Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

My observation during the past 40+ years as an ad writer has been that television and radio professionals spend so much time trying to sell television and radio ads, they have no time to learn how to make those ads work.

When you know how to make ads work, and can prove it, television and radio are incredibly easy to sell.

Instead of asking a salesperson to help you with your ads, let me tell you everything you need to know.

“Q” represents your unspoken questions.

“A”  represents my answers to those questions.

Q: Who should I be targeting?

A: I’ve never seen a business fail because they were reaching the wrong people. But I have seen lots of businesses fail because they were saying the wrong things in their ads.

Q: Are you saying you don’t believe in targeting?

A: The most effective way to target is to write ad copy that speaks directly to the felt needs of your customer. Targeting isn’t accomplished by reaching the right address, but by demonstrating to people that you feel the way they feel, and that you believe the things they believe.

Q: Are you saying I can write ads that target specific types of people in mass media?

A: Yes, but you get a lot more than that. Mass media reaches not only your target; it reaches all the influencers of your target. Is there anyone that you don’t want to know you, like you, and say good things about you? Every person is an influencer, and decisions are never made in a vacuum.

Q: If targeting the right person is no longer my primary objective, what is?

A: You want to become the solution provider that people think of first and feel the best about. When you say the right things to the largest number of people you can afford to reach with sufficient repetition, you become a household word.

Q: Which media will work best for my business?

A: The media doesn’t make your ad work. Your ad makes the media work. The media is just a vehicle that delivers your message, your ad. The wrong message will fail in every media, and the right message will work in every media. It is the message, not the media, that either works or does not.

Q: Is there a proven way to create the right message?

A: Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.

Q: Can you give me some specific tips?

A: Sure. Here are 4 of them.

1. Talk to the customer about what the customer already cares about. Most ads answer questions that no one was asking. This is why people hate most advertising.
2. Always say something new, surprising, and different. Never say what people expect you to say. Predictability is what makes ads sound like ads.
3. Don’t just describe the process of what you do and how you do it. “We use only the freshest ingredients, and everything is made from scratch.” The process is informational. The outcome is motivational. Describe the outcome. “Food so good your head will explode.”
4. Bad ads are about you and your company. Good ads are about your customer and their happiness. Ads filled with “me, my, we,” and “our,” are about you and your company. Ads filled with the words “you” and “your” are about the customer and the happiness you want to bring them.

Q: Should every ad have a call to action?

A: No, because if they did, your ads would be predictable.

Q: Are you saying that NO ad should have a call to action?

A: I’m saying that 60 percent of your ads should be written to cause people to feel like they know you, like you, and trust you. The other 40 percent of your ads should make specific offers at specific times to trigger sales activation.

Q: Can you tell me how to write sales activation ads?

A: Yes, the keys to short-term sales activation are

1. RELEVANCE: they have to want what you are selling.
2. CREDIBILITY: they have to trust you and believe you.
3. AUTHENTIC URGENCY: The time window must be limited, or the available number must be limited. Authentic urgency is the strongest possible call to action.

Q: Since you obviously know what you’re doing, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to just let you write all my ads?

A: Yes, and we would be happy to do it.

Roy H. Williams

PS – If you count the questions I have answered, you will find there are only eleven. I decided to keep the 12th answer to myself.

Renita Wolf is an expert on Exit Strategies. Whether you hope to execute “the transaction of a lifetime” in one year, a decade, or longer, there are steps you should take now to maximize the value of your company when the time arrives to sell. Renita describes how to identify potential buyers for your business, significant tax considerations you should know about, and how to recognize when the time is right to move on to the next stage of your life. “Don’t just exit — ex-cel!” MondayMorningRadio.com

Billy Sunday was born in 1862, the second year of America’s Civil War. He died in 1935, during the Great Depression. Billy was a wildly flamboyant and controversial preacher, but he made an interesting observation:

“More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.”

We’ll talk more about purpose in just a minute, but first we need to talk about possibilities.

I will say it plainly:

1. What you see in the mirror isn’t you.
2. Look inside yourself and take inventory of what you find there.
3. Realize that this is all you have to work with.
4. Make the best of it.

I will say it as Confucius might have said it:

1. Gilded paper and bright ribbons adorn an empty vessel while gold hides in a rough wooden box.
2. You will not find what is not there. But what lies inside you is easy to see.
3. Everything within you is all that you have.
4. Therefore, it must be enough.

I will say it like an old warrior:

1. Fancy uniforms don’t win battles.
2. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, it’s the size of fight in the dog.
3. If you don’t have it in you, it doesn’t exist.
4. Learn to use what you’ve got.

