Romance-in The Store: 2009

July 14/09

I am going to make a number of changes to this first draft of information posted here. I think there is some interesting stuff here but it does need to be updated...with more of an edge. When you read what is already here you might think I've lost my mind because this seems to be out there already but if you want to succeed and be noticed you had better take some chances. No truly successful business avoided extreme risks.

Original post...

Romance-In-The-Store...or Swapping Spit With Your Customers

Writing this book has been quite a cathartic experience. As expected it has given me cause to reflect on my own life and all of the mistakes I’ve made, and of course, all of the things that I’ve learned. I hope this book will not only give you ideas on how to improve your business but also reflect on your personal relationships. I was struck by the idea that so many men would be unlikely to pick up a book that might provide some insight to improving their personal relationship but would relish the thought of reading about ways to increase the profits of their business. I feel like I’m sneaking in the back door with this book.

So what is this “Swapping Spit” stuff? While reading a book on psychology and relationships I came across a discussion about the idea of swapping spit. How relationships can become so strong that otherwise disgusting bodily fluids of others suddenly become accepted and in the case of spit, quite sensually stimulating. I know that sounds rather strange put so bluntly and out of context, but what I’m referring to is kissing. Not just a little peck on the cheek but French kissing...sucking face as they say. This is an act that most of us have engaged in and find it extremely stimulating and quite enjoyable.

And what about other body fluids? As a former Emergency Medical Technician I am all too aware of most bodily fluids. Those of us in professions that deal with the sick or injured develop a tolerance for someone else’s bodily fluids but that too is different than the connections between loved ones. As a paid professional I could tolerate most fluids of others simply because it related to someone else’s suffering and my deep desire to help. But even I found certain excrement powerfully offensive in those conditions. Sometime later, while in a loving romantic relationship, my partner over indulged in some alcoholic libations. I ended the evening holding her head in my lap while she expelled the remains of that nights’ dinner in a bowl. What would have caused me to lose my own cookies in the past seemed so natural and inoffensive. My partner even commented a short while later “How can you kiss me after that?” Parents can tolerate a variety of fluids from their offspring, some of which rank up there with some of the most offensive smells known to mankind.

Right about now you are probably asking yourself “what the hell does this have to do with my business?” Relationships have everything to do with your business and with the changes coming in consumer shopping habits and ways of thinking you had better understand this.

Well it was a little experiment that I read about that really got me thinking about the power of relationships. Not just ordinary relationships but the strongest of personal bonds between close individuals and family members. How do we get to this level of bonding and what exactly is going on here. Now if I haven’t grossed you out enough yet let me try here. You may think twice about that kiss after you read this so you may not want to read it. Imagine that you have just had the most wonderful, loving kiss. As the younger generations say, you were sucking face. Now, take a clean empty glass and have your significant other spit in it. Go on, a big wet hock. Now you take the glass and drink it. What’s wrong? You didn’t have any problem with it a minute ago. What is different? I know, it is different and that’s a discussion for another writer to explore. The point is, intimate relationships are a very unique thing with bonds that are almost inexplicable. I need you to keep this in mind as I walk you down the path of success in your business, and who knows, maybe add something to that relationship.

The reality is, business is all about relationship building. Whether you are looking for a supplier/distributor, selling goods and/or services, maintaining staff, or marketing your company, the same principles apply. If you have serious long term business development plans you need to treat all aspects of your business like any romantic personal relationship.

I wanted to write a book about my 30 plus years of business development and the many things I’ve learned. I wanted to write a book about the psychology of sales and marketing. What is the potential prospect thinking? What should my marketing look and sound like to be noticed? How do I do a sales presentation so the prospect actually listens? How do I get more benefit from my existing customers?

I wanted to write a book about relationships. What does it take to build a long lasting, romantic, loving personal relationship? Friends have said to me “What the hell do you know about relationships? You’ve been married 3 times and couldn’t make them work!” The point is, if you just blindly go through life making no attempt to understand who you are and why events turn out the way they do the result will be a zero sum gain. I’ve spent my entire life critiquing all events to attempt to improve who I am. Not to mention the library of books on psychology that I have read over the years.

This book is meant for the entrepreneur that truly believes the business or service they wish to offer is not, could not, and will not be provided as well by any other competitor. Some of these principles may work to a degree by some less than scrupulous business owners but I would like to believe it would be short lived. People can see through the facade of fakery. These rules of business also require more work than most might be willing to invest. At the very least if you are insincere the customer will see through you.

If you feel that your integrity is second to none and you believe that the customer has made a grave mistake by not dealing with you then this book is for you. If you feel like the best kept secret in town you should read on. If you are already in business I hope I can give you some tips on how to improve what you currently do to make the customer feel they would be an absolute fool to want to do business with anyone else.

I want to walk you through the steps to a successful business, from operating it, to marketing and sales, and the correlation between relationships and your success. In the process you may even discover something new about your personal relationship. I know I sure did.

