Marketing confession from a newbie

I have a confession

I consistently spammed forums always just wanting people to buy, buy, buy. The internet have changed and people hate direct selling now. I knew this but still kept reverting to my old ways in the early 2000's.

My advice now:

To be successful in anything, you must help people be better and start creating relationships before you ask them to buy any thing. Strangers don't buy from people they don't know.

I think this is the beginning of the sales process, but if any body have advice on this topic, please share.

 

I agree with you. A seller starts off as a suspect in the eyes of the potential buyer. It's up to the seller to graduate to the level of a counsellor or an advisor in the buyer's perspective. Better still, directly position yourself as an advisor.

If newbies are spamming, then probably they were not trained at all, and they had to learn it the hard way.

 

If your rep is based on spamming then its hard to build a new rep....start helping people for free.....give it time and you will see the results!

 

I think it's a BS. I am not advocating to spam forums, but any timid / too-much-user-oriented adverting is no advertising at all. An advertising that delivers results is the one that is aggressive and persistent. Think of all the TV advertisers, for instance. They keep shoving their ads down our throats day in and day out. Why? Because they know it works. The funny thing is, if someone pays for their ads, we call it "paid advertising" (although it shows up everywhere and it's worse than spam), yet if one posts one too many free ads, or sends one too many emails, we call it spam. Whatever.

But, if someone disagrees with me, I honestly don't give a damn.

 

in this one I must agree with @qwikad.com as it is true that you need to help and be user oriented but too much of it means charity work and people expectation increases. The biggest companies can afford to throw away some time and effort in order to show their commitment to users but if you want to sell you need to have an agenda and some amount of aggression in your sales approach.
I am a marketer and I feel you, I know you gotta think about the client and try to help and solve an issue and etc, but you need to sell at a point. Do not spam blogs and forums but do not give away free candy for a full year. Maybe the first month but then follow a plan to make money

 

Spamming generally does not work. Advertising and promotion generally do work if you are providing a good product/service and know what you are doing from a sales and marketing perspective.

Much like @qwikad.com says, spamming is in the eyes of the beholder. For example, if someone spams me (sends me an unsolicited email out of nowhere) about a product or service of interest to me, I may not consider it to be spam. On the other hand, if a former vendor of mine sends me too many messages about things that I am not interested in, I will begin to see him/her as a spammer.

@Mehdi.b makes an important point about selling. I regularly have to train newbie sales reps that there is a fine line between consultative, trusted advisor selling and being perceived as someone other than a sales person which is deadly in the sales game. A buyer must understand that the sales effort is ultimately intended to close business and, while the salesperson may be very friendly, helpful, etc., the relationship is not a one-way street and it is expected that a business transaction will ultimately take place.

 

I think the sales tactic depends highly on what you're selling.

I once sold over $2,000 worth of a product by "spamming" a certain social network.

Took me literally 30 seconds, it was completely free and produced results.