This is how Yoda would have said it:

1. Be invisible, you will.
2. Inside yourself, you must look.
3. Hmm. Flaws, you shall find.
4. Magic, these are.

I will say it as someone who loves you:

1. You are the perfect you.
2. No one else can be you as well as you can.
3. You will be you for the rest of your life.
4. It is time to discover what you can do.

And now it is time to talk about purpose again.

A sad voice inside you whispers: “Everyone talks about purpose, but no one can tell me what it is, or where to find it.”

Quit listening to that whiner. Purpose is given to you by what you care about. Is there anything you care about?

Of course there is.

Are you ready for the real mind-blower?

Purpose is given to you by everything you care about. You are overflowing with purpose. The problem is that you care about so many things that you are having a hard time choosing a purpose.

Here is the good and happy news: You can have more than one purpose!

In fact, you already do; and you have what it takes to make a difference.

How many differences do you want to make?

Pick two or three of them to get started. You can add other ones later, when you have taken these first ones as far as you choose to go. Sooner or later, you’ll choose a few that will sink deep roots in you.

Every oak tree begins as an acorn.

Now go. Get started.

Roy H. Williams

PS – “It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.” – Henry van Dyke

David Sauers used to be a commercial banker, but today he runs a service business with 50 branches nationwide. It’s not the type of business that most people dream about owning. The nature of his business – and the powerful lessons you can learn from his success – will be revealed in this week’s story. But here’s an interesting twist: In a private note to Roy, roving reporter Rotbart wrote, “I love unusual guests and David Sauers definitely fits the bill.” The roving reporter is at it again! MondayMorningRadio.com

One hundred and two years ago, Benito organized a March on Rome with the intention of forcing the king of Italy to yield the government to him. It worked, and Benito was appointed prime minister.

Thirty-two-year-old Antonio had a problem with that, and spoke out against Benito.

Benito got tired of Antonio’s criticism and had him thrown into prison, where he died 11 years later.

But while he was still with us, he wrote 30 notebooks containing more than 3,000 pages of history and analysis. The prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci are considered by historians to be highly original contributions to 20th-century political theory.

Wizard Academy vice-chancellor Dave Young brought Antonio to my attention last week when he forwarded to me a glistening quote written by this shackled young writer:

“The old world is dying. And the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

Those words of Antonio Gramsci dance and sting like honeybees, don’t they?

In return for his gift of Antonio Gramsci, I sent Dave a couple of the enthusiastic ramblings of American scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“I will defend AD and BC, year of the Lord, AD, ‘Ano Domini,’ and BC, ‘Before Christ.’ I’ll defend the use of those because a lot of hard work went into creating that calendar – the Gregorian calendar – which is now used worldwide. It’s based on a Christian construct, but it had a lot of very interesting science that went in behind it.

I’m not just going to ‘swap out’ the words to dereligify it. I don’t mind leaving credit where it’s due.

I don’t know any atheist that still uses AD and BC. They use ‘Common Era,’ CE, and BCE, ‘Before Common Era.’

But who are they fooling? It’s the same numbers of years. They’re just trying to ‘paint over’ a religious reference.

I don’t have that much objection to the religious participation in civilization.”

But this next comment of Neil deGrasse Tyson serves as a sort of counterbalance to that first one:

“Ben Franklin was the world’s most famous scientist in his day. But he’s not remembered in America as that; he’s remembered as a founding father.

He invented the lightning rod.

What’s the tallest structure back then? The steeple makes the church the tallest structure in any city. What is the most susceptible to a lightning strike? The tallest structure. So lightning was taking out churches left and right, and if you were the other church that wasn’t taken out, you had good argument for saying the people in the church that burned down were worshiping in the wrong way.

Ben Franklin then invents the lightning rod, which does two things: It dissipates charges that build up under your structure that would otherwise be part of the lightning strike, and it sends them back into the air without the benefit of lightning. So that makes you less susceptible to begin with. And if the lightning strikes it, then it directs all of the charge through the metal and not through your house.

So Ben Franklin does this, and churches are no longer destroyed by lightning, even if they’re hit, and he’s accused of heresy for thwarting the will of God.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson is famous for his atheism but he vigorously defends the use of the Christian system of dating the history of the world in years that count backward and forward from the day that Jesus was born.

Benjamin Franklin doubted the divinity of Jesus, but he invented the lightning rod to make sure that churches did not burn down. And they accused him of heresy for it.*

As I consider articulate Antonio and bumbling Benito of Italy, I recall the words of a delightful American writer who was born in the same year Antonio was born. When she was accused of being too critical, the delightful Dorothy Parker responded:

“How could I possibly overthrow the government when I can’t even keep my dog down?”

