Marketing Classics: Communications and Industrial Selling (Theodore Levitt, 1967)

Originally written as a comparison piece on the effectiveness of advertising vs. trained sales people (and the combination thereof) in the B2B industrial sales world, I see Communications and Industrial Selling as making a rock-solid case for thought leadership marketing and integrating thought leadership into the sales process.In fact, the article quotes on my favorite ads of all time that makes the case for building relationships through thought leadership before sending salespeople in cold. It’s the decades old ad from McGraw Hill that says it all. It showed a dour, forbidding looking purchasing agent, seated in a chair, staring off the page straight at you saying,

I don’t know who you are…
I don’t know your company…
I don’t know your company’s product…
I don’t know what your company stands for…
I don’t know your company’s customers…
I don’t know your company’s record…
I don’t know your company’s reputation…
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?”

The moral of the story is that you need to work on both the “source effect” (the influence your company has as dictated by the source of the message) and the “presentation effect” (how powerful your sales person is in front of the customer). By pursuing a thought leadership position and leveraging thought leadership tactics in your go-to-market strategy, you’re building the credibility that can only help win deals and close sales faster!

The full text of Communications and Industrial Selling can be found in the book Marketing Masters, 1991. »

Related posts:

1. Upfront marketing & pre-selling
2. Marketing Classics: What the Hell Is “Market Oriented”? (Benson P. Shapiro, 1988)
3. Marketing Classics: The Hierarchy of Effects
4. Thought Leaders Need Fewer Touches
5. The growing complexity in school communications

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