Marketing - The Bold Approach Method

Congruent Life - Congruent Brand

All of us here at Bold Approach want to wish you an unbelievably successful and prosperous New Year. With that in mind, here is an idea you can implement over the holiday that will change your life and your business for good.

The best marketing or public relations you’ll ever do is to turn yourself into the person you want to be. You are a part of your brand and being congruent with your brand is imperative if you are to be successful in coherently expressing your message.

In other words, if you hate what you do, everyone will know it no matter how good an actor you are.

Companies regularly create meaningless vision statements and mission statements. They do them because it sounded like a good idea, but their vision and mission is the same as every single other competitor in their universe. There is no life or texture to those staid statements, they are just done because someone thought they should be. They are never brought to life.

What I’d like to suggest is that you create your own personal Master Life Vision using our Envisioneering™ method. And to help facilitate that, I’ve written a complete explanation of the program in a short 10 page document that you can use the first week of the month to create a life vision that will move you, your company, your relationships and your life in ways you’ve never imagined, as far and for as long as you desire. It is our gift to you.

My one request is that if you accept the offer and find it valuable that you NOT send it on to someone else, but please direct them to our Blog so that they can learn more about us and get the report for themselves. If for any reason you are uncomfortable with that, then please do forward it on when you receive it, our ultimate goal is to simply add value to as many lives as we can in the shortest period of time.

I’ll be retracting this offer shortly, so you’ll need to email me now if you want to get the Envisioneering™ exercise. If for any reason the email link doesn't work, it is dave@boldapproach.com. We value your privacy and unless you sign up for our newsletter, which comes out once a month, you won't receive anything other than the report from us unless you request it, that is our guarantee.

There is also a lesson here, if you can help just one of your customers become better, more successful, happier, wiser or better informed, you’ve deepened loyalty in ways your competitors never will.

Once you’ve tried the exercise, let us know what you think, we’d love to hear your feedback, you can email me anytime.

May all the best of 2004 visit you early and often!

Rudy Gets It

Rudy is a guy in Boise Idaho who owns Rudy’s Auto Repair and he understands what it takes to make a sale and to make marketing successful when you are a small business.

The alternator went out on my car so I called a couple of shops, Rudy was the second choice out of a random phone book choice. When he answered the phone, he didn’t speak English well, but he understood what I needed. He told me like the first place that he would get back to me shortly with a quote.

It took him all day. I had given up on a call back.

At 5:15pm, Rudy called back and said “Dave, I forgot about you, I went to the doctor and completely forgot to call you back, I’m calling now to say I’m sorry and your business is very important to me, do you still need help?” To which I said “yes” (because I was unhappy with the first quote which was prompt but alarmingly high). Rudy had all of the information at hand that I needed to make a good decision and had a price that was much more in line. Rudy then said that due to his forgetfulness he would be sure that my car was repaired before Christmas even if he had to work Christmas Eve to get it done because he felt bad and wanted a chance to earn my business.

I told him I wanted to think about it a little longer. So what did Rudy do?

He said “that is great and even if you bring it in on the 24th, I’ll still make sure it is ready for you.” As I was hanging up Rudy asked if he could ask a couple of other questions.

“Where did you hear about me?” Me: Yellow Pages. Rudy: “Which one, I advertise in a couple and I’m trying to decide where to spend my money next year, if I do both again or if I only do one.”

Excellent Question Rudy.

Then Rudy asks one last question: “Dave, what can I do or answer for you to get your business tonight, it is very important to me.”

Excellent close Rudy.

My answer? “You just did.”

Rudy did a lot of things right, he was honest, he didn’t try and make excuses for his inattentiveness, he was trying to track his advertising efforts so he could do more of what works or try something new if one book wasn’t performing as well. And, when I wanted more time to think, he got to the core of the issue, what did I need to know that I didn’t already that would allow me to make a decision right then. The truth was, nothing, I had all the information I needed, in reality, I was going to wait to talk to my wife and see which day worked best in our schedules for one of us to be at the house to have it towed in. Of course that didn’t really matter to Rudy, he was ready to help me anytime but getting a commitment on doing business with him tonight was better than waiting for me to change my mind and I was now obligated by my word to him.

How can you apply this to your business? Many ways, but I bet you don’t know the four most misunderstood, mismanaged, and unmeasured areas of your business today; Rudy the mechanic does. Just click here to find out what they are and how they apply to you.

