UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, Revised and Updated

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Lush

SALESPEOPLE ARE SO important. They need to be engaging with potential customers not just by taking money from people ready to buy right now. Salespeople are the front lines. The foot soldiers. The retail associate is the person who is your most frequent point of engagement with your potential customers. They are marketing every single day to people on behalf of your company. They are the most important people in your UnMarketing cycle on a daily basis and yet they are the number one reason sales are lost.

To prove this point, I hopped into undercover mode again and went to one of my local malls to see who would care that I was in their store. It was a Tuesday afternoon, a dead time in retail, so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowd. I walked into 20 different stores and felt the same every single time. Unwanted, interruptive, and a general pain to the workers who were trying to get important things done like stocking shelves, chatting with each other, or working on their “stink eye” look.

And then there was Lush.

I noticed this soap store on steroids, because I caught a whiff of it 50 feet away. I really had no need to go into it, because I’m a guy and buy my soap by the truckload in bulk, using it occasionally. But I went in, wanting to round out my day of uselessness of trying to prove that a store could get it right.

As soon as I walked in, I knew I had found that mythical place. Jessica perked up as soon as I walked into the store and greeted me like a long-lost friend. ...