When Seth Godin creates a product or book, it’s easier for him to sell the whole idea of it. Ditto for Jason or DHH from 37Signals.
If you’re in the world of internet marketing, you can draw parallels to Rand Fishkin or Neil Patel.
When these guys create a product, a SaaS, an app or whatever, it’s easier for them to sell. It’s not just the network effect (which was a side-effect of becoming a thought leader).
The main reason why these guys can create something and sell easier than the rest of us is because these guys are thought leaders within their industries. Some of them have written books, many have written guides, and most of the write/produce super-useful content on a consistent basis.
This is not a new trend either. This is not a new marketing fad. Unlike content marketing (which traces its roots to the early 19th century), the thought-leader thing is something that traces back to 100k - 1M years.
You read that right. 100k years or more.
Your product - the one you’re trying to sell to customers - is a tool. And when I say that, it’s not just a tool for your customers, it’s a tool for you too. A tool is a means to an end and your product is only a means to an end for all the parties involved in it (the maker, the user).
The first guy that tried to sell a tool (for barter of course) was not just a marketer. He was an expert tool maker. Also, he wasn’t making tools to sell them - it was just lying around after a lot of use and he thought, “hey why not?” when someone asked for an exchange.
His first expertise is not in making tools but in using them. The tool was made in a survivalist fashion.
You see this guy, this tool maker-turned-seller, was an expert. A leader in the tool making thing. Not just that, but he was also an expert in survival tactics (after all, that’s why he innovated and created a tool to help him in the process).
Eventually, after years of wielding the tool (by which time everyone in and around town knew this guy to be this tool-wielding expert - a thought leader of those times, so to speak), he became a tool seller.
Another few thousand years passed.
Tool makers sprung up everywhere and there were now guys who were making tools but never had to use them a lot (or even a little). These were the earliest engineers who knew how to make a tool but no longer needed them really. In fact, they made tools just because they could barter. Tools for food.
Even these early engineers had it easy - the market was just ripe enough, competition was okay, and you didn’t have to do door-to-door sales because you could just setup shop in the watering hole and every person in your tribe knew about your offering.
In 2016, this is not the case. You’re a tool maker who did not use the tool for a real long time for a genuinely selfish reason (survival? you were just using the tool to test it for others). And work out the competition, noise, lack of trust and a really long history of how people see sales and advertising, you get the picture: you just can’t sell your product no matter how insanely useful it is to your tribe.
A thought leader, on the other hand, is a resident expert. He’s the guy who has experienced pain first hand. He’s the guy who did things first-hand so he knows - at least, that’s the public perception and that’s why it’s easy for DHH to sell whatever new thing comes out of 37signals.
So what’s the general principle here that you can apply right now?
First, become a thought leader in your industry by offering your ideas. Without this, you are only a tool seller (who also happens to be a tool maker but people think of it as an afterthought).
Then, show them your tool - the one you want to sell.