The ‘Un’ Sell

April 22, 2009

'Life is Tremendous' by Stewf There’s a perspective that we take in social media that has many qualities and discussions around it and I’ve been starting to use a name or label for it: the unsell.

The idea behind the unsell is that you really aren’t selling at all, but rather letting the product or service speak for itself.  Past the initial “hey, I’ve got this product/service, what do you think of it” pitch, the idea that quality sells itself is key.

Through organic word of mouth, the quality or potential of what you have is what sells it.  This is the classic unsell.

What we need to strive for today and in the future is that whatever we’re doing for our customers or employers speaks for itself.  If it needs a bunch of fancy charts and graphs to describe why it’ll save money, trim expenses or save the planet, then it really doesn’t cut it.

So I’d like to learn from you, because you’re the smartest folks I know, what are you ‘unselling’?  How have you applied ‘the unsell’ in your work?  What kinds of things are companies doing right in social media that they aren’t talking about?

Photo credit: Stewf

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Categories: marketing, social media

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  • Just an interesting article and I was pleased to read it.
  • Setai Interesting point about most products not being good enough to sell themselves. In the long run though, I think this is a good thing, as the better products should rise to the top (ideally).

    Ionic Air Thanks for not trying to sell anything...

    Outsourcing Sales Sometimes you do need to do a bit of marketing around a product. Sometimes all it needs is a little push out the door and a chance for folks to try it out. I'm sure word of mouth doesn't work for everything, but I'd sure like to try it for most things.
  • interesting, i had never thought of it that way. i think the un-sell is a great way to make a way through life, unfortunately sometimes you have to sell a product that you don't believe in or don't know much about, that makes it hard and you have to help it along sometimes.
  • Yes. I like this idea of the product which is sold by its performance. But you know, these days there are thousands of products in just a small field that you even count them all.

    Let's take the ionic breeze air purifiers for example. You'll see advertisements everywhere and every company make investments to market his own product. You see opinions of other people and there are controversies everywhere. And at some point you decide to take what you like and not what others tell you. But without knowing the product you can't decide from the thousands of choices.
  • From everyone's point of view it's the best way to sell. For customers because they get quality product without any marketing BS, for sellers because they don't need to work hard on selling it. The problem is that unfortunately most products out there is not good enough to sell itself.
  • That's a great take on the idea, and one I'm happy to learn more about. I really believe that doing good things to help and letting your actions speak for themselves to be an honest approach.

    From another perspective, while we're all out here working and doing things to make a living, I don't believe that "getting rich" fits into the picture. That's one reason all the get rich quick schemes lead nowhere, and over-hyped products can't live up to their promise.
  • I like the name: unsell. The way I see it is that the sales cycle where you're working yet not necessarily making any money is completed outdated.

    Money is too tight now anyway. The winners are those people who can engage their customers in a humane and personal way and work for free. During a sales cycle you're working for free anyway. So leaving your sales pitch at home and actually working with your customers from the first minute is much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

    This actually allows me to communicate my strategy: that I intend to charge later in agreement with the customer. This way of doing business fits in nicely with my personal mantra: "your success is my success."

    Thanks for the unsell!

    Steven

    <abbr>Steven Devijver´s last blog post..An Alternative for a Black Swan-proof World</abbr>
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