I started my journey of discovery of business in 1975. I founded a driver education business and quickly became the number one player in the region. In the early 80’s I was in the right place at the right time and bought a floundering kitchen design and retail store. After helping to turn it around I sold it and founded a furniture retail business in the early 80’s with my brother. The early 90’s brought my piece de resistance. I founded a financial services company and went on to franchise out a total of 17 locations. The following pages are some thoughts on what I've learned on my journey of life.

Buy-ologist...Not Salesperson

I have grown to really dislike the term "Salesperson"! If you are what people have traditionally identified as a great salesperson you are likely selling people something they didn't really want or need. My guess is your customers are more likely to suffer from buyers remorse than normal.

Being in business is about meeting the wants or needs of your prospect/shopper. Your job as a business owner is to identify how your product or service meets the specific wants and/or needs of your market. When you have identified your place in the market you need to understand how to act like a buy-ologist. You and your staff must focus on understanding each prospects wants and/or needs and simply assist them in their "buying" decision.

Relationships…

It’s a bit of a novel idea that if you want to be successful in business you need to understand how to be successful in your personal relationships and vice versa. The fact is your success in business is almost certainly because you understand the importance of successful relationships. And if you are successful in business but struggling to understand your personal relationships, a little self reflection prompted by some of the ideas in this book might help. Everything we do in life involves building relationships. If we want to get along in society we will need to understand how to build relationships.

In 2008 Warren Buffett was crowned the richest man on earth. This is a man that understands relationships. I just finished his biography “The Snowball—Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”, written by Alice Schroeder and there are a couple of quotes from Mr. Buffett that I would like to inject here. One was told to students of Georgia Tech while his wife Susie was recovering from mouth cancer surgery. “The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you.” The second was a reflection of his life after his seventy-seventh birthday and is somewhat of an explanation of the title, The Snowball. “The snowball just happens if you’re in the right kind of snow, and that’s what happened with me. I don’t just mean compounding money either. It’s in terms of understanding the world and what kind of friends you accumulate. You get to select over time, and you’ve got to be the kind of person that the snow wants to attach itself to. You’ve got to be your own wet snow, in effect. You’d better be picking up snow as you go along, because you’re not going to be getting back to the top of the hill again. That’s the way life works.”

In the book “The Snowball”, the author references the first meeting of Warren and Microsoft co-founder Bills Gates at Bill’s parents retreat near Puget Sound on the east coast. As the group sat around dinner Mr. Gates Sr. “posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life?” Warren and Bill Jr. both responded “Focus”. That is what truly successful people do and it is the same in romantic relationships.
When we build relationships we form bonds, even if only in the slightest way, that helps to connect us all as a unit, a community. This sense of community causes us to think differently about those around us. When we make decisions in our lives we are more likely to keep the thoughts of others in that community in mind. As a member of a community, whether in terms of the local or the broader global community, we are a species that forms opinions, makes buying decisions, or acts in any given way based very much on the responses and actions of others in that community.

One of the most significant problems, and possibly the most serious threat in our community and society at large is the potential for anonymity. Those around us that may be antisocial or lacking in relationship skills can choose to be anonymous. We have created an environment for them. They can exist with no connection to the community and be virtually invisible. This is so serious because if an individual feels disconnected from the community they are not likely to feel any concern for others in that community. If I don’t know you, or worse still don’t want to get to know you I can objectify you. If I can objectify you it changes the dynamic of how I will treat you. If it is true that we are becoming more narcissistic and you are nothing more than just another object, I am not likely to care about your wellbeing.

The relationships that develop in communities act as a defense or protection for the group. To use a metaphor it can be seen as a protective shield with multiple eyes looking out for the safely of all. Anonymity is like a chink in the armor of a community.

I have often thought how is it that any transaction takes place in business? Unless you are the only show in town and the customer has no other choice but to buy from you, most consumer transactions take place because they felt confident enough in you and your business to give you their hard earned money. It may have been that you were the least of all evils in that market but there was some connection. What did it cost you to get that one prospect in the door? Through conventional marketing it likely cost you in the neighborhood of $500. There is a better way.

The most cost effective way to grow your business is through referrals. Referrals from who you might ask. Why not from the last customer that gave you their hard earned money for your product or service? That’s a novel idea! How much would that cost? Let me tell you, the financial cost will be substantially less but the personal effort on your part will be substantially greater.
Let’s assume you are a great communicator and have given the most compelling reason to the prospect that they would be best served to do business with you। That’s a good start but do you understand where the actual sale/relationship begins? They thought you were absolutely wonderful when they made the final decision to give you their money। They said YES to your proposal. I bet you didn’t think you were proposing did you? The real trick to building a lasting relationship is “after” they say YES to the deal. Now what are you going to do for them?

Just like in your personal relationship, if you propose and think, OK that was easy, now I can just sit back and do my own thing and live happily ever after. Woe bucko, it’s not that simple. There are two people in the word “couple” and you need to keep that significant other in mind at all times. It’s not just about YOU. Just as in business, YOU will not survive long if you see the entire process as just one transaction after another, meant to satisfy only YOU. That’s a very one sided relationship and it is destined to fail.

