The Info Treasure Trove

It is a fact of life for most new sales people; they get the dream sales job with unlimited earning potential and expect to earn so much money that they can now enjoy the fruits of their coming wealth. Everything seems perfect until they realize that before closing a sale and earning the big commission, they must first prospect for new customers (read, cold calls). Cold calling is hard to do. People hate to make cold calls and people hate being on the receiving end of them as well.

Prospecting is the most difficult part of the sales job. There are many ways to go about it but, for some reason, sales managers preach cold calling as the only way for young sales people to generate leads. As someone who has been through it, I wish that these attitudes would change.

I recently read one of the best selling books on cold calling. In this book, the author stresses persistence. He uses the 15-3-1 rule. That is, you need to make fifteen cold calls to make three appointments with prospects. Out of these 3 appointments you will close one sale. By being persistent and making fifteen cold calls a day, this will translate to, on average, one sale a day, five sales a week, twenty sales a month, etc. Further, the author explains that he doesn’t mind the rejection that he gets when he cold calls. The reason is that since it takes fifteen calls to get an appointment, that means that he will hear the word “no” (rejection) fourteen times before he hears the word “yes.”

This is simplistic and anybody reading this book may get overexcited and think that this is easy. It’s not easy and the author’s arguments don’t hold up in real life selling.

Take the fifteen cold calls a day rule. Anybody reading this book will think that fifteen cold calls a day is nothing. If it takes 2-3 minutes to make a phone call, it shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes to make your mandatory 15 calls. Then the rest of the day is spent selling in front of prospects.

But it doesn’t work this way. If you’ve ever cold called, you will know that it usually takes at least 10 phone calls to reach a decision maker. Think about it, executives aren’t sitting in their offices waiting for your call. They’re either on the phone, in meetings, on vacation, or they just don’t want to talk to you. So now, to talk to fifteen people, you need to make 150 cold calls. This is not 45 minutes of work; this can take days.

Further, for someone to say that he enjoys hearing the word “no” because it means he is getting closer to a “yes” is just misleading. Although a select few people can take this kind of rejection day in and day out, most cannot. It is only human nature to be discouraged by so much rejection.

There are better ways to get sales leads and increase your sales. People buy from people that they trust. Your time should be spent networking with your friends, colleagues, and business contacts. Get referrals, get introductions, get testimonials and the sales will come. