What do Dating and Relationships have to do with Marketing and Strategy.
I sometimes start business meetings or class seminars with a riddle. One typical one I use goes: It is why we are here today talking Marketing. It the reason why we are here talking this topic today. All hat we do – in the end is for it. No matter what we accomplish, if we don’t have it —we can’t claim success. When we achieve it --, we want to keep it by any means necessary. A competitor can have it also, but we want to make sure we have ours first. What is the “it” that I speak of? Profits! That’s what every group of American Business people give as the answer to the riddle – and they are right. Marketing is for profits in corporate America. Now when I give relationship seminars I give the same riddle. It the reason why we are here talking this topic today. All hat we do – in the end is for it. No matter what we accomplish, if we don’t have it —we can’t claim success. When we achieve it --, we want to keep it by any means necessary. A competitor can have it also, but we want to make sure we have ours first. What is the “it” that I speak of? Their answer to the same riddle is … Love. Yes – just like businesses are in the business of finding consumers to partner with them to get profit. These women were in the business of finding consumers to partner with to give them love. In America – we have become very astute at generating profit, but are still lagging behind in love. This is because the country was built on capitalism -- and you do best what you do most. We have perfected the art of getting consumers to buy, re-buy, rent, lease, our goods and services to make billions of dollars. And to continue the industrial revolution perfected “systems” and “principles”, and “tools” that lead to business success. But, to lead the world in innovation was no mistake – it was very calculated. But this thing called love. The greatest thing. A lifelong mate. This still eludes us. If the country would have spent one tenth of the time it spent on creating infrastructures for “loving relationships” as it did for “growing corporations” – what a wonderful world it would be. So – that is the task that I have taken on. I want to use the world’s best thinking on business and marketing to share insights which will maximize anyone’s ability to “build profitable relationships”.

Well if you paid money for this book (and I hope you did) J you have some interest in the opposite sex –unless you bought it buy accident trying to learn about relationship marketing used in the advertising industry. Why “put effort in?” Well the answer is that you put effort in to get something out. If your objective is to acquire a college diploma, you don’t expect to get it without taking action to get it. You have an objective. You make choices to achieve your objective