Amanda Gome, Professor of business at RMIT University

As the economy slows, it’s tempting to cut the sales and marketing budget. A better idea is to reassess the strategy. But watch out for the 30 most common sales and marketing blunders.

Here are 30 mistakes entrepreneurs make when expanding fast growth companies, and the lessons they learnt. Some are classic mistakes made from time immemorial. Others apply directly to ’08. The lessons come from  interviews with entrepreneurs and my research with RMIT University over the past 20 years, which has studied the lessons from high growth companies’ experiences.

1. Entrepreneurs still confuse sales and marketing
2. No clear strategies coming into a downturn
3. Loving the customer to (your) death
4. Using pre-internet sales methods to sell
5. It costs too much to get to the customer
6. Trying too few ways to get to market
7. Outsourcing sales to the wrong bloke
8. Not valuing “selling” skills
9. Providing no compelling reason to buy
10. Overcomplicating the product or the service
11. Failure to make the most of email marketing
12. Not making the shift from old media to alternative media
13. Not running a paid search campaign
14. Building a website that is not optimised for search
15. Pushing products people don’t want
16. Trying to outspend gorilla competitors on advertising
17. Marketing in short bursts
18. Taking word of mouth for granted
19. Selling to the wrong department
20. Sales and marketing staff don’t understand the product
21. Taking the sale for granted
22. Ignoring new ways to advertise
23. Ignoring social media
24. No try before you buy
25. Believing there is no competition
26. Not fighting hard enough when a major client is walking
27. Being cut out of the complaints loop
28. Forgetting in the new world that old methods work
29. Lacking integrity
30. Letting customers speak to machines instead of people

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