In addition to preparing advertising, marketing and public relations materials for my clients, I send out materials on own behalf in the hopes of gaining more clients. One of the most common responses I receive is something along the lines of, “We don’t have to advertise, we get all our business through referrals.”

Such a response could mean nothing more than “go away and stop bothering me.” Perhaps the company in question does in fact get all their business through referrals.

Fortunately, a majority of businesses feel some need to go after customers even if they are confused as to the means. What I’m talking about is the long-standing battle between sales and marketing. If this age-old grudge match is news to you, I sincerely hope your monastery serves hot meals.

If, on the other hand, you cherish the belief – as I once did – that the functions of Sales and Marketing are the seamlessly entwined Yin and Yang of business acquisition you also are likely to believe in a bipartisan Congress and honor among thieves.

When goods were scarce and the means to buy them limited salesmen were absolutely essential and businesses were built on their sometimes Herculean efforts. Today, however, we are swimming in solutions, drowning in goods, and benumbed by options. You can’t turn around without bumping into some new answer for a problem you don’t have…or have not yet been convinced you should have if you’re the person you’re hope to become.

Thanks to easy credit and public tolerance for financial ruin, or as some call it, the social safety net, we are a nation living beyond not just its means, but its needs. Enabling this perpetual feeding frenzy are a vast and competing distribution channels, that it to say, ways to get stuff to you. Stores, direct mail, television, telemarketing, computers. There is no escape from people hawking one thing or another. As a result of this constant assault, “sell” could well become a four-letter word.

Yet we are species that exists in the main to make or do things for each other. To survive, we must constantly find ways to reach “our customers,” and that’s why marketing is the heart of commerce, while sales is just the pulse.

We know that almost everyone is almost always shopping for something to buy, buying it, and shopping for something else. Marketing’s job is to put our particular flavor of good or service smack in front of the shopper before they chose another option. If what we make or do isn’t easily transported then we have to put the shopper in front of our choice before they consumer another option.

Given the infinite variables of age, gender, culture, bias, experience, location, etc and etc, we can only effectively reach, titillate and close with a tiny fraction of our total market, which means that we’d better have our marketing message honed to such perfection that when granted our brief audience before the king, or queen – the customer that is – they chose us.

A salesman will tell you that a good salesman has the personality to sell anything, ice to Inuits, bondage to slaves, fiscal responsibility to Democrats, and so forth. But since so much commerce is now handled by impersonal media, a glib tongue and quick wit are of little use outside of a singles bar or perhaps traffic court.

No, my friend, a knowledge of and devotion to marketing is the key if you want to sell enough whatever to get your business out of the incubator and on to the NASDAQ.

This coming November, presumed Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama, and the Republican party’s Presidential nominee, John McCain, will be locked in intense brand-driven competition for consumer mind-share, media shelf-space and – ultimately – customer purchase.

Though unlike almost every other brand-driven marketing competition, the Presidential race is unique. The quadrennial election of the President of the United States is perhaps the lone marketing category where the consumer can chose his favorite brand, but ultimately will only be allowed to take home the product that is chosen by the majority of his fellow customers.

Imagine how you would feel it after being inundated with a tsunami of car ads…for years…you decided on a Honda Prius, plucked down your money but were told that you could only take home a Toyota Camry because it was voted the best car by a majority of automobile owners. And, on top of that, you couldn’t trade it in for at least four years.

The American marketplace long ago settled on limiting political choice to just two brands, Democrats and Republicans, despite periodic attempts by popular foreign imports like Socialism, Fascism and Communism to establish domestic market share.   Many would argue that there is little different between our two parties much like the lack of perceptible difference between, say, light beers. Others consider that the Democrats are the “party of the common man,” while the Republicans are the party that favors business. Maybe it depends on whether you see yourself as “common” or “business-like” which definition you subscribe to. 

Even others like to articulate the differences between to the two camps in either/or concepts such as, “social welfare” versus “fiscal responsibility,” “big government” versus small, “anti-war” versus “national security,” and on…and on…ad nauseum. Despite the goal of sound bites such as these to distinguish one side from the other, once in office, members of both parties behave with depressing similarity by rewarding supporters with money. Not their money, of course. The money politicians love to dole out is your money and mine.

Democrats and Republicans are similar in other ways, too. Once in power, when not voting entitlements to their constituents, they spend inordinate amounts of effort plotting against each other to the point that both parities not only propose, but enact, legislation the sole purpose of which is to stick a thumb in the other guys’ eye regardless of its negative impact on the public welfare. The consequence to these once powerful brands, besides a Congressional approval rating of 19% – nearly half that of a President who NOBODY is supposed to like – is that candidates can no longer run merely as “the Democrat” or “the Republican.” Today, candidates must create personal brands.

