The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

This formula is like the ultimate governor, here's why...

This simple formula - Responsibility equals control and control equals responsibility - is so true but only to the degree that you are prepared to accept responsibility for any situation.

So, by accepting responsibility means you can exert control over the situations you find yourself in.

I first heard this formula from Mr Dan Kennedy the legendary Us copywriter who I had the pleasure of working with many moons ago on a USA based National Speakers Association tour and he used this example, to illustrate the point.

When he was a pro speaker on the tour – there was another speaker on the program (for the record this wasn’t me – but at times it could have been :)) who was not doing as well with sales at the back of the room as he should have been doing. And when Dan had a conversation with him, he had a litany of reasons, for why he wasn't doing so well.

“The environment's not good”, as they were in a great big sports arena and the audience was sitting on benches and,

“The sound is bad”.

“His time slot is bad.”

“The sales staff were doing a terrible job and they are erratic,” and so on.

In Dan Kennedys example Dan went on to explain that whilst the list was somewhat right it didn't take Dan himself who was also on the tour that long to figure out all of the same things.

By the time Dan had done his third presentation, he could see it was a terrible environment. And, the staff did suck. And especially for Dan because by the end of the day, they were exhausted, and they just wanted out of there and they couldn’t care less if anybody purchased anything.

So, Dan had the same list, but the key difference was Dan began to exert control over element after element, after element on the list.

For example, with the sales staff at the back of the room, Dan was the only speaker who paid them bonuses. Dan would arrive at the venue two hours before he spoke and went around to the manager first of all, and put him on a bonus plan based on how much was sold, this was discussed and based on the size of the audience. And then he went around with the manager to every one of the product sales areas, and set them up on their own little bonus plan.

“So if we sell this much, everybody gets $5 bills. If we sell this much, everybody gets $10 bills. If we sell this much, everybody gets $20 bills. And when all the dust settles before you all leave, I'll be back around, passing out the cash. Now, do you want to hear what you can do to sell more? Fine. Here's the script. Here's what you say when they come out, etc etc”…

And so Dan did something like this for every item One by one down the list, because he understood that ultimately he is responsible for trying to control the environment in which he worked.

Now I have found the same in my circles - just like if you ask a Real Estate sales person how is business, and they answer with how tough the banks are being with lending policies and nobody can get loans – so it is too difficult to sell.

Or if you ask an entertainer how are your bookings going in this strange COVID world and most of them will say – oh its terrible but what would you expect in this market nobody is having events.

I must admit though – just the other day I got back this answer which was “look I have had a few enquiries, but I priced myself too high and I didn’t get the gigs”.

As I am sure you can sense the answers of blaming banks or COVID or the market are not overly useful because you have no opportunity to exercise any control over them. But the answer like “I have had a few enquiries, but I priced myself too high and I didn’t get the gigs” means you at least have an opportunity now to go try and figure out what the hell it is that we can do differently that will affect the result.

This is a real thought pattern. And you pick it up, you can see who has it or not - by their language. And when you say to somebody, “how did your database mail campaign go?

“You know, it didn't do very well” verses “well, we screwed it up”.

The person who says we screwed it up, guess what? They are the true entrepreneurs, the successful entrepreneurs - the winner.

How are things going?

“Oh, business this month. Isn't very good, Now that is a loser talking because they are not taking any responsibility for it. Therefore they have no control over it. So they can't do anything about it. The people that say, well, we haven't done much business this month. Now they’re in the, fix it, improve it, figure it out mode. And so this formula  R=C & C=R is and can be so powerful.

People just don’t quite understand how important this is because this really does make a difference. Whether people take responsibility  or not depends if they are going to be in control of something and make a difference or just let things happen to them – the choice does exist.

And one of the things that I have observed amongst successful people – is how often they are willing to accept the fact and make the statement that I screwed this up. As opposed to so many other people who go the victim route, you know, this happened and that happened.

Remember there's no power in that. No power in the excuse mode, in the long lists, all the excuses, the blame others…

The only power is in a hundred percent responsibility. So again, burn this into your psyche – your daily life – R=C & C=R

Responsibility equals control and control equals responsibility.

Trust me life and business will just keep getting better.

Imagine having 171.9 million subscribers on YouTube with a total views of 22 billion. What sort of influence do you think you could have?

Enter Mr Beast the 23-year-old American Youtuber Jimmy Donaldson, an icon of total dedication to his art. Even though he has been credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centre on expensive stunts, this  is an age old technique and needs to be taken seriously in business marketing.

Ladies and Gentlemen - Harry Houdini and Dramatic Demonstration

Harry Houdini was all about dramatic demonstration. Houdini made his chops going to small town police stations where he could control the environment and the local media were thrilled to have something to cover. He would get the police to hand and ankle cuff him, tie him up and lock him in the cell. Naturally, he always managed to escape!

