I was in a Facebook group, that’s a business development for coaches group and I ended up in a bit of a spat. I hasten to say that it wasn’t me who was spatting, but the coach with whom I ended up talking to. It was all about selling.
She was asking what other coaches thought about ‘attraction marketing’. Initially, I misunderstood her and thought she was talking about the Law Of Attraction as a marketing concept. (For the record, it isn’t a marketing concept and I wrote a separate article about that fact here).
Anyway – once I understood the concept, I found myself scratching my head.
Attraction Marketing Is What Exactly?
It turns out, that ‘attraction marketing’ is about finding out who will benefit from working with you, then offering great value to that group of people by sharing useful hints, tips and articles. The idea is that by offering good value through free things – blogs, posts, podcasts etc – the people that will benefit from working with you will recognise that and contact you.
Most people call that group of activities ‘marketing’, but it seem that not everyone does…
Back To The Spat
The spat resulted from the fact that our attraction marketing coach lady ended up by saying that attraction marketing meant that she gained clients without every selling anything.
Now, dear reader, I cannot tell you how strongly disagree with that statement.
Sales And Marketing
There are finer minds than mine who can’t tell me where marketing stops and sales begins, so I’m not going to draw a line in the sand and say THIS IS SELLING. However, if you have a transaction that involves the exchange of money for a product or service, that transaction is a sale.
AIDA
The marketing acronym AIDA explains the steps within the sales and marketing process
A – Awareness
Your potential customer becomes aware of the fact that you exist
I – Interest
From being aware of your existence, the potential customer takes a step in your direction and becomes interested in what you’re doing
D – Desire
From that interest, comes a desire to have some of what you’re offering
A – Action
This is the decision and deliberate act of buying from you
Arguably, the first two are marketing, the third is both sales and marketing and the last is sales. Let me make something crystal clear; you have to go through all of these steps to create a new client; marketing AND selling.
Some coaches seem to equate no only the concept of, but also the actual word selling with a dark underbelly of society whose sole aim is to extort money from unsuspecting customers. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.
Good sales people swap knowledge and skill for customers’ time. They offer a product or a service that may fulfil a need for that customer and if the fit is good, the sale is agreed. If not, the sale isn’t. Selling is that simple and there’s nothing deceitful about it.
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