Marketing Principle: Marketing is simply Salesmanship

Marketing is simply salesmanship in advance and salesmanship is all about creating and maintaining principle-centered relationships.

The stronger your relationship is with your clients/patients/customers, the more successful and profitable you are going to be.

Nothing happens until someone sells something.

We are all salespeople – parents, children, pastors, teachers, waitresses, police officers, doctors… makes no difference.
We sell every day; ideas, services, products, ourselves….Everyone has to sell something every day.

We come out of the womb selling. We had to convince our mothers that we were hungry, tired or just wanted attention.

As you were growing up, you had to “sell” your parents to get what you wanted.

You had to sell yourself to your spouse, your boss, your co-workers, your friends, your customers, your students, etc. etc. etc…

Selling is more about Principles than it is about techniques.

Once you understand the Principles, there are a 101 different techniques to selling.
But, one caveat, Never Break the Laws of God or man.

Selling and marketing is all about creating and maintaining principle-centered relationships.
You build and maintain relationships on Trust.

People buy from people they like, and people will like you if they trust you.

I have a simple formula for trust:
Trust = Competence plus Character demonstrated over Time

Competence is talent, ability, skill, and knowledge.
Character is integrity, motive, and intent.

When trust is low, everything slows down in relationships.
Low trust causes suspicion which slows down decisions and communication.
When trust is high, confidence is high, decision-making is fast and communication is effortless.

In other words success is about building sound, trustworthy relationships.

15 Habits to cultivate within yourself and your business that will help you build strong meaningful relations – both personal and business:

1. Be Honest & Authentic. Always be straight with people.

2. Act with Kindness & Courtesy. Be Respectful of everyone; even those who might be “in-your-face” and/or disagree with you. You may have to “fire” a customer one day, but be respectful about it and then move on.

3. Be Transparent – An Educated Customer is the Best Customer. Consistently tell the world what you offer, why you offer it and how it will benefit them.
Tell the complete story about what makes you and your product or service unique. You don’t have to just tell the good, tell some bad as well. Every product or service will not be the right fit for everyone. Admit it right up front. Stating what you can’t do builds trust and alleviates unpleasant problems down the road. I’d rather lose the sale right up front and build a reputation of integrity than lose a client after the sale due to disappointment.

4. Apologize When Wrong. When you screw up, take responsibility, apologize and make some sort of meaningful restitution.

5. Be Loyal – especially to the Absent (never talk badly about anyone behind their back).

6. Deliver Results – One of the best habits you can cultivate in order to accomplish the results your clients/customers/patients expect is to clarify expectations, the next habit.

7. Clarify Expectations – Make sure everyone fully understands, including yourself. Almost all conflicts are a result of violated expectations. Even though most of my business is done with a simple handshake, it is still imperative that the expectations of effort, responsibilities and results are clarified in writing.

8. Be a Student of your Business – Constantly Improve by exposing yourself to new ideas, techniques and people. This allows you to be innovative.

9. Be Honest about Reality. Being self-aware is one of the foundations of ever achieving greatness. You have to know what motivates and de-motivates you. What your strengths and weaknesses are. You must maintain an unwavering faith in your vision or desired end result and that, in the end, you will prevail but at the same time you have to confront and be honest about the facts of current reality.

10. Be Proactive – Take responsibility and hold yourself and others accountable. Learn to “Think Win-Win or No Deal.” Never blame someone else.

11. Listen with the Intent to Understand Rather than Simply to Respond. Ask Smart Questions and listen.

12. Keep your Promises. One of the best ways to accomplish this is under-promise, over-deliver.

13. Extend Trust -Give trust and expect it in return.

14. Actively Seek Complaints – Be open to feedback; That means proactively seek out complaints as an opportunity to build trust.

15. Have an Attitude of Gratitude.

Every TOP salesperson and develops their own style and techniques but they all adhere to the same Principles

4 Things Every Client wants

Here are the 4 things every client wants and effective marketing is essential to letting the world know you offer them.

