Did you ever play the child’s game called Hot and Cold? The object of the game is for one player, who is on the hunt for an object, to find it with only the commands of another player who knows where the object is, but can only give verbal directions by indicating the hunter is getting warmer (closer to it) or colder (further away from the object.) When someone begins to walk in the wrong direction, they might be told they are "freezing” – or very far away from the object. On the other hand, when they are right beside the object, and just about to touch it, they will be told they are "red hot!”

Let’s apply the Hot and Cold game to your prospective customers. If you work in sales and marketing, you know that not all prospects start out red hot, at least not right out of the gate. In fact, most of them start out closer to frozen. So how can marketing help thaw the icy and heat up the lukewarm? The first step is to identify where a potential customer is on the hot-to-cold scale. The second step is to recognize what it will take to get the prospect to take a "warmer” step. This may be offering a special deal that piques their interest or it may mean removing some of the obstacles they have to purchasing from you. Every industry is different, but in general, it takes between 8-12 touches to get a prospect to move towards red hot. What are the steps it takes in your business? This is where sales and marketing need to work together. Discuss this with both your sales and marketing personnel in the same room. Sales should be the team in your organization that most often encounters your targeted customers. Seasoned sales reps should know the most common objections to buying your products and services. Marketing takes this information and develops strategies to reach your potential customers in a way that alleviates the objections, enticing them closer to a sale. But this has to be done in incremental steps. You typically don’t move a customer from frozen to flowing lava with one piece of marketing.

If you have not taken the time to develop a marketing-to-sales strategy, I would encourage you to do so soon. So often marketing is a guessing game for companies and it should not be that way. Guessing has a very low return rate. Not every step in marketing leads to the cash register, but it should be moving prospects closer to it. Good marketing strategy outlines the steps it will take to get everyone moving towards red hot.