According to marketing authority Chet Holmes, decision makers are now exposed to 30,000 commercial messages daily, as compared to only 3,000 ten years ago.

Similarly, the cost of selling has almost tripled over the past decade. It now takes 8.4 attempts for a sales representative to get in front of a prospect, whereas 10 years ago, it took only 4 tries. In today's market, salespeople must work three times as hard to achieve half the results as they used to.

Despite these averages, most salespeople give up after only two attempts at contacting a prospect. Yet the star performers continue to be successful. Thus, most prospecting efforts are wasted. What can a business owner do about this?

Effective marketing can be a powerful support for salespeople.

My first suggestion is to engage your prospects, by providing them important market information that helps them become better buyers. This can be achieved by either mailing or e-mailing to your target list, the offer of a free report with a title such as; The 3 Greatest Dangers Facing ..., And What You Can Do To Survive Them. (Fill in the blank with your customer group.)

Do not send the report out unsolicited. Once those people who are interested contact you to request the information, you can begin the necessary dialog. For more on this see the last edition of StreetSmart Marketer, where we discussed romancing your customer. (Article: Romance Your Customer By Making The Easy Sale First)

In addition, you need to make sure your salespeople know the average number of contacts required to be successful and follow up accordingly. You can then set up a policy for the number of contacts required and a process of sequential marketing activities to help your salespeople deal with each way a contact might turn out.

You have to provide everyone on your team with the tools to enable them to perform like a superstar. More on this in later editions of The StreetSmart Marketer.