This story was told when MJ was just a chubby kid wanting some ice cream when a Lamborghini pulled up and changed his life.
Imagine you own a beauty salon. Several times a week you have ladies walk in who want to buy a blue hair dryer. Unfortunately you don’t stock any. You stock a brown one. If you were good at sales, you could probably convince her to buy the brown one by saying it’ll match her wallpaper or her floor or something. If you were really good at sales, you could probably sell her a heat lamp and tell her if she simply shakes her head under the lamp, her hair will dry. Now, how much easier would your life be if you simply sold blue dryers?
People ask all the time, what is the #1 I should learn? Inevitably the most popular answer is sales.
But what if you could sell without selling? That is the modern day sales and it is a pull instead of a push. That is what the story was referring to and what we all call the productocracy. The storyteller? A professor at Harvard Business School named Theodore Levitt.
Levitt wrote an article titled “Marketing Myopia” if you ever have trouble falling asleep here it is: https://razaleads.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/marketing-myopia_t_levitt.pdf
Fair warning, it’s like watching paint dry, but it is absolutely brilliant. The tl;dr spelled out nicely on Wikipedia is that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products.
What is absolutely incredibly is that he wrote this article 60 years ago, told the above story 45 years ago and nothing has changed. His words, as well as MJ’s, will be just as valid 50 years from today.
Now go find yourself a productocracy and be successful beyond your wildest dreams.
*Small edits made to include great points brought up by @Charnell below.
Imagine you own a beauty salon. Several times a week you have ladies walk in who want to buy a blue hair dryer. Unfortunately you don’t stock any. You stock a brown one. If you were good at sales, you could probably convince her to buy the brown one by saying it’ll match her wallpaper or her floor or something. If you were really good at sales, you could probably sell her a heat lamp and tell her if she simply shakes her head under the lamp, her hair will dry. Now, how much easier would your life be if you simply sold blue dryers?
People ask all the time, what is the #1 I should learn? Inevitably the most popular answer is sales.
But what if you could sell without selling? That is the modern day sales and it is a pull instead of a push. That is what the story was referring to and what we all call the productocracy. The storyteller? A professor at Harvard Business School named Theodore Levitt.
Levitt wrote an article titled “Marketing Myopia” if you ever have trouble falling asleep here it is: https://razaleads.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/marketing-myopia_t_levitt.pdf
Fair warning, it’s like watching paint dry, but it is absolutely brilliant. The tl;dr spelled out nicely on Wikipedia is that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products.
What is absolutely incredibly is that he wrote this article 60 years ago, told the above story 45 years ago and nothing has changed. His words, as well as MJ’s, will be just as valid 50 years from today.
Now go find yourself a productocracy and be successful beyond your wildest dreams.
*Small edits made to include great points brought up by @Charnell below.
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