Educating vs. Selling
Selling is important. It’s what makes the world go round. But sometimes selling crosses the line and gets a little too close to misrepresenting or worse, lying. After all, there’s always been a healthy dose of deception built into selling. In sports, teams and athletes sell their opponents on the idea they’re going to zig when they in fact zag. Governments seek to sell a vision in order to successfully lead their people. Sometimes the vision is wrong, out of synch with what the people want. Look no further than China’s Zero Covid policy. Companies must sell their products and services to succeed. Startup founders must sell investors on the merits of investing in their companies. Buyers don’t want to buy an “OK” product or service. No one ever said, “…hey, let’s go with those guys, their product seems flawed but they’re really honest about it”. Much of what is sold is imperfect. Sellers have incentive to craft approaches that distract from imperfection while accentuating strengths. Even the salesman with a crappy product has to eat. It’s no wonder we’ve become skeptical. It’s essential to our survival. Storytelling is a form of selling. It often seems the best storytellers are selling the worst products. Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and Adam Neuman of WeWork come to mind. My family loves the classic Christmas movie “Elf” starring Will Ferrell. There’s this great scene when his character, “Buddy”, first arrives in New York. He passes by a coffee shop with a sign in the window that reads, “World’s Best Cup of Coffee”. He sees the sign and runs inside full of excitement to congratulate everyone, much to their bewilderment.
In hindsight, it’s always easy to identify when we’ve been sold a bad product. Sometimes we can also see when the product or service is not likely to match the hype of the slick sales pitch, helping us avoid a mistake. Yet other times the seller gets it just right and we’re compelled to buy. It’s worthwhile exploring this latter instance more closely. In our experience, this often looks more like educating than selling. A few months ago I attended a conference at which an outside consultant gave a presentation about marketing. The presentation was full of useful ideas. It was sufficiently compelling that I sought out the speaker after his presentation to chat one on one. During our conversation he remained in what I call a “giving” posture, freely offering ideas and insights. Months later, by then having established a relationship (but not having hired him to consult for us), he would occasionally reach out to me, always with ideas and insights. One day, after having reached out to share something he’d seen me do and to offer feedback on how I could improve, I realized that I wanted to learn how I could hire him to consult for us. I didn’t want him to pitch me on his business. He’d already shown me his value, I already knew how insightful he is and I knew that he cared about us. Basically, I just wanted to know how much he cost and how to get started. I had been educated. It turns out I like being educated. We think many people do.
This is how we’ve come to provide TenantSee Weekly, Café TenantSee events, the TenantSee Weekly VLOG and share all the content we regularly share on social media like LinkedIn. Our services, advisory services for office occupiers (tenants), are complicated. They can’t be sold with a simple statement like, “World’s Best Tenant Advisory Services”. Notwithstanding this fact, many in our industry continue to try. In contrast, we seek to educate by freely sharing our insights and perspectives. We want you to know all that we know.
Maybe we’re misreading the landscape, but it seems to us the world is changing when it comes to both how we sell and buy. What do you think? Drop us a line and let us know your thoughts.