Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting
Over at License to Roam, Rachel Clarke reports in her post Self-replicating Awesomeness at SXSW the following exchange:
Deborah Schultz, Chris Heuer, David Parmet
- DP: Brian Oberkirch put this together - he asked 2 questions. How to market into community without being too marketer like. And how do you build a community around what you are doing? What does ‘no marketing’ look like? How can we use social media?
- DS: None of this is about tools or technology, but is about the customers. Here to talk about some of the subtleties, not about the tactics. It’s about marketing, customer service, product development. the marketing silo needs to be changed, why are they afraid of the opps. This is not telling or selling, this is being in the trenches.
- CH: what is really bugging me right now is the number of people who are saying to me ‘build me a community’ but this does make a community, it is the interpersonal connections that make it. Social media is not new media, it changes how we relate to each other. You have to shift the way you think about participation. have to change mindset from stop trying to sell me to help make me buy.
stop trying to sell me to help make me buy
I’d rework that final phrase to…
stop trying to sell me and instead help me solve my problem/fill my want/ meet my need
Fifty years ago selling was push, push, push. Over the past half century the tide has turned and now selling is more of a pull, pull, pull.
Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting
The ENTIRE focus of my first book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results is to help the reader get out of his/her own head and into the head of his/her customers!!! To use the language above…jumping INTO THE TRENCHES and getting down and dirty connecting with your target customers.
When your focus is upon solving your customers problems…. when your focus is upon providing something they want…. when your product or service meets their need… you discover that marketing is merely presenting your solution… your answer to the people who not only want to hear it, but are EAGER to learn more.
Comments
5 Responses to “Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting”
Leave a Reply
-
Get your copy of
Keys to Small Business
Marketing Success
When you sign up for
Keys to Website Success
I always get put off by people who are obviously trying to sell me something. I prefer it if they’re just helpful and explain how it works.
[...] mark wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe ENTIRE focus of my first book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results is to help the reader get out of his/her own head and into the head of his/her customers! … [...]
Solution focused companies always seem to do better in my book because by their very nature, they need to be listening more. I always get pissed off when someone I know or am speaking with completely misunderstands the question they are asked (or chooses to ignore it) and then jumps right into the middle of their standard ‘pitch’ rather than trying to really understand what the person is seeking to learn. We must be of service to one another for the knowledge economy to really work at full efficiency…
One quick correction on my quote referenced above, what I said was more along the lines of “companies will not be successful in the modern new era until they stop selling and start helping people buy” this attitudinal shift is paramount in a digitally enabled, global knowledge economy where the power of information is in the hands of the people and the market.
It really turns me off when, for example.
A friend of yours, had not contact you for a long time.
And out of sudden, he called you up, and starts saying alot of things about his/her products.
Maybe, they should really learn how to stop their “so-called” way of marketing.
“Stop Marketing, Stop Selling and Start Connecting” > this is really good quote. I liked it very much. Really now selling is not done by forcefully. Now buyers are very conscious about product and their needs. If they feel such product fulfill their purpose then they will buy it otherwise not. So make contact and try to feel the needs of the product then your product sold out.