Sales Training Today: Marketing vs. Selling with Brian Tracy

Good day Sales Champions!

Here is a great article by sales expert Brian Tracy. Enjoy, learn, and close more sales.

Make it a great selling day. God bless!

Mark Bowser

Marketing vs. Selling

By Brian Tracy

Marketing and selling are two separate activities. Marketing is the process of lead generation. Marketing embraces everything you do up to the point of sale. The design, development, and determination of the exact product or service that you are going to sell are the first part of marketing. The second is to think through every element of the marketing mix before you begin. These elements are product, price, promotion, packaging, positions, and people.

Product/Service
What exactly is your product or service? What does it do for your customer? How does it improve his or her life or work? What products or services are you going to offer? Any changes in the product or service offered can dramatically change the entire nature of your business.

Price
How much are you going to charge for your product? Will you sell wholesale or retail? How do your prices compare with those of your competitors? Are they higher or lower? How do you justify your prices, whatever they are?

Place
Where exactly are you going to locate your business? Where are you customers? Do you sell from a retail storefront or by telephone and Internet from your offices?

Promotion
How do you advertise and attract customers? Once you have attracted potential customers, what is the specific sales process that you use to convert those prospects into customers? What systems do you use for developing and maintaining successful sales process to get customers to buy from you?

Packaging
What do your product or service, place of business, and every other visual element of your company look like to your customers? Customers are extremely visual. They form their first impression about you and your company within four seconds of seeing you for the first time. Looking from the outside, is every part of the customers visual experience with regard to your company excellent in every way?

Positioning
How are you positioned in the minds and hearts of your customer? What words to your customers use when they talk about you and describe you to others? If your name were mentioned in a customer survey, how could customers and non customers refer to you and your business?

People
Who exactly are the people who interact with your customers? What do they look like? How do they dress? What do they say? Prospective customers are largely emotional. They make most of their decisions based on the way they are treated by the people in your organization. What kind of "people experience" do customers have when they deal with you? How could it be improved?

Action Exercise
Determine what you will have to do to get your customers to give you a nine or ten score on the question, "Based on your experience with us, would you recommend us to your friends and family?"