Marketing and Sales Lessons from Deep Sea Fishing

I started fishing with my grandfather as an 8-year-old boy and this was a passion we shared, sadly my grandfather is no longer around, but the love for the sport has endured through different stages and priorities. I always retained the love for the outdoors and fishing in its various formats and I always grabbed any opportunity to cast a line into the water. Recently, I have been privileged to live on the tropical paradise island of Mauritius and I have been fishing whenever the opportunity arose, be it from the rocks, on a kayak or boats!

I treasure the time out fishing and it often provides a great break in the normal business working routine and a time to reflect away from the busy coaching routines. Sometimes, when the fish are not biting there is a lot of time to reflect! On more than one occasion the huge amounts of parallels between fishing and marketing struck me and there are valuable lessons that can be applied in the world of marketing and sales.

The first lesson is around target.

Some people will go fishing without a clear target in mind, they just have hope of catching anything and this means that there is not really a plan or a target, they might try a couple of things but there is no real focus and thus will seldom yield good results, of course there is always the exception but this can often be attributed to luck more than anything else.

The successful fisherman starts planning long before and sets their goals on a really clear and well-defined target, i.e. I want to catch at least 3 Tuna's that are bigger than 15 kg's before the boat returns to the harbour at lunch time. The clear goals then informs the target, strategies and actions required to achieve this goal. If we just focus on target i.e. 15 kg Tuna's - then we need to find the right location in the ocean using a fish finder and experience where 15 kg Tuna's hang out, when they are likely to be there, we need to know what they are eating at that place and how they are eating it.  This will ensure we go and fish at the right spot in the ocean, using the right bait, at the right time using the right fishing technique. This approach will almost always yield better results than just randomly casting baits of a boat in the ocean and hoping to catch anything.

You have to fish where the fish are that you want!

This sounds really obvious but business owners often get this wrong in their marketing campaigns. There is often not clarity on the exact ideal customer avatar they are wanting to market to or a lack of clarity on where these ideal customers are, what problems they really have that we can solve or how to effectively communicate our marketing messages to them.  Many businesses are like the fisherman driving a boat aimlessly on a vast ocean of opportunities with a couple of baits out not quite sure what they are trying to catch or how to do it. 

How do you know if your marketing is working? It must give you enough of the right leads and new customers to achieve your business goals, i.e. you need to get the right amount off "bites" and land enough of the right type and size off "fish".

At ActionCOACH, we have all the experience, tools and digital marketing strategies to assist your business to reach its goals. Reach out to our us today at hbdm@actioncoach.com to learn how to get your marketing up to world class standard!

By Hein Kruger, ActionCOACH

As a award winning ActionCOACH with 25 years experience in building business I am passionate about helping business owners achieve their financial and lifestyle goals, for a complementary coaching session please reach out to Megan at our office. hbdm@actioncoach.com