So you get the customers money and deliver the goods. They should be happy right. The “transaction” took place as you had agreed, end of story. If you are into one night stands then what just happened is wham, bam, thank-you mam…next! Wasn’t that satisfying? If it was just a transaction, and that’s all the consumer expected, then your one night stand is complete and you each go your own way. If the customer needs another “transaction” at some time in the future and you were not too offensive then you might get lucky again. But if you’re looking for something a little more satisfying and less expensive why not work on the relationship?

What's in a relationship?

There is a concept in cognitive psychology called the “channel capacity”, which is the amount of space in our brain for certain kinds of information. Various tests and studies have revealed this number to be 7. The prefrontal cortex (PFC)--a part of your brain above your eyes and directly behind your forehead--is like the RAM memory of your computer and is where we handle short term memory. The PFC has the function of holding our "to-do" list each day, information that we don't need to keep in our stored memory. When we need to take the car in for service, pick up a loaf of bread, take the kids to music lessons, etc. Once the task is complete we can forget it. When we walk into a room to get something and then forget what it was we went there for--your PFC is to blame. It seems the PFC has a very specific limited capacity for quantity and seven is the approximate number. This is why there are 7 digits to your phone number. We can remember a 7 digit number long enough to dial it but if we intend to keep this number we need to consciously store it in our long term memory. The psychologist, George Miller concluded in his famous essay, “The Magical Number Seven”.

Studies have shown that when it comes to our close personal friends, say those whose death would leave you devastated the number would be around 12. Psychologists have found that we seem to have a capacity of between 10 and 15 close relationships that we are capable of handling at any time.

The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar has studied what might be called our “social channel capacity”. Dunbar uses a formula based on the relationship between the size of the neocortex and the size of the brain. The resulting number he suggests is the maximum group size with whom we, as humans, could have genuine social relations with. Through various studies and observation he has come up with the number 150. Now think about that number. “One hundred and fifty!” That is the potential number of new prospects available to you through the network of “ONE” of your existing customers. I will address some more current thoughts on this number later in the book when I look at author Don Tapscott’s findings in his book “Grown up Digital”.
If you hope to build a strong, long lasting business there are some things you can learn from the building of a long lasting personal relationship. Rather than a “one night stand” think of it as “romance”. A good place to begin is to look at what psychologist John M. Gottman calls “bidding” in his book “The Relationship Cure”. To “bid” is to make “an attempt”. Dr. Gottman writes that in all relationships, whether between friends, co-workers, family or loved ones, there is a bidding process that goes on that builds the connection between individuals. I suggest this applies equally in the relationship you need to build with your customer but it must be sincere. “A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch…any single expression that says, “”I want to feel connected to you.””

“Relationships don’t suddenly appear in our lives fully formed. Rather they develop one encounter at a time.” The first thing you need to understand is what a bid looks like and then you must encourage or nurture it.

To start with it’s important to keep in mind a quote from John Dewey. Dale Carnegie refers to it in his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Mr. Carnegie quotes Dewey as saying “the deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.” Everybody has this innate need to feel important. Their bidding process of a prospect may be subtle, but if you are aware the desire exists then you can train yourself to respond appropriately.

As Dr. Gottman writes there are three responses we make to bids. Turning toward, turning against, and turning away. Turning toward can be as simple as reacting “in a positive way to another’s bids for emotional connection.” That could just mean laughing at someone’s joke, making a positive comment or just facing that person and listening…sincerely. Dale Carnegies’ “Principle 2” is “Give honest and sincere appreciation”.

Turning against may involve sarcastic or snide comments to another’s bids. There is an example that comes to mind on a personal level. It was a beautiful summer weekend and we had a few friends visiting us at our cottage. The cottage sits about 40 feet up a steep hill, surrounded by giant pine trees. While sitting on the wrap-around deck you have the feeling of being in a tree house. One of the ladies was explaining the differences between white and black pine trees and her husband looked over at her and says “Who the f… are you, Yule Gibbons?” In all fairness to the husband I need to put this in perspective. He was known as an amateur comedian and we all did have a good laugh, albeit at the expense of his wife in hindsight. Needless to say that couple is not together today. For those of you that may be from a later generation and don’t recognize the name, Mr Gibbons was a bark eating naturist from the 70’s that did Grape Nut commercials. The headlines of his death said he “died of natural causes.” How ironic is that?

The third response is to turn away. This is a classic TV scene of the husband ignoring his wife while sitting reading his paper or otherwise “acting preoccupied.” He may be watching a game on the tube and she is in another room calling to him, while he experiences selective hearing. I’m a people watcher and see this all the time. I don’t mean to pick on men, women are also known to respond the same way.

Dr. Gottman suggests that we can actually build a “bid bank”. If you make a habit of “responding respectfully and lovingly to one another’s bids” you can “form a pot of emotional money in the bank.”

