Selling

4 Steps to No-Brainer Status

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If your target market had to make an instant decision, without thinking, would they would still pick you?

The mind is always doing something, always focusing on something. We even dream while we’re sleeping. Your brain never really stops working.

My fellow Chicagoan James Ford taught me a very interesting lesson (inadvertently, through the radio). He pointed out that we often look for distractions to give our minds a break. We call that amusement. A-muse-ment is, literally, the act or state of not-thinking.

While I generally discourage the use of funny marketing messages, you should consider being appropriately amusing.

With that in mind, here are some amusing marketing ideas:

1) Make your offer a “no-brainer.” If your offer is just right, the prospect literally doesn’t have to think about it.

It’s not good enough to have the best product on the market or to be the most logical choice as a service provider.

Plenty of outstanding businesses struggle while waiting for the world to beat a path to their door to buy their better “mousetrap.” Marketing is still critically important, and the message it conveys must still engage the motivational drives and desires of the target audience.

There are several factors involved here. No matter how much a prospect wants what you sell, there are obstacles to overcome:

a) You have to be trustworthy. No doubt you’ve heard a lot of talk about getting potential clients to “know, like and trust” you. This is not only because we like to do business with people we like, but because we have a hard time doing business with people we don’t trust.

  • This is part of the reason marketers are enamored with social media, and it’s definitely the driving force behind Facebook Sponsored Stories and Google’s social search. You trust your friends, so when they “like” something, that something inherits some of that trust.

b) Your offer itself has to be credible. I imagine if you got a letter in the mail offering “Buy 1 Mercedes, Get 2 FREE.” It might grab your attention, but you’d dismiss the idea pretty quickly. We instinctively believe “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

By all means, make the strongest offer possible, but make sure it’s believable.

c) Eliminate as much risk as possible. The plumbing in my house is not great. At one point, we had to call a plumber every few weeks. When we finally found a guy we liked, one of the biggest reasons he got repeat business from us was because his 90-day guarantee. If the toilets clogged up in that time frame, he’d come out and fix it for free.

How strong is your guarantee? Do you provide excellent customer service after the sale? Do you share additional information or resources to ensure customers enjoy every possible benefit from their purchase?

  • Make testimonials prominent. This form of social proof can be effective at communicating the fact that lots of people just like the prospect has had a wonderful experience doing business with you. What more is there to think about?

2) Get to know your audience so well that you can describe their needs better than they can, using words they’d use themselves. When people feel like you know them, trust comes naturally. Add to that a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they’re facing and the dreams they have, there’s no need for them to look to anyone else when they’re ready to buy. Choosing you is a “no-brainer” decision.

3) Find a way to make buying from you habitual, or attach your offering to the habits of your target audience. That which people do habitually, they do unthinkingly. Here are two terrific articles explaining the power of habits and how they apply to marketing and buying decisions:

The Power of Habit
How Companies Learn Your Secrets

4) Your offer must be obviously valuable. The more clearly you describe what the customer will get after he buys, how wonderful his experience will be, the less he has to justify the purchase to himself. The less internal negotiations have to take place.
The longer he argues, the less likely he is to buy. He’s also more likely he is to either ask for a refund or suffer from buyer’s remorse – a serious problem for repeat business and referrals.

Your Action Steps

1) Get to know what you really sell. Homebuilders don’t sell structures; they provide safety, security, a feeling of family, the American dream, etc. Authors don’t sell ink on paper, but wild adventures and escapes from reality in packages that fit in the palm of your hand.

2) Get to know your prospects better than ever. Always remember, marketing is not about you – it’s about your would-be customers.

3) Speak to the soul. Go beyond having rebuttals for objections and answers for questions.

4) Work on ways to clearly communicate that the solution to your prospects innermost drives and desires is within their grasp – if they enter the door you show them. Help them see it.

5) Find effective ways to deliver that message.

This will take some work, but it will pay off in big ways.

How to Be Assertive Without Making People Run at the Sight of You

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We all know one of them.

You know who I’m talking about. The “my way of the highway,” Type A personality. The ones who always seems to get his way, whether or not the people around him feel like cooperating.

We label this kind of character “assertive.” He knows what he wants and he’s not afraid to ask or even demand for it. He can be difficult to be around at times, partly because we’re secretly jealous that we’re not more like him in some ways.

