What is Market[SELL]ing™?
Market[SELL]ing™ starts with a simple idea: companies should not only learn how to sell. They should learn to understand what makes people want to buy.
To sell, don’t start by selling.
This does not mean companies should stop selling. It means selling rarely begins when a salesperson starts trying to persuade someone.
Before that moment, the customer may already have encountered an offer, a name, a message, a piece of content, a reputation, a recommendation, a proof point — or the absence of one.
A company may start selling before it even knows it is being observed.
It can also start losing the sale at exactly the same moment.
Look at selling from the buyer’s side.
Companies naturally think through their own structure.
They talk about marketing, communication, prospecting, sales, product and customer experience.
Customers do not necessarily experience the company through those categories.
They experience one company.
And through every interaction, they progressively try to answer one question:
do I have enough reasons to keep moving forward with them?
What a company calls marketing, communication or sales, the customer may simply experience as a reason to move forward — or stop.
Functions can be separate. Their effect on the customer is not.
Companies need specialists. Silos are therefore not the problem in themselves.
The problem begins when every function optimises its own part without seeing what the other functions contribute to the same customer decision.
The company may see
- a marketing campaign;
- a piece of content;
- prospecting;
- a sales meeting;
- a proposal;
- a customer experience.
The customer may see
- a promise;
- proof;
- inconsistency;
- risk;
- preference;
- a reason to decide.
Customers rarely move forward in a single step.
The desire to buy can be built progressively.
Every step can be strengthened. Every step can also be weakened.
Market[SELL]ing™ is about observing these mechanisms.
What Market[SELL]ing™ is not.
Market[SELL]ing™ is not about making customers less free.
It is about understanding what can make their decision clearer, more credible and easier to own.
If the desire to buy changes, we need to learn how to observe it.
Content can reinforce a belief.
Proof can reduce perceived risk.
An inconsistency can introduce doubt.
A proposal can confirm a preference or destroy what had been built before it.
This is where the Desire-to-Buy Gauge™ begins.
It is the Market[SELL]ing™ model for reading this changing decision dynamic.
A doctrine only matters if it helps us see reality more clearly.
The next step is to understand how the desire to buy can grow, hesitate or decline through successive interactions.