My Shtick

I’m on a new campaign. (Old campaign, really, but renewed vigor—and I single it out from the noise.) I am trying to put … SALES … back on the pedestal it deserves. In the process I suppose I’m down-grading marketing—and that’s more than okay per me. Of course I think marketing is incredibly important, but I think it intellectually comes second after sales—and the like of MBA programs have mostly eliminated sales from the picture. Stupid! Hence one of my favorite quotes these days is from Robert Louis Stevenson: “Everyone lives by selling something.”

This all came up in a presentation yesterday. I championed my Client’s cause—the more intense and focused use of databases and analytics associated therewith in marketing. I said, fine—as long as you’ll substitute the word “sales” for “marketing.” I claimed—and I’m faithful to it in practice—that my two favorite “businessman’s terms” are: Sales. Revenue. (Good stuff.) (Very good stuff.)

I also cautioned about the use of “integrated marketing.” I said, “Fine, as long as we fully comprehend that said ‘integrated marketing’ is in service to ‘selling more stuff.'” On a roll, I suggested that the extended use of data did not mean, as some said, that “marketing” was going “left brained” (more analytic). Data and analysis, by the front-end-loader-full? Fine! But … all sales-marketing is in the end about the “Two Es”—Emotion and Experiences. And this is as true for commercial sales as for consumer transactions. The increasingly sophisticated and intense use of data and analytics is effective only to the extent that it supports emotion, experience, sales, and revenue. Period.

I’d acknowledge that’s a little strong—but my point, as usual, is to correct what I see as incorrect biases.

Tom Peters posted this on May 3, 2006, in Marketing.
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