All marketers have to learn to think like their prospects in order to sell effectively.

But if ethics are important to you, you face an even bigger challenge than the average marketer: you've got to untangle your own thoughts and figure out which you can set aside and which you can't. Yeah, that's true for any marketer. But for you, the job is a little more complicated.

Yesterday, John Carlton got me thinking about this when I wrote:

"¦ you've got to start thinking like a salesman. And see your prospects (and the world in general) not as you wish they were"¦

"¦ and not as you believe they should be.

Instead, you start looking at people and things as they ARE. The raw reality, minus all spin.

Opinions, common sense, long-held beliefs, even principles and convictions"¦

"¦ it all has to run the gauntlet of your internal Bullshit Detector.

This includes both the other guy's actions and thinking behaviors"¦

"¦ and your own.

You gotta clear your brain of a LOT of nonsense before you can even begin to approach the "truth" of any situation. As a human, your default setting is to believe that your thoughts, actions, codes of honor, and beliefs are the real deal.

...

So, first: Realize that the other guy has the SAME default setting.

He is positive beyond question that he's right, and you're an idiot.

If you're short on ethical compunctions, the 50,000 foot view of the process is:

  1. Figure out how you think so that you can recognize and remove your personal filters.
  2. Figure out how the other guy thinks.
  3. Figure out how to communicate your marketing message to them as they are.

Without ethics, step 3 basically means "tell them what they want to hear." (Or what they don't want to hear, if it'll scare them into feeling like they need your product).

Reader Comment:
Terry Schierer said:
Wow! I hear you and probably believe you but, I've got to let that roll around for a while. It's definitly food for thought or change.
(join the conversation below)

Add ethics to the mix, and you've got to work from inside a Frankenstein's mind that's made up of them plus your ethics -- subtracting their ethical flaws where necessary.

Not only that, but you've got to recognize the difference between your ethics and your opinions. You've got to understand that there's a difference not only between true/false and things like believe/disbelieve and like/dislike, but also between true/false and good/evil.

More complicated.

For example, you may be convinced that feature X will help the customer more than any other feature of your product. And you may even be correct. But if your prospects care more about feature Y, you've got to focus on feature Y.

No matter how strongly you feel about it nor how right you are, it's not a matter of principle. So you've got to let it go.

You may be convinced that black is the best car color in the world. But if your customers want red cars, you've got to sell them red. It's not a matter of principle.

On the other hand, if your prospects' greatest desire is for you to teach them to use your product unethically, or to add a few black hat features, that's a line you shouldn't cross, even if it'd lead to more sales.

You've got to crawl as deeply into their skins as you can without violating your ethical principles. But on the other hand, you've got to be willing to violate your own preferences.

Dividing the two is easy if you don't feel strongly about anything. But if you're the kind of person who does have strong convictions, you'll need to dig deeper to recognize the difference between your ethical convictions and and other beliefs.

Finally, no matter how wonderful your product may be, if it's impossible to convince people to buy it without going over to the dark side, you may have to accept the fact that you're selling the wrong product or selling to the wrong market. The more strongly you feel about your product, the harder it's going to be to see that.

Sacrificing sales by taking a stand against evil is honorable. Sacrificing sales by taking a stand against an opinion, just because you think it's less enlightened than yours, is boneheaded.