Answer: When the marketing and sales program is organized and facilitated by actors (& actresses).

I recently attended a 90 minute program with about 50 others sponsored by MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) and facilitated by the TAI Group in NY. Since this is my first experience with the TAI Group, let me say a couple of things. TAI has been around for probably 20 years and TAI originally stood for The Actors Institute. They started by training actors but found that their workshops were being attended by non-entertainers (or civilians, as they like to call us) as well. In any case, they have quite an impressive client list including The Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, Digitas (in the marketing space), CEO’s and senior execs. Their entire facility and offices were quintessentially tasteful in an art-meets-business motif.

One of TAI’s main goals in helping you or your organization is to get you to recognize your inner self a little better so that you can understand how you are presenting yourself and reacting to others in business, as well as hopefully understand their motivations that much faster.  Actors, for one, often need to use this talent or ability to quickly prep for a film or show. As TAI was saying, actors have to team immediately for success whether they get along with their counterparts or not. And the acting failure of one performer can immediately doom the show. Personally, I think good sales people have that same talent, not only in knowing what their motivations are (make the sales of course), but in reading their client so that they quickly and accurately interpret their issues, challenges and of course motivations.

Marketers often use this talent but they apply it to a wide range of customers or buyers typically. Marketers also have to understand the psychological and behavioral mathematics across their customer bases. We call this market segmentation, demographic analysis, psychographics, etc. But while marketers have to deal with the law of large numbers, sales ultimately comes down to mano-a-mano.

Since I’ve been on both the sales and marketing side of the business…in fact I often feel that I’m in the middle ground somewhere, I’ve usually found these programs refreshing and rewarding. And in this case, ditto. Maybe there is a similar program in your neighborhood so to speak.

I guess Shakespeare got it right…All the World’s a Stage. If Shakespeare were around today, maybe he too would be training actors and marketers alike.