Even if you wear all the hats in your business, you’ll work more effectively when you understand the clear differences between similar-sounding—but very different—activities such as marketing and sales. Each represents a specific focus, even if both marketing and sales share the same objective of filling the pipeline with jobs to keep your profits ups and your cash flowing.

The bifocal view

Think of marketing and sales as the bifocal view of your businesses. Marketing entails looking at the road forward to spot and capture opportunities in the future, six months to a year ahead. Sales remain tightly focused on closing a deal today. Most of us get stuck in the sales mentality and lumber from deal to deal, or transaction to transaction.

This transactional pattern spawns two unfortunate consequences, first, we end up with lulls in our business, the feasting and fasting pattern, because we have no mechanism to keep the jobs pipeline flowing. And then we cannot create, and maintain long-term systems and processes, precisely because our business resembles a roller-coaster ride, without the long valleys that allow time and energy to perfect business practices.

The top of the funnel

Marketing is the top of the funnel, filling the jobs pipeline with prospects and leads. Many companies farm this out to marketing companies, which specialize in tapping a large consumer marketplace to capture potential clients and lead them to your door. Leads services have bigger advertising budgets than typical remolding firms, and they sell you this muscle, offering to provide your company, contact information for folks considering future remodeling projects in your area.

Real estate companies do something similar for home builders, except that they take the pipeline all the way to closing the sale.

Because you can only do so much, focusing on jobs in progress and cooling the next deal, it’s not a bad idea to outsource marketing. The problem with this approach comes with the quality of the leads a typical marketing company will send you. Their focus, and their incentive (pay), comes from filling the funnel with prospect in quantity and not quality. One good lead is worth much more than ten lousy ones.

If you can design your marketing to provide higher quality leads, you don’t need as many. With the internet, social media, and a little guerilla marketing, you can setup your own marketing effort, geared to the type of clients you’re looking for. For example, if you’re selling high end services, you can focus your advertising to target this clientele, using images that educe luxury, and presenting yourself as a serious, high-quality contractor that can be trusted with a big budget.

Your advertising is the first screening in your marketing plan, and should always be crafted to attract the type of clients you cater to. Often constructors start with one idea in mind, say, doing flatwork as a subcontractor for home builders, but find a different niche along the way, such as building patios and garden structures for homeowners. Each clientele, in this example business-to-business (subcontractor to home builder), and business-to-consumer (hardscape contractor to homeowner), requires a different marketing plan.

It’s important to review your marketing every six months, including company logos, advertising art and outlets, website and social media presence, to adjust it to the client base most likely to buy your services within the next year. Sometimes the changes in your marketing are not as dramatic as described in subcontractor to remodeling example. The changes may be subtle, but just as important in terms of your defining the market segment you need to capture.

For example, I began my career with a clear focus on selling to young families, first-time buyers. But nowadays, my client basis is much older, often retired. The basic product I sell remains the same, small, affordable homes, but my marketing has had to evolve from images of swing sets and rumpus rooms, to images of walking paths and gardening.  Of course, the product has had to change, too.

Marketing is that part of your business that looks toward leading indicators that foreshadow trends, such as colors and finishes that are becoming popular. If pink granite will be all the rage, you don’t want feature images of ceramic tile countertops in your website images.

Think of your marketing efforts as aiming to identify and capture business opportunities in the near future, while your sales effort, focuses on the business opportunities right now.

The myopic view

Closing a sale requires a single-minded effort, narrowly focused on one client. The rest of the world disappears as you concentrate on the needs and wants of one family. This moment is the goal of your marketing and advertising chain. It’s likely something you already do well, with a lifetime of closing the deal, most contractors become very good salesman and negotiators.

What’s often lacking is a clear connection between the top (marketing) and bottom (sales) of the funnel. Therefore, it’s a good idea to invite your marketing team – that’s whoever does your advertising and sets up your social media presence – along on a few sales calls. By getting to know your prospects well, listening to the questions they ask (concerns), and how they react when negotiating the contract (attitude), your team can build a forward-focused marketing plan that reflects your client basis.

For example, Subaru was a small player in the automotive market, competing against giants like Ford and Toyota. They aimed at the mass market, the same crowded field dominated by strong competitors, until their marketing team began to visit and interview Subaru dealerships.

On the sales floor, they learned that the Subaru wagon sold best to a surprisingly specific market segment, lesbians. So, after some hemming and hawing, the company did something equally surprising (at the time), they hired a marketing firm that specialized in reaching gays and lesbians, and developed a marketing plan that subtly spoke to this segment, with insider-language that clearly said, ‘This car’s for you.” The Subaru wagon became a market sensation, such that nowadays, it competes favorably in the general consumer market.

The Subaru story illustrates the importance of bringing sales-floor insights to the marketing department, and marketing vision to the sales floor. The bottom line lesson comes with aligning the incentives, so that your conversion rate – the relationship between leads and successful sales –  becomes the basis for incentives throughout your company. Rather than simple lead generation by the numbers, the barometer of a successful marketing plan is contracts signed.

Public relations

So how does PR fit into all of this? Public relations strive to represent a favorable image of your company within the community. It’s connected to marketing and sales, but not focused on closing the deal. It’s focused on giving you the good guy image. When people know that your company sponsored the little league, and your employees dished out helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes to the homeless at Christmas, they begin to like and trust you, and your company image. This positive image and trust facilitate your sales effort, as people prefer to work with folks they like and trust – don’t you?