Sales Tip #4 From the Political SPIN Meisters

Hindsight is wonderful. All the pundits are busy pontificating why Bush won and Kerry lost. It's time for me to add my two cents again today, so here it is.

Tip #4: Create and mobilize evangelists.

Evangelist extol your virtues when you're not around. They passionately believe in your mission and work on converting others to their beliefs. They even forgive you when you do something dumb or sound stupid. One evangelist can deliver lots of votes.

The Bush's campaign proved far superior to Kerry's in this aspect. They targeted Evangelical Christians as a market segment, aligned their "message" with what this demographic needed to hear and actively pursued relationships with key leaders in these communities. As a result, these religious leaders became avid spokespeople for the Bush campaign. From their pulpits, they preached the Bush message to their flock and delivered the vote.

What can sellers and marketers learn from this? Look for evangelists in your midsts. Support them like crazy and help them build the buzz. An excellent book on this topic is called "Creating Customer Evangelists" by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. It's an excellent read.

Comments

[Chui]

The Bush team was able to segment the market and sell to them individually. The Born-Agains see GWB as a leader from their faith rise, the small-biz owners see GWB as a being "on-their-side", the conservatives vote for GWB because "a firm hand is needed in their military adventures overseas". Meanwhile, JK was more focussed on being critical of the execution of the projects, but not really signalling or positioning himslef as a suitable replacement for people from those segments.

[Jackie Huba]

Right on! Kerry did not preach to his choir and this was a mistake.

Another flaw in the Democratic campaign is that they gave us
a "New Coke" candidate.

[Cary]

Another book, The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, refers to this person as the connector. The idea is in creating positive epidemic you must involve someone who knows many people to spread the message.

Its a great read.