He then graduated to big city police departments and once he crossed that line, he became a worldwide celebrity. He thought about it formulaically. He figured out a place, an environment he could work in, be productive in, control, and then leverage up. And he did it all with dramatic demonstration. Same also, Jack Lalanne (swimming), David Copperfield (magic), Anthony Robbins (fire walk) and now Mr Beast with epic videos.

Dramatic demonstration is not just for celebrities

If your business has a component where you come face to face with a prospect, even online, structure in a dramatic demonstration and almost no selling will be required.

Over the years, carpet cleaners have done it sucking up a bowl of sand, car dealers do it by letting you test drive and smell the newness and during a sales webinar there will be evidence of people buying in droves.

So, the question is, do you have some great demonstrations? Is there a dramatic demonstration aspect to what you do? Since it's an ingredient that eventuates in a higher status, it suggests to us we need it.

I have helped countless entrepreneurs transform their businesses into empires and make millions of dollars faster than they ever thought possible.

My recent work with entrepreneurs and marketers has been more impactful than anything I've ever done. I've been guiding, pushing, prodding and nagging them to reinvent themselves to specifically focus on marketing to the wealthy and the top-end-of-town.

To get very, very rich, you need to see where the most money is and then take your business there to get it.

Transforming your business to market to, appeal to, and attract the affluent, will transform your income, security, and business life.

The vast majority of marketers waste valuable resources trying to get money from people who have little of it to part with. They think that customers for whom price is irrelevant are as rare as unicorns. They never set out deliberately to attract and do business with them. 

In truth, there is a giant, growing availability of such customers.

The explosive growth of the "well heeled" makes this specialised focus irresistible.

We are in the midst of a demographic revolution, with the baby boomer population peaking, their inheritances exploding, and the affluent population growing richer per capita, all converging to produce a new "spending class." 

Opportunities to trade up, to upgrade your clientele, to rearrange your business, your products, services, and prices, to attract the big spending consumers have never been better.

Get to understand them.

Appreciate how abundant and plentiful and obtainable they are (possibly contrary to your own limited perception) and learn to target and attract them.

If you want to succeed in marketing you have to constantly keep your eyes and ears open and never stop learning. 

In this episode I outline a recent lesson I learnt thanks to an outreach email I had received.

Here Is the Email

Hi Peter,I know you're busy so I'll cut right to it.

I'm reaching out to high-quality sites that feature great ways to get better leads. I came across your post: https://petergianoli.com/get-better-leads/ and was particularly interested in the free stock photo sites that you mentioned! I'd like to pitch my website for inclusion in the post - Pikwizard 

We have over 100,000 free images and videos on the site, with 20,000 of those exclusive to us. We are also adding new images and videos to our library daily and our ultimate goal is to get to more than 1 million images and videos.We've got A LOT of pictures of people, which tend to be rare on free stock photo sites. If you check out our site and search for "office" or "meeting", you will see the quality of images on the website. All of which are free to use without attribution.You can also take each image and edit it on our graphic design tool, Design Wizard!I realize it's a pain for you to make changes, so I'd like to attempt to return the favour whatever way I can (Write the blurb? Share on social?)If interested, you can check out the site here: www.pikwizard.com Thanks very much,David, 

Outreach Manager

For people like me in marketing it is a very unwelcome fact: the higher up the financial food chain you go in search of clientele, the less likely you are to obtain a customer, client, or patient through advertising, direct mail, or other proactive outreach. 

Oprah Winfrey does not look on Google for a chiropractor, nor will she be motivated by a late night TV ad. If she has back pain, she'll reach out to her network for a recommendation.

To woo affluent clients the best weaponry is by repeatedly offering "bragging rights experiences” to your customer and client base. The hospitality industry has been doing this for years.

Golf resorts have been dispatching massage therapists to deliver a quick rub to sore shoulders or achy backs between greens. Hilton's super upscale Conrad Hotel introduced the now popular "pillow menu" and individual concierges. Whilst St. Regis, introduced your personal butler.

You probably don't operate a hotel or a resort, but you can learn a lot from the most upscale of them. The best have committed clientele, unwilling to stay elsewhere unless absolutely unavoidable, and urging their peers and friends to follow their lead. 

Most businesses settle for whatever word-of-mouth advertising or specific referrals they get by accident, but in marketing to the wealthy, it is more vital to get them and each referral is so valuable, that a strategic investment of time and money is warranted. 

There are three main strategies: 

1. creating experiences customers are motivated, preferably compelled, to tell others about - that is, being the basis for storytelling 
2. recognizing and rewarding those who refer 
3. tracking, measuring, and managing referrals

Steps 2 and 3 aren’t very useful without step 1, which is pretty obvious. But by taking the time to understand the psychological and emotional drivers of your wealthy customers’ buying behaviour and enthusiasm for what they buy and whom they buy from to crafting the most appropriate sales language and choreographing your sales process – all combine the Total Experience as felt by the customer.

