52 Sales Lessons from a Marketing Expert

52 Sales Lessons from a Marketing Expert:

Often, the result is already determined by the mindset you adopt at the start. The same applies to sales; a product's fate may be sealed before it even leaves the factory. We simply use practice to validate the product's positioning and the organization's promotional capabilities.
Most people believe their efforts are not proportional to their rewards. There are only two reasons: A. Your efforts did not create value for the company—your direction was wrong. B. The results of your efforts were not seen by others—not just heard about.
You will never fully meet your superior's expectations, because your superior always hopes you can do better.
If you do ten things, get nine right and one wrong, people will generally clearly remember the one you got wrong, not the nine you got right. So don't feel wronged; this is normal.
The only result of doing things for show is that you fool yourself into a moment of joy, and perhaps your superior joins in. But afterward, you'll pay tenfold for that shared happiness. When you calculate it, it's actually most unfair to you.
When you feel your superior is less capable than you, this is also a normal phenomenon. If your superior were more capable than you in your area of work, you wouldn't have a sense of self-worth. The reason you think this way is that you haven't seen the areas where they excel. And the reason they are your superior certainly has its justification, even if there is only one reason.
Working for money can improve the material life of you and your family. Working for power gives you greater autonomy and spiritual satisfaction. These are not bad things. The real problem is when you don't know why you are working at all, and many people in reality fall into this category.
In a company, three types of people should leave: those who feel their talents are unrecognized, thinking they are capable but not knowing how to act; those who are busy all day without results, not knowing what they are doing; and those who talk eloquently but can't find their footing when it comes to action.
If you want to survive in a company with a happy spirit, you must treat colleagues as friends and partners, not enemies. The reason is simple: being with friends is a joy, while being with enemies is a hassle. Similarly, your progress often comes from conflicts with colleagues and superiors. Without conflicts, there is no progress, whether the conflict stems from a specific matter or from your own 'comfort zone'.
In reality, we often stumble on the simplest things, yet important things are always simple. Repeating simple things in an orderly manner is actually very difficult. You think it's simple because you haven't done it.
When you exaggerate your personal importance in a matter, the result is this: your superior will believe in your abilities more, increase expectations, and assign you harder tasks that you may not be able to accomplish. Conversely, if you show a lack of confidence in a task and try to negotiate a lower target, your superior will generally consider assigning it to someone else.
Making a mistake the first time is paying tuition to yourself. Making the same mistake the second time is paying tuition to your superior. The third time, you don't know who you're paying tuition to. Yet we often repeat yesterday's mistakes.
The simplest yet most forgotten truth: today's problems come from yesterday's solutions. You aren't rich today because yesterday you followed a poor person's plan.
The main purpose of forms is not for your superior to supervise you, but for you to organize your own thoughts. Letting your superior know the real situation is far more useful than letting him make blind decisions based on incorrect information.
Building a learning organization isn't about what we learn, but whether we work with a learning mindset. In practice, if you have a bias against someone, you tend to rigidly reject their actions and suggestions, even if they are correct. The key is to never listen to others' evaluations of a person.
As a superior, if you want to be relaxed, you should teach all your knowledge and methods to your subordinates, then delegate and let them act. As a subordinate, if you want to be relaxed, you should tell your superior your perceived weaknesses and shortcomings, and let them assist you.
As a superior, your ability is not shown in how you direct your subordinates, but in how well you can solve problems no matter how big a mistake they make. We often deliberately try to change a person's shortcomings, but it must be said: a person's shortcomings are also their strengths. Without shortcomings, strengths cease to exist. So letting a person leverage their strengths is more important than overcoming their weaknesses, because weaknesses need to be overcome by oneself, while strengths need to be identified by the superior and given opportunities to shine.
At work, we often spend 80% of our time on things that bring only 20% of the value (though cliché, it's true). For those things that require 80% of our time to create 20% of the value, we should identify them and rather not do them. Prioritize the important things first.
Generally, your superior is better at calculating than you, so the result of bargaining is that you admire your superior's shrewdness even more.
The most effective methods are often only suitable for your specific regional market; they don't work elsewhere. We exist because our regional market has unique methods. If everyone used the same methods, our value would be lost.
Within the rules, you can play the game as you like, but the rules are guided by your superior based on the group situation.
Good execution is the best way to test when you and your superior have different opinions and want to find out who is right. If you don't execute, you'll never know.
The worst thing is when everyone agrees in the meeting, but afterward each goes their own way. Enthusiasm is high during the meeting, but afterward, no one knows what to do. Often, half the meeting time is spent repeating yesterday's stories. The key to a meeting is forming a plan and the awareness to act on it.
In reality, we are always doing one thing: deciding what product, with what kind of people, at what price, through what channels, to sell to whom, and using what promotions to accelerate the process.
