Educate or sell?

One and off in the past, I hear people talk about the difference between educating customers and selling to them. The two are often presented as mutually exclusive. You can educate, or you can sell. Educate is a waste of time, while selling produces immediately bankable results. And so on.

There is a school of thought that says: don’t encourage your customer to think; tell them what to think. They don’t have time to think (or to learn). Just sell to them.

In reality, educate and sell are probably one and the same beast. See this post by Neil Squillante on an LA lawyer using YouTube. Is she educating? Or selling?

Much better to go out there from a position of genuine belief in your product and how it can help your customers. And accept the fact that some will get it and buy, and others won’t. Of course this does not help salespersons who are on big quotas…

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