Sales people are desperate to SELL something – but customers want to BUY. These days, fewer customers are “wanting.”

Selling versus buying is still the biggest gap in the world of sales and marketing. And the tactics and strategies that worked 10 years ago aren’t working anymore. People who are waiting for things to get “back to normal” have a LONG wait ahead of them.

REALITY: Old-world marketing “campaigns” don’t work anymore. Print media campaigns? Look at the thickness of any magazine, and you tell me.

REALITY: One look at almost every daily newspaper’s financial condition tells you that the world is changing the way marketing, sales, advertising and awareness campaigns are being conducted.

REALITY: There are 75 copies of the yellow pages sitting in the lobby of the 84-unit building I live in – they’ve been there for three weeks. I use Google and Bing. How about you?

REALITY: Direct mail? Waning. It’s the high cost of design, print and mail coupled with a low response rate. Direct mail is rapidly being replaced with e-mail.

REALITY: Social media is in the hands of big corporate lawyers trying to figure out safety and compliance in what could be the dumbest, costliest CYA in the Internet era.

And all this at a time when business NEEDS more business.

E-MAIL I RECEIVED: Jeffrey, I am planning a marketing campaign with one of my vendors. We buy a list of prospects, hire someone to canvass them via phone calls for interest, and then invite them to a webinar on the subject. We are selling integrated software for distribution, manufacturing, retail and maintenance service providers. So far, this has not yielded any great results. There must be a better way, but how? Thanks, Bob

ANSWER: Huh? What do you expect when you hand a list to someone else (quasi-qualified telemarketers) requesting they call total strangers (quasi-qualified people)?

REALITY: There’s a huge difference between your sales offer and a value message.

• Sales offers repel, or are only accepted at a moment of genuine need.

• Value messages attract and keep you “top of mind” when an actual need occurs.

• When you send out a sales offer, or call a sales offer, people who don’t need it at that moment will tell you no, or ignore you. People who already have what you offer will tell you no, or ignore you. And people who don’t know you and are skeptical of your offer will tell you no, or ignore you. That’s pretty much everyone.

• Sales offers are instant and are forgotten the next day.

• Value messages are timeless and build credibility until a genuine time of need.

• And why are you bragging about yourself? Where are the testimonials?

Rethink the way you provide information to customers, and you may open up a few more doors. If your website, your e-mail magazine or your blog offers information about what your software does, how people produce from it, and how people profit from it, you might have a chance of attracting customers without making that sales call.

If you’re tweeting a value message each day about production ideas, profit ideas, manufacturing safety ideas and other things that relate to your customer, you’ll begin to get followers. If your business Facebook page is available for your customers to comment, and posts stories and events, you can get thousands to “like” you.

The key to today’s sales call is to change your mindset and make it a value call so that others might be interested in learning more from you, rather than disinterested in a pitch from you.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2010 Jeffrey H. Gitomer