If you were to hear this complaint (which by the way, I hear very often) what would you guess the business owner was really saying?
Was he saying that he had a great product, but his targeted customers were just too dumb to recognize it and hence they weren't buying?
Or was he lamenting the fact that he was not selling to the right customer niche market?
Or maybe he was charging too much for his awesome product and nobody wanted to buy at that price?
Or could it be that no one was hearing his sales message and seeing his ads and therefore he was not making sales?
Maybe his advertising was being seen, and customers were trying to buy, but something in his sales system or process was blocking the completion of the sale?
There could be many more questions asked about why sales aren't happening. Most business owners are "sure" it's not the fault of their "baby," the awesome product they created that they know couldn't be at fault.
But beyond their perfect product, these same owners have no clue why the sales aren't coming.
Here's a cold hard reality: you may have the greatest, smartest, most advanced, most wonderful product in the world . . . but if your ads and marketing efforts don't induce the customer to see the benefit he will derive from owning and using the product, no one will ever get the chance to see just how wonderful your product really is!
It's a shame that sales aren't directly and proportionally tied to product usefulness. If that were the case, all any business operator would need to do would be to concentrate solely on producing good products. He would make a killing in the marketplace if he were paid on the basis that top quality earned top dollar, no exceptions.
But as we all know, the best products are not always the best sellers, or the most popular choice of the market niche crowd. In fact, often just the opposite is the case. Lousy products that have an excellent sales machine in place become the real "hits."
What I hope you'll learn from this sometimes counter-intuitive reasoning is this: great products generally have no real sales advantage -- the determining factor in sales success is usually the effectiveness of the advertising and marketing effort.
That principle leads me to the next observation: there is no more critical function in any solo business than the effective marketing of the products and services offered to your customers.
In fact, if you learn to become outstanding at marketing, your business will have an excellent chance of becoming extremely profitable.
If you stink at marketing (and don't get help somewhere) your business will surely fail -- and fail very quickly. Business is all about making sales and generating income. If you can't do that, you don't have a viable business.
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Post#172 |