Godzilla was assertive. Joseph Stalin was assertive.

But you know who else could be categorized as assertive? Martin Luther King, Jr. Oprah Winfrey. Michael Jordan. They’re magnetic. They move masses and have a huge impact on the world around them.

Obviously, we want to be more like the latter group than the former. How do those of us who need a little more assertiveness move forward without stepping into Godzilla territory?

Note: reader Arthur R. asked me to tackle this question when I asked for suggestions on topics to cover at the beginning of January. Honestly, I’m glad he brought it up. I’m not the most assertive person — my natural disposition is quite the opposite. That’s how I was raised. Thinking about this piece has been helpful for me; I hope you get something out of it as well.

Why We’re Not Assertive and How to Change

I don’t think there’s any denying that personality traits like assertiveness or passiveness are largely grounded in 1) upbringing and 2) genetics. Some of us grew up watching our role models play professional doormats; others saw dominant examples. And there are innumerable stages in between complete passivity and steamrolling. How do we get around that now that we’re adults?

Let’s look at what assertiveness is at its core.

One definition of assertive is “confident and direct in claiming one’s rights.” This gives us a big hint at the actions steps we can take to tweak our level of assertiveness.

In order to claim one’s rights, one must first know what those rights are. Then, one must firmly believe that they are intrinsic, inalienable rights — you deserve to experience and enjoy them.

My observations lead me to believe that most passive people are stuck at this point. Lack of confidence is a surface issue. The root of the problem is that they lack clarity and conviction; clarity about what they want and conviction that they deserve it as a God-given right.

Without clarity about their rights, how can anyone assert themselves? And if they “know” their rights but don’t believe they deserve them, why should they risk anything by taking initiative?

If Billy thinks no one cares about his ideas on how to improve sales, if he doesn’t believe he has a right to be heard, he’ll probably never lift his voice, even though he knows his ideas will work.

If Billy doesn’t believe he deserves clients who pay him $10,000 for his services, he’ll continue settling for ones who pay $500, even though he feels miserable doing so.

Clarity and conviction pave the way for confident action. When you get a clear vision of what you want and feel the conviction that you can have it (as Super Bowl champ Russell Wilson asked “Why not me?” The other guy isn’t more deserving than me) you can begin to assert yourself confidently. Or, you can start building confidence in your skills, knowledge and ability now that you’re free from the paralysis of ambiguity.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Assertiveness is not inherently self-centered. Being passive can be every bit as egocentric as being assertive.

Not speaking up is not a virtue. Letting other people “win” is only a good thing to do with children. Passivity based on fear/self-preservation or some twisted sense of victimization or martyrdom (“Look at me, always taking one for the team. I’m such a nice guy!”) is nothing to brag about. And it’s still all about you.

Assertiveness can be used to benefit other people. I mentioned Dr. King earlier. He was assertive, but not for egotistical reasons.

Accepting low fees is not the only manifestation of a lack of assertiveness. Many times, we mask our insecurities by sticking nice-sounding names on them.

  • Relationship marketing, a.k.a. cowardice when it’s time to ask for the sale
  • Inbound marketing, a.k.a. taking 3 years to “build trust” when people may be ready to buy NOW
  • Artificially long sales cycles, the result of letting people stay leads too long. Putting a crazy marketing idea in place can fix that.

Your Action Steps

1) Take ownership of where you are now. Regardless of genetics and upbringing, it’s your responsibility to get where you want to be. You can overcome nature and nurture!

2) Get really clear about what you want in life, in business and/or in specific situations. That clarity is the first step to establishing the right kind of assertiveness.

3) Establish in your mind that you deserve to win. There’s no reason you should forfeit anything you want (as long as it’s moral, legal and scientifically possible).

4) Expand your confidence. Work for mastery in your chosen areas.

5) Attach yourself to something bigger than yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, truthfully I think, that “The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.” Don’t become self-absorbed with your growth and success. That’s what leadership is about.

6) Use your powers for good, as it were.

Have a productive week.

The Universal Appeal of Shortcuts

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When Robert Frost wrote about the two roads diverging in the woods, he failed to mention a significant detail. The main reason the more-traveled road was so popular was because it was paved, well-lit and it had signs laid out by the people who made the trek back when it was one of the less-traveled paths.

