What does it take to be good at sales?
Mostly, it comes down to sharing the right message with the right person at the right time, much like Jeanette Winterson writes in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (also available on Audible):
People are different and need a different approach.
For more advice, here are some of my favourite Seth Godin quotes from his 2023 blog posts, together with a recommended title from Blinkist.
A practical way to create tribal affiliation is to amplify insular language. ~ The paradox of insular language
Learn more: Language Intelligence
Changing what someone wants is very different from helping them see the story and the path that gets them what they’ve wanted all along. ~ Making change happen
Learn more: The Story Factor
Getting to no requires caring enough to make a difference and being brave enough to tell the truth. ~ Getting to no
Learn more: Ogilvy On Advertising
If you announce that something is elegant or classy, it probably isn’t. There’s a humility to hospitality and sophistication that evaporates when we name it. ~ Elegant and classy
Learn more: Elite Sales Strategies
If you can help people get to where they seek to go, when they’re ready to get there, the stuff called marketing gets significantly easier. ~ Dreams and roadblocks
Learn more: Moving to Outcomes
If you want to do marketing, find a good cause and spread the idea. Don’t ask first. ~ Are you doing what you said you wanted to do?
Learn more: 80/20 Sales and Marketing
If you’re simply providing a good service at a good price, perhaps you don’t need to go to all those meetings and waste so much time and money on “branding.” ~ Is it a t-shirt brand?
Learn more: Better Brand Health
Like microeconomics, classic marketing theory happens in a vacuum, not the real world. To put it into widescale practice, we need to think hard about the impact of millions of decisions, often made without clarity or perspective. ~ Informed consent (rarely is)
Learn more: Made You Look
Marketing is generally about action. Marketers seek to create the conditions for a change to happen, for people to accomplish their goals and to satisfy their needs. ~ Confusion and delay
Learn more: Marketing 5.0
Marketing isn’t the act of getting people to buy what you’re paid to sell them. Good marketing is the craft of understanding what people want and need and helping them achieve it. ~ Consider switching sides
Learn more: Quantum Marketing
Marketing to others begins with marketing to ourselves. ~ Fooling ourselves
Learn more: The Direct to Consumer Playbook
People don’t share a concept because it helps the creator of the idea. They do it because it helps them. ~ Ideas shared are exponential
Learn more: Gap Selling
People don’t talk about your product or service because you have a gimmick or hype or because they care about you or even because a thoughtful analysis shows that it has the best features and price performance. They talk about it because they believe it’s good for their status, their affiliation with people they care about or their frame of mind. ~ Nothing to ad
Learn more: Marketing Artificial Intelligence
Permission is the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them. It’s not a legal construct, it’s an emotional one. ~ Creating value as an entrepreneur
Learn more: Email Marketing Demystified
Selling is a special sort of marketing. It’s interactive, generous and personal. Selling brings individual attention, connection and tension to each customer. And selling takes time, effort and money. ~ Bought or sold?
Learn more: Sell Like Crazy
The easiest thing to sell is a simple solution to a problem someone knows they have. It’s a lot more difficult to bring nuance, understanding and resilience to a complex situation. More difficult but honest. ~ It’s simple (it’s complicated)
Learn more: SEO 2024
The secret isn’t to focus on your promo. The secret is to create something that those you serve want to tell others about. ~ Promo creep
Learn more: Obviously Awesome
Trust is worth more than attention. ~ Eight marketing maxims
Learn more: Digital Marketing Strategy
When a marketer serves a community, they create the conditions where they’d be missed–because the ideas or products or services they bring are important, not simply tolerated. That’s a worthwhile goal. ~ On being missed
Learn more: $100 Million Leads
When groups of people with a shared preference or attitude choose to do something, we see markets and cultural trends. But these people aren’t different kinds. They’re simply people responding or reacting to what’s on offer. ~ Different kinds of people
Learn more: Wired for Story
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