This week I was invited by Megan Smith of the Nappanee Chamber of Commerce to speak at the Nappanee Sales and Marketing Club meeting. We had a very nice turnout and I had an opportunity to talk on the subject of building the lifetime value of a client. We also explored the psychological triggers needed in your sales copy, either on your website or near social media or any of your other marketing messages so people understand why your business is the obvious alternative at the exact moment they’re ready to buy. Welcome to the zero noise marketing podcast.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/zeronoise/Episode-005-Maximizing-Customer-Value-and-building-your-message.mp3
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Episode highlights
3:42-The first transaction whatever it is, is the most expensive usually.
5:18-We need to create a little herd of people who have initiated some sort of initial transaction with us.
5:32-Maximize the value and lower the cost of doing business with our customers over time.
7:57-Relationship had to be maintained over time.
8:06-You can almost send anything as long as it’s relevant and personal.
9:52-When you’re doing some sort of a social media outreach, there has to be a kind of a deep understanding of what the customer has is actually going through.
13:50-I am the absolute best person for my ideal customer to do business with.
14:43-First: I’m here and I’m serving your community.
16:29-Second: I am likeable and knowledgeable.
16:41-“I had no big secrets which nobody else has. I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.”
18:09-Talk about the subject and say things that are insightful and that build confidence.
18:28-Third: I resemble you in some way. People like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them.
19:53-Stand a better chance attracting people who are reminded of themselves when they look at you.
21:07-Fourth: Our approach or product is different and it needs to be for the following reasons.
People should understand why you’re different and why it’s a huge necessity that you’ve taken this particular approach.
22:41-There’s only one of you
23:17-Fifth: The cost of the alternatives. There’s always an alternative.
25:26-People respond to stories. We’re actually hardwired for stories. So many times we deliver many of these ideas in story form
25:41-Sixth: Doing business with you is consistent with their personal values and their existing commitments.
26:45-People want to be consistent.
27:49-Go deep and figure out what values that they have, previous commitments that your solution is going to be congruent with.
28:25-If you really listen they give you it will give you a perfect roadmap to sale.
28:57-People feel naturally compelled to do good for those they feel a sense of reciprocity towards.
31:03-Keep score, see how many statements you make versus how many questions you ask.
31:24-Be interested rather than being interesting.
31:46-Strive to understand rather than be understood. And that will trigger reciprocity because people are starved for attention. We’re all so disconnected.
35:17-If you’ve been in your business for any number of years and have committed and dedicated yourself to understanding it, then you are an authority.
35:41-The word authority actually has the word Author in it.
36:25-There are two distinct parts to writing literally anything: one is harvesting all the information together and piling it up at some undifferentiated mass and then there’s the editing part.
38:26-You can be an author, you can be a host, that’s a good one if you find you you have a lot of confidence, host something. Create a podcast.
40:21-Maybe that one person who’s a bad fit for you and those five people who are a good fit and now you’ve got this reciprocity thing working for you begin.
46:50-Make sure that they’re going to be worth your time. Go through a specific disqualification process.
49:23-People spend the money so long as it matches with who and how they see themselves.
3:42-The first transaction whatever it is, is the most expensive usually.
5:18-We need to create a little herd of people who have initiated some sort of initial transaction with us.
5:32-Maximize the value and lower the cost of doing business with our customers over time.
7:57-Relationship had to be maintained over time.
8:06-You can almost send anything as long as it’s relevant and personal.
9:52-When you’re doing some sort of a social media outreach, there has to be a kind of a deep understanding of what the customer has is actually going through.
13:50-I am the absolute best person for my ideal customer to do business with.
14:43-First: I’m here and I’m serving your community.
16:29-Second: I am likeable and knowledgeable.
16:41-“I had no big secrets which nobody else has. I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.”
18:09-Talk about the subject and say things that are insightful and that build confidence.
18:28-Third: I resemble you in some way. People like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them.
19:53-Stand a better chance attracting people who are reminded of themselves when they look at you.
21:07-Fourth: Our approach or product is different and it needs to be for the following reasons.
People should understand why you’re different and why it’s a huge necessity that you’ve taken this particular approach.
22:41-There’s only one of you
23:17-Fifth: The cost of the alternatives. There’s always an alternative.
25:26-People respond to stories. We’re actually hardwired for stories. So many times we deliver many of these ideas in story form
25:41-Sixth: Doing business with you is consistent with their personal values and their existing commitments.
26:45-People want to be consistent.
27:49-Go deep and figure out what values that they have, previous commitments that your solution is going to be congruent with.
28:25-If you really listen they give you it will give you a perfect roadmap to sale.
28:57-People feel naturally compelled to do good for those they feel a sense of reciprocity towards.
31:03-Keep score, see how many statements you make versus how many questions you ask.
31:24-Be interested rather than being interesting.
31:46-Strive to understand rather than be understood. And that will trigger reciprocity because people are starved for attention. We’re all so disconnected.
35:17-If you’ve been in your business for any number of years and have committed and dedicated yourself to understanding it, then you are an authority.
35:41-The word authority actually has the word Author in it.
36:25-There are two distinct parts to writing literally anything: one is harvesting all the information together and piling it up at some undifferentiated mass and then there’s the editing part.
38:26-You can be an author, you can be a host, that’s a good one if you find you you have a lot of confidence, host something. Create a podcast.
40:21-Maybe that one person who’s a bad fit for you and those five people who are a good fit and now you’ve got this reciprocity thing working for you begin.
46:50-Make sure that they’re going to be worth your time. Go through a specific disqualification process.
49:23-People spend the money so long as it matches with who and how they see themselves.
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Full Transcription:
Megan: Well good morning everyone! This is great. This is our second sales and marketing meeting for me. It’s a chance for you guys to learn. So thank you very much for coming. This morning we have Jason Tanner here. Jason’s gonna speak about how to bring customers’ value. So I’m excited to hear about that. And if you have any questions or answers afterwards questions he will answer them. So we’ll be about half an hour?
Jaeson: Until you tell me to stop.
Megan: Okay
Jaeson: Until you tell me to stop. Whoever’s got a watch, start waving. Sam could start waving uncontrollably there at minute 25.
Megan: Okay. Take it away.
Jaeson: Good morning! My name is Jason Tanner and I hail from the Nappanee Marketing Group. So what we’re going to talk about today is thinking about the maximization of value to a customer some of this stuff is kind of obvious if you think about how you’re already delivering value to customers. So a customer will purchase your product or service and you deliver them something. If you run a retail business then you have a very natural spectrum of products and services ranging from the inexpensive all the way up to a deluxe item that may be a very few people buy but but it’s available. So there’s kind of an obvious way that we need deliver value and I want to be talking today is a little bit about the ways that are not so obvious. And there’s a lot of emphasis put on social media and creating content for our customers but it’s not often framed as an extension of our value spectrum from an item that has perhaps no money being exchanged all the way up to our smallest transaction and then all the way up to our our large transaction. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today and just how to do that. So that you’re not, you know doing things that are ineffective and burning a lot of energy while you’re creating all this content. You’re doing something that actually contributes to how the prospect thinks about you when they are ready to purchase. So as I mentioned at the part of the store has a natural spectrum of products and services and they leverage those by sometimes even selling them below cost just to get your attention and just to initiate that first transaction. And the first transaction whatever it is is the most expensive usually unless you’ve been referred by somebody.
Audience: When you say that, do you mean from a marketing perspective?