Price – Product or Service – Customer Service – Lifetime Relationship

Price: The great thing about being a Principle Centered business is that when you adhere to all of our Principles, you don’t have to be the lowest price…just provide a fair price.

Product or Service: Clients buy solutions to problems. If they are in need of a drill bit for a ¼” hole and you are a chiropractor, obviously you aren’t even on their radar.

But if you are one of a hundred hardware stores in their market area, then in order to get their business, you need to be proactive in building and maintaining that relationship where they view you as their trusted adviser for all of their hardware needs.

The more you understand their needs, the better you can serve them and the more valuable you become.
The more you understand them, the better you can anticipate their needs.

Customer Service: I want to do business with an auto repair shop that knows my driving habits and my vehicle so well, that he can anticipate my maintenance requirements, he knows the the idiosyncrasies of my particular make/model to anticipate a problem before it arises.

What are the biggest fears of having to buy a new or used automobile? Getting ripped off on price and what if something goes wrong with my car after purchase? This is especially true for used cars.

According to Stephen Covey in his book “The 3rd Alternative” there is a car dealer in Utah who sells all of his new vehicles for just a few hundred dollars over cost. He then helps his customers sell their car during the next model year for roughly the same price they paid for it.

He does his research and only sells vehicles with the highest resale value.

Before retiring from the auto business, we went to a One Best Price business model on new cars and it worked quite well for us.

For used cars, it is extremely easy to stand out from the crowd and NOT have to fight the “price war.”

Once we know what makes you unique (USP), and what the Lifetime Value (LTV) is of your customer base, and we help you create your Risk Free Guarantee, you will DOMINATE your market.

Knowing your audience is essential.
Our 50 Question Discovery Process helps you with that.

Finally a relationship based on High Trust is what creates a Lifetime Relationship: Your clients want someone whose judgement they trust.

I have a simple formula for trust.
Trust = Competence plus Character.

Clients want a trusted adviser they can rely on. Someone who has demonstrated a competence in their field and has the character to do what they say they are going to do.

Learn more at  When Trust Is High

Any business that can provide all four of these will DOMINATE their market.

7 Reasons to practice Principle Centered Marketing:

Here are 7 straight forward Reasons that Principle Centered Marketing works.

1. Constantly chasing down NEW clients no longer has to be your main priority. The question you need to ask yourself is would you rather be always chasing down new clients or have them chase you?
Jay Abraham taught me that getting customers and clients to “raise their hand” and ask for me was what good marketing was all about.

2. Your share of the market increases.
Customers or clients no longer shop around, even temporarily. They trust you so your competition doesn’t get ANY of their business.

3. Your sales increase.
When your marketing is building strong, trusting relationships, your current clients turn into raving fans and become your own private sales force.
When I was selling cars and the subject of cars came up, I wanted everyone I came in contact with, prospects and clients, to talk about and refer me.
Because I had treated them with respect and honesty, and educated them not just on my product but on how to purchase an automobile, when the subject of automobiles came up, they automatically thought of me, even the ones who ended up not buying from me.
I created my own army of salespeople.

4. The Lifetime Value of your clients increase because they remain loyal to you.
– They purchase from you more often
– They refer others to you
– Over time, as trust builds, they are less likely to place price at the top of their list.

5. Your Cost of Doing Business Decreases.
Because customers and clients are now “raising their hand” asking you to help them, it costs you less in time, effort and money. Now you can focus that time, effort and money on your business.

6. Profits increase.
Same reason as above.

7. It’s more fun.

An Educated Customer is the Best Customer:

In order to have the best customers, educate them through your marketing.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Consistently tell the world what you offer, why you offer it and how it will benefit them.

In the early 1920’s, there were about ten different brewing companies aggressively competing for the same market. Schlitz wasn’t doing very well and was number eight in the marketplace.

All the breweries advertised the same basic message: “Our Beer is Pure.” They didn’t explain to the beer drinkers what pure really meant. They just kept saying, “pure, pure, pure.”

