Something came up at work that made me wonder where or not people need to be users of a product or service in order to effectively sell or market that product or service. I tweeted:
Would you hire someone who didn’t eat cereal to sell cereal?
It was a throwaway tweet, I really wasn’t expecting anyone to reply. But surprisingly a number of friends/followers replied, @brendanquinn informed me of a friend who didn’t eat cereal that had started a cereal company, @nickwai highlighted the fact that many women’s shoe and clothing designers are men. @funkstop highlighted the fact that the founder of Crayola was colour blind, that pharmacists don’t make drugs, and that Sam Malone was a great bartender even though he didn’t drink (Bob, he did drink, he just quit drinking, so that one doesn’t count).
The question though wasn’t about making the product, it was about marketing and selling the product.
@vinayg mentioned that if they looked like they could sell cereal they would be hired, and @divinemissn mentioned that she wouldn’t hire someone to sell cereal just because they ate cereal. Again good points were made.
My thinking is that in order to market or sell a product you have to understand the consumer, their decisions and what it is about the product that they really need. Can you learn this and still market or sell effectively, sure! There are a number of sales and marketing people across the world who don’t need to use the product to understand the consumers need. But I think the most passionate, effective, and really genuine marketers are people who have needed, bought and used the product themselves.
Especially in this day and age where social networks, and communities share information at light speed. An example, as always these days, is our newborn. The bee has bought countless number of things to help soothe our daughter. The crazy thing is every one of the items she’s bought has been recommended to us by a friend, a friend who’s needed, bought and used the products themselves.
Sure you can get marketers and sales people who don’t share the problem and probably never will – a great example was from ragsontherocks who said “I would hire a parent of kids to eat cereal to parents of kids who eat cereal”, which is great, because the marketer and seller understands the consumer well. So you can understand the consumer without being a consumer, but it just makes it a lot easier to understand the consumer when you are one yourself!