That total experience determines a customer’s willingness to refer when asked as well as the likelihood of them spontaneously recommending you to others of their own initiative.

An important thing to understand is that satisfaction is not sufficient. 

For example, there are many businesses I buy things from and do business with which I am sufficiently satisfied to continue as a customer. my dry cleaners, the local car wash, and my Accountant. But I have zero motivation to tell others about these businesses, let alone passionately urge others to use them. 

On the other hand, I have actively referred people to my dentist; my graphic designer Troy, my favourite restaurant, Brika.

Why do I champion these businesses but not the others? 

Because they do more than satisfy. They meet a higher standard. The secret to referral stimulus is the difference between satisfaction and enthusiasm, produced either by merely expectations or by exceeding them. 

Getting recommendations and referrals from your clients is about turning them into storytellers about their experiences with you. Nobody gathers a crowd around at a cocktail party to tell them, "My dry cleaner gets my clothes clean, folds them, and puts them on hangers." It's just not much of a story. 

Here's why this is particularly important in working with affluent clientele: Surveys show that the affluent are 30% less likely than the general public to return or exchange unsatisfactory merchandise, seek out management to lodge complaints, or make their disappointments known. Their time is too valuable to spend on such activities. They simply go elsewhere. If the experience you are delivering is unsatisfactory or merely ordinary, you can't rely on your wealthy customers to do your work for you and alert you to your mediocrity. You have to determine it, based on poor referral statistics or other statistical measurements and observation. Affluent consumers are, however, more demanding, even though they may keep their disappointments to themselves and go searching elsewhere for better experiences.

Peer Recommendations Rule

Abundant survey and statistical data supports the premise that, the more affluent the consumer, the more likely they are to rely, in whole or part, on word-of-mouth information and recommendations from peers in selecting stores, restaurants, products, services, and professional providers. If their interest is captured by advertising or direct solicitation, the wealthy consumer is at least four times (400%) more likely to ask their network about the company than is a consumer of average means. 

With the affluent, word of mouth is far more critical. And far more valuable. And must be earned through complex creation and delivery of exceptional experiences that serve as basis for positive, interesting storytelling. 

If you have all of this in place, you will get referrals. When you do, Strategy 2 (recognition and reward) should occur. 

I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard the same unhappy story – “I sent my friend/ client/ neighbour to x and never got so much as a thank-you note." Each person telling me that story is expressing deep resentment of not being shown deserved respect and appreciation, and reinforcing their determination never to recommend that business to anyone else. I don't think most businesspeople understand just how much it irritates people who deserve appreciation but not get it. 

This is multiplied with the affluent, who feel privileged to begin with and take the absence of appropriate response as a slap in the face. When they do you a favour, such as referring a customer, they are waiting for an appropriate acknowledgment. 

The good news is that recognition and rewards motivate more of the same behaviour. I guess we can all be Pavlov's dogs. 

The best way to turn a first-time or occasional referrer into a frequent one is: recognition. And, the more affluent the customer, the more personal the recognition should be. They do not need a gift card that you buy a dozen at a time to reward referring customers. A personal, preferably handwritten thank-you note will do. 

But, ideally, its best to find and obtain something of specific relevance to the individual or their business, family, pets, or personal interests. And you are developing even more “bragging rights experiences”.

Finally, Strategy 3 is holding yourself, your staff, and even your clients accountable for referral activity. This means measuring effectiveness every way you can, beginning with overall stats. 

I often ask a professional service provider like a dentist or chiropractor to tell me how many referrals they’ve received per active patient this year to date vs. last year … and guess what – most of them have no idea. 

You can't manage what you don't measure. Depending on the nature of your business, you may be able to measure one staff person's efficacy at securing referrals against another’s. You can certainly track referral numbers, frequency, and consistency for each customer, client, or patient. The courageous marketer will single out the clients referring below par and engage them in frank discussion about it. 

The point is that referral productivity is something to be proactively managed, not passively accepted, whatever it is.

A cloth bag is not worth $4,000 without a Gucci logo, or some other designer's logo.

You may feel that it is not worth $4,000.00 with the logo either. But that reveals you remain hung up on what a product is, instead of what it symbolises and represents, what status it confers on its owner, what emotional reactions it evokes, how it feels to purchase and own it, how others important to its owner feel about it. 

Few things are intrinsically worth their price. 

Diamonds are, in essence, polished dirt. 

We have all accepted that a diamond engagement ring should be priced at least equal to two months' salary.

Finding rocks is easy. Selling rocks, tough. In the last 50 years, only two markets have opened up for stones. You wear them on your fingers when in love; you put them over the head of a loved one after death.

Both excellent examples that evoke reactions and eliminate price resistance.