Me neither, Dorothy. Me neither.

Anyway, those were some of the things I was contemplating last week. I hope you found them to be as interesting as I did.

Ciao for Niao,

Roy H. Williams

*Ben Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod was blamed by church leaders for the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake off the coast of Colonial Massachusetts — as his “heretical rods” interfered with the “artillery of Heaven & deprived God of using lightning as tokens of His displeasure.”

How does a self-published children’s book author garner global media coverage, reach more than 2 million potential customers in a single day, and zoom upwards more than 1 million spots to the top of the Amazon charts? (1.) You have to write a truly incredible book. (2.) It helps to be married to Dean Rotbart and have Maxwell Rotbart for a son.

You may not have those second advantages, but that’s okay, because it’s the first one that really matters. The lessons to be gleaned from Talya Rotbart’s success can be applied by every business owner who would like to attain blockbuster visibility without spending a dime on consultants, social media ads, or news releases. Listen, learn, and earn, at MondayMorningRadio.com

As you round the corner and see your destination, the inconveniences of travel evaporate from your mind.Poof. You are here now, and everything is new again.Your children will carry the joy of this place wherever they go. The adventures we have for them are unimaginable.Leave them with us. We promise they won’t miss you.Everything you see here is real. This is not a Hollywood facade.Now you understand why we don’t have to advertise.You knew you were in love before you got here. Your partner knew it, too. But neither of you are prepared for the wonder of how deeply in love you really are.Remember. We promise the kids won’t miss you.

It takes only about 20 seconds to read those 118 words, but they leave a hovering question mark that vibrates with curiosity. Where is this place? What is “Everything I see here…”? What caused me to experience “the wonder of how deeply in love I really am”?

I didn’t have to provide those details, because I knew you would.

“Begin with a happy outcome” is one of the secrets of the world’s best ad writers. You must illuminate the imagination of the customer and cause them to supply the details that you have no way of knowing. The customer is the star of a movie you are directing in their mind. Cause them to see themselves smiling joyfully. The hovering question mark that vibrates in their mind is called customer engagement. Lights. Camera. Action.

Great companies puts their energies into the creation of a process that will ensure the happiness of their customer.

Then they insist that their ad writers describe every detail of that process until there is nothing left to surprise and delight you. Until the customer desires the outcome, they have no interest in the process. If you want them to watch your movie, make sure it begins with a happy ending.

Several things were ungrammatical in my 118-word call-to-action,

one of which was a shift from past-tense to present-tense within a sequence of connected sentences. “You knew you were in love before you got here. Your partner knew it, too.” The past-tense verbs within those two sentences take you into a possible future and cause you to look back at an experience you have not yet had. Then I shifted into present-tense verbs. “But neither of you are prepared for the wonder of how deeply in love you really are.” Your mind is now imagining the experiences you will share at this place you have never been, and don’t know how to get to. I never said it was the most romantic spot on earth. You did.

Roy H. Williams

Duane Scott Cerny is an expert on dead people. (Or, more precisely, he is an expert at selling their possessions when they’re gone.) A best-selling author, music producer, lyricist, and newspaper columnist, Duane runs Chicago’s largest antiques mall and fully understands the formula for business success. Thanks to his ability to listen closely to his customers and adapt to ever-changing tastes, Duane is celebrating his mall’s 34th anniversary this year. “Not only is Duane business savvy,” says roving reporter Rotbart, “he is a born entertainer and storyteller. I had a marvelous time doing this interview.” The time is now. The place is MondayMorningRadio.com.

Calvin is looking up into a star-filled sky when he says to his tiger friend Hobbes,

“If people looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.”

My friends are Calvin. I am Hobbes.

Last week Hobbes was complaining to Jeffrey Eisenberg about his frustration with a company that had “upgraded” its website, making it impossible for Hobbes to buy what they were trying to sell. Jeffrey responded like Calvin,

“The only things that matter online are Motivation, Momentum, and Friction. It sounds like this company has introduced so much Friction into the buying process that your decision to purchase has lost its Momentum and your Motivation is about to disappear. Am I right?”

Jeffrey’s summary was so piercingly accurate that all I could do was vibrate my head up and down in a sort of big-eyed, high-frequency nod.

Motivation, Momentum, and Friction are the only three dials that matter on the e-commerce machine.

1. Turn the knobs of the first two dials all the way to the right.
2. Turn the knob of the third dial all the way to the left.
3. Stand under the spout where the money gushes out.
4. Enjoy being rich.

The next day I got a text from Tim Storm.

” I think this needs to be understood: We are literally time travelers.”

A few moments later, a second text appeared.

