Great post and I totally agree. However I wonder why you have not mentioned a dream/vision/goals layer? Is that not considered part of marketing?

Ray

“The whole purpose of The Fulfilment Spiral is to turn your buyers into your most productive, profitable sellers — or evangelists, as Willie puts it. And that takes a considerable amount of emotional output.”

I like your idea of using a sprial metaphor — much more true to what actually happens instead of a funnel metaphor.

Thanks for adding to the conversation.

Wonderful post and insightful.

I agree that without a proper structure, your marketing can be in vain.
In my former work, I dealt with civil engineering and construction inspection where we always dealt with the base foundation being the key to solid support. Without it, the loveliest architect’s rendering would be nothing without proper structure.

As such, once a project is completed, the public eye sees the finished product, perhaps without understanding all the intricate layers that go into producing it in the first place.

I like your take on Willie Crawford’s use of the evangelists. Once you get loyal customers who understand your product/service/structure more completely, and are using it to help their goals/businesses, they are naturally going to tell others about you and your product(s).

Thanks for your tips!
Paul Klein

Marketing is often misunderstood because its classic definition (“identify an unmet need and satisfy it”) is so manifestly inadequate. No emotion involved, for a start, and it only represents the first 5 of the 8 stages in the complete Fulfilment Spiral.

The whole purpose of The Fulfilment Spiral is to turn your buyers into your most productive, profitable sellers — or evangelists, as Willie puts it. And that takes a considerable amount of emotional output.

Those three final, missing stages make all the difference, and they’re precisely what’s missing from most marketing strategies. So we end up with half-baked “solutions” like loyalty programs and “ethical bribes”, none of which create any real loyalty because they ARE bribery!

If the role of the marketer is to “identify an unmet need and satisfy it”, the role of the seller is critically important: to get people to WANT what they need, because no matter how much they may NEED your solution, until they WANT it, they won’t BUY it.

I’ve always like the analogy comparing marketing to duck hunting.

The marketer knows where the ducks are, when they’re there and why they’re there. He/she knows when it legal to shoot them, and how many. He/she attracts the ducks with decoys, sounds, etc and scares the unattracted ones into the air. He/she loads and aims the gun and pulls the trigger… then sends the sellers after them to bring them back in!

John

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you through Twitter. Thanks for taking the time to comment here. I owe the Evangelists part to Willie Crawford who pointed out to me that there is that third type of customer.

I like how you distinguished between customers, repeat customers, and evangelists. Most people think the job is done after the first sale when it’s actually just getting started.

Ryan