If you run a trade business and get your work from other businesses, not individual people, then you need to be doing business-to-business marketing. Before you dismiss marketing and say you don’t do it, consider this: you are doing some form of marketing, or you wouldn’t get any business.

Some people tell me, “I don’t do any marketing; I get all my business through word of mouth.” Then I ask a few questions and discover they have sign-written vehicles, a website, and get most of their work from a few relationships with other businesses. I point out, “That’s marketing, including whatever you did to establish those relationships.”

For most of you, some business to business marketing will be required:

• If you’re a builder specialising in architectural work, architects and designers can refer work to you.
• If you do front-end work, you might call designers, state managers, and even target customers directly.
• The same applies to government agencies, subcontracting to builders, and work controlled by property managers.

All these people (employees or owners of businesses) are either in control of awarding work or have influence. 

They make their awards or recommendations based on relationships they have with people like you. Very few people are hitting Google to find tradies and builders. They either have existing relationships or they’ve got people contracting them (like I’m pushing you to.) 

So, if you don’t want to be at the mercy of word-of-mouth marketing and if you do not want to find yourself with work drying up, you need to engage in business to business relationship marketing. 

You need to be calling people and asking for work or building relationships so they consider you for work. 

Remember all the above can get you repeat work. I’m not proposing you start cold-call strangers to sell them a new power contract.

Also, remember these people need people like you to do their job properly. You’re not calling to beg for work; you’re useful to them (well, if you’re any good, that is).

So, a question for you: How many calls have you made this week to people who can give you work or refer work to you? (If you want the kind of work I just described.)

Because that’s how it works: you make phone calls and schedule meetings and coffees to build these relationships then develop and improve them (and to progress opportunities, deliver quotes, and all the other good stuff).

If you do this kind of work but you’re not consistently investing in this work – the relationship marketing – then you’re setting yourself up tp pissed off when work dries up, and you’re stuck in a hill between projects.

So, back to my question: how many of these calls have you made?

It’s probably not a big number, and I can confidently say it should be a bigger number.

And look, specifically, I mean calls you initiate to try to find or win business. Be wary of just calling your usual friendly contacts – new blood is the life-blood here. 

A powerful way to turn your business to business marketing into a machine is to count these calls. I learned this from a book I read when I first started as a coach: WOMBAT Selling by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. He talks about this type of selling and how vital it is to measure your outbound sales and marketing activity.

He explains that your customer can only buy from you if they’re in contact with you (or your business), which makes sense, doesn’t it? 

And it makes sense that it’s up to you to take the steps to put them there. It’s your business, you can’t just sit there and hope, that’s not a good strategy.

You can reach out with marketing (ad spend, etc.) and you can encourage people to get in touch with you. 

But here, I’m focused on your B2B folks, specifically on calls and emails—your outbound communication attempts. If you’re serious about your business and want to avoid quiet periods, you need to do this, and you need to do lots of it. 

So, start tracking your numbers. 

I created a tracker, based on the book, called The Today Tomorrow Report. Every day, you record your outbound attempts and forecast how many you’ll make tomorrow. I’ve made space to tally them up, one column for your daily total, one for your forecast, and space for conversations (because you won’t always get through), meetings, and sales. I want you to see the impact of making more calls on these results.

Comment “TT Report,” and I’ll get it to you.