“I don’t use drugs, but that felt profound to realize.”

Tim is right, of course. Physically, we are 3-dimensional creatures traveling through a 4th dimension called time.

Friends say insightful things if you’re listening.

Perhaps the most impactful thing a friend ever shared with me happened 48 years ago. He said,

“Depression is unfocused despair. You can rise above it by trying to help someone else. When you see a person who is sad or worried or afraid, take a few minutes to encourage them. Forget about your own problems and focus on theirs. Find a person who needs help and help them! If they’re trying to carry something heavy, help them carry it. If they need someone to help them scrape bubblegum off the bottoms of school desks, help them do it. When you make a series of little differences, you win a series of little victories. Keep this up and the cloud over your head will fade away and the sun will shine again. This has always worked for me. Perhaps it will work for you, too.”

He was right. It has always worked for me.

Perhaps it will work for you, too.

His name was David. You would have liked him.

Roy H. Williams

Rock-hard sandstone used to be just plain old sand, the kind you see at the beach.

If you lie down on beach sand, you will leave your imprint on it.

But if you lie down on sandstone, it will leave its imprint on you.

Every person who starts a business hopes to leave their mark in the sand. If that businessperson is disciplined, committed, and consistent, their mark will become sandstone and leave its mark on future employees.

Did it ever occur to you that the processes and procedures, policies and warranties of a company are a direct reflection of the preferences and beliefs of the CEO?

Company culture, commitment, and camaraderie – or any lack thereof – are merely a reflection of the shape of that CEO.

Look closely at how a company’s employees are recruited, evaluated, motivated and compensated, and you will see the precise size and shape of that company’s CEO.

Listen to how a company’s employees talk about their job, their boss, their products, and their hopes for the future, and you will hear an audible echo of the soul of the CEO.

Companies don’t spring into existence on their own. They are born in the imagination of an entrepreneur when he or she lies down in the sand, then brought into reality through the magic of time, energy, and money. And if that company endures, every future customer will experience the values and beliefs and priorities of its long-ago CEO every time they interact with the company that CEO left behind.

You realize that I’m talking about more than just business owners and their businesses, don’t you?

I’m talking about grandparents and parents and their children and their children’s children and schools and religions and colleges and cultures and prisons and wars and the movies we make and the books we read and the hobbies to which we devote our time and money.

I’m talking our collective journey across the sands of time.

When you lie down on sand, you leave your imprint on it.

When you lie down on sandstone, it leaves it imprint on you.

Roy H. Williams

Peter Spitz is an MIT-trained chemical engineer and a renowned expert in petrochemicals. He holds seven patents and started a company that grew to $20 million in annual sales before being acquired by IBM. Peter’s most recent book is about the history of inventions.

When we turn on a television, use a computer, heat dinner in a microwave, open a refrigerator, drive a car, or take an antibiotic, we are using technologies that took root in the Industrial Revolution of England 300 years ago. Peter wasn’t around back then, but with a razor-sharp mind at 98 years of age, he has far-reaching insights on how to create successful inventions and how each of them will impact our modern world.

Sit back, turn up the volume and listen as deputy rover Maxwell Rotbart pulls a mesmerizing tale from the magical mind of Peter Spitz. Where else but MondayMorningRadio.com?

I don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself, and maybe it’s a generational thing, but America, to my way of thinking, is less of a place and more of a belief system; a way of looking at the world and the people in it.

Americans believe in opportunity and equality.

Americans believe, “Treat others as you would like others to treat you.”

Americans believe in defending the weak from the strong who would abuse them.

Americans believe in lifting people up, dusting them off, giving them a big smile and telling them to try again.

Americans don’t scare easily, and we don’t leave anyone behind.

Shortly after the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, men and women from every corner of the world began meeting here, mingling here, and producing mixed-race children here.

We’ve been doing it for 400 years.

This place has gathered people from every nation that has ever flown a flag. Some of these people came voluntarily. Others were brought here against their will. But none of that matters because children do not get to choose their parents.

Americans are not purebred showdogs. We are mixed-breed puppies born in a howling wilderness.

Alexander Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, but he came to this country and became one of its Founding Fathers. We have printed that man’s face on 27 billion ten-dollar bills and the Broadway play about his life was a stunning success.

That play, by the way, was written by an American whose DNA is Puerto Rican, Mexican, English, and African. His parents named him “Lin-Manuel” after a poem about the Vietnam War.

Is America portable? I believe it is. America is kindness and generosity.

If you believe in opportunity and equality, defending the weak, lifting people up, dusting them off, smiling and telling them to try again, you are an American.

If you don’t scare easily and don’t leave anyone behind, you are an American.