Jaeson: Yes what you pay for that first transaction. Thank you. So if you paid whatever is that you pay for advertising and whatever that was brings in five people, you just do the simple math and divide out the cost of your advertising over the five new customers. That first transaction is expensive right? So we’re trying to make that customer more valuable. You’re naturally trying to move them into second transaction which may be identical to the first. But the cost of the second transaction is significantly lower because you already have some relationship with them. And the question is: how do you initiate that second transaction? Well we have to create opportunities to do that. Our friends at a grocery store do not make direct contact with individuals unless they have some sort of a points club or something like that. They simply spray us with flyers. Everybody who has a strong pulse in the mailbox gets a flyer and that’s the big criteria. And so they’re able to to create multiple transactions from us and build habits over hoods and ears and that model works very very well. But those of us who are not in a general market like that need to do something very specific and we need to create a little herd of people who have initiated some sort of initial transaction with us. After that, we can move through all of the other areas and maximize the value and lower the cost of doing business with our customers over time as we can’t just live on. It would be impossible to just do one offs all the time. People we have never heard of do you want a transaction and then move on in most cases. So what are we doing our by it the buying cycle of the customer is say six months or a year or five years, what can we do with them to provide meaningful contact so that the thinking of you when the time comes. And some businesses who think of car dealerships for instance we don’t know when the customer is going to be ready, they just start to pop up one day and and you cross your fingers and you hope that they’re going to be thinking about you and favoring your particular option and ready to buy all the same time. And that’s really really tricky. There’s a famous car salesman, Joe Girard. You heard of Joe Girard? Joe holds the Guinness Book of World Records as the seller for most cars of the year between 1963-1978. Joe held that record. He sold 13,000 tires between those years down in Detroit and you know what Joe’s magic bullet was? Anyone heard this?
Audience: I think it’s staying in touch. He was always sending Thank You cards
Jaeson: Right! Yeah. He sent out thank you cards, a little hello cards. And on the front of every single one of them he had three little words, he said: “I like you” and then the person’s address and everything. Then the magic of it was that each of them looked different. Like if you were getting one of these every month, it wouldn’t look the same as the one you got last month. And they would be handwritten. And so they felt personal. So, Joe was creating these direct relationships with all these people who had any kind of contact with. And Joe knew that he had no way of knowing when they were going to be ready, when does the transmission gonna die on the one you’re driving. You know when are you going to be feeling most motivated to move forward. So he knew that that relationship had to be maintained over time. The other thing that we can unpack from Joe’s example is that you can almost send anything as long as it’s relevant and personal. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary every single time. Joe would send out the “i like you” message and when you open it up there would be some sort of a seasonal breathing or something along those lines but it would be personalized so you really did feel like Joe was reaching up to you. And even if you have the presence of mind to understand that there were probably 12,500 people getting a very similar message at the same time, it’s still kind of nice. There’s a mortgage broker, Sean Donohue. Him and his his dad Wally actually do this once a year, I still get birthday card from them. The only one. But that’s beside the point. But they have no idea when your mortgage is going to renew necessarily unless they keep meticulous records and they arrange the last mortgage. So while this seems like maybe a scattershot approach, it’s a very simple strategy for keeping people on top of your mind. Of course in the Internet age do we need to necessarily send out printed material? Obviously, obviously not. But the trick with via with something to do online is that it does need to seem personal somehow. So how do you make an online message? I say a Facebook post or a Twitter blast or something like that. Or even leave an email seem like it’s personal. Well it all comes down to the relevance of the message. So when you’re doing some sort of a social media outreach, there has to be a kind of a deep understanding of what the customer has is actually going through. Now i’m talking very generally here because I don’t know what businesses everyone is in. But there’s a, so we’re talking high level. We’re talking about broad principles here so I apologize about that. We’re trying to leave some room for questions at the end here so that if you have specific questions about your situation we can talk about that a little bit. So the one consideration is that it has to feel as though you have a deep and almost uncanny understanding of their situation. And when you have that, it’s easier to come up with ideas for your social media or your email outreach that actually is interesting to them. They may not be directly related to what is that that you’re selling and maybe interact indirectly related or complimentary. One of my customers makes these beautiful handmade wooden bowls from a little eight inch Bowl all the way up to a twenty inch Bowl. They really are beautiful. And one of the things that we’re starting to explore is the things that the the customers are also interested in. So if you are the kind of person who is building a home and is trying to furnish it with real authentic housewares like this maybe you entertain a lot. Maybe you’d like to know how to make a five or six different salads that you’ve ever made before to go into this giant salad bowl. Certainly we’ve talked about how to do a maintenance on similar wooden bowls and structures. So our reasoning here is that if someone is an ideal customer for us, it may not be someone who has never bought a wooden bowl bowl before. So if someone has a bunch of wooden products in their home already they’d like to know how to make them last a lifetime. So we’re currently doing a bunch of Education about that so that we can help support people’s habit and of course that as a first step as a zero cost transaction of value where they don’t pay anything but they do get value in exchange. It’s a good first step on a value ladder all the way up to their most expensive product which is like a $1,300 set of bowls which is like a Russian doll arrangement with your 21 inch Bowl on the outside stacked all the way up to the little bowl in the middle. And so they can go all the way up. So how do we do that with your business? So I’m going to go through a list of nine different things that you can send about when you are creating a content on your site so that on your website or in your social media so that when people are ready to buy whenever that’s going to be they will already have been exposed to a body of information that will make them much more likely to buy it from you. So it’s structured as a thesis. Remember when were writing essays in school? If you tried to come up with a top-level thesis and then you’ve created a whole bunch of supportive arguments all the way down. So we have a native structure for developing them and our thesis statement is that “I am the absolute best person for my ideal customer to do business with” that’s your thesis statement. so everything else that we do from here on in supports that and hopefully we’re not doing a heavy-handed way so that people know you’re selling to them. The gold standard for this is that you can do it invisibly when you’re delivering sales messages and messages of influence. If you can do it in such a way that people feel like they’re being delivered value in because they are, they will love they’ll be much more effective than being heavy handed. You can’t actually say your thesis statement. You know and put that message right on the front page of your website and it will have no effect at all because it’s too long the nose so we have to kind of need that limit. So here’s the first one I’m here and I’m serving your community again that’s ham-fisted and direct but what we want to do is put things in our social media that demonstrate that implicitly demonstrate that that’s what you’re doing. So perhaps you talked about pending on them to chamber meeting where you’re volunteering or whatever it is that you’re naturally doing. You may want to look at some of the stuff that you’re already doing and find ways to humbly and modestly talk about that. One of the things you can do is promote organizations that you feel strongly about. That will put the attention on them and that in you know volunteering your time to put a spotlight on a volunteer organization that is congruent with the values of the person you’re trying to reach out with. It naturally associates you with that. You can go as far as you want with that. In fact if you have a podcast or something along that line and you interview your biggest competitor make sounding a terrible terrible idea. But the implication is that you as an authority have initiated a conversation and allowed this person into it. Which makes them subordinate to you in some way especially if you’re driving the conversation and asking questions. So it’s it’s counterintuitive, some of these some of these approaches here. So our number two statement here that we’re going to support is: “I am likeable and knowledgeable”. So Robert L Shook interviewed Joe Girard we talked about earlier, in his book ten greatest salespeople. And Joe Gerard said: “I had no big secrets which nobody else has” and he smiles and says “I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.” So if Joe had gone out there and walk around with a t-shirt that said “Joe Girard is the world’s greatest product”, first of all they would have locked him up. But he lived his life and interacted with prospects as though that were true. And when you go online and talk or put out a message and it’s friendly and it’s generous and it demonstrates your knowledge and demonstrates your interest in oth
