How Much More Business Could You Be Doing?
Successful businesses have problems, too. Not necessarily problems that threaten their survival, but obstacles standing between where they are today and where their owners want them to be.
Qualified prospects who show interest but never buy. Sales that should be happening but aren't. Marketing campaigns that generate leads without producing enough profitable business.
And sometimes, the biggest obstacle isn't nearly so obvious.
What if the problem you think you're trying to solve isn't the real problem at all?
What Got You Here May Not Get You Where You Want to Go.
Your business has reached a certain level of success. But now growth has stalled. No matter what you do, you can't seem to break through to the next level—or generate that additional 20% or 30% in sales you know should be possible.
It's not necessarily a lack of ambition, ability, or opportunity. The problems you need to solve to reach the next level may be entirely different from the ones you solved to get where you are today.
And there's another possibility. What appears to be the problem may not be the real problem at all.
You may think you need more leads when the real issue is that too few of your existing prospects become customers. Or you may believe you've reached the limits of your market when the real issue is how your business is positioned, how you communicate its value, or whom you're trying to reach.
And sometimes, there's no problem to solve. Just profitable opportunities no one has recognized, let alone pursued.
That's Where Conquest Comes In.
We work with business owners and professionals who sell high-value products and services. We help them uncover the problems holding back their results, recognize profitable opportunities they may have overlooked, and develop the strategies, persuasive sales messages, marketing campaigns, and follow-up systems they need to attract more customers, increase sales, and boost profits.
Even brilliant work on the wrong problem leaves the real one unsolved. And investing in more marketing before making the most of the opportunities already within reach is an expensive way to grow.
Diagnose before you prescribe. Optimize before you maximize.
These principles are at the heart of Conquest's approach to helping a business grow.
Much of Conquest's thinking began with questions Russell Martino started asking more than four decades ago.
Questions Like These.
Why does anyone buy anything?
And what must happen in a prospect's mind before buying becomes the obvious choice?
Why do qualified prospects hesitate?
Why do seemingly qualified prospects who could genuinely benefit from what you're selling hesitate, stall, or simply disappear without buying?
Are you solving the right problem?
How do you know whether the problem you're trying to solve is the one actually holding you back? Solve the wrong problem, and you can spend years and a small fortune trying one thing after another while the real problem keeps costing you business.
Russell Learned to Sell by Selling.
His first big-ticket sales job involved selling a product that started at $70,000 and went up from there to wealthy individuals.
He was young, new to sales, and selling something complicated and expensive when he received advice that propelled him to become the top salesperson in the country for that product—and shaped how he would think about selling from then on.
The advice was simple:
Don't try to sell anybody anything.
Instead, carefully identify good prospects and understand what they really want, which is rarely the product or service itself. Understand the problem they're trying to solve, the emotions that must be in play for them to have any interest at all in the product or service, the outcome they want to achieve, and what they need to know and believe to decide that your product or service is right for them.
Then show them how your solution can help achieve that outcome—and why doing business with you is clearly in their best interest.
Give them the information they need. Then let them decide.
That experience led Russell to an insight that continues to shape Conquest today.
Before a High-Value Prospect Says Yes, Five Things Must Be Resolved in Their Mind.
A Strong Enough Need
They must feel a strong enough need to do something.
Belief a Solution Exists
They must believe a solution exists—and that it could work for them.
Why This One Is Different
They must understand why other solutions they've considered or tried may not have worked, and why this one is different.
The Right Choice
They must believe that your solution—and you—are the right choice.
From Their Point of View
And all of this must be communicated from their point of view, focusing on what they want, what they fear, what they're trying to accomplish, and what stands between them and the outcome they want.
When you view selling this way, marketing looks very different. It stops being about ads, websites, leads, funnels, mailings, or whatever tactic is popular at the moment.
It becomes a study of people, decisions, and what needs to happen in a prospect's mind before a sale can occur.
The More Russell Sold, the More He Wanted to Understand Why People Buy.