If you believe in love with its sleeves rolled up, you are an American.

Take America with you wherever you go.

Be an American today, okay?

Roy H. Williams

PS – Do you live outside the U.S.? Not one of the virtues I mentioned today is exclusive to America. Most people-groups believe in exactly these same things. I wrote directly to the people of America today – calling them out by name – because we have been fighting about some really stupid things for a long time.

The virtues I wrote about today live in the hearts of the people of your nation, too, and of every other nation on earth. Wouldn’t it be great if we focused on our similarities instead of our differences?

*At any given time, there are about 2.5 billion ten-dollar-bills in circulation, but the average ten-dollar-bill is replaced by the Treasury Department every 5.3 years. We have been using Hamilton’s portrait on the ten since 1928 (96 years).

96 years/5.3 years = 18

18 x 2.5 billion = 27 billion portraits of good brother Alexander

How would Walt Disney run your company? Even though he died in 1966, his company and his disciples continue to spread his beliefs. Among these disciples is Brian Collins, a former Disney Imagineer who helped create the magic for many of the world’s most beloved theme parks and is today teaching brainstorming and innovation and the cross-pollinization of technology to large and small companies around the world. Roving reporter Rotbart tells us that Brian Collins is a living example Walt Disney’s statement, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Put on your Mouse Ears and get ready for a Disney adventure at MondayMorningRadio.com!

PART THREE of SEVEN SECRETS OF SALES ACTIVATIONThe objective of a Customer Bonding campaign is to make your name the one that people think of first and feel the best about.

When you have not successfully bonded with your customer, any attempt at sales activation is simply an experiment in direct marketing. This can certainly work for awhile if you’re good at it, but it will work less and less well the longer you keep doing it.

The world of marketing is full of people who will tell you exciting success stories about high-impact offers that made them a lot of money quickly. But have you ever noticed that all of those stories are told using past-tense verbs?

They are telling you about something that happened, but is no longer happening now.

Give that some thought.

“Have you ever done anything that worked really well?” is a question I have asked a couple of thousand business owners over the past forty years.

“Oh, yes!” they answer.

“Tell me about it!” I say with bright eyes.

After they explain to me what they did and how awesome it was, I say, “Wow, that sounds great! Are you still doing it?”

When they say “No,” (which they always do,) I wear the expression of a puzzled puppy and ask, “Why not?”

Yes, I am a tiny bit evil. But the simple truth is that I want them to realize their mistake, own it, regret it, and decide – on their own – never to do ask me to temporarily fluff up their sales numbers by resorting to the meth-laced crack cocaine of lies, gimmicks, artificial urgency, ambiguous offers, or misleading messages.

It’s just not the way to build a company.

Few business owners have the patience to win the hearts of the public.

But if you have what it takes to become the company that people think of first and feel the best about when they need what you sell, a new day will dawn for you and your business.

In golden glow of that goodwill, up to 40 percent of the ads in your Customer Bonding campaign can include happy, healthy, sustainable Sales Activation.

These are the ways to do it:

Remarkable Item, Remarkable Story.

A 30-year client, Kesslers Diamonds, recently conducted a contest among their designers with the winning designer honored by name in a radio ad.

RICK: I’m really looking forward to this.

SARAH: Me, too.

RICK: She absolutely nailed it.

MONICA: Are you talking about Jenni Sambolin?

SARAH: Yeah, Jenni and her pendant, “The Music in a Mother’s Heart.”

JENNI: [SFX Door Opening] Hi Rick. Hi Sarah. Hi Monica.

MONICA: Hi Jenni!

SARAH: Hi Jenni!

RICK: Jenni, we’re going to produce your pendant design as a limited-edition collector’s item and put a few of them in all 8 Kesslers stores.

MONICA: Congratulations, Jenni!

JENNI: Wow! This is HUGE!

SARAH: Jenni, we expect “The Music in a Mother’s Heart”to sell out very quickly.

RICK: We’ll also make a few available online.

JENNI: I designed that pendant from the memory of how my Mother made me feel when we would sing together.

MONICA: How often did that happen?

JENNI: Constantly. We would sing along with whatever was playing on the radio, or sometimes we would watch a musical on TV and sing along with that.

SARAH: At just 124 dollars, “The Music in a Mother’s Heart” is going to sell out lightning fast.

RICK:  I’m buying one.

SARAH: I’m buying one.

MONICA: I bought the prototype the moment I saw it.

RICK: For the location of the Kesslers nearest you, visit KesslersDiamonds.com

Catch the Wave of a Coming Trend.

