Oh no…the football analogies continue…

Last week I talked about how your sales are more dependent on how often you manage to build the trust and credibility needed for people to be ready to buy than on how good you are at the final step of selling.

(Like the way a football team's goals are more dependent on how often and how well they get the ball into danger zones on the pitch than they are on their shooting ability).

There's another related football analogy that's important here too.

I can't source the quote exactly (I had in my mind that it was Johan Cruyff from his groundbreaking work at Barcelona but it seems not) but you may well have heard some variation of:

“If we've got the ball, it means the opponent can't score”.

It's real back to basics, but it's true. None of that fancy stuff about getting into danger zones means anything if you haven't got the ball.

In marketing, keeping the ball means keeping the attention of your audience.

You can't build credibility and trust and get people ready to buy if you've lost their attention. If they're no longer listening to you.

I don't just mean people actively disconnecting – unsubscribing from your emails for example. Far more common is people staying subscribed but just not opening or reading any more.

In fact, your main issue isn't upsetting people so they unsubscribe, it's boring them so they drift off without unsubscribing.

It's particularly vital if you sell something big with a long sales cycle. You need people to keep paying attention over a long period of time so you're there and front of mind when they're ready to buy.

And unlike football, if you lose attention, it's rare you get it back.

It would be fantastic if there were marketing equivalents of ball-wining midfielders and hard-tackling defenders to get attention back once you'd lost it. But that's rarely the case.

Instead your best option is to make sure every email or piece of marketing you send is valuable or interesting – ideally both.