New Approach To Marketing and Selling

We live in a world that for many has become technology advantaged in business and life. Imagine, for a moment, just how communication, science, art, medicine, automation, supply chain and products have all been reinvented.

Even consumers’ behaviors have been unearthed and changed beyond recognition. Consumers have become more assertive, demanding, highly skeptical, and more cynical, less trusting and with less loyalty to brands and companies.

With all the reinventing and shifting in a diversity of industries and cultures we find however, little has changed in the process of how marketers and sales proceed to understanding why consumers’ buy and how they think. Our marketing methods and selling techniques only probe for surface understanding and not the core emotions and feelings of consumers’ behaviors.

Marketing and sales people rely on worn-out familiar campaigns and techniques that simply obtain less than marginal results and then place blame on their products, services or the economy. This become more apparent with sales and marketing people in hot industries where demand exceeds supply - sales skyrocket with little effort or skill on the part of sales and marketing. Then, when supply exceeds demand and there are too many sellers chasing too few consumers’—the blame sets in and the excuse making erupts, causing products and services to fail or drop dramatically below projections.

Change doesn’t come easy when you’re entrenched in deeply rooted behaviors of which takes much courage to change. Change means thinking differently about how one does things, which sometimes goes against all that you were brought up to believe in. People who hold stubbornly to their view and can’t envision a different world will fight to maintain their current one.

To maintain a competitive edge in your business will require stepping outside your comfort zone and the traditional methods of conducting yourself in business. The world has become a melting pot of various nationalities and cultures creating the backbone of our economy. Regardless, if you have a world vision of your business or not, the effects of you succeeding is influenced by your understanding of how consumers’ think and how they buy.

Consumers’ ask for one thing and do another. They make illogical leaps of judgment and come to unreasonable conclusions based on their experience, memory and unconscious thoughts. The truth is, most customers form opinions about you before you ever get a chance to deliver your service or product. That opinion is formed mostly unconsciously.

Customers’ are your only business and requires you to reach beyond product features, benefits, quality and reliable delivery methods. Sales and marketing people service their consumers better when they understand how consumers feel, think and experience you and your products and services.

The interaction between the confidence of your marketing message and the confidence of a salesperson in his/her product or service sets the stage for how, when and why the consumer will or will not purchase goods and services. When a salesperson conveys confidence in his/her company, product and service, it delivers subtle nonverbal cues to the consumer. That confidence, if perceived by the consumer, as authenticity on the part of the salesperson, adds great persuasive power to the decision making of the consumer.

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Don L. Price – Sales/Marketing & Positive Change Success Coach, International Speaker, Consultant and Author of Secrets of Personal Marketing Power-Strategies for Achieving Greater Personal & Business Success. www.donlprice.com