In the early 1990’s Woody Justice was watching a hot new show called Melrose Place when he noticed an actress wearing a drop-pendant necklace. A couple of days later, he saw Katie Couric wearing a similar drop-pendant on the TODAY show. So he called a supplier, described the necklace, and had several hundred of them made. We decided to call it the Melrose necklace.

I wrote a 60-second radio ad and Woody sold a ton of them for $99 each. These were well made, fine quality products, and every customer who bought one was happy-happy-happy.

The supplier who made them for Woody began telling the story of our success to all the other jewelers on his account list, and within a few months every department store in America was selling plastic or glass “costume jewelry” versions of that necklace for $79, then $59, then $39, $29, $19, and finally, $9.95. Most of these retailers described it as a “Y” necklace, because a capital Y describes the basic shape of a drop pendant.

When other retailers started selling them, Woody moved on to something else that was new, exciting, and different.

Woody Justice had a special kind of intuition that allowed him to catch that first, early wave of every new trend and ride it all the way to the beach where he would sit in the shade and drink Pina Coladas while all the copycat weasels raced each other to the bottom of the sea.

If you have the ability to spot “the next big thing,” use it, use it, use it.

Timely Offer.

Make an enticing offer during that predictable window of time when people start thinking about purchasing a particular seasonal product or service. The key is to begin airing your mass media ads a few weeks BEFORE the season begins. If you wait for the starter’s pistol, you’re going to get lost in the crowd. Have the courage to start early.

Most advertisers just buy some keywords and then wait for customers start typing those keywords into Google. They do this because they assume online ads are more effective simply because they are more easily measured.

When was the last time you saw a NIKE ad on TV? NIKE abandoned television a few years ago to boost their online budget and sell direct to the public. NIKE now recognizes that as their “25-billion dollar mistake.” 

I’m not saying you don’t need an online budget. I’m just saying that Google is never going to make you a household word. It’s never going to make your company the one that people think of first, and feel the best about.  

Bundling.

Bundle a group of related purchases together to deliver everything the customer will need, then sell the bundle at an attractive price. Offering this convenience to your customer saves them time and money.

Your profit margin will decrease a little due to the discount, but your gross profit will jump due to the higher average sale. It makes you more money and it makes your customer happy. It’s a win/win.

Gift with Purchase.

One of the ways you can combine “a gift with purchase” into a bundle is, “Buy these and get THIS free.” If the customer sees what they will receive for free when they buy the other item(s), it gives them the logic to justify what their heart has already decided.

But it’s usually better to give away something that your company does NOT sell.

One of my most successful gifts with purchase was back when everyone wanted an iPad but most people didn’t have one. My client had traditionally offered a $2,500 rebate on the purchase of a new Air Conditioning System in the month of October, and it usually worked pretty well. But the offer of a $800 Apple iPad for FREE with the purchase of a new air conditioning system performed significantly better. 

Fly in the Eye of the Storm

A hurricane is a vicious circle of high-speed air powerful enough to move everything in its path. But in the middle of that circle is a zone of peace and quiet called “the eye of the storm.” If you had a small airplane, you could fly around in the middle of that storm if you were careful to move with it and not get caught in the outer edges.

A big news story is a hurricane, moving heaven and earth for your benefit. Find a clever way to legitimately tie your product or service into a BIG news story that has everyone’s attention.

When you see race cars on a track, you will often see one car following tightly behind the car ahead. This is called “drafting.” The idea is to let the car ahead of you push all the air out of the way so that you can ride in the calm vacuum of that “hole in the wind” that travels behind them. This makes additional horsepower available when you punch the gas pedal and whip out from behind them to “slingshot” around them and take the lead.

Ride in the quiet, empty air that travels with a big news story. Be part of the solution to the gigantic problem presented by the news.

Recognize the Lifetime Value of Your Customer

Remember the iPad story I told you a minute ago? For every $800 iPad we gave away, we were saving $1,700 on every system we sold because we had previously given them a $2,500 rebate, remember?

This allowed us to delight those customers who called to say, “Hey! I bought a new air conditioning system from you last month. If I had known you were going to be giving away iPads, I would have waited.” Because my client is a wise and thoughtful man, he would always say, “Okay, I’m sending a courier to your house right now with a new iPad. Thanks for doing business with us!” Those people became raving fans and customers for life, of course.

Don’t measure your success transaction by transaction. Recognize the power of happy customers and invest in creating more of them. All it takes is an attitude of generosity and a few simple actions that whisper, “This is what you purchased, and here is a little bit extra that we want you to have because we love you.”

