The two most important functions of a business are innovation & marketing. The goal of marketing is to make the product sell themselves!
You might have heard above or similar quotes multiple times.
A huge selling myth is that, if you have a great product or service, customers are going to buy it.
Although such novel ideas do come about occasionally, they are rare, and businesses still need to reach buyers.
Great products, marketed well, will get attention. But they don’t automatically sell themselves.
If they did, no one would hire a salesforce because everyone believes they’ve created a great product!
However, it’s not just about sharing features and benefits anymore. It’s about helping customers make the right decision and having the courage to ask people to buy when it is!
There is so much market saturation today with startup costs being low. This means that retailers and potential clients are bombarded with product pitches.
Even the best products will require an expert salesperson to convince a customer to buy.
Anyone who believes that a great product sells itself is mistaken!
A great product can sell itself once its market position has been thoroughly established, but no products sell themselves right out of the gate without marketing and sales effort.
You can only sell your product when the audience knows what it does and how it can help them.
So, the next question arise which arise in your mind is where? When? & how much sales & marketing efforts are required? Does same strategy work across the industry, product & services?
When price of any product goes up, the market demand for that product or service will go down & vice versa.
Generally low-priced item such as milk, biscuits, chocolates, pens, shampoo toothpaste, tea, coffee, refreshments etc. are generally sold in high volume. Value of these products are quite negligible even if we compare the price to disposable income of poor people. These products are manufactured & consumed in huge quantities as the customer base for these products is very wide.
When you go to any shopping mall, you randomly pick up the low-priced, good-looking products from the shelf yourselves which you know what it does & how it helps you, then you go to the billing counter to complete the transaction. You don’t need any salesperson to explain the features of that product or to convince you to buy these products.
People does not blink an eye while buying these and emotions influence their buying decisions. Marketing plays a pivotal role in influencing the decisions which are based on mood, emotions & impulsive nature of buyers.
In case of high value products & services, buyers make decisions based on logic. They evaluate the products or service, its benefits, alternatives, their current needs, discounts & finance schemes available before making the purchase. There is a possibility that, buyers may postpone or cancel their decision to buy high value products due to multiple reasons. Here sales play major role to influence decisions of buyers. So, when it comes to logic, marketing cannot do any magic 😊
Depending upon the price, need, nature of the products, supply & demand – degree of sales & marketing efforts required varies.