While you’re busy imagining how you’re going to be the next billionaire influencer to enter history, you might want to think about brushing up on your selling skills.
Being a visionary is great. But if you can’t convince anyone that your idea is great then what is the point?
Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal”. Steve Jobs himself is a proponent of this school of thought. That’s because even the most innovative idea is just that. An innovation of an existing concept. Facebook wasn’t the first social network, Ola wasn’t the first taxi company, Alibaba wasn’t the first ecommerce company. But what these companies did do was sell it right. The entrepreneurs behind these companies found a way to convince investors to fuel their project, they persuaded users to try their product. Then they went one level deeper and convinced users to continue using their product and not a competitors.
It’s a sad but true fact. Your product might be the next best thing since sliced bread, and you may be able to categorically prove it. But it won’t matter.
No matter how ground breaking your product is, no matter how much better your product is than a competitor’s, if it isn’t branded and presented so that it ‘appears’ the best thing since sliced bread then your ideas will never be rewarded.
Remember the famous Pepsi challenge? In a blind tasting users actually preferred Pepsi to Coca Cola. But out in the real world, these same users will prefer Coca Cola to Pepsi. Why? Because power of branding, that’s why.
Unless appreciation and monetary rewards from the outside world don’t matter much to you and you’re satisfied with your own product, you might want to work on branding and selling that amazing product of yours. A word to all noble entrepreneurial visionaries, who feel selling is beneath them; get off your high horse. Branding and selling your innovation is crucial. In fact you’re the best person to do it, because who is more passionate about an innovation than its owner?
A starving artist you may be, but even a starving artist must live in a real world. And in the real world you have bills to pay, financial obligations to meet. So your ideas must earn you money.
It isn’t at all about being a greedy capitalist. You are by all means meant to be a law abiding businessman or businesswoman who still empathizes with people less fortunate.
And it definitely isn’t about subscribing to an ideal where you can live off social welfare. It’s that the world needs more people with the potential to create wealth and jobs. Wealth is important to your survival and to your businesses’ survival. Without capital your business cannot grow. And you must grow if you are ever to survive the rat race that is commerce.
Once again, it will all boil down to how many investors, how many consumers you can persuade to go with your product and not somebody else’s.
Unless you’re not willing to do what it takes to convince all of us (let’s not use the word, ‘sell’, it somehow seems to trivialize the profound importance selling has – pun intended), or at least most of us, that we must buy your product then your great idea will be lost in oblivion.
And we can’t afford to lose out on great ideas. This world needs more of it. So, oh noble visionary entrepreneur, brush up on those selling skills. You will need it when you’re trying to change the world.
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
