Donnie Bryant

Donnie Bryant is a direct response copywriter and marketing consultant. He helps small businesses and solo professionals connect with and convert their “should-be” clients with unusually effective marketing messages and systems.

U of You: Why Education Matters More Than Ever

by

Education has never been more important than it is at this moment. Your parents always told you to get your education. Every year your teachers prepared and encouraged you to continue down the path to higher levels education.

Repeat: education is more important now than it has ever been. But not for the reasons that have been drilled into your mind.

I was watching television the other afternoon during one of my rare couch-potato moments. My brilliant wife pointed out that there was an advertisement for a college or university during every commercial break. Apparently getting a degree is big business these days.

The lessons you learn when you understand what’s really going on here can transform your business.

Let’s get right to the point, shall we? Here are 4 crucial insights:

1.  People value education. But why? Do they want to know more for the sake of knowing more? Of course not! People want to learn so they can get what they want. More. Faster. More easily.

Why does anyone go to college? If this were Family Feud, the number one answer would be “To get a good job.” Simply put, people seek educations to get what they want in life.

2.  Schools are rarely short on students. Good schools have people fighting to get in.

3.  Some of the most trusted individuals in any community are its teachers. Professors are acknowledged experts in their fields.

4.  Educators shape the way their students understand the world.

Now, I’m not telling you to go back to school. In fact, I believe the way the modern school system is structured is radically flawed.

Can you see how the 4 lessons above can apply to your business?

I’ll say it one more time: education is more important than ever. Your potential customers are constantly looking for information. Why? So they can get what they want. More. Faster. More easily.

How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? Better yet, how do you rise above the rest of the pack to become, not the best, but the only person your prospects want to deal with?

The most powerful way to accomplish this feat is to become the educator in your niche. Establish the University of You!

By setting yourself or your company up as the source of quality information and/or training, you have gained all the advantages that Harvard or Yale have. You are the expert. Trust is easier to gain, even from skeptics, because of the credibility you’ve built. Your “marketshare” of people seeking knowledge in your field will increase naturally and dramatically.

And you will have the opportunity to really influence the people you communicate with. Think about it— who has had a greater impact on your life, a teacher/mentor or a salesperson? (Not to diminish the importance of selling!)

There are more benefits to educating your prospects than can be covered here. If you’re ready to start reaping those benefits, consider the “Ivy League” approach to doing business. No degree is required. Just start taking action today.

Not All Marketers Are Liars

by

While I’m posting social media conversations on my blog, here’s a few tweets that I exchanged with a guy I follow yesterday:

IJR: The world has become such a easy place to market to; sell them lies and they will buy it… Give them truth and they will shun it…

Sell them lies: Diet pills, shakes, body braces, etc and they will buy… Sell them truth: More vegs + exercise and they will shun it

Me: it’s not necessarily truth they shun. It’s WORK.

The world is so easy to market to, not because people buy lies (although they do), but because they want ease.

That’s why grown men buy clip-on ties, why most of us don’t cook food from scratch. Make life easier & marketing gets easier
—–

Marketers and salespeople can use deception to get sales, no doubt about it. A lot of people do. It’s a bad idea, but it can work in the short-term…

For that reason, a large percentage of us automatically distrust salespeople and think of advertisements as mostly fantasy (or at least puffery).

But truth sells, too. It’s a little harder to dig out truth than to make up stories, but truth-telling is a much more intelligent, more sustainable business model.

The Oldest Webinar Promotion Advice Yet

by

Webinars are becoming increasingly important as communication and marketing tools. How many webinar invitations or notifications are sitting in your inbox right now? I bet there’s more than one…

One of the big challenges webinar promoters have is getting people to register for their webinars.

In my first post on Roger Courville’s blogsite, The Virtual Presenter, I reach back a few centuries to unearth principles of persuasion from a seemingly unlikely source.

If you’re struggling to get your audience to sign up for your webinars, read “Aristotle’s Advice.”

Actually, the concepts apply across all manners of influence. You might want to read the article even if you never intend to host a presentation online.

Chasing Butterflies

by

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

So goes the basic introduction into what’s commonly known as the butterfly effect.

Taken from the title of a paper written by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1972, the concept has gained significant popularity and made in impact in our culture.

Aside from movies and books, you’ve probably heard discussions about the butterfly effect in one of two arenas: personal development or in business improvement.

Despite all that you think you may know about the phenomenon, chances are that you have probably been misinformed.

You’ve been taught, to summarize, that the butterfly effect speaks to the reality that one tiny change has the potential to create massive change. Even the flapping of an insect’s wing can unleash the power of a tornado.

The application is that small improvements you make in your life and business can create tremendous, life-changing results.

A more accurate term for this truth is kaizen, which literally means “continuous improvement.” Seemingly insignificant but continual incremental advancement in your work has a compounding effect and will create much larger development. Always getting better, little by little, turns good into great.

