I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed that whenever the subjects of Marketing and Sales come up it’s like watching the front row of a horror film at it’s most gruesome part of the show. Just the words on their own are enough to spin people into a frenzy of anger, even when the topic is essential to not just every businesses or organisation but to each and everyone one of us in our daily lives. Connecting and creating friendships, relationships and valuable partnerships is what makes the world go around and we all sell and market in some shape or form, whether we know it or not.
You see, its those very same stomach churning reactions that reduce the learning and earning power.
Who wants to learn or look at adopting a new strategy around sales and marketing when they’re getting upset and respond with knee-jerk reactions that downplay the whole thing?
Not many that I know of! That’s why it’s worth bringing those two belittled, battered and abused words back into our lives, yes the dreaded Marketing and Sales words. Exposing yourself to sales and marketing actually eliminates the irrational behaviour, which would in turn help more to understand it and discuss it, and see what was good and bad, ultimately meaning that more people and businesses would get more of it right and there would be less negativity toward it and more focus on learning instead of hating.
The one thing that I would like you to take away from this is; MARKETING AND SALES IS NOT ALL BAD, its not all lies, manipulation, conning people or getting one over on the other person or using them. I would agree that there are plenty of people out there that abuse the knowledge of effective sales and marketing and they take it to places that only seek to service their own greed, but even the most subtle and unappreciated methods of selling and marketing come from the belly of the same beast. Yes. there are two sides to every coin!.
So I am going to go out on a limb here and make a statement that just might upset a lot of people, responsible marketing and sales principles and strategies are based on EXACTLY the same strategies that those slippery, dirty spammy operations use.
So LOVE and HATE come from the same place. Just like the recent debates over whether the internet is a good or bad thing. Its not the thing itself, its how it’s used. With me ?
Whether your a hater of sales and marketing or you neither love or hate it, you should still see the benefits that learning about the art of proven and current sales and marketing strategies could bring into your business and personal lives.
Without sales and marketing EVERYTHING would grind to a halt and I mean everything. There would be no cooperation, no problem solving, no exploring new frontiers, no new, no good. The world and without doubt every businesses within it would fail.
If you don’t do marketing or sales you wont sell (get peoples BUY IN) on anything.
There is no question that you NEED sales and marketing, especially if you are in business.
Embrace the change, don’t resist it.
When presented with something different or new our natural animal instincts are normally to resist, dismiss or attack it, its the self defence fight or flight programme built into all of us.
One of the best strategies to overcome this is to develop reassuring patterns which requires effort or energy in exactly the opposite direction of what we are trying to hide or run away from. Just like people that hate their jobs but need them, need to pluck up the courage to change them.
Fear of the unknown stops us from achieving better results than we have now, because deep down we are scared of looking in the mirror and finding truths that we just don’t want to admit exist.
Avoiding loss may be even more powerful than the fear of the unknown because of the implied consequences of getting it wrong (there is no wrong by the way, only feedback) and it ensures that we stay firmly rooted in our beliefs and opinions desperately trying to hang onto the status-quo.
Is this how far the human race has come ? Come on people lets get smart, because we are smart creatures aren’t we ?
Lets stop fearing the unknown and share and learn about sales and marketing approaches that are commonly used in our everyday lives by both the best and worst sales and marketing operations in the word because integrity and honesty as well as mind blowing results lies amongst it all.
Sales and marketing influences behaviour, decision and most of all emotion whether its for the greater good or the solo slippery snake. It knows how to tap right inside your psyche and what motivates you to take action, how to pressurise you, frighten you, excite you and compel you. From the single transaction to building a long term relationship.
When we don’t embrace the change the outcome can be the untimely and agonising death of an idea, concept or business. Just look what happened to UK manufacturing because it didn’t change its attitudes and adopt new ways of doing things and in more recent times the music industry has suffered from the same erosion of business as it fought music downloads instead of embracing it. Even for some time television channels with the rise of the internet, but thankfully some of those guys seem to have learned from the past, but not all.
Not changing can bring about the exact dramatic results you tried to avoid by resisting it.
Change can and is good and we all need it.
You’re already a strategic manipulator of your own tribe
By now your blood may be boiling and your thinking about lashing out at sellers and marketers for making you do things that you thought you had complete control over.
The truth is though that WE ALL MANIPULATE PEOPLE around us every day. No one is “better” or more “superior” than sales and marketing people. What differentiates us is the way we each choose to sell and market ourselves, what we do and how we can help others and the methods by which we do it is mainly affected by what we find comfortable to do, driven by our likes and dislikes.
For those of you with children you will appreciate that ensuring your little cherubs clean up, wash themselves properly, tidy things away and do their homework can require a certain approach. You know that when your child refuses to do something and talking to them in a logical manner does not always work, the threat of losing privileges or a favourite item or positively motivating and rewarding them can mean the difference between something being done or not at all.
Husbands, wife’s and partners use exactly the same approaches with each other, exchanging chores, calling to tell each other that they love them, enquiring about their day or an event or reading them the riot act because of their absence down the pub.
Even single people exchange glances, move expressively, open with the right words and compliment each other to show their interest in another person. Choices like the clothing you wear, your make up and perfume aim to persuade and convince others, your mini strategy to getting what you want.
Business people, whether they are one man brands or large corporations all need to engage their audiences, create interest and motivate people into feeling that they are the right place for a potential or existing customers to invest their money to achieve a desired outcome. Creating appealing products or services, offering more choice, creating add-ons and up sells and special offers all seek to to achieve that same aim.
Become a truth seeker and open your eyes to the good in sales and marketing
What is going to make the most difference in your life and businesses is realising that your feelings about sales and marketing are created by beliefs and experience otherwise known as knowledge.
And its knowledge that will help you to lean more about how people motivate and influence you and others. The more you know the more you can avoid the traps and pitfalls and the more able you will be at seeing just how sales and marketing can truly help your business and life.
Its things like social influence and persuasive psychology combined with decision making processes that can both protect you and make you stronger and more capable.
Being informed and educated will make you more able to see what options are available to market your business. You can then choose which sales and marketing strategies feel right for you and your businesses and you can filter out what truly deserves to be hated and what deserves to be loved.
So, have you ever taken the bait and got sold on a loser ? Are their sales and marketing strategies that you are either unsure how they would work, or if they would actually work for you ? Do you think sales and marketing is complicated and tiresome and if so why ? What do you love and hate about sales and marketing ?
Go on, tell use how you really feel. Unleash the fury 
Written by Nic Windley, a Business Development Consultant, Marketing Consultant and Sales Consultant you’ve been reading post Why most people HATE Sales and Marketing and why learning to LOVE it could save you ?
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