ers. Again, what does that say about you implicitly? So there’s always a sort of the yin and the yang in your marketing message and you want to focus on the implicit that’s where your action lives and the explicit message is the is the that implicitly implies the stuff that were talking here. So for instance if he wanted to rather than say “I know a lot about this subject”, well you could say that but it’s too on the know isn’t it? Instead, why don’t you talk about the subject and say things that are insightful and that build confidence. So that’s the explicit action that implicitly implies the point that we’re trying to make in our thesis body here. So here’s number three: “I resemble you in some way” people like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them and back to our car dealership an example one of the things I’m always trying to talk my car dealership customers into is to get in each and every one of their salespeople in a video on the website just talking about whatever, it doesn’t even matter. Because they’ve got a pantheon of characters in every car dealership and there’s usually one there to match every potential type of customer. You’ve got the mother of two who’s in her late 30s, you’ve got the you’ve got the old warhorse with all the rings on his fingers and he’s in selling cars forty years and he’s a bit of a card if he’s not careful you might say something racist you know and you’ve got everybody in between. And if you have those people out there you have kind of a spectrum of personalities there’s going to be someone who reminds you of yourself and that’s who you’re going to instinctively be drawn towards. So if there’s only one of them in your business, you can you know leverage the fact that you have a face basically and a personality and it’s unique by putting it out there and at least stand a better chance attracting people who are reminded of themselves when they look at you. and it might be a personality or maybe your interests and you want to get all of those out there. It might seem a little bit loosey goosey for instance to get on there and talk about the guiding club that you belong to or the ski club or the Chess Club or whatever it is that that you do but you have this now sort of relatedness stack. You’ve got a person who may have something I may be interested in the future, who also is understanding this thing that I’m interested in. And maybe you mentioned the third thing that reminds them of you. It could be something simple. The fact that you’re raising kids between you know five and eighteen. That might be enough to make them feel as though you’re a relatable person. So I resemble you in some way. People want to do business with people who remind them about them because it lowers barriers, makes it more natural. Number four this, is an important one but strangely enough it’s not as important as the first three. It’s in our approach or product is different and it needs to be for the following reasons. So if you have an approach that you’ve developed to scratch your markets’ itch and you’ve gone through a lot of trouble to do that, this is one of those areas where you can be really explicit about. It doesn’t really matter you know that you’re being on the nose in this case. You can be as explicit as you want to be. People should understand why you’re different and why it’s a huge necessity that you’ve taken this particular approach. So you can do that as much as you want. Now, what if you’re in an industry that is deeply commoditized? Anybody in a business like that? Where you think about what you’re selling. Maybe you’re a highly regulated industry, I know Sam is. And it’s difficult to behave differently when you’re delivering value because there is really only one product and one way of selling that product that is allowed inside of your industry. So if you’re in a product like that, if you’re in an industry like that, that has a product that is commoditized or deeply regulated, I think Brad is in that situation too. Refer to the first three things, right? Because now, the you know the Joe Girard principle there. You’re back to selling the best product in the world. You know it’s what your mother told you, there’s only one of you. It’s very very difficult. It’s very difficult to copy you. No one can do that. If you get your face out there and you are in front of people for this subject matter and you’re educating them, no one’s going to clone you and scoop away your customers and subvert those relationships. It’s impossible, It’s very difficult to replicate. So the other thing we want to talk about in number five here, we want to talk about the cost of the alternatives. There’s always an alternative. What is the number one alternative to doing business with any of us?
[ctt template=”8″ link=”3bA4O” via=”no” ]”I had no big secrets which nobody else has. I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.” -Joe Girard [/ctt]
Audience: None.
Jaeson: Exactly! Doing nothing is number one. So the cost of doing nothing, the cost of delay. Right? Do you know what that is for our ideal customers? Or the cost of a lower value alternative. Right? So can we talk about how we’re selling guitars, we have a boutique in our shop and there’s a two thousand dollar Les Paul. Can you actually explain to me in terms I will understand why buying a two thousand dollar Les Paul is preferable to buying a three thousand dollar guitar. You know, equivalent size, color, shape, whatever. Can you do that? Can you demonstrate that? And maybe that’s your mission, you know. And I will go down the rabbit hole on all the reasons why that could be as I find it in that business. But you should be able to do that. Explain all those things and maybe most of them maybe most of the reasons won’t matter to them especially if they’re just starting up. Maybe the lower cost option is a gateway to what you’re doing and then you want to have that lower lower cost option to your value ladders so that they’re thinking about you. You were the person who provided them with the introduction that will lead one day to the high priced Cadillac version of whatever it is that you’re selling. So the cost of doing nothing, delay, or more valuable alternatives. You want to talk about that. You can do that with stories, case studies, and if you really want to get luring and gruesome there’s always examples in the news depending on the business that you’re in where people have done nothing and this is what that story looks like. Just enough they’re aware. You know, people respond to stories. We’re actually hardwired for stories. So many times we deliver many of these ideas in story form, that’s great. It’s probably the only thing you’re going to remember from this Joe Gerard, that was the story part. So number six, doing business with you is consistent with their personal values and their existing commitments. So people like to behave in a consistent manner especially if they explicitly articulated their values to you in some way. And this is kind of an important thing you can do when you’re talking to someone in sales. I rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of features and benefits and all that other nonsense, find out what’s important to them. You find out what their values are. Find out what personal professional commitments that they have. Maybe what their long term goals are. And then when you’re delivering, when you’re talking about your features, you’re talking about the parts of your value offering, you can always be relating them back to what they have already committed to. What’s already important to them. Because people want to be consistent and once they know that you know what’s important to them then and they understand how what you’re offering is actually an extension or in support of their highest ideals and commitments and values. You don’t really have to sell it all. What we’re selling, we’re not really there to convince them of anything new. We’re just telling them how this fits into something they’ve already committed to and of course this applies to the messaging that you put on your website and the message you put on your your social media. Now, the trick here is that you may have to break some bad habits and I am really guilty of this. I’ve had to work hard on it and my wife has been a big help to me. When I talk with people I desperately want to jump to the solution. I think it part of it is because I’m a guy. You just want to solve, solve, solve. But you need to go deep and figure out what values that they have, previous commitments that your solution is going to be congruent with. Because that’s going to motivate them more than anything. You know you’re working with them. You see, before that I was on that side of the table. Right. Adversarial, playing ping pong. But as soon as you start talking about their commitments and their values, you change science, now you’re a partner. Now you’re working together. Now they really open up. In fact, if you really listen they give you it will give you a perfect roadmap to sale. It may be that they are a bad fit for you and that may be something you discover. And that’s cool too because you can use the time you would have spent chasing them for the next eight months on ten other customers who may be an excellent fit for you. So it’s a good part of your disqualification process as a salesperson. Reciprocation. This is a tricky one here. People feel naturally compelled to do good for those they feel a sense of reciprocity towards. So someone does something nice for you, you know the free samples in the grocery store, you have a little piece of cheese and now you’re thinking about finding a bigger piece cheese. There’s examples of that in every business. Free samples. Not exactly a well-thought-out reciprocity idea because it’s not super high value, right? Ideas are actually of higher value particularly when they’re deeply relevant to the person. Because they’ve cost you as the giver, a lot of attention to figure out that’s going to be the most relevant to that person. So don’t think about selling or giving away small pieces of cheese. Find out how to deliver the highest possible value. They’re kind of congruent with you know number 6 on our list here with helping them helping to understand how what you offer is consistent with their values and commitments. You know you really have to give of yourself and completely surrender to understanding the person to see if they’re a good fit. See what their values are and find out how, what you’re saying can be deeply relevant to them because when you’re delivering something that’s deeply relevant that’s the best kind of reciprocity because you’ve taken an interest. We love a little bit of interest, don’t we? Little kids, if they run all over the place and going crazy, I have a little niece they think she has Asperger’s but I don’t know. But if I sit down and color with her for 10 minutes, you know just a little bit of attention and then they level the radio. And adults are exactly the same. You know, ask more questions and find out as much as you can about someone and you know you can even notice in a conversation. Keep score, see how many statements you make versus how many questions you ask. Try to get it to 75% just to see how the conversation goes and see how much further you get in turning that stranger into someone who wants to do business with you. Just for fun. Just try to get her 75%. It’s really hard.
[ctt template=”10″ link=”bfcw6″ via=”no” ]“People like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them.” -Jaeson Tanner [/ctt]
Audience: Be interested rather than being interesting, right?
