Do you want to grow your business without expensive advertising? Would you like to utilize an easy strategy to turn your best customers into your best salespeople? Are you tired of attracting poorly qualified prospects that waste your valuable time?

OK, enough of these silly rhetorical questions....any business owner or executive who just read these questions has just gone through a brief period of euphoric fantasy followed quickly by a sick feeling in their gut...knowing that it's just too good to be true. I'm here to tell you though that the positive answers to these questions are not only true they are more than likely the way in which your business is really growing now.

Here's some reality therapy:

• People don't believe advertising.
• People are sick of advertising.
• Unless you spend very big bucks, your advertising may be sending many a negative message about your company.
• The awareness your advertising creates may not convert prospects to high-value life time clients.

We're all bombarded by thousands of advertising messages each day. How many do you remember from yesterday? A more important question: Of those you remember for how many will you become a customer? For example take Geico insurance, sure we all remember their funny ads, but how many of us actually buy from them? Not many. About 7 out of every 100 auto insurance buyers.

In my 15+ year sales career I've learned that one principle is by far the powerful: people buy from those they know and trust. Like many of the most profound concepts in life, this truth is simple and intuitive yet ignored by a vast majority of sales and marketing "experts". I sat through a couple hours of stereotypical sales training recently in which the instructor counseled, "If you can't be a good actor then you can't sell." No wonder sales people have such a bad reputation! Do I really want to be sold something from someone who is acting (i.e. lying)...why should I expect that my customers want to get an acting job when they read my marketing collateral or meet my salespeople?

Traditional advertising and sales are almost always based on acting...whether through outright fake sentiment or through some entertainment gimmick like Geico does. It's so established that advertiser embellish the truth on a regular basis that we've invented the special legal word—"puffing". It doesn't sound so bad as "lying" but means the same thing. Take a look around at the advertising or packages closest to you this moment and notice how we've become desensitized to the "puffing" of advertising...do you really believe that spaghetti on the shelf is "America's Favorite Pasta"? No you don't. That's why you will typically buy it on price or otherwise only when you have credible insight into it having superior quality.

So it's really no wonder that most people instinctively don't believe either salespeople or advertising. So back to our principle, people do buy from the exact opposite of advertising and sales...they buy from sources that they know and trust. I'm sure for anyone whose familiar with RisingLine you already know the answer to advertising and sales people but we'll have to wait for my next post to conclude.

Labels: New-Media-Marketing

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 11/13/2006 09:50:00 AM