What began as a fascination with human behavior grew into a decades-long study of buyer psychology, positioning, direct-response sales strategy, persuasive messaging, and one-to-many selling.
Russell studied and trained with masters of direct-response marketing, including Clayton Makepeace and Dan Kennedy, and worked on projects with both.
He wrote sales messages. Built campaigns. Sat across from real prospects. Discovered what persuaded people to buy—and what didn't.
When something worked, he wanted to understand why so he could repeat it. When something failed, he dug even deeper to discover what went wrong.
Was the problem the message, the market, or the offer, or something nobody had thought to question?
Over Time, Russell Discovered Something That Changed the Way He Looked at Businesses—and the Results He Could Help Them Produce.
What appeared to be the problem often wasn't the real problem at all.
A business owner might be trying to generate more leads when the real problem was why good prospects weren't buying. Or spending money to improve a sales campaign when the real opportunity was in a market nobody had thought to pursue.
And sometimes there wasn't a problem to solve. There was profitable business waiting to be discovered. A valuable group of prospects nobody was pursuing. A market nobody had considered entering. A different way to position an existing product or service. Or a new campaign capable of producing revenue where none existed before.
Russell came to recognize two ways a business could achieve substantially better results: Identify and address the real problem holding it back. And spot and pursue profitable opportunity no one else has seen.
But finding the real problem or recognizing a profitable opportunity is only the beginning. What matters is knowing what to do about it—and developing the strategies, sales arguments, and campaigns needed to turn that knowledge into profitable results.
Seeing what others miss. Solving what others haven't solved.
Capturing business that otherwise might never have been done.
That became the foundation of Conquest Sales & Marketing.
Today, Conquest Is the Partnership of Russell Martino and Terrie Lopez.
Russell Martino
Co-FounderRussell brings more than four decades of experience in sales, buyer psychology, and direct-response marketing. He excels at spotting problems and opportunities others overlook, then developing campaigns and persuasive marketing assets that increase conversions, shorten the sales cycle, and make selling easier.
His strength lies in understanding what motivates people to buy, what causes them to hesitate, and what it takes to move them toward a decision. He brings a practical, results-driven perspective to every engagement, challenging assumptions, questioning conventional approaches, and finding ways to make even complicated products and services easier to understand, easier to value, and ultimately easier to sell.
Terrie Lopez
Co-Owner & Equal PartnerTerrie is Russell's daughter, co-owner of Conquest Sales & Marketing, and his equal partner in identifying business problems, recognizing profitable opportunities, and developing the strategies, sales arguments, campaigns, and persuasive assets the company creates for clients.
Terrie brings 20 years of experience managing one of the largest Social Security Law Firms in the Nation, where deciding which cases were worth pursuing, identifying root causes of problems that affect performance, and developing practical solutions were part of running the business. The firm continues to retain her as a consultant.
She's also an accomplished writer and strategist, with expertise in identifying new markets and developing campaigns to sell high-value products and services.
Together, they bring different but complementary experience to the same challenge: finding what's holding a business back, recognizing profitable opportunities others may miss, and developing the strategies and campaigns needed to turn those discoveries into more customers, sales, and profit.
Neither Accepts the Other's Conclusions at Face Value.
They question assumptions, challenge the logic, and examine proposed solutions from multiple angles—including the prospect's side of the table.
They've both seen promising ideas collide with the realities of the marketplace. And they know that years of experience don't make anyone's assumptions any less likely to be wrong.
They believe it's better to find out why a strategy might fail before a client invests in it than to discover why it failed after the money is spent. This explains something about how Conquest operates that may sound a little strange.
The First Thing They Do With What Seems to Be a Good Idea Is Try to Kill It.
Most people who come up with what they believe is a great marketing idea immediately start looking for reasons why it will succeed.
Russell and Terrie do the opposite. We do the opposite. They look for reasons it won't. We look for reasons it won't.