Jaeson: Right. Understood like that… yeah there’s a strive to be to understand… what is it? How do I win friends and influence people that was one of the principles. Strive to understand rather than be understood. And that will trigger reciprocity because people are starved for attention. We’re all so disconnected that someone looks you in the eye and says: “how are you?” it’s meaningful. Just as a footnote to that, how are you is throwaway thing now. You can create a little bit pattern by changing it. Try saying: “how’s your week going?” because it forces them out of whatever the pattern that they usually go into when they’re asked how they are. Yeah, they say “good”. It’s reflexive isn’t it? And they’ll tell you. They’ll give you very specific answers and you may actually learn something. so how’s your week going or something like that. So reciprocity, and we can do that in our messaging just by having a deep insight into what the person is actually worried about, right? And how what we deliver will relieve that in some way. Social proof, that is one of those things to throw around so much that it’s lost all meaning so we’ll just, we’ll talk about how to make it more meaningful. We want to demonstrate what other people have done so the implicit message that we are concealing and everything that we do is this is what others have done to solve the problem that you have. So we can do that with solutions stories. We can go with white papers if our customers having trouble sleeping. If you want to do it in an interesting way get in front of the video in front of a video camera and tell a story about someone you know we did business with you and how you solved their problem. And you know if you’re interested in doing this more effectively, your storytelling is important. There are some excellent books on how to develop a story and the structure of the hero’s journey have you heard of this? Where you start out with you’ve got this crisis moment and you can’t go any further and you need to transform as a person in order to move past the problem. That’s the hero’s journey where every movies constructed exactly the same way where everything is fine until it isn’t. And then what happened to solve the problem? And we love those stories because we’re always interested in whether or not we will actually be able to do that ourselves and being reminded that it’s possible to move past a current version of ourselves into a new version. Like the person here leaving this room has a bit tiny tight end different than the person you want in us. Hopefully with some new ideas and some things you can try and maybe you’ve thought of something in your business that you can use to move over or whatever hurdle that you’re currently struggling. But that’s why the hero’s journey is interesting because we’re always going through these cycles in our lives. We’re trying to become a new person and every time we do that we’re going across some new obstacle that we couldn’t have possibly anticipated. So the tell stories. Case study videos are very effective as well. And the last thing is Authority. So are you an authority on your subject? Well if you’ve been in your business for any number of years and have committed and dedicated yourself to understanding it, then you are an authority. So the question is, “are you behaving like an authority?”. So think about people who you know in certain spaces who are considered authorities. The word authority actually has the word Author in it. So a lot of them aren’t authors and an easy way to become an author is to just become an author. You don’t have to be a great writer. In fact a good way to break through, you think to yourself: “now he’s lost his mind, I’m not going to write a book.” That’s crazy talk. Why don’t you write a terrible book. You know, tell yourself: “you know what, I am going to by the end of… I’m gonna make it my goal that in 90 days I will have written an awful awful book about the thing that I’m expert about.” because there are two distinct parts to writing literally anything: one is harvesting all the information together and piling it up at some undifferentiated mass of you know snakes and then there’s the editing part. And those are two distinct areas. People have this funny idea that art or literature or writing comes out fully formed. You think Mozart was just manifesting these complete symphonies out of his imagination fully formed for all of us to love and enjoy but that’s not how it works. That’s a crazy crazy lie. It has to start if there’s two things to it. There’s a one-two punch. There’s creating the terrible version of it and there’s the editing and that’s why there are editors. It’s a profession and you can be your own editor but just don’t do both of those things at once. So if you’re thinking about how to make yourself a more natural choice to a potential audience and authority is one of the things you’ve put off or it would otherwise disregard, commit to making something terrible in the next 90 days. So you know what? It’s going to be garbage. And the other thing is that it’ll take a lot of pressure off and there will be segments of your work aren’t you pretty good when you get back to editing it it’s not that bad, you know. You wake up in the morning and set aside 15 minutes a day for the next 90 days to create something terrible. That will give you till January 25th. Just see what you come up with and just tack that on your fridge or remind yourself, 15 minutes a day whatever small increment would get you into it without without having to go to war with your personal resistance. So you can be an author, you can be a host, that’s a good one if you find you you have a lot of confidence, host something. Create a podcast. I’ve got one, Brad’s been on it. We’re gonna have our fifth episode soon so I’m just at the beginning of that too. You know, so that I’m not being too hypocritical taking here about making stuff. Be a host. Come up some of the questions that we talked about earlier. And the other thing is that if you interview people that you would be interested in doing business with and who are also serving your customers, there is also some built-in reciprocity there that you’re creating a very natural and subversive way so that maybe down the road they will feel more inclined to do business with you because you can also be a connector for people to be together. It also works really well when you’re being a host to keep perhaps two people at once or introduce people who may be able to do business together which also generates reciprocity. Or be a curator. So as you’re going through your day-to-day rummagings on the internet, you may find things that are excellent and may serve your customers and not necessarily compete with you. You know, they could be alternatives. We’ve talked about alternatives to doing business with you but they may be low cost alternatives they may be zero cost alternatives they may be alternatives for people who aren’t even fit for you. to think about the people you don’t want to do business with. And you know if you discover one of those, if you had a bunch of alternatives all cued up for them. This isn’t good for you but here’s five things you can try. Though the beautiful thing about that is maybe that one person who’s a bad fit for you and those five people who are a good fit and now you’ve got this reciprocity thing working for you begin. So that’s the list. A lot of things to think about. If you’d like to have a copy of this list I can email it to you just come up to me afterwards and I’ll share my email address with you. There is an excellent book by Robert Cialdini called influence where he talks about most of these letters and depth if you haven’t read it already you absolutely have to put on the reading list. If you’re not much of a reader, if you don’t like reading, have to do some driving, get the audiobook. You have to listen to it. It’s absolutely essential. So that’s my presentation. It’s called influence by Robert Cialdini. So thank you very much. If you want to talk about how to develop a thesis in your business I
always suggest having at least a half-hour conversation with me because we are all so deeply steeped in the hot water of our business you know we’re all teabags and our own little cup of tea that we’re not even aware of the hot water right? We’re like that goldfish in a bowl never hear that joke of you guys walking along the river and he says to the fish how’s the water in there and the fish says “what’s water?” you know. Now what makes you unique and interesting and compelling is so much fundamental part of your day-to-day life. You don’t even think right. So to have someone like myself have a conversation with you kind of inlay of the checklist here will be very valuable and I’d be happy to the internet pretest a conversation with you about that I’ll just flesh out some ideas and help you get you on your way and also you know help you to manage the stuff going for it because it can be a bit of a hassle if you don’t set up a system to keeping you consistent. Thank you very much.
Megan: So any question? question arises.
Audience: How soon in the process do you answer the question or even on a website maybe a better price costs investment.
Jaeson: Well you know, it’s different for every business, right? If you are creating custom solutions for people then that has to be a function of what the solution will, what value is delivered by the solution. So if you’re in a business like mine where we’re developing marketing solutions, it would be ridiculous for me to tell you what it costs upfront until I know what it will, what did, what value it will create. For instance, if I looked at your business and said listen I think that given what you’ve told me so far and the goals you’ve expressed to me we can bring you a hundred thousand dollars of new revenue in the next twelve months. Then I would look at that and say: “does it make sense for the solution that cost ten thousand dollars?” right? So what price really has to be a discussion that’s all the way down the road if you’re in a custom business or solution business after you’ve come to a deep understanding of what what value you’re actually delivering and how it’s congruent with their actual value is.
Audience: So when do you start that process? Like from the beginning you’re establishing obviously their needs oftentimes in my business I’m sure everybody’s business is well how much is this gonna cost me unless you’re an explicit business that has all that information that’s already out there.