Practice What You Preach

It is always nice to see experts practicing what they preach. In a very recent example, the author of one of my favorite books (Influence – Science and Practice, Dr. Robert Cialdini, Ph.D) sent me a Christmas card. Rather than just send a card with his name signed to it he sends a card that includes a small note that says that he and his company have made a donation to the American Cancer Society in my name to help in the fight against cancer. So what, you say? Well, one of Dr. Cialdini’s keys to influence is reciprocation. Give something to get something. Start the process by giving a prospect something of value to initiate the rule of reciprocation, they begin to feel obligated to give you something in return. In this case, give something on my behalf, something that will make me feel tremendous. A great example of an expert taking his own advice.

Did it work? Do I feel obligated to do something in return?

Yes.

And likely what I’ll do in return is buy some more of his books and tapes to give to clients so he’ll have more money to donate to the American Cancer Society and his coffers.

Nice job Dr. Cialdini!

So, what is in this for you? A lot. Ask yourself and your staff how you can practice the law of reciprocation? What can you give your prospects preemptively that will initiate the obligation reaction in all of us? Dr. Cialdini did something very smart, he didn’t give me something of his which is far too obvious, he made a donation on my behalf, who could be offended by that? And, I feel pretty good about it too. So, get creative, this doesn’t just work at the holidays, it works any old day.

Here is a great way for you and your team to learn more about applications of influence to sales.

Sell the way the buyer wants to be sold

Once again I chose not to buy a service from a senior salesperson (in this case the owner of the business, you can't get much more senior than that) who was too simple minded to listen to what I wanted. Rather she chose to focus on what she wanted to tell me about her. I honestly could have cared less. I needed to have about three criteria met in order to continue the conversation. Her exact response was "Why don't you call back when I can tell you everything I need to before we get to your questions."

That is the perfect example of what we call SALES INSANITY.

The simplest way to sell more products to more people faster is this: Let them tell you or teach you how they want to be sold. Then, feed them the information they need in the format they want it and let them sell themselves.

Doesn't sound too tough does it?

But it is.

And thousands of of perfectly good sales are sent to a premature death. And thousands of salespeople shake their heads and say "That was a bad prospect, they just don't get it."

If people tell you they want to understand how your fees work before they go any further, you get to ask them one or two more questions prempted with, "to answer that question, I need to ask you two questions (or whatever the right amount is) in order to give you the best information and then I'll give you a ball park estimate."

Then do it and answer.

If they say ok, thanks and want to go, you get to start a new line of questioning, like, was that beyond what you expected and if so, please share what you were hoping to know because there is significant information that can impact price, if we can spend a couple of more minutes together, we'll know if there is a way to make this work for you or not.

Not that tough a plan. Listen along the way, don't spend all their time talking about yourself and how thrilled people are to have the priveledge of working with you. Give them relavent examples of success that could apply to their situation, one or two bullet points and then get them talking again.

Then feed their information, pain and concerns back to them with your solutions wrapped around them and you have the basis for a great selling situation.

Or, you can stay focused on you and how important you are and how lucky they are to be talking to you . . . for the 2 seconds it takes for them to say "Bye" and hang up so they can call your competition.

Great Research For Determining Which Media Consumers Choose

The age old question that marketers and business owners ask is which media should I choose?

The answer is always it depends.

The media you should should not use is the deal of the day. Too many business owners fall into the trap of knowing that they need to do advertising and they buy what they think they can afford as presented by the media salesperson of the day as opposed to doing research ahead of time to know more about their clients or to do one media very well and own that audience. This link will show you some very interesting information on media as chosen by consumers vs. what media buyers thought they would choose. It really shows the vast disparity between what consumers do and what many marketers think they do.

The most important lesson for you is this: Choose the media that you can afford to do regularly and consistently, focus on a strong message with a call to action and do it with enough frequency over a long enough period of time for it to take hold in the consumers brain. Whether overt or implied, there has to be a call to action in every ad that you do. Powerful copy in any media is key to a successful campaign. For a great copywriting newsletter, sign up for Jack Forde's, he does a great job, the newletter is actually written for practicing copywriters, but his style as well as much of the information is invaluable. Here is more information on how copy should work to compel.