I hesitate to join the Seth Godin echo chamber. Not because I disagree with him—he’s insightful and articulate and pretty much right on the money 90 percent, no, 95 percent of the time. Rather, I worry that this blog will end up being just another Seth Godin affiliate (there are many out there), existing only to redirect traffic to his already highly trafficked site. My guess is that most blogs that have a sales and/or marketing focus have, at some point, reckoned with this issue.

But. I have to link to one of his recent posts because it makes an important distinction between two things—selling and serving.

Yesterday Maribeth made a similar distinction in her post , in which she suggests that you think of yourself not as someone looking to sell a policy, but rather as someone looking sell a solution—a solution that benefits the consumer. (After all, why should a prospect want to help you sell a policy?)

Back selling vs. serving. The change in thinking is internal, but the external consequences—and the effects on the way you market yourself—are profound. Godin makes his point by looking at Zappos.com, the online shoe store, whose motto reads, “We are a service company that happens to sell."

Godin: “Zappos wants you to call their 800 number. They want you to order too many shoes. They want you to return (at their expense) the shoes that don't fit.

As a service company, the more they service you, the better they do.”

The similarity between Maribeth’s and Seth’s approach is that they both would have you take the focus away from selling—or more specifically, the selling mentality. This mentality, through its very nature, conveys your own self-interest, and there's nothing that's further from the prospect's mind (and less relevant) than your own self-interest.