The Best Sales and Marketing Advice I’ve Heard This Year

I had a great conversation this week with Dev Patnaik, author of Wired to Care and founder of a great firm, Jump Associates, which helps innovative companies like Nike and Target get even more innovative.

I asked for his advice on what marketing and sales folks should do TODAY to become more successful. If empathy is the solution, as Dev proposes, whose moccasins do you need to walk in?

Here’s what he said:

“The first thing they could do is just get outside. It doesn’t matter if they work in aircraft engines, or detergents, or for a grocery store chain. Every single person out there is getting a paycheck from someone out there in the world. That person is shopping in our stores, that person is buying our products – but they’re living in their homes and they’re spending their time in places that matter to them.

So the first thing you could do is get outside of your building. Skip that meeting, leave that conference room, and go spend some time hanging out in the real world. My friend John Morioka, who’s a senior exec at Target, is one of the best examples of this. When he’s trying to think about what he wants to do next in his business, he’ll get someone from one of his vendor companies to meet with him. But rather than spending time in a conference room, he says, ‘I’ll meet you in a grocery store.’ And they’ll have a conversation while they’re walking the aisles, and they’ll see things and know things that the rest of us would have to read about to know what was going on.”

Great advice from a great guy! Wired to Care should be required reading for leaders who wants to help their team, as Dev put it, “make 10,000 better decisions.”

What’s your advice – one thing somebody could do TODAY to improve their sales or marketing skills or strategy?

Keith Ferrazzi is the world’s foremost expert in professional relationship development. His signature focus on success through relationships has transformed the lives and careers of clients and readers worldwide – and is equally responsible for his own incredible rise to prominence. Both Forbes and Inc. have called him one of the world's most "connected" individuals. www.keithferrazzi.com