Day 23: Everybody sells
Saturday
各位书友，今天我们一起阅读《Zero to One》第十一章IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME的134-139页。
Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
技术精英希望可以忽视销售，把销售人员都放逐到其他星球。我们都认为自己才是做决定的人，销售对我们没有用处，但这不是真的。每个人都有产品需要销售——不论是员工、创始人还是投资者。即使你的公司仅仅由你和电脑组成，也是如此。环视四周，如果没有看到销售员，那么你就是。
思考问题：
How to Sell to Non-Customers?
如何将产品销售给客户以外的人？
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01 Distribution Doldrums
销售的盲区
In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.
在人员销售（要求有销售员）和传统广告（不要求有销售员）之间有盲区。
Suppose you create a software service that helps convenience store owners track their inventory and manage ordering. For a product priced around $1,000, there might be no good distribution channel to reach the small businesses that might buy it. Even if you have a clear value proposition, how do you get people to hear it? Advertising would either be too broad (there’s no TV channel that only convenience store owners watch) or too inefficient (on its own, an ad in Convenience Store News probably won’t convince any owner to part with $1,000 a year). The product needs a personal sales effort, but at that price point, you simply don’t have the resources to send an actual person to talk to every prospective customer. This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.
假如你开发了一个帮助便利店老板追踪存货、管理订购的软件，可是这样一个价值1000美元左右的产品，并没有完善的销售渠道和有购买意向的小企业对接。即使你有清晰的价值定位，又怎么才能让人们了解呢？广告要么范围太广（没有专门针对便利店老板的特定电视频道），要么效率太低（在《便利店新闻》上登广告不足以说服便利店老板每年花费1000美元）。该产品需要人员销售，但是从产品定价来看，你恐怕没有钱派销售员与每个潜在客户洽谈。这就是为什么如此多的中小企业并不使用大企业习以为常的方式的原因。并不是说小企业老板异常落伍，或者没有好的途径，而是因为销售有个隐形的瓶颈。
02 Marketing and Advertising
市场营销和广告
Marketing and advertising work for relatively low-priced products that have mass appeal but lack any method of viral distribution. Procter & Gamble can’t afford to pay salespeople to go door-to-door selling laundry detergent. But P&G does employ salespeople to talk to grocery chains and large retail outlets, since one detergent sale made to these buyers might mean 100,000 one-gallon bottles.
市场营销和广告对有广泛吸引力却缺少病毒式推广方法的低价产品极为有效。宝洁公司无力支付销售员上门推销洗衣液的费用，却雇用销售员与连锁杂货店和大型零售商沟通，因为与这些客户的一单生意意味着10万瓶一加仑洗衣液的售卖。
Advertising can work for start-ups, too, but only when your customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value make every other distribution channel uneconomical.
广告对初创公司也奏效，但只有在客户获取成本和客户生命期价值在任何其他推广渠道都不经济的情况下才奏效。
Consider e-commerce start-up Warby Parker. The company states plainly on its website that “TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
想想电商初创公司沃比派克。该公司官网上直言，“电视是一个巨大的扩音器”，当你只能负担几十美元来赢取新客户时，你就需要尽力找到最大的扩音器。
Every entrepreneur envies a recognizable ad campaign, but start-ups should resist the temptation to compete with bigger companies in the endless contest to put on the most memorable TV spots or the most elaborate PR stunts. I know this from experience.
所有企业家都羡慕影响深远的广告活动，但是初创公司应该抵制住和大公司进行广告竞争的诱惑，不要陷入无休止的竞赛中，看谁的广告最令人难忘，或谁的公关噱头最精彩，这是经验之谈。
03 Viral Marketing
病毒式营销
Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.
谁最先占领有病毒式营销前景的细分市场，谁就能成为整个市场的定居者。
A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too. This is how Facebook and PayPal both grew quickly: every time someone shares with a friend or makes a payment, they naturally invite more and more people into the network. This isn’t just cheap—it’s fast, too. If every new user leads to more than one additional user, you can achieve a chain reaction of exponential growth. The ideal viral loop should be as quick and frictionless as possible.