But before they can challenge an idea, they need to understand the business behind it. That begins with intensive analysis. They interview the owner, asking dozens of carefully designed, open-ended questions. They may talk with key employees, current and former customers, and others whose perspectives could reveal something important. They study the competition, the market, the company's strengths and weaknesses, and what makes its offering different, or not different enough.
The objective is to uncover what others may have overlooked, question what everyone assumes to be true, and discover what's actually driving—or limiting—the business's results.
Armed with that knowledge, Russell, Terrie, and their team begin testing the proposed solutions and opportunities.
Is this the real problem, or merely a symptom? What is actually preventing the business from producing better results?
Is it viable? Are there enough qualified prospects? Does the potential payoff justify the investment? Can it be sustained? What assumptions might turn a promising idea into an expensive mistake?
What could go wrong? Where might it break down? What have they overlooked?
One becomes the salesperson. The other becomes the prospect nobody wants to face. Qualified. Interested. Has the money. Needs the solution. And still won't buy.
"Why should I believe you? What's really different? Why should I choose you? What if it doesn't work? Can I get a lower price? Why should I do this now? What's the rush?"
If the argument can't stand up to those questions, it isn't ready. Back to work.
The purpose of this process isn't to prove they're right; it's to identify where they might be wrong so they can address the weakness or kill the idea before creating assets and spending money to deploy the campaign.
None of this guarantees success, but it increases the odds of solving the right problem, pursuing a worthwhile opportunity, and developing a campaign that can stand up to the realities of the marketplace.
It can also help prevent something far more expensive than a failed campaign: launching a campaign that should never have been launched in the first place.
Sometimes, the process's greatest value isn't preventing a costly mistake; it's uncovering a problem no one properly diagnosed, or a profitable opportunity no one knew existed.
What Else Is Here?
Which brings us to a question worth asking about your business. You may have built a very successful business. You have loyal customers, a product or service people value, and a reputation you've worked hard to earn.
But success doesn't necessarily mean you're capturing all the profitable business your company can generate.
And the problems you solved to get where you are today may not be the same ones you need to solve to get where you want to go next.
What if there's a considerably more profitable business within your reach than you realize?
That's a question worth answering.
Three Reasons Business Owners Contact Conquest
Something isn't working as well as it should, and you want to fix it.
Good prospects aren't buying. Sales have stalled. Marketing isn't delivering the return it should. You find yourself answering the same questions, overcoming the same objections, or watching opportunities slip away that should have become profitable business.
Or perhaps you've reached a point where the strategies that brought you this far aren't enough to take you where you want to go next. Something needs to change. The question is what, and you want to get it right the first time.
You're doing well, but you suspect there's considerably more profitable business within reach.
You've built a successful business, but you may still wonder how many valuable prospects you're missing, where to find them, which markets you haven't explored, and how much more business you could generate from the customers and opportunities already within reach.
You don't necessarily need to fix what's broken. You want to make the most of what you've already built and capture profitable opportunities you may be overlooking. You want to discover what's possible, and what it would take to make it happen.
You're considering an important move, and you want to know it makes sense before you commit.
A new market. A major sales campaign. A different way to position or sell your product or service. An investment of time and money that could produce substantial returns or become an expensive mistake.
You want to know whether the opportunity is real, whether the strategy is sound, and what might have been overlooked. The time to discover what could go wrong is before you've spent the money.
What We Bring to the Table
We find the real problem—not just the apparent one.
You don't need an expensive fix for the wrong problem. You need to understand what's really holding back your results, and what it'll take to change that.
We uncover profitable opportunities you may not know exist.
You may be missing valuable prospects, sales you could close, or opportunities to grow your existing business. We identify them, assess their potential, and determine which are worth pursuing.
We turn sound thinking into profitable action.
We develop the strategies, persuasive sales arguments, campaigns, and follow-up systems needed to convert worthwhile discoveries into more qualified prospects, customers, sales, and profit.
Our objective isn't to sell you more marketing. It's to help you do more profitable business.
If you're facing a problem that needs solving, see an opportunity worth exploring, or believe your business is capable of considerably more, we'd welcome the opportunity to talk.