How The Allegory Of The Seed Relates To Sales And Marketing

WARNING: This post contains an allegory taken from the Book of Mormon and utilizes it to teach about sales and marketing. If this is likely to offend you, then you should not read on. I do however believe it is an amazing teaching tool for how to market a product for long-term sales growth in the age of the Internet. This post will also likely be very long.

I have always been a spiritual person, and just before my 21st birthday I decided to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am not going to try an convert you, but if you want more information I am willing to share. After my post yesterday about “Concentrating on and Emphasizing Your Strengths“, I realized this allegory would be optimal for showing how to market on the Internet for long-term sales growth.

I also know that so far the fact that I am Mormon has cost me at least one sale. I understand that I am likely to lose more sales as a result of this revelation, but I truly believe this is the best way for me to teach this and in the process of teaching gain a greater understanding.

Allegory Of The Seed from Alma 32 : 28, 30-33, 37-43

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.

31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.

32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.

33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.

38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.

39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.

40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.

41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.

42 And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.

43 Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you.

What is the seed?

For the purposes of sales and marketing related to board games, the seed represents 2 different things.

The seed is/are board games.
The desire inside of people that wants you to succeed.

Throughout this article I will be interchanging the use of the word seed to me either #1 or #2.

The Difficulty Of An Allegory

Allegories are difficult to explain in plain terms. For the remainder of this post, I will assume that you have an understanding of what is said above. The basic outline:

To see if a seed is good, you must plant it
If a seed is good, then it will begin to grow. If the seed does not begin to grow, then it is a bad seed and should be discarded.
If you nourish and take care of the growing tree, then it will take root and bring forth fruit.
If you neglect the growing tree, then it will not take root and will be scorched by the sun, wither, and die.
If you neglected the growing tree and as result the tree died, then this does not mean that the seed was bad. It also does not mean that the fruit of the tree would not be delicious. It means that the soil that the seed was planted in was barren.
If you diligently nourish and nurture the growing tree with faith, great diligence, and patience, then the tree will grow and take root.
After the tree takes root and grows, it will eventually fruit at which point in time you will be able to reap the rewards of your efforts.

See if the seed is good… Plant it

Everyday, there are new businesses popping up on the Internet, new blogs, new content sites, new software, and copycats of the old successful players. This is the result of people planting their seeds of ideas and seeing if they will grow. They want to know if the seed is good, if it is a possible place to reap long term benefits.

Think of your particular idea right now. What are the barriers to entry? Would it be a sufficient test right now to start a blog? If so, then start that blog and test to see if your seed is good. The cost for hosting is minimal or if you want you can go with a free option. I personally recommend Wordpress.com for the free end or a hosted Wordpress option.

If a seed is good it will begin to grow… If not, discard that seed and find a new one

Good seeds grow. People become interested in what you have to say. They continue to experience your work and like it so much that they decide to share it with their friends. If an idea is good, then it will grow. On the Internet though, how long should you give something the opportunity to grow? I have no clue. I started this blog as a way to possibly sell a couple of additional games. When I began I was not very focused and I was discouraged at how slow it was to find visitors. It felt like there were only 2 people who read it. My lovely wife Erin… and Seth Jaffee, who is head of development at Tasty Minstrel Games.

Discouraged with the speed of growth, I decided to bribe people to subscribe to an email list. This email list would then send out updates from the blog automatically every 1st and 3rd Friday. Additionally, it would allow me the flexibility of a potential audience that I could email when it came time to sell some games. Bribing your target audience with what they like seemed like the best idea, so I made a free board game drawing every week for email subscribers. I went from 0 subscribers to 700+ within a week.

I did also have a supplimentary supplementary idea intent on getting some additional board game sales. I had started an online directory for board gamers. This is definitely a seed that did not grow and I could tell that it would not grow. I discarded that one.

The Beauty of the Internet and Nourishing Trees

It would be an incredibly painstaking task to nourish an individual relationship with every possible consumer and/or retailer that would be carrying my games. In fact, if I were able to accomplish my long-term goals, then I would need to hire a large staff to handle just that aspect of the business. I have opted for a hybrid strategy. I imagine a system under which various groups of people can help each other nourish their trees of wanting Tasty Minstrel success. Demoers can help nourish the retailers, retailers help nourish the consumers, consumers help nourish each other, reviewers help nourish consumers, and so forth. So, there would be a network of people working by their own freewill and choice to help maintain the trees of others.

That leaves the responsibility to me for creating an environment with rich soil in which the seeds can be planted and grow. Not only does a tree need proper maintenance, it needs fertile land to grow in. So I am constantly trying to add to the fertility of the Internet for the growth of Tasty Minstrel Games. That is what led to this blog, the “free board games” email list, the reviewer support email list, the Facebook fan page for Tasty Minstrel, upcoming Facebook fan pages for all of our games, upcoming retailer support email list, upcoming YouTube channel for video rules tutorials, and whatever else I come up with or happened to omit. Sure, it takes significant work to get all of these various “soil amendments” up and running, but that is what it takes to drive success in my mind.

The Internet is also great because of the self selecting nature of it. Statisticians refer to it as selection bias. For example, if you ask a random sample of 1,000 people what there favorite music is, they are unlikely to say “I love cello music.” However, if you ask 1,000 cello players, they are very likely to say “I love cello music.” The same thing is at work on the Internet and it work in the favor of niche businesses. With the proper motivation, people will actively seek out what you have to sell and will actively be referred by their friends that have similar interests. When looking for converting interest into sales, there is nothing better than an active seeker that has been referred by a friend. Make self-selection work for you, figure out who the major influencers in your market are and get them to LOVE you.

Why all of the effort?

The fruit of the tree is delicious. Not only that, but each piece of fruit that is eaten is another opportunity to have seeds scattered. However, if the fruit is coming from an existing tree, then the only thing you need to do is to improve the likelihood that the seed be planted in rich soil. If you do the work to make the soil rich and you have a good seed, then you are enabling a situation in which sales can grow exponentially. Instead of enabling a situation in which there are large initial orders to stock retail stores and insignificant reorders because the games do not sell at the retailer level.

Games like Settlers of Catan, Blokus, Bananagrams, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride have exponentially growing sales. In the case of these it because the games are stellar. With an excellent game and an appropriately rich soil in which seeds can grow, you can have the same effect on a smaller scale.