如果产品的核心功能可以鼓励用户邀请其他朋友成为用户，那么这个产品才能进行病毒式营销。这是Facebook和PayPal快速增长的原因：每次只要有人与朋友分享或付款，他们自然而然会邀请更多的人加入。这不仅消耗低而且速度快。如果每个新用户再邀请一个以上的用户，你就能实现指数级增长的链式反应。理想的病毒式营销循环应该尽可能的快捷无阻。
04 The Power Law of Distribution
销售的幂次法则
One of these methods is likely to be far more powerful than every other for any given business: distribution follows a power law of its own. This is counterintuitive for most entrepreneurs, who assume that more is more. But the kitchen sink approach—employ a few salespeople, place some magazine ads, and try to add some kind of viral functionality to the product as an afterthought—doesn’t work.
不管做什么生意，上述方法中都有一个最为有效，那就是产品销售的幂次法则。这对大多数企业家来说是反直觉的，他们总以为销售策略越多越好，但是大杂烩式的方法——雇用几个销售员，在杂志上登广告，并且尝试增加一些产品的后续功能，使其能够呈病毒式增长——并不起作用。
Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
多数公司没有一条有效的销售渠道，导致它们失败的最主要的原因，不是产品差，而是糟糕的销售。如果你有一条有效的销售渠道，你就能成功。如果你尝试了多种销售渠道，却没有一个有效，那你就等着关门吧。
05 Selling to Non-Customers
销售给客户以外的人
Your company needs to sell more than its product. You must also sell your company to employees and investors. There is a “human resources” version of the lie that great products sell themselves: “This company is so good that people will be clamoring to join it.” And there’s a fundraising version too: “This company is so great that investors will be banging down our door to invest.” Clamor and frenzy are very real, but they rarely happen without calculated recruiting and pitching beneath the surface.
公司需要推销的不只是产品，你还必须向员工和投资者推销你的公司。好产品不需要推销这句谎话有个“人力资源”的版本：“我们公司很好，人们争相加入。”还有一个筹资版本：“我们公司非常好，投资者纷纷登门投钱。”一窝蜂和争先恐后的形容很生动，除非有精细的招聘计划和深层次的推销，不然这种情况不会发生。
拓展
Selling your company to the media is a necessary part of selling it to everyone else. Nerds who instinctively mistrust the media often make the mistake of trying to ignore it. But just as you can never expect people to buy a superior product merely on its obvious merits without any distribution strategy, you should never assume that people will admire your company without a public relations strategy. Even if your particular product doesn’t need media exposure to acquire customers because you have a viral distribution strategy, the press can help attract investors and employees. Any prospective employee worth hiring will do his own diligence; what he finds or doesn’t find when he googles you will be critical to the success of your company.
把公司推销给媒体是推销给其他人的必要前提。出于本能，技术精英不相信媒体，常常犯忽视媒体的错误。但就像你不会期待仅仅靠产品的外在优点而没有使用任何推广策略人们就会购买优质产品，你也不会认为没有使用公关策略人们就会欣赏你的公司。即使因为你有病毒式营销策略，而不需要媒体曝光来赢得顾客，媒体也会帮助你吸引投资者和员工。任何值得雇用的潜在员工都会先了解公司，他上网找到了公司的哪些信息，对你公司的成功至关重要。
本月共读《Zero to One》英文版
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☞ 领读达人：刘亚南，英语共读负责人，85后
☞ 主播：熊叔，别人说我英语讲得像母语，是个美国人，我笑~谁说不出国门就学不会地道美语?，别人说我拥有TESOL国际教师资格证~，我笑~自己只是个教书的逗比小光头罢了。
☞ 设计：刘莹
☞ 编校：陈珺洁