy to bring people in , then allow the designers to take over by creating a model and closing the sale .
Most designers resisted the idea of closing because they had never seen themselves as salespeople and were nervous about performing in this role . My friend assured them it was easy , that once the customer had expressed their excitement with the model they ’ d created , the designer simply had to say , “ That ’ s great . Let ’ s get started . Sign right here .”
He , too , was scared to death , but he was willing to bet the company on SMarketing . What he found was that by spring of that same year , his sales had grown by 12 %. This was in contrast to the previous few years where sales had only grown by two to three percent each year .
That was 18 months before my fateful day in May of 2019 .
As soon as I heard about this concept from my friend , I couldn ’ t shake it . I ’ ve read before that if you can ’ t get an idea out of your head after two weeks , maybe it really is an idea worth pursuing . Well , I was coming onto about a year where this idea hadn ’ t left me , but it was such a radical move that I was scared .
However , after countless discussions with my partners , we made the decision to take that same route . This decision was heavily
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