Schlitz hired a marketing consultant in hopes of improving sales. The marketing consultant was taken on a tour of the brewery and was told how Schlitz brewed their beer. He was very impressed with what he learned.

The Schlitz facilities were right on Lake Michigan and the lake water back in the twenties was very clean.

However, even though they were right on the lake, they drilled two five-thousand-foot artesian wells because they had to go deep enough to find the right combination of water and mineral content to make the best beer possible.

They explained how they labored thru 1,623 separate experiments over five years to identify and develop the finest mother yeast cell that could produce the richest taste and flavor.

They showed the consultant how they went through a process of distillation of the water before they used it to brew the beer. It was heated to five thousand degrees Fahrenheit and then cooled down and condensed – and they did that not once but three times to make sure it was absolutely purified.

They described the bottling process where they steamed each bottle at temperatures of sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit to kill all bacteria and germs so they would not possibly contaminate the taste of their beer.

Then they explained that they had every batch tasted to make certain it was pure and rich before they would ever bottle it and send it out the door.

The consultant was overwhelmed by this brewing process. He told Schlitz management that they should tell consumers about the extraordinary measures they took to brew their beer. Schlitz management said, “Why would we do that? All breweries do the same thing we do.”

But the marketing consultant understood the concept of preemptive marketing. “But no one in your industry explains it,” he answered. “The first person who tells the story and explains how, and the reasons why, you do something, will gain distinction and preeminence in the marketplace from then on.”

Schlitz was the first and only company that ever told the story about how their beer was made. That became their unique selling proposition (USP).

The word they used was Krausening…all the breweries did it, but only Schlitz told the public.

Within six months Schlitz moved from number eight in the market to number one.

This story was shared by one of my marketing mentors, Jay Abraham

6 Things you Don’t Learn Getting an MBA

Getting an MBA will open a lot of doors but here are 6 things you DON’T learn from an MBA.

  1. People want to be led.
    But they want to be led by someone they trust.
    Trust = Competence plus Character.
    In everything you do and say, show that you know what you are doing and talking about and that you place Integrity and your reputation above money. They want someone to educate them on the features of what you are offering but more importantly, how it will benefit them. Always remember WIIFM – Every time you make a presentation, the client is silently asking…What’s In It For Me?

2. Tell people what action to take.
Every selling transaction, whether it’s a direct personal contact, a sales call, letter, email, text, video/vlog, commercial, or print ad, you need to lead them into taking an action.
It might be simply leading them to take the next step – “Pick Up The Phone and Call me Now at ……..”
Marketing is nothing more than selling and selling is all about persuading someone to take an action that will benefit them.

3. Test Everything and Test Small.
A Little Bit At A Time All The Time Has The Greatest Chance of Success.
It’s the Principle of the Tortoise and the Hare.
Test different headlines, body copy, offers, etc.
Then track results. Very quickly you’ll find out what offers produce more sales, profits or customers.

4. Advertising/marketing is nothing more than Salesmanship.
EVERY marketing/selling communication should make a compelling case for the product or service you are selling.
I constantly fought the thinking of most marketers who are traditionally “creative-minded” and get caught up in “cutsey”.
I want and teach “where the rubber-meets-the-road” marketing.
Function over form.
Every business owner has a story to tell. Something that makes you and/or your product UNIQUE. Tell the world. Tell it often.
Would you train your sales people to stop their sales presentation in mid stride or tell them NOT to ask for the sale or to take an action?
Would you tell your sales force to be flippant or “cute” in their sales presentation?
Would you tell them to only give a partial presentation?
Of course you wouldn’t!
Once you understand the Principle difference between “cutsey” advertising and rubber-meets-the-road selling and Principle Centered Marketing, you will have an immediate advantage over your marketplace and competitors.

