📄 Everything that's wrong with marketing and sales in one handy sentence

A while ago I saw a salespage for some new thing that one of the big names in motivational speaking is doing - I forget the details, but it’s some sort of programme designed to help people start mastermind groups.

So far, so good: a mastermind group is a fantastic tool in the life of any business professional, and everybody should be in one. Seriously.

But somewhere on the page, it read:

"Social Pressure - This is going to be one of the biggest launches in history with more hype leading up to it than ever before, and people are going to be afraid to miss out on this new wave of opportunity."

Well, yuck. Stuff like that just makes me feel like I need a shower.

That single line describes perfectly why marketing and sales have such a bad reputation.

I mean, come on: Hype? Afraid to miss out? New wave of opportunity?

Oh sure, it’s effective marketing. Hype works.

And it’s effective selling too: Painting a ‘wave of opportunity’ reels people in, and pushing scarcity buttons and triggering fear of missing out, that works too.

But it’s scuzzy, manipulative, and unethical.

Marketing and sales campaigns like that, they prey on the gullible.

It’s designed to coerce people into buying something - not because they actually need it, but because there’s an artificial sense of need being created in the buyer. It’s manipulation, of the wrong kind.

Now I’m sure the dude is a good guy, nice to his grandma and so on, and I guess his work makes a difference for people. All good.

But seeing this? What a turnoff.

Selling - done right and done ethically - doesn’t need any hype, or ‘wave of opportunity’ or fear of missing out.

Selling done right means you serve a buyer in making a yes/no decision, based on actual - not manufactured - need.

Person has problem.

You have solution.

Help person in deciding to buy, or not to buy:

Ethical selling in a nutshell.