Key to success – key to failure
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Bill Cosby said it. And I’m here to tell you that he hit the nail on the head. Let’s face it. No matter how hard you try, some folks just aren’t going to like you. And if they don’t like you, they probably aren’t going to do business with you – and there’s nothing you can do about it.
People like to do business with people they are comfortable with. With people they trust. With people they have some affinity with. You might be able to win over a few of those with whom you have nothing in common, but you will expend a lot of time and energy for little return.
So get over it. Forget about them and concentrate on the ones who are naturally drawn to you, the ones Master Marketer Dan Kennedy refers to as your “herd.” And if you work your “herd,” you can be more successful with less effort.
On the other hand, when we try to please everybody, we get caught in the trap of spending time and energy with prospects that we have virtually no chance of selling to.
When the time comes to purchase, prospects easily remember those they do and don’t want to do business with. If you are one of the “dos,” you have competition. Chances are they have met a few others who they’d be happy to deal with. Keeping your name in front of them until they are ready is one of the easiest and most overlooked strategies for ensuring that YOU are the one that gets picked.
Often, people will deal with the business or person that they have had the most recent contact with. One that they’d like to do business with. Make sure to position yourself as that person.
So what do you do to stay in their field of awareness? Simple things. Be sure to email them valuable information on a regular basis. If you are looking to sell them a high-ticket item, make personal contact via phone or hand-written note from time-to-time.
That brings up an interesting point. Much of our business is done through our websites. When we collect information, it is generally just the name and email address to get them on to an autoresponder (A/R) sequence (regular contact). Some of our A/R sequences stretch out for several months and we have plans to extend several of them for over a year. I’m sure that as that year approaches, we will extend them even further, or loop them to start again, adding new messages into the sequence as needed.
But collecting additional information, such as phone numbers and mailing addresses is a bit trickier. I know I am put off when a new contact asks for that type of information. Many marketers report getting bogus information when they push for too much, too soon.
We need to take a little time to build a relationship before we can ask for more information, and even then, extract it a little bit at a time. One of the best ways to get such information is by offering or selling a physical product.
I know the how strong the temptation is to offer only digital products in order to keep costs low, but having the physical info can be very important. Having the ability to send prospects and customers sales letters, gifts and greeting cards radically increases your options for relationship building.
One of the most inexpensive methods of getting shipping info is to offer a free CD with valuable content and ask the person to pay for the shipping and handling. It is easy to see how a modest shipping & handling charge could easily cover the cost of the CD, the shipping container, and shipping expense.
So basically, you can get the information for free. How much of a response you can expect is directly proportional to the value of what is being offered. Low value, low response – high value, high response. How do you know? Your prospects will tell you by how they respond.
By presenting offers of information and free product, as well as what you write into your A/R messages and email broadcasts, you begin to have a personality emerge – it could be yours or the business’s. But some of your prospects will respond to it – that is your “herd.” Take good care of them and they will take good care of you.
Take a little time out of your schedule today and think of ways you can use the above suggestions in YOUR business. Write them down. Then organize them into a plan. Then put the plan into action. If you do one thing every day to build your “herd,” at the end of the year, you will have dome some 250 little things. How do you think that will reflect on your bottom line?
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