John 21:6 describes a biblical event in which Peter and several others had fished all night and caught no fish. Jesus instructs them to cast their net on the right side of the boat, which they do. Following these seemingly irrelevant instructions the fishermen catch so many fish that they could barely haul it in.
So what’s the simple message that marketers can learn from this story? YOU NEED A NET!!!
Fishing without a net is plain stupid
Imagine if the men had gone fishing without a net. It would not matter that they had a boat, a team, or that the water was loaded with fish. To have gone fishing without a net to catch the fish would have been simply dumb.
You are a fishermen…of sorts
You’re fishing for clients, and it’s equally dumb for you to fish without a net as it would be for actual fishermen to fish without one. But don’t worry…Jesus loves stupid marketers to…and has provided free nets 🙂
What’s your net?
So what’s the net for marketers? It’s your CRM software. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term CRM stands for Customer Retention Management.
Why you need a net
I speak with business owners and sales people every day who are struggling to make their numbers. When I ask them how they track their leads, I’m flabbergasted to hear things like: I write them on a notepad, they are in an Excel spreadsheet. What – Jesus Christ!!!
Consider this – a sales person, marketer, business, non-profit, or you fill in the blank with a 10% close ratio who needs to close 100 sales a year to make ends meet needs to do 1,000 proposals. Not to mention that to do 1,000 proposals you need to likely talk with twice as many leads. How can you keep up with communication streams, follow up activities, to do lists, etc for 2,000 leads and 1,000 prospects on a sheet of paper or Excel spread sheet. You can’t.
You’re fishing without a net and that’s just plain dumb.
Free nets – Yea!
There are many different CRM tools on the market. SalesForce.com is the wolds most popular…and expensive cloud based tool. There are others like Sugar CRM and ACT which you can load on your computer. However Zoho offers a CRM tool, it’s their basic version, that you can use for absolutely free.
When I worked in the mortgage industry I used the free version while I was building my book of business at Wells Fargo. Once I was making enough in commissions and needed more than the free version offered I upgraded to the paid version…a whopping $12 a month.
Don’t be stupid…get a free net!