Jaeson: The flippin answer is that if we do it right, it shouldn’t cost you anything. It’s great. You know. But to do that in a way where you have a clear return on investment there’s a lot of questions I need to ask you. I need to even figure out whether or not I’m a good fit for you because I might not be a good fit for you. In fact, that’s really compelling that little push away, people aren’t expecting sales people to go. I might not be a good fit for you then and I’m gonna be a good fit for any of the people in this room. It may be in Sam’s business may be so ruthlessly regulated that there’s no room for any imagination. Maybe the same thing with Brad but Brad’s doing some pretty interesting things with personal branding so maybe there is some room for me, I don’t know. But you don’t do a little push you know. Okay so to answer your question, so if you’re in any business and service business where you’re providing a custom solution then there’s a lot of kind of posturing a question. Asking that needs to happen before that because like you’re not entitled to provide them with a solution until you know them, right? Like I don’t know Sam well enough to give him dieting advice at all. Well first of all I’m not in that business. But if I was a dietitian, I can’t just walk up to them and say you need more vitamin C Sam. I can’t do that. I’m not entitled to give you a solution so conversely than not entitled to a cost because there’s no solution. No solution, no cost. Like that. How can those two things go together? So it’s impossible, right? So there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen up front. First of all, you want to make sure that they’re going to be worth your time. Go through a specific disqualification process and make sure they understand that’s what it is. Because that differentiates you from the other sales and then who are. We’re looking for anybody with a strong pulse and there’s lots of those out there. You know, “oh look you’ve made eye contact with me so I’m going to talk to you” right? Now if they don’t have so many prospects that they’re doing some careful disqualification to make sure that they’re only serving people who they’re you need to be positioned to help then well don’t, maybe there’s something else wrong. Anyway, so there’s a disqualification process and then once you realize that they’re not to be glib about what they’re worth your time and your worth their time because it’s two-way, right? It’s going to be a good fit then you can go deep on what they actually need and what their values are. What’s important to them, what the future support, what future they’re trying to create in their business or in around their situation. And then you can discuss in the framework of that how your solution is congruent. Everything that their hopes and dreams are. You know, you said this. I know that this will be an important feature to you because of what you said here, you also mention that and this is important, you mentioned this obstacle and I think you can get around that by you know you’re kind of it’s you’re letting them set the tone and the script for what you’re saying again. You know the price ends up being a footnote to that because if some things sometimes completely congruent with your values and your aspirations like think about all the crazy hair brain things that will be bought over the years, like the dumb money we’ve spent just because it matched with who we feel we are. Just our identity as human being you know, “I am a harley-davidson motorcycle driver” or they call that whatever they call it in there. They’re trying this is what I am ergo thirty thousand dollars for a harley-davidson you know that’s crazy money you’re never gonna see and that’s not an investment. That’s out the window, that’s stupid money. You know, people will do that. People spend the money so long as it matches with who and how they see themselves and if they know you’re aware of their identity and you’re working to support their identity and their values and commitments well it’s just such an easy. It’s not selling at all, you’re just laying track. Is there any questions?
[ctt template=”11″ link=”X323x” via=”no” ]”If we do it right, it shouldn’t cost you anything.” -Jaeson Tanner [/ctt]
Megan: thank you very much Jaeson.
This has been the zero noise marketing podcast. If you feel like the zero noise marketing approach is right for your business, we love to hear from you. You can reach us at zeronoisemarketing.com or give us a call at (888)-997-5372. Have a great day.
Megan: Well good morning everyone! This is great. This is our second sales and marketing meeting for me. It’s a chance for you guys to learn. So thank you very much for coming. This morning we have Jason Tanner here. Jason’s gonna speak about how to bring customers’ value. So I’m excited to hear about that. And if you have any questions or answers afterwards questions he will answer them. So we’ll be about half an hour?
Jaeson: Until you tell me to stop.
Megan: Okay
Jaeson: Until you tell me to stop. Whoever’s got a watch, start waving. Sam could start waving uncontrollably there at minute 25.
Megan: Okay. Take it away.
Jaeson: Good morning! My name is Jason Tanner and I hail from the Nappanee Marketing Group. So what we’re going to talk about today is thinking about the maximization of value to a customer some of this stuff is kind of obvious if you think about how you’re already delivering value to customers. So a customer will purchase your product or service and you deliver them something. If you run a retail business then you have a very natural spectrum of products and services ranging from the inexpensive all the way up to a deluxe item that may be a very few people buy but but it’s available. So there’s kind of an obvious way that we need deliver value and I want to be talking today is a little bit about the ways that are not so obvious. And there’s a lot of emphasis put on social media and creating content for our customers but it’s not often framed as an extension of our value spectrum from an item that has perhaps no money being exchanged all the way up to our smallest transaction and then all the way up to our our large transaction. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today and just how to do that. So that you’re not, you know doing things that are ineffective and burning a lot of energy while you’re creating all this content. You’re doing something that actually contributes to how the prospect thinks about you when they are ready to purchase. So as I mentioned at the part of the store has a natural spectrum of products and services and they leverage those by sometimes even selling them below cost just to get your attention and just to initiate that first transaction. And the first transaction whatever it is is the most expensive usually unless you’ve been referred by somebody.
Audience: When you say that, do you mean from a marketing perspective?
Jaeson: Yes what you pay for that first transaction. Thank you. So if you paid whatever is that you pay for advertising and whatever that was brings in five people, you just do the simple math and divide out the cost of your advertising over the five new customers. That first transaction is expensive right? So we’re trying to make that customer more valuable. You’re naturally trying to move them into second transaction which may be identical to the first. But the cost of the second transaction is significantly lower because you already have some relationship with them. And the question is: how do you initiate that second transaction? Well we have to create opportunities to do that. Our friends at a grocery store do not make direct contact with individuals unless they have some sort of a points club or something like that. They simply spray us with flyers. Everybody who has a strong pulse in the mailbox gets a flyer and that’s the big criteria. And so they’re able to to create multiple transactions from us and build habits over hoods and ears and that model works very very well. But those of us who are not in a general market like that need to do something very specific and we need to create a little herd of people who have initiated some sort of initial transaction with us. After that, we can move through all of the other areas and maximize the value and lower the cost of doing business with our customers over time as we can’t just live on. It would be impossible to just do one offs all the time. People we have never heard of do you want a transaction and then move on in most cases. So what are we doing our by it the buying cycle of the customer is say six months or a year or five years, what can we do with them to provide meaningful contact so that the thinking of you when the time comes. And some businesses who think of car dealerships for instance we don’t know when the customer is going to be ready, they just start to pop up one day and and you cross your fingers and you hope that they’re going to be thinking about you and favoring your particular option and ready to buy all the same time. And that’s really really tricky. There’s a famous car salesman, Joe Girard. You heard of Joe Girard? Joe holds the Guinness Book of World Records as the seller for most cars of the year between 1963-1978. Joe held that record. He sold 13,000 tires between those years down in Detroit and you know what Joe’s magic bullet was? Anyone heard this?
