A sales conversation is much easier when the person already knows who you are, understands what you do and has a reason to trust you.
The opposite is also true. If someone knows nothing about your business before they speak to sales, the salesperson has to do everything at once. They need to introduce the company, explain the service, build credibility, understand the problem, overcome resistance and try to move the conversation towards a sale.
That’s a lot to ask from one phone call.
This is what we mean when we say 90% Of The Sale Is Done Through Your Marketing.
It isn’t a literal percentage. The principle is simple: your marketing should do as much of the explaining, educating and trust-building as possible before the sales conversation begins.
Sales Shouldn’t Have To Start From Zero
Most of us are naturally more resistant when somebody tries to sell us something we know nothing about.
If an unfamiliar company calls us and immediately starts explaining why we should buy, we know we’re being sold to. That changes how we listen. We become more cautious, question the claims and look for reasons to say no.
The problem gets worse when the salesperson also has to explain the entire business from scratch.
Compare that with speaking to somebody after you’ve been seeing their company for a while.
You recognise the name. You’ve seen some of their content. You understand roughly what they do. You might have visited the website or read a review. Before the conversation even starts, the business already feels more familiar.
That doesn’t guarantee a sale, but it removes a lot of the work sales would otherwise have to do.
Your sales team shouldn’t need to spend half the conversation proving that the business is worth listening to. Your marketing should already be helping with that. The EMS ethos describes this as building familiarity, credibility and then giving people an easy way to take action.
Marketing Should Do The Explaining Before The Call
Good marketing gives people opportunities to understand your business without asking them to sit through a sales pitch.
A useful article can answer a question.
A video can explain how your service works.
A case study can show what you’ve achieved for somebody else.
A review can give a prospect confidence that other people trust you.
Your website can explain the offer properly and show people what to do next.
An advert can remind somebody that you exist.
None of those things needs to close the sale on its own.
Together, they give the prospect information at their own pace. They can learn about the business without feeling that somebody is trying to force a decision.
That’s where marketing becomes part of the sales process rather than something that simply generates leads.
When the prospect eventually speaks to somebody, the conversation can move forward instead of starting with a presentation.
The original EMS thinking behind this is that marketing should work as an intentional nurturing system alongside lead generation, so the prospect is more informed and more familiar with the business before sales gets involved.
Familiarity And Credibility Make Sales Easier
Seeing a business regularly builds familiarity.
Seeing useful, credible information from that business gives us reasons to trust it.
Familiarity + credibility = trust.
That matters because sales resistance is often highest when everything feels unfamiliar.
If we’ve never heard of the company, never seen the people behind it and have no idea whether they know what they’re talking about, the salesperson has a lot to prove.
If we’ve been seeing that same company for months and repeatedly found its content useful, the conversation starts from a much stronger position.
That’s why content has such an important role in sales.
It can answer the questions people have before they ask them. It can explain the things your sales team normally repeats on every call. It can show people what good looks like and help them understand why your approach is different.
Frequency builds familiarity. Content builds credibility. Strategy builds sales.
Spend More Time Finding The Right People
Better marketing doesn’t only make prospects more familiar with you. It should also improve who gets into the sales conversation in the first place.
Sales becomes much harder when we spend our time trying to convince people who were never good prospects.
The better approach is to identify the businesses or people you genuinely want as customers, put your marketing around them and give them enough information to decide whether what you offer is relevant.
Then sales is speaking to people who are more likely to have the problem you solve, more likely to value the solution and more likely to understand the business before the conversation begins.
One of the original EMS rules puts it simply: spend more time finding the right customers instead of trying to convince the wrong ones to buy.
That’s a much better use of both marketing and sales.
The People Who Don’t Buy Today Still Matter
Not every good prospect is ready to buy when you first reach them.
Their budget might not be available yet. Their current supplier might still be under contract. The problem may not be urgent enough. They might simply need more time.
That doesn’t mean the opportunity has disappeared.
This is where marketing needs to keep working after the first conversation.
If you disappear for six months and then contact them again, you’re relying on the prospect remembering you. In the meantime, they may have seen a competitor every week, read their content and eventually bought from them instead.
But if your content, advertising, emails and social presence keep you visible, the relationship continues without your sales team constantly chasing them.
When the timing changes, you’re still there.
The original EMS approach describes marketing as a nurturing machine for leads who don’t close the first time, rather than leaving them untouched until somebody remembers to follow up months later.
Marketing And Sales Should Be One System
Marketing shouldn’t finish when the lead enters the pipeline, and sales shouldn’t be expected to carry everything that came before it.
The two should support each other.
Marketing finds and reaches the right people.
It builds familiarity.
Content builds credibility and answers questions.
Nurturing keeps the business visible while prospects decide.
Then sales steps in when a conversation is needed, fills the remaining information gaps and helps move the opportunity forward.
That’s why we say:
90% Of The Sale Is Done Through Your Marketing.
Not because sales isn’t important.
Because sales becomes far more effective when the marketing has already done its job.