In many companies, especially small businesses like our North Georgia virtual tour company, the “sales and marketing department” is one and the same person. While I do wear both the sales and the marketing hats, marketing that doesn’t lead to sales really doesn’t help much in the long run. It’s easy for me to market our virtual tours because I believe in what we do. I’ve blogged a lot lately about how we found a company that allows us to do the things we love. But the bottom line is that if we weren’t able to make money doing these things, then our business would be nothing more than an expensive hobby. Our venture would fail because we would have to find other incomes and not be able to devote ourselves to our customers.

In my last blog, I talked about having a vision for your business that was about more than just creating a stream of income and I believe that is essential to happiness in life. There is an great idea that if you find something you love, then the money will follow. If that were totally true, then I would be paid to eat watermelon and play with puppies all day. The real truth is is that a business that doesn’t make money will soon be out of business. The real truth is is that a business that doesn’t make money will soon be out of business.

As the sales and marketing department for Vision Quest Virtual Tours, I am responsible for identifying prospective clients to utilize our tours. Says Jon Spoelstra in his book, Outrageous Marketing, “The tough part of a sales call is not making the sale, it’s everything that leads up to it -- making the appointment, juggling the schedule, preparing the material”. For me, there is a great deal of research that I do about my prospective customer before I ever introduce Vision Quest Virtual Tours to them.

I was on a potential client’s website earlier this week learning as much as I could about their business before calling to see if they are interested in a healthcare virtual tour. I noticed that they have links to virtual tours. I clicked on the link to view the tour but it took me to the GoDaddy website because the virtual tour company’s domain name was for sale.

It is possible that the tour this company had was made by someone with incredible passion. It could have had award winning photography and amazing features. But all that is really is a moot point because the company responsible for the tour is out of business and their tours have disappeared with them. I have to wonder if the healthcare company knows that their virtual tour links are really just GoDaddy advertisements.  I'll definitely be mentioning it!

One of the objections I hear from business owners occasionally is that they don’t need us to do their virtual tours because they can do it themselves. We could have chosen do-it-yourself virtual tour software but we chose RTV, Inc. to be more than just our virtual tour software provider...we chose them to be our back office.

RTV, Inc. services a network of thousands of virtual tour photographers who provide high definition, interactive virtual tours for more than 150,000 real estate agents and businesses all over the world. RTV, Inc. devotes their time to research and development of cutting edge technology and then provide that to us. They focus their efforts on what they do better than any company in the world  -- providing us with service delivery systems.  This in turn allows us to do what we do best...market, photograph and create the tours themselves.

Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a North Georgia virtual tour provider. We create virtual tours for healthcare, hospitality and education. For more information, visit us online at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com or call us at 404-863-9769.