What De Beers did for diamonds, anyone can do for anything.

There are wines that sell for hundreds of dollars per bottle.

But there is BrewDog beer that sells for $765 US per bottle. How can beer be worth such a price? 

You may answer: It can't. Or answer: Why not? 

To make a giant income marketing to the affluent, you must erase your own deeply ingrained insistence at connecting price to worth and worth to function.

Marketing to values is more powerful than the marketing of products.

As a marketer, it's a choice between selling things, or selling aspirations.

Selling things often requires brute force, typically against resistance. Whilst selling aspirations and emotional fulfillments takes finesse, typically with little resistance. 

Which is the more pleasurable and profitable?

An accomplished jazz musician has 3 key rules:

1. Find your own voice
2. Never play the same way twice
3. Know the basics inside and out

Sound advice I know. In fact these three rules even make more sense in business and marketing.

This podcast outlines the concept of Improvisation in detail.

Self-employment is one of the most reliable paths to first-generation wealth.

Research shows self-employed make up slightly more than 20% of the Australian population, yet account for about 70% of the wealth.

The personality of these affluent business owners and entrepreneurs is sharply drawn, so they can be marketed a wide variety of goods and services.

Won't Take No for an Answer

First and foremost, they view themselves as fiercely independent.

They exit, stage left, upon hearing "rules language" in marketing. The fastest way to repel this cohort is to tell them "no, you/we can't do that," and when asked why not, say, "policy."

There is a lot of value in being able to say yes to the wealthy.

If They Admire You, They'll Reward You with Their Business

The self-made wealthy are great admirers of the qualities that got them where they are.

Every one of them is doing business with somebody who reminds them of themselves when they were starting out. They reward ingenuity, drive, persistence, and sales acumen. They have a reverence for these virtues.

On the flip side, they detest sloth, weakness and wimpiness.

Generally Searching for Value as They Define It!

They know the value of money, and tend to pride themselves on being smart, getting good deals and bargains, negotiating successfully, even being seen as frugal.

While they all have one or two things they will spend wildly on, most abhor waste and have an emotional need to buy smart. 

Most affluent entrepreneurs harbor a nagging fear of losing it all or having it all taken away from them and finishing up broke. 

It's important to know that the price these people will pay for something has to do with how right and justified they feel about it. Not about intrinsic value or their ability to pay.

Most of us can't understand why seemingly good businesses go under. 

They employ smart, dedicated people and they have a strong track record in the industry. So, what goes wrong?

Industry norms are often to blame.

Industry norms are often based on a faulty premise, not facts.

It is easier to accept unproven strategies because they seem to make sense. 

When you first get into a business it is normal to model it on what others are doing. Like transferring to a new high school. You spend your first few weeks looking around to see how things are done. What do the cool kids do? How do I conform in order to be accepted? 

It is no different in business

The majority is always wrong.

In business, conforming to industry norm’s guarantees – average results.

Industry norms by their very nature are based on the average, the median, what everybody else is doing. But that doesn't mean they are right or that those results are good enough for what you can achieve with your business.

Sometimes it is better to start a new business category, where norms don't exist.

Make your own mark and stamp out your territory in business.

Once looked upon as a maverick, you start to develop a position of leadership with money and success mounting. You become an overnight sensation or just plain lucky- no one really knows how it happened but keep amplifying your uniqueness and the customers will flock to you because they appreciate differences from what's common today.

Entrepreneurs who make a lot of money defy norms whilst those who are content with average money conform to them. 

The choice is yours.

Are you an awesome entrepreneur, consultant, accountant, or career coach?

Whatever your business, how do you expect people to find out about you and your talent? Promoting your work opens up unlimited opportunities because your valuable product or service sees the light of day.

Being modest, introverted or humble and not self-promoting, is holding you back.

Your less competent competitor is about to get the business.

True, we are all afraid of sales. The perception. The idea of being pushy.

Many people equate sales with making people buy things they don’t want, don’t need, and can’t afford. Daniel Pink, in his bestseller, "To Sell Is Human" states that 1 in 9 roles has a formal sales title. But 9 out of 9 roles involve selling to other people. 

Teachers sell to kids. Doctors sell to patients. Authors sell to readers. If your work involves other humans, you are selling.

Finding ways to help others.

Want clients? Start talking to your network.

Find out how they are doing, how business is going, back and forth with ideas without any expectation of anything materialising. None of this costs anything but time.

But it is not a cost, it's an investment that can pay your business in spades, short term and long.

Some home truths

Truth #1: If you operate on the assumption that people will benefit from using your products and services, then sales is entirely about helping others. 

Truth #2: How you sell is with the value you create for the customer. 

Truth #3: Everyone is selling in some capacity — even if they don’t think they are — so we might as well get good at it.

Don’t run from sales. Embrace sales as the engine powering all business.