Roy H. Williams

Eric Savitz knows Business Technology inside and out. He spent 24 years as the “Investing and Technology” reporter for Barron’s magazine in New York and Silicon Valley. He served as a partner at Brunswick Group, an international consulting firm where he had an “up close and personal view” of some of the world’s most important companies. And three months ago, General Motors hired Eric as its corporate editor-in-chief! This week, Eric shares his best insights on “Investing and Tech and its Impact on Global Culture” with our own roving reporter Rotbart. Where can you listen in on magical conversations like this? MondayMorningRadio.com!

Two thousand years ago, Confucius was as old to the people of China as Christopher Columbus is to us today. Five hundred and thirty-two years before the wise men followed their star to Bethlehem, Confucius wrote,

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by contemplation, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

I agree with Confucius, but I believe it is the wisdom gained by bitter experience that runs the deepest in us. The boy who travels from village to village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” learns things about wolves and villagers that no one else can know.

I was once a wandering wolf-shouter.

There is a red flashing light in my soul that keeps me from writing hard-hitting “sales activation” ads, not because it is foreign to me, but because I am extremely good at it.

When I was a 20-year-old ad salesman, business owners would say to me, “Show me what you can do with a small amount of money, and if it works, we’ll talk about a long-term commitment.”

Being young, confident, and stupid, I wrote sales activation ads that could only be measured with a seismograph, and my career took off like a race car in a gravel parking lot. I’m told the gravel is still flying somewhere between Jupiter and Mars.

I wore my tie draped around my neck like a scarf and I never tied my shoes. People said, “Your shoes are untied.”

I smiled and said, “Yeah. I know.”

That young fool was the diamond-ring Cadillac man. He was like Coca-Cola, baby, he was everywhere. When people called and ask if he delivered, he would say, “You want a crowd? Crowds cost money. How big a crowd do you want?”

For 3 years he was the King of Making Big Things Happen Fast. He was going in circles faster than a NASCAR driver on a Saturday night and making more money than a heart surgeon. But he didn’t like the person he had become.

He was thinking about how much he hated working with anxious, impatient advertisers when it hit him: “Every one of those twitchy little bastards is a short-term results addict and I am their dealer.”

I was writing the advertising equivalent of meth-laced, crack cocaine.

In 1942, Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote,

“The world is not a prison house, but a kind of kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”

Realizing that I had been trying to spell success with the wrong blocks, I climbed out of the car I had been driving on the fast track to nowhere and saw what T.S. Eliot was trying to say when he wrote,

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

Finally standing with my feet on the ground, I looked with fresh eyes at what needed to be done, and knew the place for the first time.

I saw Seven Truths that corresponded with The Seven Secrets of Sales Activation.

These are the Seven Truths.

1. You’ll never see a bigger crowd than the first time you cry “Wolf!”
2. Anything that delivers big results quickly will work less and less well the longer you keep doing it.
3. You cannot build a strong and resilient company on gimmicks and empty promises.
4. Anything that works better and better the longer you keep doing it will deliver disappointing results at first.
5. It takes awhile to make people feel like they really know you.
6. This is why winning the hearts of customers requires months of meaningful courtship.
7. The average business owner does not have the faith and patience to build an attractive brand.
8. (This is particularly true of business owners who trust metrics more than they trust their own heart.)

There have been a few occasions in the past 35 years when longtime clients have persuaded me to use the Seven Secrets of Sales Activation to give them a hard jolt of meth-laced, crack cocaine. In every instance, both the client and I have regretted it.

Detox is a bitch.

Uh-oh. You want to know how it’s done. I can feel the strength of your curiosity vibrating through the keyboard beneath my fingertips. You want to know the seven secrets of meth-laced, crack cocaine!

(sigh)

Lest you believe I have written you a fiction, I will tell you how it is done, but I wash my hands of the disasters that await you.

FINAL WARNING: before you click this link, believe me when I say that meth-laced crack is addictive. People who know the Seven Secrets of Sales Activation usually overdose and kill their business.

I have rarely seen an exception.

Roy H. Williams

Many of the people close to you are neurodiverse and face challenges that are not immediately visible. In fact, one in five Americans is neurodiverse, which includes conditions such as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome. Dr. Matthew Zakreski is recognized as an expert on neurodiverse employee/employer relations, and is an advocate for neurodiverse individuals in the workplace. Listen as “Dr. Matt” shares with deputy rover Maxwell this week, employers who welcome and accommodate those who think and behave differently reap the benefits of enhanced workplace productivity, job satisfaction, and innovation. It’s always win/win/win at MondayMorningRadio.com

Leadership = Energy + DirectionDirection = Vision + CourageTherefore, leaders are people of Energy, Vision, and Courage.

