The Fine Line Between Marketing and Hyperbole

The greatest salesman I have ever had the pleasure to work with made an observation to me that I've always remembered. It was one of those little pearls of wisdom that sticks with you because it is so true. The original context was about selling telecommunications equipment, yet it is applicable throughout all aspects of business, politics and life in general. His message was this:

"The more you have to tell someone how great you are, the less they believe you."

It's a good rule that I try to follow, even though I don't always succeed. Despite my background in technology, many years of promoting products and ideas have moved my approach more towards sales and marketing where promotion is fundamental. The trick is in knowing where to draw the line between promotion and hyperbole, and also knowing when to stop it entirely.

The process is to use promotions to gain an audience. Once you have gotten in the door and you have an audience let your product (or service, concept, business proposition, or whatever you are pushing) do the talking for you. Once they're paying attention, stop marketing and start helping them benefit from the product. If it's any good to them they'll let you know. If you can't back up your promotion with a product that delivers value to the customer, or you have left a trail behind you of broken promises and unhappy customers, no amount of marketing can save you or your company.

Success comes when the customer tells you how great your product is and how they are able to benefit from it, whether by solving a problem better than their current solution or how they can do useful things they couldn't do before. Many of these customers will agree to be references. This will help you win over new customers, and also investors if you are a startup. This is the source of building a good reputation and credibility, and true commercial success.

There are corollaries to this rule. For example, do you like to name drop? That's when you try to impress someone by relating that you know important person 'X'. It is instead far more impressive when person 'X' knows you. Do you primp and preen before an important date, wash the car and pick an expensive restaurant? That's marketing, and there's nothing wrong with that provided you can back it up. It's what comes out of your mouth and in your casual behaviour that tells the truth about the product, you, not the packaging.

To close this off post I will note that my MP, John Baird, has started filling my mailbox with one-sheet flyers extolling his and his government's virtues and accomplishments, suitably simplified and inflated. There's nothing particularly wrong with that considering that an election is increasingly probable - it's marketing - if they can show they know where to draw that line between promotions and delivering the goods. My vote will depend on what I really believe he and they actually accomplished and what that indicates for the next term, and if they show wisdom in letting their record speak louder than the message.