Most any business consultant, business owner or marketing director will talk about the importance of customer service, value and product selection to increase sales. The theory is, if you have better customer service, low prices and lots of choices, you'll have more customers. The problem with this philosophy is you must have a customer in order to give them service, price breaks and increased options. You can't just say, "I've got great customer service." You must have a system that will drive the customer to you! One of the things you might hear business gurus say is, "If you have more sales training and if you are better at sales, then you'll be able to get more customers." The problem with that is, again, you've got to have prospects in order to use your sales skills.
Advertising agencies have their own tricks and techniques for closing the gap between the buyer and the seller. They use so-called "out-of-the-box" creative to build awareness with the prospect. Often times these creative advertisements fail to deliver on their promises or are misleading. Have you ever seen these ads from eye care practices promoting LASIK surgery for a ridiculously low price? If you read the fine print, you'll notice these low prices are reserved for individuals with very specific conditions. This is a sales trick that does nothing to build trust. Instead, these tricks build contempt and suspicion. The result is a widening of the divide when the goal of the advertisement should have been to narrow it.
In the book Think and Grow Rich, author Napoleon Hill wrote, "It is as useless to try to sell a man something until you have first made him want to listen as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating." If your prospective customers don't want to listen, they are not going to want to buy what you are selling. They are going to view you as a pest. That's where the difference between sales and marketing come into play.
In sales, you are trying to make people want to listen to you. Effective marketing makes people want to listen and prepares the buyers to seek you out and provide you with an opportunity to sell. Sales skills are still very important, but your time is used more productively in closing sales rather that chasing them down.
Portions of this text were borrowed from Monopolize Your Marketplace by Richard Harshaw.
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