The butterfly effect is an expression of chaos theory, and the end results are not at all related to those you can expect by putting kaizen into practice.

Sowing Seeds

You don’t have to be a farmer to understand the law of sowing and reaping. Plant a seed, get a harvest.

Tend to the soil and enhance the environmental conditions, and you’ll reap an even more impressive harvest.

This agricultural axiom is proven to work and relied upon around the world to produce most of the food we eat.

It may not have been clear before, but these two concepts are not the same. They’re not even really related. Let’s make some comparisons.

1) The butterfly effect, by definition, is extremely unpredictable. A beautiful butterfly in South America is depicted as being capable of affecting disastrous weather on another continent.

Small changes can create much different outcomes, but there’s no real way to know what those outcomes will look like. An extra handshake after a meeting could win a new account for your company, or it could set off a series of events that cause a stock market crash. You can guess what will happen in terms of probabilities, but you can’t know for sure.

As we’ve noted, we’re delving into chaos theory here, which boils down to a mathematical attempt to describe the unknowable.

On the other hand, the law of sowing and reaping is highly predictable. Planting tulip seeds will produce tulip plants.

2) Rightly understood, the butterfly effect is completely out of our control to initiate, improve or direct. Every move you make causes a change in the atmosphere akin to the flapping of the butterfly’s wings. And every other creature on the planet has the same effect on you. Again, the results are random and irreversible.

While this may be how the universe actually works, the butterfly effect is not something you can invoke to “manifest your desires.” You have no capability to interact purposefully with this process.

Sowing and reaping is the opposite. The farmer decides what seeds will be planted, you can fertilize, water, increase exposure to sunlight, etc., to impact how the seed will grow. The plant can be uprooted and moved, or chopped down and destroyed. That’s the prerogative of the sower.

3) The butterfly effect is a scientific/mathematical term, but when it’s discussed in personal development conversations, the tone is more metaphysical or mystical. Positive thinking on steroids.

The law of sowing and reaping is a verifiable scientific fact. Easy to understand and apply.

Which seems to be more worthy of your attention?

Bottom Line

While imprecise use of terminology in this case may not have major detrimental effects on success in business, fuzzy thinking does.

By all means, make incremental improvements in yourself and your work. Compound your efforts and success, and think positive thoughts. Little things do have big potential.

But always seek to understand the ideas that you’re buying into. Clearly defining vocabulary is always a winning proposition. You may find that you’ve been making statements (or agreeing with the statements of others) that you’d actually disagree with if you clarified the language.

If you still think you can rely on the butterfly effect to create the success you’re looking for (like in those time travel stories), you may still have some thinking to do on the matter.

Stick with what’s proven. Start planting some seeds, and take care of the ones you’ve already put in the ground.

Self-Identity Is the Key

by

“You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.” – Zig Ziglar

This quote by the master salesman and motivator also applies to how your potential customers make purchasing decisions.

They cannot buy brands, products or services that are inconsistent with their self-perception. This lesson will benefit anyone involved with selling or promoting their businesses or ideas, and everyone interested in communicating effectively and persuasively.

I discussed this concept in the Ophiuchus Effect and 5 Judo Moves Every Copywriter Should Know. Here’s an excerpt from the latter:

“…how many millions of dollars does Nike make selling equipment to people who are athletes? How many more millions do they earn from those who dream of being athletes?

“Find out how your customers identify themselves. Use the insights you gain from that research to make your business and your offers more relevant to customers.”

Brush off the Haters

by

“It is not the critic who counts…The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Is Marketing Getting Too Relevant?

by

Is it possible to be too relevant?

Apparently that is something that Staples fears. Take a look at the Unsubscribe Email page:

Too Relevant

It’s small, so you may have difficulty reading the words in the image. Listed are the different reasons people may want to opt-out of receiving emails from Staples. The circled reason says “Staples emails are too relevant (feel watched).”

This inspires a question — is marketing getting to be too targeted?

(By the way, if you’d like to make your email marketing more relevant — without getting creepy — you may want to take a look at Emails That Make Sales.)

A Man of Extremes

by

I found this short article by Chris Chase to be interesting.

As a former track star (in my mind), Carl Lewis was a big hero of mine. Now it looks like he’s running for Senator. No comment.

Here’s an excerpt of the article, the part that I’d like to stress.

“Carl Lewis is a man of extremes. When he’s good at something, like sprinting or jumping, he’s the best in the world. When he’s not good at something…his awefulness is astonishing.”

I’ve made this point a few times. It’s better to be world class at a limited number of things and horrible at everything else than it is to be decent at everything but not great at anything.

What are you extremely good at? Live and work in such a way that your extreme strengths are so noticeable, so impressive that no one minds your weaknesses.

Being well-rounded sucks.

