I'm going to use the terms "marketing" and "selling" interchangeably here, because most of us don't have our own marketing and sales departments, we need to be both.
And for most of us, Life is our business.
Peter Drucker (Click the Photo for his Bio)
There will always, one can assume, be a need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available, i.e., logistics rather than salesmanship, and statistical distribution rather than promotion.
Again, I’m not writing a biography of Peter Drucker. If that’s your thing, click the image above and knock yourself out.
Now, how does this tie in with yesterday’s lesson from Elmer Wheeler “Don’t’ Sell The Steak, Sell The…”?
Your marketing must understand what your customer wants.
What you want (i.e. to make a sale) is unimportant in the customer’s eyes.
No matter what words come out of their mouth, the customer's biggest concern is always, always, always, "What's in it for ME?"
Your relationships, your job, your golf league, bicycling, jogging, bowling groups. You are exchanging your time, your intellectual and physical capital with others, for their time, intellectual and physical capital and you want them to look forward to that.
Your customers are your friends, family members, co-workers & even strangers you interact with.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
The underlying principle here is to make them all “satisfied customers” who will come back and do repeat business with you (if that’s what you want).
Unless you are in command of the world's most powerful military machine, or the world's reserve currency, you are probably unable to coerce others to comply with your wishes through brute force.
Never appeal to a man's better-nature.
He may not have one.
Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
Robert Heinlein
Honestly, good relations are always more cost effective in the long run anyway.
All human interaction boils down to the principle of exchanging with others; with the exchange of goods & services at one end of the spectrum and the exchange of bullets & bombs at the other.
If you don't believe that and think everything is a battle, then I can fall back on Sun Tzu:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Hah, I win!
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