Sales and Spitituality – Strange Bedfellows?
I am currently out in Spain visiting a dear friend who runs a B&B. The other evening we were discussing how she could improve her marketing and had an interesting debate about how traditional sales techniques sat with her own personal values and her intention to market her B&B to a wider audience.
Our discussion got me thinking. It is my current opinion that it is perfectly possible to combine commercial sales and marketing techniques with a spiritual and ethical approach. Yes we can all think of examples how people around the wortld have been manipulated using advertising and influencing methods but by same token, those same methods have been used to generate huge amounts of charitable aid. I seem to remember an Islamic proverb that says “Trust in Allah but tie up your camel”. Why not use the power of attraction and marketing together.
It seems to me that influencing techniques are not intrinsically good or bad. It is the intention of the person utilising these approaches that determines whether they are manipulative or not.
I would love to open up a debate on this topic and to collect examples of people or organisations who combine commerical sales and marketing techniques with a more spiritual approach. I´d love to hear your views – Please feel free to add a comment to this blog.
Enjoy your weekend
Namaste
Gavin
