Here are some of the dumber things I have heard from people about marketing and sales:

1. I think I’ll place one ad in a trade magazine do you think that will be worth the money?
2. I sent out a hundred sales letters and only received ten responses and five orders.
3. We decided to make this offering to one thousand customers and made twelve sales but two people said they didn’t like the offer so we have stopped doing it.
4. My husband doesn’t like ads with flags on them so I do not want to go with this graphic even if it is the fourth of July.
5. I’m only going to do this once and if it doesn’t work that’s it, I’m done.
6. What if we send this flyer out and hundreds of people respond? We could flood the shop with business!
7. We stopped offering that product, too many people wanted it.
8. If we delivered good product on time we would not need advertising.
9. If we delivered good product on time we would not need sales people.
10. We’re going to concentrate on making the shop run perfectly and then we’ll start doing some marketing.
11. Once we buy our LDI we can start advertising.
12. We sent out a sales flyer and got 500 responses but we cannot find the time to follow them up.
13. If we don’t go to that trade show people will think we are out of business.
14. There is no need to market we have all the business we need.
15. Our customers are going to be with us forever.
16. We only want high tech customers
17. I told all our lower end customers to take a walk we don’t need them anymore.
18. We don’t deal with customers who are hard to deal with.
19. We don’t deal with customers who want special treatment
20. Our business would be great if it wasn’t for those darn customers
21. Everybody knows us we don’t have to advertise.
22. All our customers know what we do we don’t have to keep telling them.
23. We fired all our reps, they were making too much money.
24. We’re not bothering with social media, that’s just for kids
25. I don’t need a web site designer; the kid next door is doing it for me.
26. I don’t understand all this connection stuff, so what if someone across the country knows my name.
27. If we got rid of this global market stuff we’d be thriving.
28. I know a good deal when I see it.
29. We’re way to busy right now to get out and get new business.
30. This worked in 1974 and I know it will work today.
31. Putting more than one part number on a panel is not doable.
32. Putting five part numbers on one panel is unethical.
33. Our boss decides our marketing message, it’s his company.
34. When it’s time to talk to our customers we shove the sales person out of the way and talk directly.
35. All anyone wants is the lowest price.
36. I’m not going to do that it makes me too nervous
37. What will happen if too many people want to buy from us?
38. I remember once in 1984 when we had too much business. I never want to go through that again.
39. We’re way behind in the shop so are going to stop booking business until we catch up.
40. Once we catch up we’ll send the sales team out to get business flowing again.
41. Why should I read a business book? I’ve been out of college for twenty years.
42. We get all our business from word of mouth.
43. I hired that sales person a month ago and all he has brought me are quotes so far.
44. I going to fire that new sales person. It’s been five weeks and we only have two new customers.
45. I’m going to hire that sales person, he will bring me all the business from his old company.
46. I have my sales people make hundred calls a day every day.
47. No wonder sales are down, it’s a school holiday.
48. No wonder sales are down we have a new president.
49. No wonder sales are up we have a new president.
50. Did you see what the stock market did yesterday? That will boost our business.

And the dumbest thing I ever heard someone say about sales and marketing…drum roll please…”Build it and they will come.”

It’s only common sense.