“Selling” is not a bad word – it is an essential business skill. It’s easy to see how some people would think that influencing others is somehow underhanded or unethical:
“Yep… this one’s got really low miles. Only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady from Pasadena”
In reality, many great ideas die an agonizing death because they have not been properly sold. There also seems to be an inverse correlation between our technical ability, and our willingness to sell. In other words, probably the more technically skilled you are in your area, the less likely you are to want to sell your idea. (With all due respect to the Engineers out there.)
Here’s an ugly truth: marketing is everything. Think of the examples in consumer goods:
- 8-tracks were far superior in quality to cassettes or records.
- BetaMax was most certainly better than VHS
- Apple’s Mac has long been superior to any PC.
So if these are any indication, great products and great ideas require great marketing if they are to be adopted.
So what do you do?
First – you have to value the idea of selling your ideas. You need to tell a story about how your idea is going to enhance pleasure, or reduce pain.
Second – Put together a marketing plan. Depending on what you’re doing, it might only be half a page long, but have some idea about what story you are going to tell, to whom, and via what media.
Third – Check out our podcast this week to hear more about Influencing Others
Finally – remember that we are all “in sales”. If you live in a society of more than one person, you will be constantly trying to lobby people to your way of thinking about one thing or another. The sooner we all get comfortable with this reality, the sooner the good ideas will at least seem to “sell themselves”.