First impressions…

First impressions are formed very quickly, most of the time in the blink of an eye, and can have lasting consequences. Here is a little on how first impressions are generated in the brain. The subconscious mind through your five senses has the ability to process up to 11,000,000 bits of information per second. That’s right, eleven MILLION per second! In contrast, the conscious part of your thoroughly fascinating brain can only process a meager 40 bits of information per second. The thing is, the subconscious mind is the adviser to the conscious mind. All of these bits of information being collected by your mind that you may, or should I say are not likely to be aware of, are being stored and used in a feed-back mechanism when you need to consciously think about what you should do.

With all this information being absorbed by the sub-conscious brain we need to be aware that the brain also hates ambiguity. In fact when confronted with ambiguity it is a master at making things up. If the brain encounters anything that doesn’t make sense it turns out that it is a very crafty spin doctor and will make something fit into what it already feels is a given. To begin to understand this you need to take the “blind spot” test. The eyes it turns out have a blank spot, or sort of black hole in our vision. At the point in the back of the eye where the optic nerve gathers all the information from the receptors and exits with it bits of information there are actually NO visual receptors. So why is it that we don’t see a “blank” spot in everything we look at? There is a simple test you can do to prove how creative the brain is when faced with an ambiguous situation. To see how creative the brain can be copy the link below and take the test at this web site.

http://www.frontsteps.com/games/blind_spot_test/

There are two ways to look at ambiguity, in a negative light or to your advantage, in a positive light. If you are unaware of this human condition it can cost you if it is a negative interpretation by the individual making the first impression. There was a 2002 Web-based experiment to determine the world’s funniest joke. The one voted the funniest involved a situation with two hunters out in the woods when one of them suddenly collapses and stops breathing. The other hunter calls an emergency number on his cell phone and cries, “My friend is dead! What should I do?” The operator says, “Calm down; I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is silence, then a gunshot, and the hunter says, “OK, now what?” There was a slight misunderstanding of the ambiguous phrase “make sure”.

So what is happening here? We need to look at why this process evolved in the brain. As primitive creatures we needed the ability to make quick decisions about whether that big hairy beast with massive teeth designed to crush bone and tear off chunks of meat was a threat to us. If we left it to our conscious mind and its’ measly 40 bits of information processing ability, by the time we consciously look at the beast and give it any thought as to the danger to us, we would be the main course at our last dinner engagement. The eminent psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert wrote in his book, “Stumbling on Happiness” described it this way. As a means of survival as a “terrestrial” being, “evolution took no chances and designed the brain to answer the “”What should I do?”” question before the “”What is it?”” question. Experiments have demonstrated that the moment we encounter an object, our brains instantly analyze just a few of its key features and then use the presence or absence of these features to make one very fast and very simple decision. Is this object an important thing to which I ought to respond right now?” That explains why we are here today as a species and not listed as the poor extinct species that spent too much time thinking and not enough time running.

So you might think, “If they get the first impression of me wrong I will just spend a little more time setting the record straight.” Before you think this is an easy task you need to understand a little more about how the brain processes this information or first impression.

To quote Dr. Daniel Gilbert again…”Most of us will pay a premium today for the opportunity to change our minds tomorrow.” Our brains find it difficult to disbelieve and information being gathered is considered to be truth.

Our brains are wired with a “reality first policy” that takes into account the immediate, things we see and feel around us, first. This has the result of limiting our future thinking and how we might imagine something at a later time. It may also influence how we actually feel in the present depending on those current conditions. Dr. Gilbert has a great comic strip of a fish asking a sponge, without limits, and the entire universe of possibilities open to it, what would it choose to be? The sponge responds “I guess I’d have to go with a barnacle”. In the words of Dr. Gilbert:
“Each of us is trapped in a place, a time, and a circumstance and our attempts to use our minds to transcend those boundaries is, more often than not, ineffective. Like the sponge, we think we are thinking outside the box only because we can’t see how big the box really is. Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow the machinery that is owned by perception.”

Perception is the compilation of the brains experiences but because how we think we will feel about something, and what we are actually experiencing in the moment, use the same areas of the brain, the “reality first policy” gets the preferred treatment. In other words we are limited by the here and now. The immediate world, affects of information being fed through our 5 senses, will influence our decisions. When you consider that our five senses, active in the here and now, have the capacity to process over 11,000,000 bits of information per second, you have the ability to influence the customer while “inside the box” of your business environment. I will explain this in detail in a future chapter but suffice to say, you have some control over the future thinking of the customer using the right current environment.

Our brains are making comparisons with things around us when thinking of how much we will like something in the future. When a bag of potato chips is sitting beside a chocolate bar versus a can of sardines, we think we will enjoy the chips less if we see the can of sardines and more if we just see the chocolate bar beside the chips.