What is a brand? Books say it's a reputation formed through communication. In plain terms, it's the feeling consumers have when they encounter brand-related information, a satisfaction when they have a need, eventually forming a belief. In practice, it's a personality. Differences are easier for consumers to remember, but the problem is that the differences must be accepted by consumers.
Don't beg to tell consumers how much about your product, because they can't remember that much. Just give them one reason to believe and buy, and they will buy. You only need one, but if they don't buy, they'll give you many reasons.
Without concrete market or sales results, everyone's argument sounds reasonable and logical. But in reality, many market outcomes don't follow your logic. So often the 'therefore' is right, but the 'because' is wrong.
In practice, you often push a product with great effort, only to find that the product cannot be promoted with your current resources or is not suitable for the market at all. This is the most tragic situation, but it happens often. If you start wrong, everything else done well is still wrong. Books say the order of product-price-channel-promotion has its reasons.
When a new product is launched, 80% of the lack of sales is due to high prices, but in reality, it may be that few consumers even know our price.
High or low price is a relative perception. The key is to find what consumers compare it to and why they compare it that way.
A typical special price is to attract consumer attention and tell them 'I'm cheaper,' not how much cheaper. (Few consumers can accurately remember your product's price; they remember a price range.) Unless your discount drops below the consumer's perception of the entire category's price.
In practice, there are three types of special prices (promotions): cheaper than your own previous price, and consumers can feel it; cheaper than products consumers are familiar with, enough to trigger impulse buying; for a special display; to tell distributors and retailers we will run a promotion; the marketing director tells regional managers we will run a promotion.
Even a good product is nothing if no one sells it. Sometimes getting others to sell is more effective than getting others to buy. In market reports, we often write 'no market potential, special market, high price...' but in reality, our products aren't even being sold. So first, find a way to get the other party to sell—that's what matters most.
Channel management is about ensuring that all places that can sell your product have it at an appropriate price, and that sellers can make money (achieving their psychological balance).
Sales often involve first getting others to sell, then considering how to get people to buy. But in practice, 'buying' and 'selling' are dialectical: selling influences buying, and buying influences selling. Like a rolling ball, only then can it enter a virtuous cycle.
Without major promotional campaigns, display and point-of-sale shaping may be your only platform to communicate your product to consumers.
Promotion accelerates the process of market operations and is a method among methods. If you say a market achieves high sales without or with little promotion, then you are truly remarkable.
Promotion is not about how many tricks you have to attract consumers and channels, but whether you, at the right time, in the right place, with the right product, using the right method, and through appropriate publicity and display, clearly convey your intended message to consumers.
In practice, any promotion (even the clumsiest) will have an effect. The key is that the effect often isn't realized because execution doesn't capture every detail.
The most common mistake in designing promotional activities is that the designer treats themselves as the consumer, essentially designing an activity for themselves to buy. But the problem is that you may not be the target group of the product.
When you can continuously analyze a problem thoroughly from multiple angles, you've already found the answer. In reality, 80% of decision errors stem from not seeing the problem clearly or analyzing it thoroughly.
The only person who understands your product better than you is your competitor, but it must be noted that they may not think along the same logic as you. So our judgments of competitor behavior are often flawed.
If you can make money for distributors from your product and make it not too hard, then you've already conquered them.
When negotiating with others, the more you ask for, the more you get.
When a distributor gives you something, never forget there's a purpose behind it: your relationship with the distributor is just a lubricant for communication. Our most essential relationship is one of interests. Feelings are built on interests; when interests are gone, feelings are gone too.
We and distributors are partners; they are not gods, but they care about what we can bring them. So it's more important to jointly create value with them (within company policy) that they will never be fully satisfied with. It may be tiring, but we must do it.
Respect your distributor as you would the God of Wealth; in a sense, they bring you fortune. But also guard against your distributor like a thief; in reality, they are always calculating how to get the money from your pocket.
Don't say 'I need to ask my superior' for everything. Instead, say 'I should think about this,' then seek your superior's opinion. Over time, if you always defer, distributors won't negotiate with you because they see no value in you. However, using your superior's objection to refuse a distributor's request can be a good tactic.
The worst thing is telling your distributor, 'Actually, I also think the company's policy (or decision) is inappropriate.' You feel you're building trust, but in the distributor's eyes, they'll become more suspicious of the company and of you.
Never believe a distributor's complaints: 'I'm not making money.' Their goal is to gain more benefits. Rest assured, when distributors aren't making money, they won't continue with your product.
When you don't know which negotiation technique to use, the best approach is to use none, just like describing it to yourself.
There's no need to use company interests to buy distributor support or please them. The policies you hold are limited and diminish with use. What truly sustains your relationship with distributors is their admiration for you, and the key is that it grows over time.

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