I was approached by a prospective client recently for help with their blog. Problem was, their problem wasn’t their blog — it was their sales process and their products & services. They were getting hurt on price because they couldn’t reach the decision-makers until their message had already been weakened by gatekeepers so that it became about price only. The products they sold could be found for less elsewhere. The decision-makers they wanted to reach with their blog weren’t the blog reading type.
To their credit, they were addressing the product price issue by selling bundled, recurring services instead — a very smart move.
Blogs don’t fix problems. Blogs are the final product of your business’ processes. The culture, processes, methods, and results need to already be there to a large degree. Blogs are only a part of that. Blogs provide customer interaction, customer touchpoints, and customer education. Blogs provide a valuable feedback loop.
But blogs won’t patch that hole in your sales process or fix your flagging customer service. Those things have to come first.
I respectfully declined to work on the project. I just didn’t see a win-win coming out of that. I wish them all the best with their efforts.
Photo by Paul Everett