What is the best way to reach your audience and create a relationship with them? We offer Website Development, industry leading Online Marketing solutions, Targeted Opt-In Email List Generation, and Online Marketing tips and Tactics. See Email Marketing Online to learn more. When corporate and personal buying motives conflict, the personal motives frequently win out. If you want to sell to business people something that's good for their companies but bad for them, they'll probably find a way to sabotage your efforts and convince their bosses not to buy it. I can think of hundreds of examples of this. Let me give you a recent one. Most advertisers stress the benefits of what the product will do for the reader's company, assuming this is the reader's only concern. But it's not. Readers are also concerned with how the purchase decision affects them personally. A close friend owns a small but well respected ad agency here in New Jersey. Recently, she had the chance to pitch a new high-tech account. The person who called her had responded to a sales letter she had sent to about fifty such firms. His title was Senior Writer. She visited his com¬pany. He started talking about graphics and desktop publishing and asking what software she used and what fonts she would recommend. |
Online Marketing
"Wait a minute," she said politely. "While we are happy to do graph¬ics, we are not a design studio. We are an advertising agency. That means we do the whole advertising campaign—from planning and strategy through copywriting and design." The prospect immediately became dis¬tant and cold. "I do all the planning and writing around here," he explained haughtily. "I just need someone to lay out my words. And I already know marketing, so your help is not needed there."She thanked the prospect for his time, ended the meeting, and left. Later, we reviewed his writing and agreed he was a terrible writer, with no understanding of selling or marketing. So why did he not retain this ad agency? The reason is that the service threatened his ego. He perceived himself as the great writer and saw the ad agency as competition, not help. Even though he recognizes the benefits such technology can bring to his department, he wants to avoid the pain of learning something he perceives to be difficult and frightening. Again, personal concern outweighs cor¬porate benefit in this situation.
Although his company's business goal was to produce more effective marketing communications, this prospect's personal goal was to do all the writing himself resulting in a conflict that motivated and doesn't need this extra headache, despite the fact that it would probably help clear up some of his existing paperwork backlog.
Fear of the unknown is the root cause. Fear is an extremely powerful motivator that can either work for you or against you. A middle manager, for example, might vote against acquiring desktop publishing and putting a terminal on every manager's desk because he himself has a phobia of computers.
It's mostly about getting help doing their job. You know that corporate downsizing has left fewer managers to do the work of many.