Someone once told me that if you want to start a business, find out what people want and then sell it to them.
According to dictionary.com, the definition of marketing is:
1. The act of buying or selling in a market.
2. The total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing and selling.
So, marketing starts with uncovering what people want and ends with selling it to them.
Order is Important
Determine what people want first "Create the Product or Service second." A good example of this is the 1965 Ford Mustang. Ford talked to buyers do determine the name for the car. They found out what styling was necessary. They found out that people wanted options so that the entry price could be low. They build what people wanted and selling them was easy.
The other way around - product first, customer second is much more difficult. A good example of this is the Edsel. "Build it and they will come' doesn't work." You can get lucky, but the risk is tremendous.
I do want to stress the importance of the customer. It is easy to sell them something they want, but not so easy if they only sort of want it - and all but impossible if they don't want it.
We are all customers ourselves. We know what we like and what we don't like. Every day we interact with companies - we give them the opportunity to meet, exceed or fall short of our expectations. So, think about it, your experience with a company determines whether you will buy from them again or whether this will be a one-time sale.
Scott Cleveland is an innovative, creative, technical VP of marketing & sales at Ingenuus Software with over 20 years of experience in marketing and marketing management; sales and sales management; and business process consulting aimed at high tech companies like Adaptec, Applied Materials, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and many of the aerospace and defense contractors.
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