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Advertising and Marketing
Business is nothing without advertising and marketing. You can have the best product, the best letter-headed paper, and the best domain name, but if you don't know how to advertise and market your product or service cost effectively, you will fail.
I cannot stress how important advertising and marketing are. Imagine a successful business is a cake. Advertising and marketing is 90 percent of the cake.
Let me tell you the facts of life. The best product does not always win. The most successfully marketed product does. The winners are always the products the market likes the most.
Let me give you some examples.
Some years ago, there were two video systems—VHS and BETAMAX. Anyone who is technically minded knows that BETAMAX was the better product. In fact, BETACAM was used in the TV business until fairly recently. However, VHS won the consumers. Why? Because they won the marketing race.
How to Sell Today
Today's consumers are far more savvy and skeptical than they were 40 years ago. The hard sell, also known as “shout loud—money grab,” simply doesn't work well any more.
Forty years ago, selling was all about the hard sell, and grabbing as much as you could, as quickly as possible. The theory was to money grab, by closing the sale as soon as possible for fear of losing the sale al-together. Salespeople were also taught to shout loud, that is, make a lot of promises.
This may have worked in the past, but today's consumers are turned off by brash selling. ...
