This is a great article, it is after all an extract from Seth Godin's new book.
I remember as a salesperson getting a copy of his book Permission Marketing 20 years ago and reading it. Being a new business salesperson I have always had to do my own demand generation so I read book after book in my late 20s and 30s on Marketing. Because, after all, isn't that were leads and meetings are supposed to come from?
They didn't, so there I was (I had an hour commute on a train) reading Marketing books hoping to find the secret to finding leads and meetings.
Permission Marketing taught me that everybody, buyers, prospects and customers want to be treated differently. You can go to the best marketing agency, get the best copy in the world, get the best photography in the world and deliver it to me in a chauffeur driven limousine, but if the name at the top is for Tom (my name is Tim) I will put it in the waste bin.
Seth explains in this article how to market today.
Nobody is interested in your company or your products, I'm a busy person and if you interrupt me by cold calling me, send me adverts, sending me unsolicited emails, you will piss me off. Then if you broadcast / pitch at me, you will piss me off again.
In fact if you interrupt me and broadcast at me two things happen.
1. I totally ignore you, delete you, or deliberately buy from your competitor.
2. I will think how sad it is that the key to great marketing has been around for 20 years and you have still chosen to ignore it. How very sad.
In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, "I will do x, y and z; I hope you will give me permission by listening." And then -- this is the hard part -- that's all you do. You don't assume you can do more. You don't sell the list or rent the list or demand more attention. You can promise a newsletter and talk to me for years, you can promise a daily RSS feed and talk to me every three minutes, you can promise a sales pitch every day (the way internet retailer Woot does). But, the promise is the promise until both sides agree to change it. You don't assume that just because you're running for president or coming to the end of the quarter or launching a new product that you have the right
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