Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud

Chapter 12

How to Keep Your Noble Sales Purpose from Being a Mere Tagline

Any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.

—Leo Burnett, Advertising’s original “Ad Man”

Marketers appreciate the value of a great message. So the right Noble Sales Purpose (NSP) can make a marketer’s heart sing. But ironically enough, the very people who appreciate the value of a meaningful message often unintentionally undermine it.

Marketing’s temptation is to turn your NSP into a tagline, since good marketers are always eager to share a great brand message. A compelling NSP fills the bill. It’s the perfect tagline to put on your website and to include in your literature and ads.

Unfortunately, the marketing team often takes it one step too far by using the NSP to create scripts for sales calls. This is certain death for a sales force.

It seems logical when you look at it from a marketer’s perspective. Your NSP is concrete and meaningful; why wouldn’t you want to lead with it on sales calls?

Because what works in marketing doesn’t work in sales.

Leading with your NSP on sales calls prevents you from actualizing it. As you know from what you’ve already read, generic NSP presentations run the risk of failing to engage individual customers.

Think about it this way: if marketing is a résumé, then sales is the job interview. You use your résumé to talk about yourself and provide a one-way push of information. However, during the job interview, you ask questions ...