Lyres, lying and other phony marketing techniques...

Over the Thanksgiving break, I revisited Jeff Thull's The Prime Solution and was reminded what a brilliantly useful book it is for those of us aspiring to improve industrial marketing and selling.

When you read a book like this, you are reminded of just how unsatisfactory are the many shallow business marketing how-to articles, seminars, videos and blogs being published nowadays. Such efforts are like so many Lyre Birds strutting about the social media rainforest, skillfully mimicking the most fundamental precepts, yet offering no real depth as to the how-to.

One of the dead-on observations in Thull's book is an analysis of how today's false "consultative selling" approach is only a mid-step along three eras of evolution. In Era One (the 1950's), the sales approach was one of skilled persuasion, the objective being to overcome any customer "objections" to the sale. In Era Two (late 20th century, where most industrial sales forces still reside), the sales quest was to present oneself as a problem solver. This sounds right-minded, but look closer. The approach is still based on the seller's perspective, made worse by the assumption that the customer's complex problem is accurately defined by the customer, and moreover, that the right "solution" can be chosen from among the many product iterations now added to the salesperson's line card.

If you want to know how the Era Three marketing and sales approach is profoundly more evolved, you must study the book. It is too simplistic to say, what your company needs is enlightened organizational leadership, the wisdom to market and sell not just products but to turn your company into a source for business advantage. It's fundamentally a question of perspective (the customer's, not yours), but you still need to know the how-to details and you won't find the answer in a blog.

At some point, we all have to go back to how-to school, especially the leaders of American industrial manufacturing companies, leaders who are challenged to market and sell complex, highly engineered solutions. Without a depth of how-to in the areas of marketing, sales and organizational change, companies will continue to underachieve.

We all seem to agree that there is a shortage of skilled labor in this country. We next need to agree that there is a shortage of skilled marketing and sales leadership in this country. So long as companies fail to cultivate and give voice to their genuine value, they are like Lyre Birds calling attention to themselves based on deception.

Deception is a technique that works well enough if you are a Lyre Bird, but not if you are a modern marketing and sales organization still relying on vocal techniques to simulate real problem solving.

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jb