How Clients Buy

Chapter 9Element 1: I Am Aware of YouWhat Was the Name of Your Firm Again?

As Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.” It's one of the most basic truths in commerce: if a prospective client doesn't know you exist, they cannot buy from you.

The entire sales and marketing profession sits atop this little gem of obviousness. Broadcast advertising, sales reps, Internet advertising, direct mail, public relations, content marketing, email campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), trade shows, social media, and event marketing are all arrayed in front of business people for them to choose among, like bracelets in a jewelry store.

Of course, these tactics do other work as well—explaining what you do and why it makes sense to engage with you—but one of the first jobs of marketing is to let others know who you are. Absent this knowledge, you don't exist. The threshold work of sales and marketing is to cause your name to pass through the minds of those you most want to serve.

Why? Because prospective clients cannot engage with us unless they know us. The great handshake that is commerce starts with an introduction. Your client cannot choose you unless she or he knows your name.

To a Land Where You Are Not Known

Forty years ago, a young man sat in a small rural classroom located 193 kilometers east of Vancouver on the Trans-Canada highway and hung on his teacher's every word. ...