There are lots of ways to be cute or clever in the field of sales and marketing.

One of them is by swallowing whole the garbage that passes as wisdom, professed by some of the purportedly best and brightest.

One of these sloganeers says:

If you do a good enough job of marketing, selling becomes unnecessary.

I suppose this means you can build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, presuming you price it attractively, package it nicely, and do a modicum of promotion, preferably of the indirect type.

But the more time I invest in marketing, especially the kind that lets clients feel they discovered you, by reading your articles or by happening upon one of your books, the more Im convinced that aggressive, outbound selling is always necessary, if you want to make a nice living or enjoy fatter profits.

Frankly, selling is one of the few business endeavors that you can correct and control on the spot.

Lets say you contact the head honcho at a firm and try to sell him light bulbs, but he says no deal. Instantly, you can switch products and offer something else, bundle the bulbs with other items, schedule a convenient call back for a future order, or even cut your prices on the spot, if you have to do it.

Selling, because of its in-your-ear or-face reality, enables you to make breaks for yourself where there are none, if youre using a less direct means of communication.

By comparison, waiting for the phone to ring or for web surfers to find your site or your postings, is way too passive, and it reminds me of the ancient Chinese quip:

A person must wait for a long time with his mouth open for a roast duck to fly in!

Ive tried that, and believe me, its not the way to look for your next meal, or sale!