Must we persuade in marketing?  Is there a better way?
Channel: George Kao
Date: 2016-02-12

If you've never quite enjoyed "persuading" in sales, then this post is for you...

...because I haven't either.  And I'd like to present you with an alternative.

It is typically assumed that in marketing or selling your service, you need to do some element of "persuasion".  In fact, most marketing teachers will tell you that the more persuasive/convincing you are, the more clients you'll get.

This unfortunately is true.  Aggressive marketing tactics often work... in the short-term.  

But I'm not here to do things for the short-term.  And neither are you.  Because your heart and conscience tells you something is wrong, whenever you act only for the short-term, regardless of long-term consequences to your soul.

This is why persuasion tactics in marketing and sales bothers us.

Even though it often "works" to get a new client, our conscience is saying "there's got to be a better way."

(And by the way, clients who are persuaded into buying your thing, will sometimes get "buyer's remorse" down the road, because your persuasive tactics temporarily short-circuited their own natural buying thought process. which has its own rhythm and time and I think need to be respected.)

The better way is Alignment.

Instead of trying to persuade whoever is in front of us to buy, we do our best to *align* what we offer with the right people who need and want what we have.

1. We are in marketing alignment when we offer the right thing to the right person at the right time for the right price.  When we fail to align on any of those, we can become desperate and feel the need to fall back into persuasion tactics.

(Persuasion often arises from desperation.) 

2. We need to talk to enough prospective customers in the right way -- to understand what problems they really want to solve, that our service can help with, and to discover what else they (or their friends) buy that is similar to our service.  

One way to do this is to conduct more Niche Interviews: https://medium.com/@georgekao/7108e7db96db

3. We need to keep improving our services, and our understanding of whom it's best for, so that we can talk about our services honestly -- transparently re: what it really does and what it doesn't do -- so that we feel energized to take our services to the people who really need it.  When we approach marketing/selling from this service-oriented way, perhaps even altruistically, we find alignment.  Persuasion become unnecessary.

Imagine that what you sell is "a solution to the cancer of the right-toe."  You won't need to do any "selling" if you present it to someone who *has* cancer of the right toe, or has a friend who suffers with that problem.  There's perfect alignment between what is being offered and who wants it.

However, if you are talking to someone who has never heard of cancer-of-the-right-toe (which, by the way, I just made up!) and you are trying to sell them your solution, you will become desperate, and fall to persuasion tactics such as "Listen to these scary stories of people who had such a cancer... YOU might develop it too, so you better buy it now.  Last chance for this price.  You'll never see this great offer again.  Etc. Etc."

So in your copywriting, in your selling, in your marketing language, in your networking, remember this: Persuasion is unnecessary.  

Work instead on Alignment.

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