Stop!

How is your marketing working for you? Are you marketing yourself and your business, or are you selling? Are you selling every day to everyone who you meet? Are you selling so hard that people don’t want to engage you in conversation? Are total strangers, and your friends, avoiding you? Maybe you should stop doing what you are doing and try something new and different.

Perhaps you should try something that may seem even a little non-productive. Maybe you should stop talking about yourself, what your business does, what your business offers, or what you can do for someone else. Maybe you should stop selling all the time.

Why don’t you try marketing instead of selling? You may believe that marketing and selling are the same; doesn’t everyone know that. You would be wrong if that is what you believe. Selling and marketing are not the same, and it is time we all learned that.

Selling is the point where the other person, our prospect, decides to purchase from you whatever you offer, your product or service, agreeing that it is what they need for themselves or for their business. Everything else up to that point, and from that point on, is marketing. If you don’t do the marketing right, the selling never happens.

You must do your marketing correctly to make the sale, and you must keep doing it correctly to keep the sales flowing, either from that same customer, or from the referrals that clients may bring to you. Your marketing is everything that you do all day long. Every word you speak, every gesture you make, every nod, motion, movement, smile, frown, handout, flyer, letter, email, card, everything is your marketing.

You find prospects from your marketing; you develop customers from your marketing, and you turn those customers into clients. You gain referrals from your marketing, and you enhance your reputation from your marketing. Your marketing is everything that you do, and it leads to everything that you have or gain in the future. It also represents everything that you lose or can lose, because it can be good or bad marketing.

If you do your marketing correctly, sales will fall into your lap, and referrals will follow you everywhere you go. Strangers will know you by your reputation and will want to know you, will want to do business with you, and will refer business to you. Therefore, what is more important to you, the sale, or your marketing?

We should all stop being sales people and become marketing consultants. We should stop trying to sell to everyone we meet and discover what others need. We should become listeners and hear what others say that they are looking for, and stop trying to sell them what we have to offer. Then help them find what they need or what they are searching for, or try to help them find someone who can help them find someone else to help them. Refer business to others if we cannot solve the needs of our partners.

If you stop selling and become someone who helps others discover how to solve their needs, those people will be grateful to you and will show their gratitude to you. That’s Gratitude Marketing in reverse. Gratitude Marketing is a two way street, just like all marketing. Join the revolution and show gratitude for others. Please comment here, or email me at Jim@JimTeasley.com, or call me at 360-314-8691. I am always grateful for your questions, comments, or other input.