Sales And Marketing Is Not Evil

Sales and marketing is not evil.

They are not good either.

They are in fact, completely neutral. They are “tools” used to accomplish an end.

The simplest way to make this point is by an analogy - and a perfect analogy for the neutrality of sales and marketing is Harry Potter. For a minute, replace the business people with wizards. Now replace sales, marketing, and business in general as being the wizard's magic wand.

The magic wand on it’s own isn’t really good or evil. It largely just sits idle, waiting to be used. It’s the volition of the user that determines if it is used for good or evil. It is through these tools that the wizard or the businessman can spread good or evil.

Business can be done in a way that is mutually beneficial to everyone. Both end of the transaction can - and should - walk away happy.

In a broad sense, businesses have great capacity for good. They can improve the world and the lives of the people in it.

Or they can do the opposite.

Which then begs an interesting question.

Business success is not easy. Generating profits can be quite difficult for both the ethical and unethical business person. In fact, the things that seem to matter most exist inside the mind the business person.

It comes down to drive, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and perhaps most importantly it comes down to persistence.

There are many that lack these qualities that fail in business, whether they had ethical intentions or not.

So why do the unethical business people pour all that energy into a harmful venture when they could pour that same energy into a beneficial venture? Why work to make the world worse when you could work equally hard to make it better?

Well that’s a complicated question. We could guess the answer is greed, or avarice, or a character flaw, or ignorance, or desperation...

But to the main point, sales and marketing are not good or evil. They are actually idle until the intentions of the user animates them and brings them to life.

When a person says something like ‘sales and marketing is evil’, what they’re really saying is that they’ve come across businesses and people whose intentions they didn’t trust. Trust is difficult to build and easy to lose. People trust Harry Potter. If you do your sales and marketing correctly, and with the right intentions, they’ll trust you too.