Let me give you an example of how a creature in the bird kingdom views the idea of first impressions:

The Bowerbirds are among the most fascinating in the world. Some are spectacular, such as the male Regent Bowerbird of eastern Australia whose colors are shocking in the deep wet forest. Others are very drab, like the Vogelkop Bowerbird (male, below, at his bower, arranging a man-made item).

It is these drab appearing males that build and decorate the most spectacular pieces of architecture in the avian world. Vogelkop Bowerbird, isolated in the Arfak Mountains on the Vogelkop Peninsula of western New Guinea, is the world’s greatest bower-builder. Just look at the size of this “maypole” structure (below), compared to the size of the bird (he’s in the lower right; he is actually the size of a medium-sized thrush).

Male Vogelkop Bowerbirds spend 9-10 months each year working on his bower in an attempt to attract females to mate. This one (above) has decorated his bower with green moss, red berries, silver snail shells, and in this case, a bit of decorative film casing and some batteries accidentally dropped by a National Geographic film team!

Coates, B.J. 1990. The Birds of Papua New Guinea. Part II. Dove Publ., Ltd., Alderley, Australia.

Now that’s creativity and persistence. We could all take a lesson from this little creature. I could go on to give you dozens if not hundreds of examples such as this from nature. It’s all about first impressions, and as the saying goes, “there is only one first”. Everything else is secondary. To paraphrase Tiger Woods, there is only one winner, second place is just first loser. And love him or hate him, he knows about winning.

Do you put that much effort in seeking Mr/Ms right? Are you trying that hard to find a customer? Remember the Bowerbird…presentation is everything. Ok, so it isn’t exactly “everything” but it’s an important start. Your appearance, or “outside perception”, creates that first impression that can make or break your chances of getting to communicate the “inside reality” of who you are. If you look like a slob what do you think the perception is of your inside reality?

Business Development

Do you feel it is an accomplishment of yours to get a new client or is it an accomplishment of the client to have the opportunity to deal with you? Are you a salesperson or a consultant?
Inside Reality...

So what is your “inside reality”? Well, it’s everything that makes up who you are. As a person that is made up of all of your life experience. It’s the way you communicate, your beliefs, your ethics, your wants and desires, family values, the people you surround yourself with, etc. In business it’s the way you communicate, your ethics, your systems, your staff, the products and services, and the customer network you may have already built.

What is your “outside perception”? That’s how the world perceives you. All of those people that don’t yet know you, begin to piece together thoughts of what you are all about based on the information available to them. If it’s you as a person the pieces begin to come together from your personal appearance, how you dress and groom yourself, the way you carry yourself, the condition of the vehicle you drive, the places you frequent, the people you socialize with, organizations you belong to and what others say about you. In business it’s the marketing pieces you put out there, the language or content in those pieces, and the name you use for your business. If you have a physical premises it starts with the parking lot (is it clean), the signage, appearance of the building. If you have vehicles with you business name on them are they well maintained and clean? Are the drivers always courteous? And just like the personal you, it also involves what others say about you. Remember if they aren’t a personal friend or already doing business with you this is the only way they will able to make a decision about why they should do business with you or your competitor in the future.

You could have the best run business, or be the best catch from the huge pool of singles in the country, but if you don’t understand how to communicate your inside reality to the outside world you will be the best kept secret in town.

Before we look at the media we need to establish what the message should be. The message must be relevant to your prospect. This requires you to think about not what you are saying but what the prospect is hearing. At a time when there are so many options, so many choices for the prospect to choose from you need to understand and think about how to address their needs and concerns. Does the fact that you are a family run business, have the largest showroom, or been around since the beginning of time mean that I’m not going to get screwed if I deal with you. Remember, they don’t know you but they do know that some business owners are less that reputable.

It’s December 12, 2008 and I’m sitting in a hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. I spent the day yesterday driving from St. Louis, Missouri listening to the various programs on National Public Radio (NPR). During the drive the NPR program “Day to Day” came on and was talking about how the cutbacks had resulted in the eventual termination of this show and elimination of 7% of NPR staff. While driving up I-29 north of Kansas City the NPR program Talk of the Nation discussed a topic “Where will you get your news in 2012?” We are in the middle of some significant changes in how we get our information which in turn influences how you will market our products and services. One of the major topics of discussion was the challenges faced by newspapers to attract enough advertising dollars to enable them to survive. An estimated 40% of their costs come from putting out the paper which generates about 90% of their income. With the advent of the internet more and more people are getting their news from these digital sources. The various media are forced to maintain web sites that provide information and news for free and haven’t yet been able to generate sufficient revenue from these sites to replace what is being lost with the lack of paper sales. A number of major papers are now facing bankruptcy due to the loss of businesses spending their advertising dollars on these traditional sources. It’s not just the newspapers. Most media are experiencing similar problems due to the change in how consumers get their information. NPR does not depend on advertising dollars to put programming on the air but it does require private donations from its listeners.