Those courageous people were entrepreneurs like you.

If you think about it, every single product, service and business is built around providing its customers with shortcuts. They enable their clients do what they want and need to do faster, better and with less effort.

You don’t need to learn about internal combustion engines; you can take your car to the mechanic. Who needs to chop vegetables and boil chicken broth when you can buy a can of soup? Forget driving all the way to the library. Google is waiting for your search inquiry.

People like fast and easy. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what comes easy to some may be incredibly difficult for others. That’s opportunity. Work hard at what comes easier for you than for other people. Use your gifts to help others who aren’t gifted in those areas. Free them to focus on their own strengths and passions.

Very few people want to take the road less-traveled (even if it does make all the difference).

The question is, are you positioning your product or service as the shortcut to the good life? Do your sales and marketing messages help your prospects see all the time they’ll save, all the toil they’ll avoid and the improved quality of life they’ll enjoy when they take the shortcut you provide?

Your homework for the week is to think about how you can clearly communicate this idea to the people you want to do business with.

Go on, get started.

Isn’t Selling to the ‘Lizard Brain’ the Goal?

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In The Art of Planting Ideas, we talked about how the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the human brain goes dormant while watching movies on the big screen, television shows and sometimes even marketing videos.

Understanding people, how they think and why they do what they do is the foundation of marketing. Knowing why certain tactics and triggers work makes you much more effective at applying the what and how of selling and marketing.

Why does the relative inactivity of the PFC even matter? Don’t people always buy based on emotion? Isn’t the goal to sell to the “lizard brain” anyway? First, let me say that I find the term “lizard” or “reptilian brain” ridiculous (although the phrase itself is both visual and visceral, making it a great use of language). This part of the brain – the limbic system – is not some genetic hand-me-down of an evolutionary process. (In fact, the “three-brain theory” has been largely rejected by modern neuroscience. Most marketing educators are clinging to old, invalidated information.)  I find that the radical self-interest of the human race can be traced back to choices Adam made back in Eden. The more I learn about psychology and neurology, the more clearly I can explain why marketing works from a Biblical perspective. (Maybe we’ll talk about that another time.)

I prefer the term “old brain” instead of “lizard brain“?

Back to the point…

The desires that drive our decision-making, including purchasing decisions, do come from the old brain. They’re more emotional than intellectual. That’s why we focus on appealing to the emotions in sales and marketing.

But the prefrontal cortex is still in control of the executive function, i.e. the ability to guide thought and action in accordance with internal goals. We aren’t lizards! Desires still have to make it past the PFC, which processes the logical outcomes of acting on that desire. This is the reason why “reason why” advertising works.  Marketers have to provide the necessary ammunition to rationalize the purchase. Check out Simon Sinek’s 2009 TEDx presentation explaining why “why” matters. (I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but it’s still worth watching.)

Ultimately, desires are rooted deeper than logic and rationality, but the PFC almost always has the final authority.

Have you ever wanted to punch someone right in the mouth? Have you seen yourself do it in your mind’s eye? Most of us have. But most of us don’t act on that desire. That’s the executive function at work, overriding emotion.

That means you sell to the emotions, but you can’t neglect the intellect in the process.

So, is the PFC-paralyzing power of video good or bad? It is inherently neutral. It can be used for evil purposes, e.g. the Nazi propaganda film “The Triumph of the Will.” It can also be used for good. In either case, it’s effective.

A good story can have a similar effect on the brain. When you’re engrossed in narrative, the brain makes its own mental movie to watch the story unfold. Robert Collier said it well: “The mind thinks in pictures, you know. One good illustration is worth a thousand words. But one clear picture built up in the reader’s mind by your words is worth a thousand drawings, for the reader colors that picture with his own imagination, which is more potent than all the brushes of all the world’s artists.”

 

30 Minutes to More Trust: An Interview with Charlie Green

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Warren Buffet famously said “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.” But is that really true?

Earlier this week, I had the distinct privilege of speaking with one of the world’s foremost experts on building trust, best-selling author Charles Green. Boy, did I learn a lot!

During our 30-minute interview, Charles talked about

  • why trust is absolutely essential to your success in business
  • specific ways you can create more trust in your relationships
  • specific ways you might be sabotaging your efforts to gain the trust of your prospects and customers
  • popular myths about trust
  • how long it really takes to start building (or rebuilding) trust
  • and more

I was blown away by simple, yet profound truths Charles shared. I think you will be, too.

