Sales is all about twisting the truth
Saturday, May 23, 2009 14:45I’ve been following Drew Stevens Consulting blog for many many many months now. This dude just can’t get his numbers right, however he is brilliant sales consultant. Here is a good example of the fantastic power that he has to motivate sales professionals - The top 10 fallacies about the current recession.
TWISTING FACTS AND FORGING NUMBERS
Just take the first item of his list. Basically he states that over 92% of Americans are working (8,5% are unemployed so deducting that from 100% we get 91,5% units… hmm). Unemployment figures are counted based on the population of working age people or then America has taken really hard measures in use to combat slagging competitivity by introducing child labor. As a result it is evident that far less than 91,5% of Americans are working.
PRESENTING IS EVERYTHING
This kind of presentation of half truths works amazingly well in front of an audience, because nobody will pay attention to the details they just follow what you present and accept that. It is bit like magician asking from an assistant if the handcuffs are real and solid - naturally the answer is yes. This yes is then taken by granted by everybody in the room. However it does not work on the paper, because the reader has more time to put their minds into it.
SELLING IS NOT MARKETING
Here you see a brilliant example how selling works, you lead them and they follow. You take control and cut the corners and as a result you have made your case as well as possible. All of this has everything to do with you body language and posture. Do you remember a post or actually a comment in which I mentioned the importance of a non-verbal communication? Sales has to be presented.
Marketing however cannot rely on the moment. Marketing is a channel when the target is more in control when they accept the message and in what context, e.g. reading morning newspaper on patio and taking their time reading a lawnmower ad. If you put clearly misleading information on those ads you risk being completely blown off by the prospect. Marketing has to be planned.
AFTERTHOUGHT
I just noticed that Seth Godin had posted an article that follows right in my mental foot steps. Given his brilliance, I think he’d say his take on the matter is completely different.
Melody says:
May 24th, 2009 at 6:58 am
SoOOOooOooOo glad you said this–and didn’t mean to write that like a 13 yr old..lol
One of the biggest misconceptions regarding marketing is the idea that marketing is just a bunch of strategies that you apply to your business. What people fail to realize though is that marketing starts with a solid marketing plan defining your goals, purpose, mission, blahbly blah blah…
Selling comes from the message your trying to communicate about your product via your initial marketing plan…
If I haven’t already made a point then I spaced out a little on what I was going to originally say..so…uh…I’ll end this now lol..
(random) I find it so funny how some people try to nod while they’re talking in order for you to subconsciously begin agreeing with their idea and then finally accept it themselves…It’s all mental kungfu lol..
Melody’s last blog post..Still enough time to enter to win!
Jake Stone says:
May 24th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
It’s very rare to see a product or service that is planned to be part of the marketing from the ground up.
Usually we have this situation where a traditional product - let’s say a car - is sold with the help of marketing, but that marketing is really only advertising. Still automotive companies have marketing departments that have hundreds of workers. For what purpose? Buying advertising campaigns from outside agencies?
The other scenario involves a new product or service. Marketing is the secret formula thats produces the results, but this method also falls short of reaching the real target - a product specifically developed from marketing point of view. How so?
Marketing that uses existing products just uses them little differently. We see this a lot especially in the field of finance. There might be one product issuer, but many to use the final finance product by marketing differently. In purest form these are just sales organizations.