To begin marketing your business you need to establish who or what your target market is. This will determine which types of media you should invest in. Too many businesses dismiss or ignore certain media with claims that it doesn’t work or is too expensive. It’s important to make sure when using any media to get the message right. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make when choosing or avoiding various media. They may have tried a given media only to have experienced no or limited success. Rather than examining the message used they blame the media.

So who is your prospective customer and where is it that your message is likely to be noticed by them? If it’s a product or service that appeals to the masses, people of all incomes and interests, then look at places and media that could best get their attention. If this is your business you have the widest variety of venues to choose. Fairs, home shows or any place large groups of people are likely to gather. Bus signs, radio, newsprint, TV, web sites, and billboards are also options to consider but with each of these require careful examination of the message and delivery.

To examine a few of these there are some basic rules. If you choose bus advertising there are three positions, inside, outside (side), and outside (back).

If it’s an older group (in general terms those older than boomers) then you might still find the Yellow pages of phone books useful. These are becoming less and less effective with the increased use of the internet.
The message not the media…

Social Proof in your marketing….

While reading the biography of Warren Buffet I was first struck by the idea that this is a man of extreme personal integrity…someone very driven to do the right thing while handling other people’s money. As I read further I was also struck by what an extreme control freak this man is. It’s a questionable balance of integrity and his need to control people and things around him. I would suggest his integrity may be compromised now and then. If he appears altruistic it is offset by his underlying intent to ultimately gain from those actions.

Conventional Marketing...

Marketing should be considered as part of the courtship of a relationship. You need to keep your message out there about how great you are and what a sensational couple you would make. You will be the ultimate provider (of the product or service the prospective partner is seeking) and you are the best suitor. Like a peacock, strutting your stuff, you need to make a show.

The word “marketing” is such an all encompassing term. When you understand who could use your product or service…your market…you need to decide how to best present yourself to that “market”. This encompasses everything that is designed to tell your market who you are. Signs, flyers, web sites, radio, TV, all forms of print media, word of mouth, and your sales people.

Many people treat Sales and Marketing as two separate parts of your business but I would argue they are one and the same. When you have a disconnect of the two concepts you may be missing out on more effective use of certain media. As you analyze the closing ratio of your sales staff so should you analyze the potential closing ratio of the rest of your marketing. Is the message being communicated by you salespeople the same as the rest of your marketing?

What are you doing when you give a sales presentation in person to your prospect? You should be overcoming objections they may have and building a relationship. Helping them to understand why they need you and why they would be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else. That’s what you do in a “sales presentation”. The old way of looking at marketing is to simply try to get the attention of the prospect using sex, or animals, or celebrities, or babies…and then some hook. You offer them something with a time limiting offer that they can never get again…Bull Shit!!! Everyone…EVERYONE is doing this. What makes you unique? How can the prospect identify you out of the swamp, no, the cesspool of marketing bombarding them every minute of every day?

The Buying Spectrum…

The buying spectrum is a scale that captures where the prospect is in there process of choosing what product or service to purchase and who to eventually deal with. Who will be their lucky new partner? Very few products or services are purchased without considerable thought unless you have had a sudden mishap or emergency and something needs to be attended to immediately.

This approach to marketing also limits the number of prospects that, should they even see this crap, are likely to respond. The hook or special offer is only of interest to the few people in the buying spectrum that are actually ready to buy right now. This represents no more than 5% of all of the potential prospects that may be thinking about your product or service at any given time.

If you are trying to attract a significant other into your world are you going to look at what all the other eligible singles are doing and copy them? Web site dating is the equivalent to the standard brand builder marketing. You present your image, point out your special features, hope that you are photogenic and appealing to the potential mate, and then hope he or she reads on or better yet takes some action. If you had a chance to meet face to face with this individual would you be any different? Would you do and say something that is not in your profile? I would hope so.

These so-called experts in marketing would tell you that your marketing needs to be kept simple with not too much verbiage because nobody will read it. I challenge them and suggest that if what you have to say is relevant to your audience they will read anything and everything you have to say. In this day and age the consumer is trying to filter through all of the crap and decide who is worth taking the next step with. You need to be seen as relevant to their needs before they are willing to endure the dreaded salesperson.

So how do I distinguish myself from my fellow suitors? Am I being lost in a crowd of competitors? If you are searching for the Queen (or King…hey I’m writing this as a heterosexual guy) of the Ball to be your date, what are you doing that’s different than all the others with the same date in mind?

The first easy litmus test is to examine the marketing done by your competition. This is assuming you have competition. In this day and age, chances are your market is so flooded with competition and your friends are thinking you’ve lost your mind to even consider entering the market to start your own business. Going into most businesses is like running a marathon but at any point, competition can jump into the race with fresh legs and challenge you. You might say “Why should I care about what my competitions marketing looks like? I’m so much different and better. If you take a close look at my business, who I am and how I look after my customer you would know.” Remember, the prospect doesn’t know you and how much better or different you are because you haven’t told them.

