"How an Equipment Loving, Hands-On Chemical Engineer Ignored All of the Marketing, Advertising and Selling Experts and Developed an Approach to Marketing and Lead Generation That Not Only Makes Sense but Delivers Results."

 ...and why he is sharing that approach with specialty business owners and business people everywhere who know in their hearts that there has to be a better way but just don't know where to begin. 

Dear Business Owner:

My name is Scott Metcalfe, and I am not a marketing expert by training. I've never worked in advertising, and my graphic design experience is limited to clip- art and PowerPoint presentations. 

So how do we find ourselves together, today discussing highly evolved marketing strategies? Well that's an interesting story...

I still remember the day like it was yesterday. I had finished my old Company's, technical and sales training three months shy of the year, allotted to new hires to become "selling professionals." 9-months earlier I had left the nuclear power industry to take a job as a sales person (reluctantly I might add!) with a chemical company that was perennially rated one of the Top 100 companies to sell for by Selling Power Magazine.

Our VP of Sales, Rick was putting me through one last test in his office. He picked up the phone and asked me if I knew the number for the Sr. VP at what would one day become my largest account. "Scott, I want you to dial up Mr._______ and get us an appointment."

I remember, the lump forming in my throat, the perspiration, my heart pounding and my hands trembling as I punched the number into the phone. Let's be clear, I'm an engineer, not a boiler-room phone jockey. Then it happened... "You have reached the voice mail box for Mr._________. Voice mail!

Here I was trying to pass my final exam, and I get voicemail. Rick was shocked. He couldn't believe that a person of Mr._____ stature was using voicemail instead of having a secretary or assistant handle his phone calls.

It was July 1989, and though Rick and I didn't realize it at the time. The Golden Age of the Salesperson was coming to a close and the Age of the Customer was just dawning. 

So for the next 15 years I worked as a salesperson and then sales manager, traveling up and down the eastern seaboard selling technical products to a highly technical industry. I spent my days chasing clients and prospects who were becoming ever more adept at hiding behind voicemail. Each year "dialing for dollars" became less and less effective.

In the summer of 1994 I didn't have to worry about cold calling anymore because I got my first marketing job. And boy was it an eye-opener. 

Having just spent 15 years in the trenches, in the minds of our prospects I knew exactly what marketing should be doing to support the sales force.

Marketing should be generating interest, starting conversations and providing prospects the information they needed in order for them to want to invite salespeople like me into their facility. 

I quickly found out (because nearly everyone was telling me) that I had no clue what marketing was all about but if I kept my mouth shut, watched and listened I would learn how marketing was done. 

What I learned is that marketing is about branding, slogans, the "Four Ps", color palettes, and pretty brochures. In short, everything other than delivering measurable results, qualified leads and profits.  

Just like you... Everything I was being taught about marketing was wrong, ineffective and outdated.  

It wasn't until recently that I realized why. The person who had created and built the marketing organization at my old company had grown up in the Golden Age of the Big Brands! 

In 2003 after nine years of beating my head against the pillars of big brand marketing I left the corporate world and started my own business. I was excited, eager and fully expecting the world of small business marketing and selling to be entirely different. 

Boy was I wrong. 

"Have you been making your dials?"  

"You know selling is a numbers game."  

"Every no gets you one step closer to yes"  

"You have to knock on doors to get them to open" 

I felt like someone had turned back the clock and it was 1989 again!

It seemed as though prospecting and marketing hadn't evolved outside the walls of my old company either. 

Surely, I had to be wrong.

So I started calling and meeting with marketing and advertising "experts".

Probably the same type of "experts" you've talked to and flushed money down the toilet with.  

"You need a logo" 

"You need a tagline" 

"You've got to build your brand"  

"People need to see your ad 6 - 12 times before they'll buy" 

"You should run some more ads"  

"Marketing isn't something you can measure. You just have to do it" 

I knew in my heart that all of these so-called experts were completely wrong.  

But this time I didn't have the Senior VP of Marketing, telling me that I couldn't try my own ideas... so I did. 

I knew immediately that to ignore the Internet and the coming Web 2.0 revolution would be a huge mistake. So I spent virtually every evening for 4 years researching how to effectively market on the web.   

And what I found was that while the Internet and Web 2.0 hold tremendous marketing leverage in the end they are really just highly evolved marketing tools and enablers.   

I learned that the fundamental truths of marketing, real direct response marketing had been lost in the Golden Age of Brand Building.   

All the marketing and advertising "experts" I had been talking too had never been taught this lost science!

But I found this lost science, and I mastered it.

And then I mastered: 

• Search Engine Marketing
• E-mail marketing 
• Search Engine optimization 
• Pay Per Click Advertising 
• Cost Per View Advertising 
• Article Marketing 
• Press Release Marketing 
• Social Marketing 
• Traffic Generation 
• Conversion Strategies 
• Keyword Research 

and I distilled it all down into two revolutionary processes:

The Marketing Profits 4.0 Marketing Equation, and the Lead Generation Marketing process. 

The Cat Gets Out of The Bag 

Keep in mind that up until 2009. I kept these secrets to myself and used them to keep my pipeline full with minimal effort.  While my colleagues were door knocking, dialing for dollars and wasting money on advertising I was coaching my boys' soccer teams living a stress-free life. 

I can't remember who exactly got me to let the cat out of the bag first. It might've been a sales training client, a colleague or just a networking contact.

All I know for certain is that suddenly it seemed as though I was constantly either on the phone, exchanging e-mails or getting together with someone who wanted to "buy me a cup of coffee" to talk about this new approach to marketing. 

A Site is Born

So I suppose if I could remember who it was I could blame them for this website.

Or I guess I could blame the so-called marketing and advertising "experts" because if they actually produced measurable results I would never have had to develop the Marketing Equation or the Lead Generation Marketing Process

But in the end I guess it really came down to self preservation, sanity and sleep!   

As much as I like a good cup of coffee and helping people out it just became impossible to have a cup of coffee with everyone who had heard something about what we've been doing here and wanted to learn more.

I sincerely hope that you can apply the principles of the Marketing Equation to your business so that you never have to cold call or waste another dime on crappy marketing again. 

Warm Regards,

Scott Metcalfe and the MarketingProfits 4.0 Team