Marketing: Super sales people are other-centered
– By John Foust, Raleigh, NC
Dwight Eisenhower once reflected on the days when he worked with Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. “You know,” he said, “MacArthur has an ‘eye’ problem.” When asked if MacArthur was afflicted with blurred vision or nearsightedness, Ike explained, “He has a fatal attraction to the perpendicular pronoun ‘I.’”
Eisenhower’s choice of words is particularly interesting, because one definition of “perpendicular” is “extremely steep.” Ike recognized that, in our dealings with other people, we create steep obstacles when we keep the focus on ourselves.
His comment reminds me of an advertising creativity training program I conducted a few years ago. When it was time to select a business to use as an example, the group chose a bakery shop. “Before we discuss ad strategies,” I said, “we need to determine what this particular bakery sells.”
Answers flew around the room: bread, cookies, cinnamon rolls, wedding cakes. But when somebody mentioned doughnuts, a woman sitting close to the front threw down her pen, leaned back, and crossed her arms – clear signals of disapproval. “I don’t like doughnuts,” she said in a loud voice. Obviously, she didn’t intend to participate in any discussion involving doughnuts. (I could understand that kind of reaction if liver and onions had been mentioned, but that’s another story.)
For her sake, I hope she was just trying to be funny. But if she wasn’t joking, her behavior indicated that she has a serious “I problem.” If she has that attitude on the job, her favorite customers get the lion’s share of her attention. Everybody else – the doughnut stores and other businesses she doesn’t like – gets a half-hearted effort. Or no effort at all.
Of course, there is an important distinction between personal preferences and moral issues. Under no circumstances should a sales person be forced to work with clients who market products which they believe are morally wrong. In this case, I don’t think doughnuts were a moral issue; she just didn’t like them.
Self-interest is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It’s impossible to have any degree of success in advertising sales without understanding the role that self-interest plays in the salesperson-advertiser-audience relationship. The salesperson is naturally concerned about making quotas. The advertiser wants to move inventory. And the typical reader wants the answer to the universal question, “What’s in it for me?”
Effective sales people are big enough to leave personal tastes out of their client relationships. They know it doesn’t make any difference whether or not they like doughnuts or any other product. As long as doughnuts are important to the corner bakery, they will do anything in their power to help their client sell as many doughnuts as possible.
The advertising industry demands people who are other-centered instead of self-centered. We need people who will give 100 percent effort, whether they like a particular merchant’s products or not.
Want to make a difference? Want to be an advertising superstar? Start by becoming other-centered.
(c) Copyright 2009 by John Foust. All rights reserved.
E-mail John Foust for information about his training videos for ad departments: jfoust@mindspring.com