Audience: I think it’s staying in touch. He was always sending Thank You cards
Jaeson: Right! Yeah. He sent out thank you cards, a little hello cards. And on the front of every single one of them he had three little words, he said: “I like you” and then the person’s address and everything. Then the magic of it was that each of them looked different. Like if you were getting one of these every month, it wouldn’t look the same as the one you got last month. And they would be handwritten. And so they felt personal. So, Joe was creating these direct relationships with all these people who had any kind of contact with. And Joe knew that he had no way of knowing when they were going to be ready, when does the transmission gonna die on the one you’re driving. You know when are you going to be feeling most motivated to move forward. So he knew that that relationship had to be maintained over time. The other thing that we can unpack from Joe’s example is that you can almost send anything as long as it’s relevant and personal. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary every single time. Joe would send out the “i like you” message and when you open it up there would be some sort of a seasonal breathing or something along those lines but it would be personalized so you really did feel like Joe was reaching up to you. And even if you have the presence of mind to understand that there were probably 12,500 people getting a very similar message at the same time, it’s still kind of nice. There’s a mortgage broker, Sean Donohue. Him and his his dad Wally actually do this once a year, I still get birthday card from them. The only one. But that’s beside the point. But they have no idea when your mortgage is going to renew necessarily unless they keep meticulous records and they arrange the last mortgage. So while this seems like maybe a scattershot approach, it’s a very simple strategy for keeping people on top of your mind. Of course in the Internet age do we need to necessarily send out printed material? Obviously, obviously not. But the trick with via with something to do online is that it does need to seem personal somehow. So how do you make an online message? I say a Facebook post or a Twitter blast or something like that. Or even leave an email seem like it’s personal. Well it all comes down to the relevance of the message. So when you’re doing some sort of a social media outreach, there has to be a kind of a deep understanding of what the customer has is actually going through. Now i’m talking very generally here because I don’t know what businesses everyone is in. But there’s a, so we’re talking high level. We’re talking about broad principles here so I apologize about that. We’re trying to leave some room for questions at the end here so that if you have specific questions about your situation we can talk about that a little bit. So the one consideration is that it has to feel as though you have a deep and almost uncanny understanding of their situation. And when you have that, it’s easier to come up with ideas for your social media or your email outreach that actually is interesting to them. They may not be directly related to what is that that you’re selling and maybe interact indirectly related or complimentary. One of my customers makes these beautiful handmade wooden bowls from a little eight inch Bowl all the way up to a twenty inch Bowl. They really are beautiful. And one of the things that we’re starting to explore is the things that the the customers are also interested in. So if you are the kind of person who is building a home and is trying to furnish it with real authentic housewares like this maybe you entertain a lot. Maybe you’d like to know how to make a five or six different salads that you’ve ever made before to go into this giant salad bowl. Certainly we’ve talked about how to do a maintenance on similar wooden bowls and structures. So our reasoning here is that if someone is an ideal customer for us, it may not be someone who has never bought a wooden bowl bowl before. So if someone has a bunch of wooden products in their home already they’d like to know how to make them last a lifetime. So we’re currently doing a bunch of Education about that so that we can help support people’s habit and of course that as a first step as a zero cost transaction of value where they don’t pay anything but they do get value in exchange. It’s a good first step on a value ladder all the way up to their most expensive product which is like a $1,300 set of bowls which is like a Russian doll arrangement with your 21 inch Bowl on the outside stacked all the way up to the little bowl in the middle. And so they can go all the way up. So how do we do that with your business? So I’m going to go through a list of nine different things that you can send about when you are creating a content on your site so that on your website or in your social media so that when people are ready to buy whenever that’s going to be they will already have been exposed to a body of information that will make them much more likely to buy it from you. So it’s structured as a thesis. Remember when were writing essays in school? If you tried to come up with a top-level thesis and then you’ve created a whole bunch of supportive arguments all the way down. So we have a native structure for developing them and our thesis statement is that “I am the absolute best person for my ideal customer to do business with” that’s your thesis statement. so everything else that we do from here on in supports that and hopefully we’re not doing a heavy-handed way so that people know you’re selling to them. The gold standard for this is that you can do it invisibly when you’re delivering sales messages and messages of influence. If you can do it in such a way that people feel like they’re being delivered value in because they are, they will love they’ll be much more effective than being heavy handed. You can’t actually say your thesis statement. You know and put that message right on the front page of your website and it will have no effect at all because it’s too long the nose so we have to kind of need that limit. So here’s the first one I’m here and I’m serving your community again that’s ham-fisted and direct but what we want to do is put things in our social media that demonstrate that implicitly demonstrate that that’s what you’re doing. So perhaps you talked about pending on them to chamber meeting where you’re volunteering or whatever it is that you’re naturally doing. You may want to look at some of the stuff that you’re already doing and find ways to humbly and modestly talk about that. One of the things you can do is promote organizations that you feel strongly about. That will put the attention on them and that in you know volunteering your time to put a spotlight on a volunteer organization that is congruent with the values of the person you’re trying to reach out with. It naturally associates you with that. You can go as far as you want with that. In fact if you have a podcast or something along that line and you interview your biggest competitor make sounding a terrible terrible idea. But the implication is that you as an authority have initiated a conversation and allowed this person into it. Which makes them subordinate to you in some way especially if you’re driving the conversation and asking questions. So it’s it’s counterintuitive, some of these some of these approaches here. So our number two statement here that we’re going to support is: “I am likeable and knowledgeable”. So Robert L Shook interviewed Joe Girard we talked about earlier, in his book ten greatest salespeople. And Joe Gerard said: “I had no big secrets which nobody else has” and he smiles and says “I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.” So if Joe had gone out there and walk around with a t-shirt that said “Joe Girard is the world’s greatest product”, first of all they would have locked him up. But he lived his life and interacted with prospects as though that were true. And when you go online and talk or put out a message and it’s friendly and it’s generous and it demonstrates your knowledge and demonstrates your interest in oth
ers. Again, what does that say about you implicitly? So there’s always a sort of the yin and the yang in your marketing message and you want to focus on the implicit that’s where your action lives and the explicit message is the is the that implicitly implies the stuff that were talking here. So for instance if he wanted to rather than say “I know a lot about this subject”, well you could say that but it’s too on the know isn’t it? Instead, why don’t you talk about the subject and say things that are insightful and that build confidence. So that’s the explicit action that implicitly implies the point that we’re trying to make in our thesis body here. So here’s number three: “I resemble you in some way” people like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them and back to our car dealership an example one of the things I’m always trying to talk my car dealership customers into is to get in each and every one of their salespeople in a video on the website just talking about whatever, it doesn’t even matter. Because they’ve got a pantheon of characters in every car dealership and there’s usually one there to match every potential type of customer. You’ve got the mother of two who’s in her late 30s, you’ve got the you’ve got the old warhorse with all the rings on his fingers and he’s in selling cars forty years and he’s a bit of a card if he’s not careful you might say something racist you know and you’ve got everybody in between. And if you have those people out there you have kind of a spectrum of personalities there’s going to be someone who reminds you of yourself and that’s who you’re going to instinctively be drawn towards. So if there’s only one of them in your business, you can you know leverage the fact that you have a face basically and a personality and it’s unique by putting it out there and at least stand a better chance attracting people who are reminded of themselves when they look at you. and it might be a personality or maybe your interests and you want to get all of those out there. It might seem a little bit loosey goosey for instance to get on there and talk about the guiding club that you belong to or the ski club or the Chess Club or whatever it is that that you do but you have this now sort of relatedness stack. You’ve got a person who may have something I may be interested in the future, who also is understanding this thing that I’m interested in. And maybe you mentioned the third thing that reminds them of you. It could be something simple. The fact that you’re raising kids between you know five and eighteen. That might be enough to make them feel as though you’re a relatable person. So I resemble you in some way. People want to do business with people who remind them about them because it lowers barriers, makes it more natural. Number four this, is an important one but strangely enough it’s not as important as the first three. It’s in our approach or product is different and it needs to be for the following reasons. So if you have an approach that you’ve developed to scratch your markets’ itch and you’ve gone through a lot of trouble to do that, this is one of those areas where you can be really explicit about. It doesn’t really matter you know that you’re being on the nose in this case. You can be as explicit as you want to be. People should understand why you’re different and why it’s a huge necessity that you’ve taken this particular approach. So you can do that as much as you want. Now, what if you’re in an industry that is deeply commoditized? Anybody in a business like that? Where you think about what you’re selling. Maybe you’re a highly regulated industry, I know Sam is. And it’s difficult to behave differently when you’re delivering value because there is really only one product and one way of selling that product that is allowed inside of your industry. So if you’re in a product like that, if you’re in an industry like that, that has a product that is commoditized or deeply regulated, I think Brad is in that situation too. Refer to the first three things, right? Because now, the you know the Joe Girard principle there. You’re back to selling the best product in the world. You know it’s what your mother told you, there’s only one of you. It’s very very difficult. It’s very difficult to copy you. No one can do that. If you get your face out there and you are in front of people for this subject matter and you’re educating them, no one’s going to clone you and scoop away your customers and subvert those relationships. It’s impossible, It’s very difficult to replicate. So the other thing we want to talk about in number five here, we want to talk about the cost of the alternatives. There’s always an alternative. What is the number one alternative to doing business with any of us?
[ctt template=”8″ link=”3bA4O” via=”no” ]”I had no big secrets which nobody else has. I simply sell the world’s greatest product. That’s it. I sell Joe Girard.” -Joe Girard [/ctt]
Audience: None.
