Marketers and salespeople get a bad rap sometimes. It's mostly from folks who have had a bad experience.

But most people I speak to can recall far more positive commercial experiences than negative ones when really asked to consider this.

I think it is because the bad experiences stereotype are just hard to forget and the satisfactory ones that meet our expectations are easy to forget.

That doesn’t make it any easier to produce a pleasant buying experience. It’s hard. You have to really think about how the consumer wants to interact with you, your product and the purchase process.

You have to make sure your people are properly trained and in the same page.

Consistency and ease of purchase are the building blocks of success

You have to try to keep each experience consistent from one to the next.

The continued success of McDonald’s is not built on quality of the product; it is built on consistency in product and purchase experience.

“Marketing in an interactive world is a collaborative activity—with the marketer helping the consumer to buy and the consumer helping the marketer to sell.” - Seth Godin

You can’t expect the consumer to help you sell through word of mouth referrals (or even incentives) if they have to qualify the recommendation with: “It’s kind of a hassle”, or “For the most part, you get what you came for.”

Helps customers buy, and they can do some of the selling for you. You can’t quite get rid of your sales staff, but if you want word of mouth referrals, you need to focus on these fundamentals.