If you are a person of energy, vision, and courage:

(1.) I have noticed that people like you often become surrounded by wanderers who are looking for a leader. It is hard to make money when you are stumbling over puppies who gather at your feet. Resist the temptation to become a thought leader. Oh, I forgot. The new word is influencer. Don’t become one.

(2.) Do not become a zookeeper. When you find yourself among persons of energy, vision, and courage like yourself, do not try to “manage” these untamed creatures. Zookeepers diminish energy, dull vision, and punish courage. You will never meet a wealthy zookeeper.

(3.) When you see pent-up energy, unexplored vision, and fearless courage, become the friend who delivers that person from their captivity. Hire them. Unlock their leg irons. Empower them, encourage them, unleash them.

(4.) Be a leader who gives vision and direction to other leaders and encourage those leaders to do the same. Model correct behavior. Lead by example. Spread the joy.

(5.) Your life is about to become very interesting.

ADDENDUM: Lest you become too anxious as you search for world-changers like yourself, I have asked Albert Bandura to share this word of warning with you:

“Let us not confuse ourselves by failing to recognize that there are two kinds of self-confidence—one a trait of personality and another that comes from knowledge of a subject. It is no particular credit to the educator to help build the first without building the second. The objective of education is not the production of self-confident fools.”

– Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, p.65

Do not be attracted by self-confident fools.

Tinsel and glitter stand proudly in the spotlight, but true gold is found surrounded by mud.

SURPRISE! Seventeen years ago the wizard recorded a memo that reminds me of the one he shared today, so I time-traveled back to November 5, 2007 and retrieved it for you. – Indy Beagle

I thought Bill Clinton was a good president for the same reason I thought Ronald Reagan was good; both were excellent Head Cheerleaders. Their politics, personalities and characters were different, but each had a similar ability to keep things from spinning out of control.

Every organization has a Head Cheerleader. Their business card usually says “manager”. The Head Cheerleader’s job is to keep talented hotheads, sycophantic suck-ups, whining excuse-makers, moon-eyed lunatics and plodding paranoids all headed in the same general direction. They have to make everyone feel like everything is going to be all right.

Are there really people who can do this job?

Thrown into the deep water at 26, I was possibly the worst manager ever to assume the position. But over the years, I’ve had a chance to observe the great ones, and I’ve noticed an unusual but recurrent characteristic:

Great managers are rarely excellent at any of the things they manage.

Great coaches are great not because they were superstars, but because they know how to awaken the star that sleeps in each of the players around them.

Excellent don’t show you photos from their own vacation. They ask to see the photos from yours, and it makes them happy to see you had a wonderful time.

Life-changing managers look for things to praise in their people, knowing that it takes seven positive strokes to recover from each negative reprimand.

Think about it. If seven out of eight times we encounter our boss, we receive an authentic, affirming comment, a bit of happy news or a piece of valuable insight, we love to see our manager coming down the hall. But if our encounters with the manager leave us deflated, discouraged, or scared, our hearts sink when we see them coming.

Do your people love to see you coming?

If not, begin looking for things to praise. Keep your ratio of positive comments seven times higher than your negative ones, and they will soon begin to smile when they see you coming. This newfound attitude and confidence will bring new levels of productivity, and all because you believed they could do it, and made them believe it, too.

Great managers are never afraid to hire people better than themselves.

Each of the 217 times David Ogilvy opened a new office for Ogilvy and Mather, he would leave a set of Russian nesting dolls on the desk of the incoming manager. When the manager removed the top half from the largest of these bowling pin-shaped dolls, he or she would find a slightly smaller doll inside. This would continue until the manager came to the tiniest doll and retrieved from its interior what looked to be the note from a fortune cookie:

“If each of us hires people smaller than ourselves, we shall become a company of, but if each of us hires people bigger than ourselves, we should become a company of giants.”

– David Ogilvy

Now walk down the hall and find a sleeping superstar disguised as a plodding paranoid.

For each of the next 21 days, compliment that person every time you see them take a right action. Then prepare to meet a whole new employee on the 22nd day.

Don’t be surprised if they have the same name as the plodding paranoid that used to stink up the place.

Go. The hallway awaits you.

– Roy H. Williams

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

More than half of all customers are willing to pay more for the same product or service if the seller also provides a single intangible: trust. Natalie Doyle Oldfield studies the dynamics that drive customer loyalty and business growth, and “Trust,” she finds, “is the critical value that top companies rely on to secure their market dominance and drive substantial growth.” Prepare to feel wonderfully affirmed when Natalie reveals to roving reporter Rotbart the proven methods companies can use to amplify their trustworthiness and strengthen their reputation and their brand. If there is only one episode you are ever going to listen to, this is the one. MondayMorningRadio.com