Jaeson: Exactly! Doing nothing is number one. So the cost of doing nothing, the cost of delay. Right? Do you know what that is for our ideal customers? Or the cost of a lower value alternative. Right? So can we talk about how we’re selling guitars, we have a boutique in our shop and there’s a two thousand dollar Les Paul. Can you actually explain to me in terms I will understand why buying a two thousand dollar Les Paul is preferable to buying a three thousand dollar guitar. You know, equivalent size, color, shape, whatever. Can you do that? Can you demonstrate that? And maybe that’s your mission, you know. And I will go down the rabbit hole on all the reasons why that could be as I find it in that business. But you should be able to do that. Explain all those things and maybe most of them maybe most of the reasons won’t matter to them especially if they’re just starting up. Maybe the lower cost option is a gateway to what you’re doing and then you want to have that lower lower cost option to your value ladders so that they’re thinking about you. You were the person who provided them with the introduction that will lead one day to the high priced Cadillac version of whatever it is that you’re selling. So the cost of doing nothing, delay, or more valuable alternatives. You want to talk about that. You can do that with stories, case studies, and if you really want to get luring and gruesome there’s always examples in the news depending on the business that you’re in where people have done nothing and this is what that story looks like. Just enough they’re aware. You know, people respond to stories. We’re actually hardwired for stories. So many times we deliver many of these ideas in story form, that’s great. It’s probably the only thing you’re going to remember from this Joe Gerard, that was the story part. So number six, doing business with you is consistent with their personal values and their existing commitments. So people like to behave in a consistent manner especially if they explicitly articulated their values to you in some way. And this is kind of an important thing you can do when you’re talking to someone in sales. I rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of features and benefits and all that other nonsense, find out what’s important to them. You find out what their values are. Find out what personal professional commitments that they have. Maybe what their long term goals are. And then when you’re delivering, when you’re talking about your features, you’re talking about the parts of your value offering, you can always be relating them back to what they have already committed to. What’s already important to them. Because people want to be consistent and once they know that you know what’s important to them then and they understand how what you’re offering is actually an extension or in support of their highest ideals and commitments and values. You don’t really have to sell it all. What we’re selling, we’re not really there to convince them of anything new. We’re just telling them how this fits into something they’ve already committed to and of course this applies to the messaging that you put on your website and the message you put on your your social media. Now, the trick here is that you may have to break some bad habits and I am really guilty of this. I’ve had to work hard on it and my wife has been a big help to me. When I talk with people I desperately want to jump to the solution. I think it part of it is because I’m a guy. You just want to solve, solve, solve. But you need to go deep and figure out what values that they have, previous commitments that your solution is going to be congruent with. Because that’s going to motivate them more than anything. You know you’re working with them. You see, before that I was on that side of the table. Right. Adversarial, playing ping pong. But as soon as you start talking about their commitments and their values, you change science, now you’re a partner. Now you’re working together. Now they really open up. In fact, if you really listen they give you it will give you a perfect roadmap to sale. It may be that they are a bad fit for you and that may be something you discover. And that’s cool too because you can use the time you would have spent chasing them for the next eight months on ten other customers who may be an excellent fit for you. So it’s a good part of your disqualification process as a salesperson. Reciprocation. This is a tricky one here. People feel naturally compelled to do good for those they feel a sense of reciprocity towards. So someone does something nice for you, you know the free samples in the grocery store, you have a little piece of cheese and now you’re thinking about finding a bigger piece cheese. There’s examples of that in every business. Free samples. Not exactly a well-thought-out reciprocity idea because it’s not super high value, right? Ideas are actually of higher value particularly when they’re deeply relevant to the person. Because they’ve cost you as the giver, a lot of attention to figure out that’s going to be the most relevant to that person. So don’t think about selling or giving away small pieces of cheese. Find out how to deliver the highest possible value. They’re kind of congruent with you know number 6 on our list here with helping them helping to understand how what you offer is consistent with their values and commitments. You know you really have to give of yourself and completely surrender to understanding the person to see if they’re a good fit. See what their values are and find out how, what you’re saying can be deeply relevant to them because when you’re delivering something that’s deeply relevant that’s the best kind of reciprocity because you’ve taken an interest. We love a little bit of interest, don’t we? Little kids, if they run all over the place and going crazy, I have a little niece they think she has Asperger’s but I don’t know. But if I sit down and color with her for 10 minutes, you know just a little bit of attention and then they level the radio. And adults are exactly the same. You know, ask more questions and find out as much as you can about someone and you know you can even notice in a conversation. Keep score, see how many statements you make versus how many questions you ask. Try to get it to 75% just to see how the conversation goes and see how much further you get in turning that stranger into someone who wants to do business with you. Just for fun. Just try to get her 75%. It’s really hard.
[ctt template=”10″ link=”bfcw6″ via=”no” ]“People like to deal with people who look like them or who resemble them.” -Jaeson Tanner [/ctt]
Audience: Be interested rather than being interesting, right?
Jaeson: Right. Understood like that… yeah there’s a strive to be to understand… what is it? How do I win friends and influence people that was one of the principles. Strive to understand rather than be understood. And that will trigger reciprocity because people are starved for attention. We’re all so disconnected that someone looks you in the eye and says: “how are you?” it’s meaningful. Just as a footnote to that, how are you is throwaway thing now. You can create a little bit pattern by changing it. Try saying: “how’s your week going?” because it forces them out of whatever the pattern that they usually go into when they’re asked how they are. Yeah, they say “good”. It’s reflexive isn’t it? And they’ll tell you. They’ll give you very specific answers and you may actually learn something. so how’s your week going or something like that. So reciprocity, and we can do that in our messaging just by having a deep insight into what the person is actually worried about, right? And how what we deliver will relieve that in some way. Social proof, that is one of those things to throw around so much that it’s lost all meaning so we’ll just, we’ll talk about how to make it more meaningful. We want to demonstrate what other people have done so the implicit message that we are concealing and everything that we do is this is what others have done to solve the problem that you have. So we can do that with solutions stories. We can go with white papers if our customers having trouble sleeping. If you want to do it in an interesting way get in front of the video in front of a video camera and tell a story about someone you know we did business with you and how you solved their problem. And you know if you’re interested in doing this more effectively, your storytelling is important. There are some excellent books on how to develop a story and the structure of the hero’s journey have you heard of this? Where you start out with you’ve got this crisis moment and you can’t go any further and you need to transform as a person in order to move past the problem. That’s the hero’s journey where every movies constructed exactly the same way where everything is fine until it isn’t. And then what happened to solve the problem? And we love those stories because we’re always interested in whether or not we will actually be able to do that ourselves and being reminded that it’s possible to move past a current version of ourselves into a new version. Like the person here leaving this room has a bit tiny tight end different than the person you want in us. Hopefully with some new ideas and some things you can try and maybe you’ve thought of something in your business that you can use to move over or whatever hurdle that you’re currently struggling. But that’s why the hero’s journey is interesting because we’re always going through these cycles in our lives. We’re trying to become a new person and every time we do that we’re going across some new obstacle that we couldn’t have possibly anticipated. So the tell stories. Case study videos are very effective as well. And the last thing is Authority. So are you an authority on your subject? Well if you’ve been in your business for any number of years and have committed and dedicated yourself to understanding it, then you are an authority. So the question is, “are you behaving like an authority?”