In the last two years, Hillary has run as “Clinton Version 2.0.” When she proved that she lacked her husband’s political legerdemain, she tried “Girl Power” followed by “The Democrat Who Can Win the White Vote.” In recent weeks following a succession of “misstatements” that even the once fawning media couldn’t whitewash, her brand has become “Hillary, the Victim.”

Hillary’s opponent, on the other hand, has run as a virtual Brand Family. Simultaneously we had “Barack, the Soul Brother,” that is until his longstanding association with a racist African American preacher proved troubling. Along side that was “Barack, the Eastern Liberal’s Fantasy,” until his words about “angry working class people who cling to guns and religion” proved that East Coast Liberal orthodoxy doesn’t play as well west of the Hudson River. And don’t forget “Barack, the Man Willing to Meet with Our Enemies,” which, while intended to evoke Richard Nixon meeting Mao, conjured instead Neville Chamberlain who, as everyone knows, signed a treaty with Hitler to “bring us peace in our time.” 

John McCain, currently running the UnBush has his own brand challenges, a staunch independent with a closet full of lobbyists, and Republican standard bearer distrusted by his party’s right wing. Come to think about it, with Moderates escaping to the left and Libertarians struggling to create third alternative, the right wing is about all there is to the Republican Party these days. McCain does have one brand image that still rings true – that of a bone fide War Hero. Too bad so much of the country is in denial about currently being…at war…or they might want someone with some cojones and real life combat experience at the nation’s helm.

How will these brand messages effect the coming election? Of course I don’t know. What I hope for is that whoever occupies the Oval Office come next January demonstrates self-sacrifice, honesty, courage, wisdom and guts. You know, the brand attributes of a true leader.

A couple of weeks back I had the occasion to chat with a pastor who was looking for marketing help to grow his church, and though I’m both a marketing pro and a committed Christian my advice to him was not to waste time and money…at least in any secular effort.

Before I tell you why I feel that my chosen profession is not the best tool to serve my God, let me set the scene…

The pastor I spoke with is a bright, young (most people I talk to are younger than me) man. He’d attended a very prestigious seminary and had served in the requisite positions of Youth and Assistant Pastor at other churches before assuming leadership of his church some years ago.

He told me that lately he had been feeling that his church was stagnating and he feared that if it wasn’t growing, it was slowly dying. When he challenged his flock to personally reach out to their friends and neighbors not much happened as they seemed content with the status quo.

The pastor felt that for the church to be viable into the future, they needed a substantial increase in membership and a new facility to house the expanding worship. His church’s membership, on the other hand, didn’t seem to share his vision.

On the advice of one of the few members who did share his concern for the church, the pastor had mailed out thousands of flyers and distributed a large number of door hangers inviting folks to come to attend a service. Sadly there had been few, if any, takers. He’d found me in the process of looking for someone to handle some “PR,” though he most certainly meant, for lack of a better phrase, “business development.”

I suspect that he was not prepared for the advice that I would offer.

Had he called me 20 or so years ago, I would have bubbled over with marketing tips and suggestions to juice up the musty message of Christianity: More consumer focus, punchier language, hipper graphics, incorporate contemporary music, etc.

In the last two decades, the “church growth” movement has done just that…and the results haven’t been what they expected. Sure, churches have grown…some to the size of small towns. Immense, gleaming edifices have risen. Arenas are regularly filled with the faithful seeking revival.

Judging from the results all this marketing has reached more people, but touched fewer hearts. You see, what I’ve come to understand is that the purpose of God’s message is to change us and not to be changed to suit us. If you change God’s message in order to appeal to us…you defeat its purpose.

Now, I didn’t say these words to the struggling pastor. He didn’t need a lecture from some lay person about his profession. Actually, I felt that he needed something more…

Since I was reborn in Christ some 20 years ago, I’ve attended three different churches…two of which went through profound crises that stemmed from their pastors’ struggles. Without going into detail suffice it to say that in both cases, men who I believe genuinely desired to serve the Lord caused great harm because each either refused or was unable to face some personal shortcoming.

So, as this pastor is recounting his struggles, what came to my mind was not the marketing challenge faced by his church, but the unspoken personal challenge I could hear behind his words. What I told him was that you don’t fill churches pews with marketing. Churches are filled with people when they are filled with the Spirit.

I don’t care whether you believe in God or not, when you enter a sanctuary filled with genuine believers, you can feel the spirit…the Holy Spirit. That means that church growth begins with the spiritual growth of those already attending the church. If they’re alive with the love of God’s word and they act out of God’s love…others will notice. You don’t have to believe in God to realize that people are attracted to other people who are kind and loving.

Okay, is there a general marketing message in all this? Yes, I believe there is. If you want your business to grow, make sure that your employees love what they’re doing and do their jobs with kindness and concern for others.