5. An Educated Customer is the Best Customer.
If you haven’t by now understood the message, it is the more your prospects and clients know about you and your product, the more comfortable and trusting they become.
An Educated Customer Is The Best Customer.
Every business owner has a story to tell.
Something that makes you and/or your product UNIQUE.
Tell the world. Tell it often.
The research you went thru before even representing this product.
Present facts, proof, give a frame of Reference. Tell the good as well as some of the detriments.
I would much rather lose the sale during the presentation and gain a reputation of Integrity, than lose it after the sale because the client received disappointing results.
Under Promise and Over Deliver is the best Rule to follow.
In a follow-up message, I’ll tell the story about Schlitz Brewing company from back in the 1920’s that clearly demonstrates this Principle.

6. Always Make It easy for Your Customers to Say YES.
Every time you make a selling statement on a feature, give the client a frame of reference they can wrap their minds around.
Like this: “Have you ever searched for something on Amazon and the next time you went to your Facebook page, you saw an ad for that very same product? That’s Retargeting.”

Human nature is to say NO when we don’t completely understand something or we don’t have a complete Frame of Reference as to how it works, how it will benefit us.
Make it easy for the client to understand.
A very powerful way of doing this as well is to ALWAYS offer a Risk Free Guarantee.

8 Things Every Website needs to Include

There are 8 things every website needs to have in order to be effective at generating leads and sales.

1. Video – more and more important, although in my experience a lot of business owners just won’t do it. But if you can get over your nervousness, and get on camera saying who you are, what you do, and why you do it – that’s personal & powerful.

Example: As a car dealer, I would use my smart phone to take a short video at delivery showing my client walking around his or her new vehicle and driving away and then sharing that video via email with my client and posting it as a testimonial on my website.

You could use the same method in any other brick & mortar business.
The possibilities are endless.

2. Phone Number – Make sure your phone number is at the upper right side of every website page – It should also be obvious & prominent on your mobile site version too. Principle of Marketing: Always Make It Easy for your Customers to do Business With You.

3. Call To Action – You have about 3 seconds to convey who you are, what you do, and why the site visitor should care. If the home page is full of text about how great you are instead of what problems you solve, site visitors aren’t going to stick around.

4. Opt-in form – or some way to capture information so that you can market to them again. Offer something of value to your client as a way to capture their information.
Just saying “Sign Up for our updates” or “get our newsletter” will not cut it. Give people a compelling REASON to give you their information.

This underscores the importance of knowing your Lifetime Value of your customers or clients.

Once you know their value, it is a lot easier for you to calculate how much you are willing to invest or reward them with an “ethical bribe”.

5. Mobile Compatibility – It’s critically important that your website works properly with mobile devices (like iPads and Smart phones) Not just a tiny rendering of your entire site, but basic info like phone number, address, maybe a menu – depends on the business. Right now over 60% of local searches are done on a mobile phone and that’s only going to increase

6. Testimonials and Proof – If people love your service and you’re the best in your industry, say so! I believe the best way is to collect video testimonials of your customers saying that in person.

7. An effective “About” page – Typically your “About” page is the second-most visited page on your website. People want to know who they’re dealing with. Don’t hide behind vague reassurances or terminology, especially if you’re local. Videos of you and your staff are highly effective.

8. Social Media Connection – Now, more than ever, it is very important to have a connection between your website and social media.
Have you ever searched for something on Amazon and the next time you went to your Facebook page, you saw an ad for that very same product? That’s re-targeting.

Think about this: You spent thousands of dollars to create a website with the sole purpose of generating leads and ultimately sales. Don’t waste that investment by treating it like a digital yellow page ad.
That is just a waste of you money, time and effort.

The only goal of marketing for a brick & mortar business is to drive traffic either to your place of business or to your website and then you have to convert that traffic to sales.

With this simple tool of Facebook re-targeting, you make sure that everyone that visits your website, continues to be exposed to your message, product or services.

It requires a minimum of 5 “touches” before people begin to “hear” you message, and several more exposures (touches) before their action is initiated.

These simple 8 website principles are your key to having an effective web site that generate additional sales.

5 Great Rules Every Selling Communication Must Follow

Every communication you have in life is simply all about selling and relationships.

So, when you are writing a sales letter, email or any sort of sales communication there are 5 Great Rules of Selling you need to follow.

