We Don't Sell Products, We Sell Change

“I actually believe that we don’t sell products, we sell change,” says Tiffani Bova, Customer Growth and Transformation Evangelist at Salesforce. Bova was interviewing legendary speaker and author Seth Godin when she made that comment.

“What great marketers and great sales people and great organizations do is only one thing, as Michael Schrage has written about, we make change happen,” responded Godin. “My favorite example of this is Harley Davidson. Harley turns disrespected outsiders into respected insiders. That’s what they do. They make half of their revenue licensing their logo, because the logo, the totum, the uniform is a symbol of the change. You don’t even have to have a motorcycle to be changed by the brand.”

This is the company’s internal marketing positioning statement that illustrates the point that Bova and Godin are making:

The only motorcycle manufacturer
That makes big, loud motorcycles
For macho guys (and “macho wannabes”)
Mostly in the United States
Who want to join a gang of cowboys
In an era of decreasing personal freedom.

Per Inc. Magazine

Godin also talked colorfully about sales, marketing and social media:

“It all comes down to what story does the sales person tell himself when he shows up at work every morning. Trust and awareness are the two key things here. What we want isn’t email, we want me-mail. What we want isn’t to hear about you, we want to hear about us. We want to hear about our dreams, where we are going. Salespeople who get that, who show up at work everyday intent on making that happen, they don’t have a social media problem.”