Good Products Do not Sell Themselves

Good products sell themselves is one of the biggest myths in business. Brian Tracy, a well respected business philosopher, once said that the average person has four to five ideas a year each of which would make them a fortune.
So where are they all?

Ah, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it?

Think about this:
Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest authors in American history. One of his most popular works is ‘The old man and the sea’, a story about an old man who catches a large marlin which gets devoured by sharks before he can bring it to shore.

Now if someone were to come to you all excited about this book they were writing and that was the plot what would you think? Yet today it is considered one of the great pieces of modern literature.

Not only that, Ray Kroc was 37 years when he met the McDonald brothers; his bright idea was to open more hamburger stands named McDonalds.

The list goes on: Colonel Sanders began to sell his fried chicken recipe when his business closed down, Mary Kay Ash founded Mary Kay cosmetics selling skin crème and Wally Famous Amos copied his cookie recipe off the back of a Nestle chocolate chips bag.

These are but a few of the stories of people who started took ordinary ideas and built them into a fortune.

How did they do it?
They knew that good marketing would sell anything. Think about this: Even if you are selling manure eventually someone is going to need to fertilize their yard.

So what can you begin to do to become a great marketer?
First of all, market something you are passionate about. Robert Frost said: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." Promotion is nothing more than a transfer of emotions, and enthusiasm is one of the most irresistible emotions there is.

Second, start marketing with a simple product. Most people have very short attention spans unless they are talking about themselves. If your idea is too complicated people may end up tuning out before you can ever get our point across. Not only that, simple enough idea will be easy for people to tell their friends about which will spread your message even faster.

Finally, your product must make contribution a priority. No product can survive unless people deem it valuable to themselves. Henry Ford said that a market can never be saturated with a good product, but it can be saturated very quickly with a bad one.

If your product or idea is not designed to contribute something of value to people it is going to gain a reputation of being a rip off.

So next time you have a great idea test it against these three principles. If it passes the test great! Then you can get to work and stick with it until you can be included in the marketing hall of fame. Good luck!

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