Your Product is....You!

And if you're trying to get someone to buy something from you or convince them to do something, you need to understand this. You could have the greatest product in the world, but if you're coming across as a lifeless automaton, you will find very few buyers - unless your clientele is other lifeless automatons. If I'm approached by ten different people who all have the same product that I want, I'm going to buy that product from the person who seems to be the most like me - it's just human nature. We are most comfortable dealing with those who are most like us, or, specifically, who are the most like us as we would like to be.

That's a bit of a subtle difference, so let me talk about that a bit more. I may be way off-course here, but I think all of us want to improve our lives on a more or less continual basis, so we are attracted to those who are a bit better at things than we are. If I'm looking to improve my tennis game, I'm not going to look for a tennis partner who plays worse than I do (assuming such a person exists!), I'm going to find someone a bit better at tennis so my game will have to improve. But that potential partner has to be someone who's still at my general ability level, not way high above me. The gap between my current ability level and that of my partner has to be a believable gap - I have to be able to see that I can improve to his level relatively easily.

So, when we translate that idea into our marketing approach, we need to be aware of where our prospects' current level sits and talk with them accordingly. Most of us can easily visualize improving something by a reasonable amount over a period of time, but will have a much harder time with an enormous change in a short period of time. If the belief gap for your prospect is too high, skepicism creeps in and you've lost the sale.

Am I doing the right thing?

Hmmm, that's kind of a strange title for a post, but that's OK - it will make more sense in a bit, hopefully. The actual question goes back to a conversation I had the other day with a friend of mine, I'll call him Jim even though that's not his real name. We were talking about what it takes to be successful as a marketer and he mentioned the fact that though he had considered moving to a new company to market, he had decided to stay put where he was. What he actually said was that he had realized that it wasn't the company that mattered but rather what he did himself. That's a pretty bold statement, so I'll repeat it. It wasn't the company that mattered but rather what he did himself. Or, to put it another way, success comes from within each of us.

Part of what made the whole conversation with Jim so interesting is that he's had loads more time in the marketing industry than I have, by a factor of something like ten to one in fact, but he's never had much success with it, so I found myself in the position of giving advice to someone who's been around a lot longer than me. There are no doubt lots of reasons that Jim hasn't had much success yet, but I know that it's not from a lack of trying on his part. Without knowing all the details, I would still safely to be able to say that the missing element is his belief level in himself rather than any lack of skill. I could hear it in his voice.

And, I know, his prospects can too.

If you're not excited about what you're doing, why should anyone else be?