Don’t forget to visit TrustedAdvisor.com to further develop your ability be the trusted provider in your industry.

Expect Resistance and Overcome It

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Selling is hard.

Rather, selling can be hard.

Each of us has certain built-in psychological resistance to “being sold.” The challenge marketers and salespeople face is circumvent that resistance.

In a 2-part series on the Diamond Website Conversion blog, I’ve gone into detail about several specific forms sales resistance takes on, and more importantly, ways you can bypass it.

No matter what you sell, no matter what field you work in, these obstacles exist in all of your prospects to varying degrees. Do you know how to overcome them?

Overcoming Your Prospects’ Hard-Wired Conversion Obstacles
Part 1: Skepticism, Inertia and Reactance
Part 2: Cognitive Biases (confirmation bias, normalcy bias, etc.)

What An Alley Mechanic Taught Me About Selling ANYTHING

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In the middle of last  summer, I took my Chevy Astro to Chuck, a mechanic my father-in-law recommended for some long-overdue tuning up. He had done some work for Pops in the past. He was one of those backyard mechanics who worked more for the love of cars than for the money. So he was a lot cheaper than the big name shops, but he did good work and he was fast.

I know very little about fixing cars. But Pops does. If he trusted Chuck, I wouldn’t give the recommendation a second thought.

So we took him the van. He did his thing. He was fast and friendly. When I returned to pick it up, Chuck mentioned that the car wasn’t in perfect condition, but he had gotten the “Check Engine” light to turn off. As long as that light didn’t come back on, he said, I should be in good shape.

The drive home was smooth. I felt good about myself. I saved some money and supported a small business in my community at the same time.

But the next drive was not nearly as pleasant. By the third trip, the van was acting exactly like it had before Chuck worked on it.

I was baffled. What did that mechanic do to the van? Had he really done anything? I didn’t actually see him do anything, and he seemed to be finished faster than he should have…

And what about this Check Engine light? It hadn’t turned back on.

Maybe the only work he did was to remove the fuse for that warning light!

Can You Make Up Someone Else’s Mind?

To be honest, I never confronted Chuck about the work he did. He may or may not have actually done what I paid him to do.

Although it seems as if there’s quite a bit to learn from this story, I wonder if you detected a lesson that can literally transform your ability to sell whatever it is that you have to offer.

Do you see what happened with the Check Engine light? Chuck gave me a very specific and unmistakeable indicator that he had done a good job. The Check Engine light was off, so  he must have fixed the problem I asked him to take care of.

Those of you who have been around for a couple months or longer know about my penchant for education as a selling too. When done properly, I don’t know of a more effective way to get people to take action.

Looking back on the situation, I don’t think Chuck was aware of what he was doing, but he taught me how to appreciate his work. Here’s what happened:

1) I had a problem that I needed to solve,
2) I perceived Chuck to be an expert in his field (mostly based on the recommendation of my trusted father-in-law)
3) Chuck defined the criteria on which I would judge the quality of work done for me.

When you think about it, how much do your customers know about what you do? They should understand the benefits of buying from you, but do they know how you achieve the results you deliver? Do they even want to know?

In other words, most of your prospects and customers are a lot like I am when it comes to fixing cars: I know I need help, but I don’t have a clue how mechanics do their job. I just know that when it’s done, I’m looking for the thing that was wrong to be repaired.

That means, I don’t really know the difference between a good mechanic and a great one. When I’m having car troubles, I can either rely on referrals from people I trust, or I pick whoever’s the cheapest or closest.

From the car shops’ perspective, they’re relying on factors outside of their control (random word of mouth or having the lowest prices) to determine the fate of their business. That’s not a recipe for success. It’s hoping and praying that the dice rolls your way time after time. No wonder over 90% of businesses fail in their early years!

Take Control of Your Sales Process and Marketing

One of the biggest advantages of selling though education is that as an authority figure, you can tell your prospects what they should look for when choosing a product or service.

For example, if you were a mechanic, and your website featured an article or special report about “6 Misconceptions About Car Repairs that Can Cost You Thousands of Dollars,”  how easy would it be to define the process of fixing in a way that highlights your distinctive benefits and subtly disqualifies your competitors who operate differently?