While you’re at it, you might as well look at the Chase’s whole article. There’s a cool throwback video of Carl Lewis setting a world record. Oh, and one of him singing (one of his aweful failures).

The Myth of Selling Without Selling

by

It seems like nobody likes sales people (at least when they’re customers), and “sales” seems like a dirty word these days. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Nothing I can think of sells without selling. Not even candy bars in vending machines.

Let’s explore that thought experiment for a moment. Imagine one of those vending machines with the glass front that allows you to see its contents. In this one, all the merchandise is packaged in identical, completely nondescript containers. Perfectly cube-shaped, unmarked cardboard boxes.

You have no clue what’s inside any of them. Could be anything.

When you happen across this vending machine, what are you going to buy? Will you press A1 or E7?

I’m willing to bet you’ll choose to keep the dollar in your pocket.

Why? Because nothing is being sold. It’s just there. It’s available for sale, but it’s not being sold.

Now let’s imagine the vending machine is in the middle of a sweltering desert. There’s nothing else in sight but sand and scorpions. And you’re getting really, really thirsty.

What do you do now? Remember, you can’t tell what’s in any of those containers. Might be bottled water, or a bag of cheese curls. But since you have that dollar in your pocket, you might take a chance and pick something at random. You desperately need something to drink, and you have no other options. So you take a chance.

Why? Because your thirst is more important, more urgent than your dollar bill.

A Salesman’s Journey

I’ve sold lots of different stuff over the course of my career. Everything from warranties to watches. I loved it. The rush of closing a deal. The battle of wits and wills when overcoming customer objections. The competition between peers and with myself

At one point, I felt like I could sell anything to anyone.

Then, Harry Browne smacked me across the face with his painfully simple, brutally powerful book, The Secret of Selling Anything.

The question is often asked, do salespeople sell, or do customers buy? I always held to the position that salespeople sell. When transactions take place, the success is 90% due to the ability of the salesperson.

Reading Browne’s book, I found out that I was wrong. I was introduced to what Browne referred to as the “universal fallacy:”

“The universal fallacy is the belief that an individual would willingly accept something unprofitable to himself.

“No individual will give up some of his own resources for something he values less. When you think he will, you’re headed for failure. He may very well make an exchange that you would never make — but he will not willingly make an exchange that will lower his values.” (Author’s emphasis)

No one willingly does what she does not want to do.

Jonathan Edwards, considered by many to be the one of the greatest minds in America’s history, had this to say about making decisions: people “always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.”

Edwards is saying that, from the options available to us, we always choose what has the strongest, most desirable emotional impact on our lives in that moment. Period.

Back to the Vending Machine

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

If you were responsible for the sale of just ONE of the items in the vending machine, how would you get the guy in the middle of the desert to spend his dollar on your product?

For starters, you’d make sure that he knows it’s a refreshing liquid.

In our example, where does the selling power come from? It comes from the thirst of the guy in the desert.

On the other hand, could you sell salty potato chips to him? I don’t care how good a salesperson you put on that job, he’s not going to have much success.

We see that people buy what they want. Selling is (or at least it should be recognized and treated as) giving people what they want. Helping them satisfy their desires and needs.

With the vending machine, you’re not selling without selling. You’re selling without being obnoxious. There’s a major difference!

Guess what. Your salesmanship is nothing more than increasing the likelihood that your product in that vending machine is the one that gets picked.

The argument isn’t so much whether salespeople sell or customers buy. It’s both! The desire comes from the customer. It is the job of the salesperson or marketer to help the customer make the best decision.

My Talk with Mark Fox

by

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mark Fox, CEO of Sly as a Fox, LLC and author of Da Vinci and the 40 Answers. He’s one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of purposeful creativity. Oh, and he is former Chief Engineer on the Space Shuttle.

He enlightened me for 35 minutes and let me record the conversation.

Here’s why it matters to you.

We’ve talked about how improving your offer will improve the response you get from your marketing and sales propositions. Mark gives two of the best examples I’ve ever heard of “better than money back” guarantees. One involves a million dollar payout.

You can definitely learn something from these ideas.

The broader context of our discussion was how to become creative on purpose instead of having to wait for your muse to show up. We’re all well-accustomed to accidental creativity. But what if you could reproduce those times of inspiration predictably, on demand?

You’d start to see problems and obstacles dissolve right before your eyes.

On top of all that, I make a total anus out of myself in the first 5 minutes of the recording. I was so embarrassed I almost canceled the rest of the talk. I’m getting over my pride, because there is some really great content that I think you’ll benefit greatly from hearing. It’s worth the shame.

Check out the audio here.

You don’t want to miss this.

P.S. While you’re at it, you should go to Mark’s site. His is one of the only newsletters I haven’t unsubscribed from. He’s also offering the full text of Da Vinci and the 40 Answers in PDF form for free. No opt-in required.