Although the reason for any business is the Customer, it is very common to come across managers who have not the slightest idea who this stranger is for whom they claim to have the utmost respect and whom they seek to seduce or serve.
Of the various misconceptions that cloud the notion of the Customer — and hinder our understanding of the sales process — perhaps the most serious is the widely accepted fiction that the Customer actually exists.
Assuming that the Customer does indeed exist and is out there somewhere, going about their ordinary life, it is easy to understand why every business strategy seeks to achieve the same objective: to capture them.
Not satisfied with capturing the Customer, business strategists have elevated Customer loyalty to the ultimate goal of marketing — a kind of benign and voluntary slavery, embodied in an obligation to buy exclusively from a company in exchange for the promise that all needs will be satisfied.
The truth, however, is that the Customer does not exist and, as such, cannot be captured, much less made loyal. Like the children’s game of hunting for imaginary creatures, hunting for the Customer is an irrational and absurd undertaking, used to justify ineffective investments and disastrous commercial policies.
In the reality of facts, where the life of companies and our marketing efforts must be grounded, the first rule to follow is to acknowledge the truth. And the truth is that companies compete for the preference of People, not Customers.
People genuinely exist, with their complete, multidimensional and dynamic lives — realities that can be characterised sociologically but are never entirely available to the understanding of marketing directors.
Sometimes, when certain circumstances come together, these People temporarily become counterparties to our company in purchase and sale agreements and — at that moment — acquire the status of Customer. There are therefore no Customers without Sales. Selling is the magical act through which we create Customers who did not previously exist and who, after the sale, will tend to disappear from our circle of relationships.
What some call loyalty might more accurately be described as the ability to repeat sales to the same People. Such repetition may create a preference for our products, for the things that carry our name.
In those circumstances, we will have encouraged a pattern of brand preference, a kind of predisposition to pay attention to our future offering and, potentially, to buy from us more regularly.
Understanding the sales process therefore requires us to cast aside foolish myths and not blindly believe the airport best sellers that promise to reveal every secret of the effective salesperson.
Selling is a profoundly civilised and intellectually worthy act. It lies at the heart of social development and creates frameworks for the enrichment and pacification of countries. At the foundation of all marketing thinking lies knowledge of People — real people who, through their consumption potential, constitute the market.
Because People were born to be free and autonomous in their Will, we must accept that we will never have an exclusive claim on their preference, nor will we ever know with certainty what they want. We must therefore study them, feel our way across their faces, try to understand where they are going, what kind of company they want us to provide, what kind of discourse they prefer to hear, while respecting the old principle that the Book of the World is more something to be written than read.
To write the Book of the World, in this case, means making a determined effort to understand who we are as a society, what is happening to families, to young people entering that inherently risky territory we call professional life, and to women who, year after year, occupy workplaces and households with ever-growing influence. It means continuously proposing a dialogue in which our company can take part, even if its interest in doing so is obviously commercial.
Those who most rapidly and profoundly tune in to what is happening within the structures of society, who most accurately identify the symbols of their time and propose practical solutions to the problems of the future, will make the most money.
Leading companies are those with the deepest understanding of market trends — and the market is society using money. Let us understand People better, and we will know more effectively how to ask them to become our Customers. To buy our services.
Paulo Fidalgo
CEO of Marketividade