1. The Right Audience: Before you take your first step, KNOW who your audience is.

Before communicating – spend time thinking, researching and asking questions of your audience. What do they want? What problems do they need a solution to?

You really want to do your clients or prospects a favor? Ask them questions that help them self-discover the problem they may not even realize they have.

Learn to Ask Smart questions

The most effective time we spend with clients is when we conduct our Question Discovery process guaranteed to give you answers to out-think, out-perform and out-earn your competition.

Seven Things Questions Do:

a. Give you answers you’ve never heard before

b. Stimulate your thinking

c. Give you powerful information

d. Put you in control

e. Get others to open up

f. Teach you how to listen with the intent to understand, rather than      simply to respond.

g. Persuades thru self-discovery. The Principle of Inside Out

2. Grab their ATTENTION:
The headline or title is the ad for your ad.

It Sells the message in the body of your letter.

It tells your audience whether this is something worth reading or listening to.

The headline tells the right people what you are selling and why they should want to learn more.

As succinctly and clearly as possible, your headline has to grab the audience’s attention.

3. The Body of the communication is where you educate and arouse your audiences INTEREST regarding the benefits of what you have to offer.

Your audience is always asking: What’s In It For Me? WIIFM
What will the product or service do for me?

Give them a frame-of-reference to make it easy for the reader to grasp what you are selling.

Example, if I want to explain what Facebook re-targeting is I would give the following frame-of-reference:
“Have you ever searched for something on Amazon and the next time you went to your Facebook page, you saw an ad for that very same product? That’s re-targeting.”

You can also “paint word pictures” of them using and benefiting from your product or service.

Be authentic & sincere. They will be interested in you and what you have to offer only when they know you are interested in them.
Put yourself in their shoes and talk about them, their situation, desires, pains, etc.
They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Write like YOU speak.
Authenticity and sincerity build trust and credibility. Tell the complete story about what makes you and your product or service unique.
Avoid platitudes and exaggerations like the plague.
You don’t have to just tell the good, tell some bad as well.

Every product or service will not be the right fit for everyone. Admit it right up front. Stating what you can’t do builds trust and alleviates unpleasant problems down the road.

I’d rather lose the sale right up front and build a reputation of integrity than lose a customer and my reputation after the sale due to disappointment.

4. Provide Proof
Testimonials are a great source of proof, but always use specifics instead of generalizations.

Testimonials NEED to be authentic, truthful, and from specific and verifiable sources. A video testimonial from one of your current clients is the strongest kind. Putting a human face behind your product or service gives you credible authority.

Specifics – Does it take several weeks to see results or 19 days?
Explain how – Clearly and carefully explain how your product or service does what it does.
There are dozens of ways to provide proof once we sit down and Ask the Right Questions.

Caveat: Get in the habit of under promise – over deliver; no one will ever ask you to prove an understatement
5. ALWAYS have a Call to Action and/or ask for the close.
Amplify the appeal for the call to action with some sort of Risk Free Guarantee and clarify exactly what the guarantee looks like.
Again, give them a frame-of-reference they can clearly picture in their head.

Every client or prospect wants their needs and desires met and a solution to their problem.
They buy solutions or benefits. They want to be led by someone they trust.

Trust = Competence + Character

Sell Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

If I’d of had this technology, information and paradigm 10 years ago, I’d
be sending this from my own private island somewhere in the South Pacific. :)

Watch this video I made on the “spur-of-the-moment” and with just a little
imagination on your part, I’m sure you’ll be able to see what I see and relate
to you in this video I shot while walking my dog in the country.

I could have put another quarter million dollars in my pocket with this technique of being able to sell anything, anywhere, anytime.

I don’t care what kind of business you have, I can show you how to increase traffic
and increase your income with this simple tool and way of thinking.

 

Future Strategies On The Way

Are you looking for business, sales and marketing strategies that work in your local area? This blog is for you.  Principle Centered Marketing will be posting business growth, sales and marketing strategies based on time tested principles.  When you use these principles with today’s technology and tools you will maximize your business growth.

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