. So think about people who you know in certain spaces who are considered authorities. The word authority actually has the word Author in it. So a lot of them aren’t authors and an easy way to become an author is to just become an author. You don’t have to be a great writer. In fact a good way to break through, you think to yourself: “now he’s lost his mind, I’m not going to write a book.” That’s crazy talk. Why don’t you write a terrible book. You know, tell yourself: “you know what, I am going to by the end of… I’m gonna make it my goal that in 90 days I will have written an awful awful book about the thing that I’m expert about.” because there are two distinct parts to writing literally anything: one is harvesting all the information together and piling it up at some undifferentiated mass of you know snakes and then there’s the editing part. And those are two distinct areas. People have this funny idea that art or literature or writing comes out fully formed. You think Mozart was just manifesting these complete symphonies out of his imagination fully formed for all of us to love and enjoy but that’s not how it works. That’s a crazy crazy lie. It has to start if there’s two things to it. There’s a one-two punch. There’s creating the terrible version of it and there’s the editing and that’s why there are editors. It’s a profession and you can be your own editor but just don’t do both of those things at once. So if you’re thinking about how to make yourself a more natural choice to a potential audience and authority is one of the things you’ve put off or it would otherwise disregard, commit to making something terrible in the next 90 days. So you know what? It’s going to be garbage. And the other thing is that it’ll take a lot of pressure off and there will be segments of your work aren’t you pretty good when you get back to editing it it’s not that bad, you know. You wake up in the morning and set aside 15 minutes a day for the next 90 days to create something terrible. That will give you till January 25th. Just see what you come up with and just tack that on your fridge or remind yourself, 15 minutes a day whatever small increment would get you into it without without having to go to war with your personal resistance. So you can be an author, you can be a host, that’s a good one if you find you you have a lot of confidence, host something. Create a podcast. I’ve got one, Brad’s been on it. We’re gonna have our fifth episode soon so I’m just at the beginning of that too. You know, so that I’m not being too hypocritical taking here about making stuff. Be a host. Come up some of the questions that we talked about earlier. And the other thing is that if you interview people that you would be interested in doing business with and who are also serving your customers, there is also some built-in reciprocity there that you’re creating a very natural and subversive way so that maybe down the road they will feel more inclined to do business with you because you can also be a connector for people to be together. It also works really well when you’re being a host to keep perhaps two people at once or introduce people who may be able to do business together which also generates reciprocity. Or be a curator. So as you’re going through your day-to-day rummagings on the internet, you may find things that are excellent and may serve your customers and not necessarily compete with you. You know, they could be alternatives. We’ve talked about alternatives to doing business with you but they may be low cost alternatives they may be zero cost alternatives they may be alternatives for people who aren’t even fit for you. to think about the people you don’t want to do business with. And you know if you discover one of those, if you had a bunch of alternatives all cued up for them. This isn’t good for you but here’s five things you can try. Though the beautiful thing about that is maybe that one person who’s a bad fit for you and those five people who are a good fit and now you’ve got this reciprocity thing working for you begin. So that’s the list. A lot of things to think about. If you’d like to have a copy of this list I can email it to you just come up to me afterwards and I’ll share my email address with you. There is an excellent book by Robert Cialdini called influence where he talks about most of these letters and depth if you haven’t read it already you absolutely have to put on the reading list. If you’re not much of a reader, if you don’t like reading, have to do some driving, get the audiobook. You have to listen to it. It’s absolutely essential. So that’s my presentation. It’s called influence by Robert Cialdini. So thank you very much. If you want to talk about how to develop a thesis in your business I
always suggest having at least a half-hour conversation with me because we are all so deeply steeped in the hot water of our business you know we’re all teabags and our own little cup of tea that we’re not even aware of the hot water right? We’re like that goldfish in a bowl never hear that joke of you guys walking along the river and he says to the fish how’s the water in there and the fish says “what’s water?” you know. Now what makes you unique and interesting and compelling is so much fundamental part of your day-to-day life. You don’t even think right. So to have someone like myself have a conversation with you kind of inlay of the checklist here will be very valuable and I’d be happy to the internet pretest a conversation with you about that I’ll just flesh out some ideas and help you get you on your way and also you know help you to manage the stuff going for it because it can be a bit of a hassle if you don’t set up a system to keeping you consistent. Thank you very much.
Megan: So any question? question arises.
Audience: How soon in the process do you answer the question or even on a website maybe a better price costs investment.
Jaeson: Well you know, it’s different for every business, right? If you are creating custom solutions for people then that has to be a function of what the solution will, what value is delivered by the solution. So if you’re in a business like mine where we’re developing marketing solutions, it would be ridiculous for me to tell you what it costs upfront until I know what it will, what did, what value it will create. For instance, if I looked at your business and said listen I think that given what you’ve told me so far and the goals you’ve expressed to me we can bring you a hundred thousand dollars of new revenue in the next twelve months. Then I would look at that and say: “does it make sense for the solution that cost ten thousand dollars?” right? So what price really has to be a discussion that’s all the way down the road if you’re in a custom business or solution business after you’ve come to a deep understanding of what what value you’re actually delivering and how it’s congruent with their actual value is.
Audience: So when do you start that process? Like from the beginning you’re establishing obviously their needs oftentimes in my business I’m sure everybody’s business is well how much is this gonna cost me unless you’re an explicit business that has all that information that’s already out there.
Jaeson: The flippin answer is that if we do it right, it shouldn’t cost you anything. It’s great. You know. But to do that in a way where you have a clear return on investment there’s a lot of questions I need to ask you. I need to even figure out whether or not I’m a good fit for you because I might not be a good fit for you. In fact, that’s really compelling that little push away, people aren’t expecting sales people to go. I might not be a good fit for you then and I’m gonna be a good fit for any of the people in this room. It may be in Sam’s business may be so ruthlessly regulated that there’s no room for any imagination. Maybe the same thing with Brad but Brad’s doing some pretty interesting things with personal branding so maybe there is some room for me, I don’t know. But you don’t do a little push you know. Okay so to answer your question, so if you’re in any business and service business where you’re providing a custom solution then there’s a lot of kind of posturing a question. Asking that needs to happen before that because like you’re not entitled to provide them with a solution until you know them, right? Like I don’t know Sam well enough to give him dieting advice at all. Well first of all I’m not in that business. But if I was a dietitian, I can’t just walk up to them and say you need more vitamin C Sam. I can’t do that. I’m not entitled to give you a solution so conversely than not entitled to a cost because there’s no solution. No solution, no cost. Like that. How can those two things go together? So it’s impossible, right? So there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen up front. First of all, you want to make sure that they’re going to be worth your time. Go through a specific disqualification process and make sure they understand that’s what it is. Because that differentiates you from the other sales and then who are. We’re looking for anybody with a strong pulse and there’s lots of those out there. You know, “oh look you’ve made eye contact with me so I’m going to talk to you” right? Now if they don’t have so many prospects that they’re doing some careful disqualification to make sure that they’re only serving people who they’re you need to be positioned to help then well don’t, maybe there’s something else wrong. Anyway, so there’s a disqualification process and then once you realize that they’re not to be glib about what they’re worth your time and your worth their time because it’s two-way, right? It’s going to be a good fit then you can go deep on what they actually need and what their values are. What’s important to them, what the future support, what future they’re trying to create in their business or in around their situation. And then you can discuss in the framework of that how your solution is congruent. Everything that their hopes and dreams are. You know, you said this. I know that this will be an important feature to you because of what you said here, you also mention that and this is important, you mentioned this obstacle and I think you can get around that by you know you’re kind of it’s you’re letting them set the tone and the script for what you’re saying again. You know the price ends up being a footnote to that because if some things sometimes completely congruent with your values and your aspirations like think about all the crazy hair brain things that will be bought over the years, like the dumb money we’ve spent just because it matched with who we feel we are. Just our identity as human being you know, “I am a harley-davidson motorcycle driver” or they call that whatever they call it in there. They’re trying this is what I am ergo thirty thousand dollars for a harley-davidson you know that’s crazy money you’re never gonna see and that’s not an investment. That’s out the window, that’s stupid money. You know, people will do that. People spend the money so long as it matches with who and how they see themselves and if they know you’re aware of their identity and you’re working to support their identity and their values and commitments well it’s just such an easy. It’s not selling at all, you’re just laying track. Is there any questions?
[ctt template=”11″ link=”X323x” via=”no” ]”If we do it right, it shouldn’t cost you anything.” -Jaeson Tanner [/ctt]
Megan: thank you very much Jaeson.
This has been the zero noise marketing podcast. If you feel like the zero noise marketing approach is right for your business, we love to hear from you. You can reach us at zeronoisemarketing.com or give us a call at (888)-997-5372. Have a great day.
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