Take a close look at their marketing. I’ve done this for years and I can tell you, you will be shocked at what you see! In the overwhelming majority of cases you will see...THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME! They could be the worst run company that is totally unethical. I have personally worked in one of the sleaziest business I know. It is totally unregulated and the consumer should be concerned. It is rife with unethical retailers and manufacturers. The president of one of the largest companies invited me to see there new product. I asked him why they were doing what they did to their product and he said it was what the customer wanted. I suggested that the customer didn’t know what they wanted and needed to be educated. He just said he had to answer to shareholders.

They are all using the same platitudes and saying virtually the same thing. “Been in business since the 1000 BC”, “Largest Selection”, “Family Owned and Operated”, “Highest Quality”…the list goes on. Let’s assume you need a lawyer. Now there’s a quest. With all that you have heard about lawyers and the scary thoughts of selecting a one, what should you be asking yourself? Look in the Yellow Pages for a Lawyer. See if you could tell which firm to choose to handle your affairs. This is one of the worst categories of business famous for poor marketing. OK, I can’t resist a lawyer joke here. “Why did the shark not bite the lawyer? Professional courtesy.”

Seriously though…how can your potential mate distinguish you from all the other sharks out there? You need to stand out in the crowd. You need to be noticed if you are hoping to win the heart of the one of your dreams. If not, you will end up simply getting your small piece of the consumer pie. Assuming that you are in good economic times, you look like everyone else, and there are 9 other competitors, you will be dividing the pie 10 ways. As another marketing expert once said “Even a dead fish can float down stream.”

How can I say that attracting, selling to, and maintaining a customer for my business is anything like the relationship I am having or would like to have with a significant other? The first thing you need to do is to think of yourself as a customer looking for a product or service, and not the owner of the business. What would it take to get your attention? What would it take for you to part with your hard earned money? What would be necessary for that business provider to do to ensure you return as a repeat customer? This is the biggest question. How would you have to feel about that business to risk referring your closest friends to do business there as well? This means allowing someone inside your closely held network of friends. What if you do refer a friend to a particular business and he or she has a bad experience. Will this reflect on you? You could risk losing a good friend over this.

What would it take to get your attention? This part of the process could be viewed as not terribly important (by relationship standards) if your product or service will be a one-time investment by the prospect and you are of the mindset that there is a sucker born every minute. Chances are pretty good that you’re not in much of a relationship either. These people do still exist! I know a fellow that had done business that way for several years. He was buying reconditioned product by the truck load, and selling it as new. When the customer calls with problems he just ignores them. I predicted he would eventually run out of “suckers” and the last I heard he was out of business. What I didn’t predict was that the failure of his marriage to his beautiful wife would precede the demise of his business.

There are some basic thoughts in marketing circles about how to get your attention. The most common philosophy taught by most schools is the “Brand Builder” approach. This evolved in the sixties and early seventies when national advertising campaigns were used on TV. There were only a few channels and relatively few companies with a national market. It was comparatively cheap to get your message out to a captive audience, fascinated with this new technology. This was the time of the slogan. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz”, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”…etc.

Marketing schools looked at how these big corporations were successful and said “Hey look…if you put together a cute message, put it out there a gazillion times and spend millions of dollars you will make all the money.” This is still being taught by schools to this day. There is still something to be said for this approach but most of us can’t afford to spend the money required using the “Brand Builder” method. Even if you could spend that kind of money I would argue there is a more efficient way.

Think for a moment about looking for a mate, that special someone, to spend the rest of your life with. How would you go about getting that persons attention? How much effort would you put into that process? How about that example from nature?

Error based training...

I am an advocate of building a consumer advisory council. Invite your top ten or twenty customers to act as a biannual board of advisors to help you learn to improve how you do business. Your clients are the ones most likely to give you ideas on how to improve and with the improved relationship with them you are creating the advocates that will refer their friends.

Before you make the choice of which of your customers to select to sit on this board you need to look at who in this group are the most connected with the largest number of personal contacts, and what other personality traits would help spread the word of how great you are. In his book “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell discusses three different personality types that create a “tipping point” in our society--Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. When you understand the influence each of these personality types has you will see the importance of creating a board with the right mix.

The first are the Connectors—people that know a lot of people—but it’s not just the number of people but the diversity of the contacts in their network of friends. Gladwell uses the example of the American revolutionary movement after the 1773 Boston Tea Party. On the afternoon of April 18th, 1775, when a “stable boy overheard two British officers talking about how there would be hell to pay on the following afternoon” he took this very historical bit of information to a “connector”. That night 2 revolutionaries set off on midnight rides in separate directions to notify the residents of the towns and villages north and west of Boston of the potential threat of a British attack. They both covered roughly the same distance that eventful night but why is it that so few people know the name William Dawes? I would venture a guess that you are very familiar with the name of the rider of record in history—Paul Revere!

Paul Revere was a true “Connector”. He was well known in many circles and throughout a large part of New England. As Gladwell writes; “He was a fisherman and a hunter, a cardplayer and a theatre-lover, a frequenter of pubs and a successful businessman. He was active in the local Masonic Lodge and was a member of several select social clubs. He was a doer.” This was a man that people respected and listened to—a real erudite—and Mr. Dawes wasn’t. This personality type is relatively easy to identify in a community.

