May 21st, 2007
Great marketers sell more stuff. True or false?
There's a post at Marketing Professionals http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/05/what_makes_a_great_marketer.html that asks: What's a great marketer?
The answer to which most people refer is: "A great marketer sells more stuff." (first comment there.)
Seems reasonable, yes? Sell more, make more. You're a better marketer.
But is selling more stuff always a good thing?
On the one hand...
Marketers (and sales people) who are driven by the desire to sell more are also the most tempted to do and say things that are not in anyone's best interest but their own.
Remember when they used to glamorize smoking in the movies? How about the old but smooth alcohol ads?
Today, there's stuff like Aspartame http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame - the artificial and apparently addictive sugar substitute in diet sodas, also available in little blue packages on counters in every restaurant in America.
But we want to be thin, right?
Or the Chicken McNuggets with butane - lighter fluid - (post here http://www.kimklaverblogs.blogspot.com/2007/03/lighter-fluid-in-chicken-mcnuggets.html) in them. But we want fast, cheap, salty food, right?
And we have the networkers who make big promises to make sales. (E.g. bad press on product promises, see FreeLife http://kimklaverblogs.blogspot.com/2007/01/should-freelife-reps-worry.html, and Mannatech http://kimklaverblogs.blogspot.com/2007/05/will-mannatech-get-us-all-in-trouble.html, or and bad press on business opportunity income promises, USANA http://kimklaverblogs.blogspot.com/2007/04/turning-tables-on-mr-minkow-part-1.html.)
But there's a reason this all continues to go on, despite our complaining about it.
That's the other hand...
Why does a company sell something that's possibly bad for you over time, and addictive besides? Why do people offer a quick fix to others for weight, energy or financial success when it doesn't happen quickly, if ever? Because we buy it. Because we're a nation that's into instant gratification.
We use sugar substitutes because we're obsessed with being thin. We think sugar is bad, so in goes the blue packet (NutraSweet) or the pink one, Splenda, for the coffee. Now we feel justified having that dessert.
We want to believe the claims about the quick weight loss without changing eating habits. Or getting that energy back without more exercise. Or getting some fast financial success. And if there's a chance it can be done quickly and painlessly (no change of lifestyle on our part) we're all for it. Over and over and over again.
Aren't marketers (us included) just playing to ourselves? To our own hopes and dreams of a quick fix so we don't have to change anything we're doing, much less overhaul our priorities?
Should marketers continue to play to the national instant gratification habit in order to sell more stuff and be 'great'?
And if not, then what is a great (network) marketer?
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