What about a dog groomer who gives presentations on how proper care extends the health and life of pets? Not only can you define the buying criteria for anyone looking for a groomer, but you also position yourself as someone dog lovers can trust to take the best care of Rover.

There is nothing manipulative about this method, as long as you’re telling the truth. So, of course, there is the danger of con men and swindlers using education to misinform people and rip them off, but you’re not that kind of person.

During a presentation I gave last month, I joked that the way you hire the best copywriter is to look for the ones whose first and last names start with “D” and “B” respectively. That’s a joke you can use, as well as an example of what not to do as you educate your market.

Leveraging the power of education is one of the most important ways businesses can maximize their growth in any economy. It takes extra effort, but if you do it correctly, I can’t think of a better way to boost the results your sales people and marketing materials are producing.

Strategies are less fun than tactics, but without a strategy, you’re just hoping and praying. Is that where you want your business to be?

Satanic Sales Pitches

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Does your sales pitch sound like something Satan would say?

In Isaiah 14, we’re given a glimpse of the mind of Lucifer as he plots the failed takeover attempt that got him booted from heaven.

One thing you’ll noticed is that every sentence is I-centered; “I’m this, I’m that, I’m going to do this,” etc.

You see this same kind of conversation (maybe monologue is a more accurate term) here on earth.

How does that compare with how you sell/market to your potential customers?

Read more

In Case You Missed It: USPs and More

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Yesterday, I had the distinct privilege and wonderful pleasure of being interviewed by Yasmin Razaq for her Explode Biz Profits event.

We talked about:
– how recessions are good and USPs are bad
– possibly the dumbest advertising sign I’ve ever seen
– two foundational principles for writing copy that people will respond to, and
– how to keep your messages out of email jail.

I also shared how you can get my ebook Stealth Selling gratis.

Go check out the replay at http://businessmarketinggirl.com/explodebizprofitsreplays/. I’m not sure how long Yasmin will keep this page open, so if you have any interest at all, don’t wait too long.

Update: If you’re interested in hearing the recording of this hour-long interview, I’ve got it right here. If you’re interested in getting a copy of my book, send me an email and we might be able to arrange something.

A note on Unique Selling Propositions
Theodore Levitt said that selling focuses on satisfying the needs of the business, whereas marketing works to satisfy the needs of the customer.

With that in mind, the USP is inherently focused on the company, product or service itself. Even a benefit-rich USP can be off-base.

Feature-focused USP: “Our product is awesome. It’s made from the strongest steel ever produced.”
Benefit-focused USP: “Our product is awesome. It’s more durable than other products, so they don’t have to be replaced as frequently, saving time and money.”

Sounds good, right? But even the benefit-driven USP can be improved upon. These are selling points, rooted in the needs of the one who needs to make the sale. What if you moved into the realm of marketing defined by Levitt?

Unique Value Proposition: “Our customers are awesome. They save time, money and headache by using with the most durable product available. It works more reliably, for longer periods of time and with fewer replacements needed.”

The wording is purposefully corny, but you see the difference, don’t you? It may seem like a tiny distinction, but even the tiniest change in perception and approach can create a big change in results. A slight edge makes all the difference in the world.

Don’t make your audience dig for the value they’ll get from you. Sure, they might be able to figure it out by your statements about how great your product is. But why not make what’s in it for them obvious?

Attention-Jacking

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNJY-lYndWk
Whoa!

I usually don’t gush with praise for TV commercials, but Old Spice did something brilliant here.

Sure, it’s loud, over the top and a bit obnoxious, but there’s a powerful lesson to be learned (p-p-pardon the p-p-pun).

If you want your advertising to be profitable, you have to grab your audience’s attention. There are an infinite ways to do this, most of which don’t involve putting your head through a wall (or making the volume on your commercial super-loud, as many advertisers are doing these days. Shouting at your customers is rarely a good way to build relationships or get them to buy).

This commercial is great because it was as unexpected as any I’ve ever seen. Terry Crews literally hijacked a Charmin spot. Viewers had their attention focused (to a greater or lesser degree) on bath tissue, only to be rudely interrupted…in an unforgettable and creative way.

What can you do to hijack your audience’s attention? You can’t sell to them until you do.