The next influential personality type that Gladwell identifies is the “Maven”. Gladwell writes; “The word Maven comes from the Yiddish and it means one who accumulates knowledge.” These people know the price of everything that matters. They can be the retail store owners’ worst nightmare. If you are claiming that a particular product on your shelf is the best price in town—beware the Maven—because not only do they know the prices of products they are obsessed with letting others know what they know. “The critical thing about Mavens is that they aren’t passive collectors of information. It isn’t just that they are obsessed with how to get the best deal on a can of coffee. What sets them apart is that once they figure out how to get that deal, they want to tell you about it too. A Maven is a person who has information on a lot of different products or prices or places. This person likes to initiate discussions with consumers and respond to requests.” Sounds like the ideal prospect for your board provided you are running the legitimate operation that you claim to be.

The third and final personality that Gladwell writes about is the Salesman. He writes; “In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it. But there is also a select group of people – Salesmen – with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing, and they are as critical to the tipping point of word-of-mouth epidemics as the other two groups.” The best salesman has mastered the “science” of persuasion – and this is a science not an art. Robert B. Cialdini, a social psychologist, is considered one of the leading experts in the on influence. Mr. Cialdini co-authored a book titled “Yes! – 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.” Mr. Cialdini et al walk you through 50 chapters of scientific research that provides insight on the possible psychology behind these persuaders.

One significant attribute of these salesmen is their mastery of listening. I love the maxim “Don’t just do something, stand there.” You need to learn to listen and listen with sincerity. “It is the Provence of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.” Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is only when you listen that can you expect to be heard. If someone feels you are not truly listening to their needs or wishes it won’t matter what you have to say. A talented listener knows it’s not what someone is saying that is important it’s what they are feeling. When someone is speaking they will be expressing their feelings, sometimes in the most subtle ways and you must learn to read that. There are approximately 33 muscles in the face that are not connected to bone. These muscles are activated by our emotions. There is facial recognition software that has been developed. This software is so sensitive to these 33 muscles that when you are having your picture taken for identification purposes you cannot smile. Smiling creates an emotional change in us and in turn adjusts these muscles.

It is important that you keep in mind the idea that you are so close to your business that you may not see the “forest for the trees”—as they say. You need to be able to see your business as the consumer does so who better to keep you in touch with this view than the people that use your product or service.

Another approach based on the studies of “error based training” would be to maintain contact with the top prospects that didn’t buy from you or worse bought from your competitor. This will certainly be a test of how well you are able to build relationships with your prospective customers. The concept is that people learn more from studying their mistakes than simply reviewing what they have found to be the right way to do things. It was found that firefighters made fewer serious errors when they were taught what happened in cases where the wrong approach was taken. (chapter 25 in YES)

If you can build strong enough relationships with all of your prospects you should be able to remain in contact with them and consult with them about why they chose your competitor. There is so much more that you can learn to possibly avoid making the same mistake again. Wouldn’t that be a novel idea to have an advisory board that also contains lost deals? This not only broadens the spectrum of varied ideas to improve what you do but should help to create true devils’ advocates. We have the potential to learn more if we have input from true dissidents.

Use of Language...

It’s important to use the correct tense in your language when giving your presentation. Steven Pinker in his book, The Stuff of Thought, explains; “The future tense is often used by flight attendants and waitstaff at fancy restaurants as a display of politeness. It pretends not to foreclose any possibilities, as if the listener’s approval will be solicited at every stage, before anything is set in stone...it is an example of a common tactic of politeness in the world’s languages: Pretend to give the listener options.”

Next Generation

I believe the world of business will experience some dramatic changes when trying to attract consumers from the coming generations. The world is changing at exponential speed (get clips from the 2012 video). I believe the strength of relationships with consumers will be the difference between the winners and losers with this generation and beyond. The use of conventional marketing will be futile. Author Don Tapscott, considered one of the leading authorities of this highly wired—or more appropriately wireless--digital generation, has written a book called “Grown up Digital” in which he discusses what he calls the Net Geners. When the Net Geners are asked how they feel about email their response is that it’s a formal means of communication, such as applying for a job.

Mr. Tapscott believes this generation is even more concerned with relationships than past generations and they value honesty and integrity. They are building these stronger, complex relationships using networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Their preferred means of communication is text messaging. They may even ignore the incoming call on that very communication device being used to text a friend. It gives them a sense of control of their lives.

When it comes to relationships and employment Mr. Tapscott feels “In organizations this means that each employee is treated as an individual contributor. Employment is a relationship—between the employee and employer. It needs commitment from both sides, as the employer routinely taps into the needs of the individual worker; to engage and collaborate throughout their entire careers, at every stage of the employee life cycle.”

Monday, July 13, 2009

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Romance-in The Store

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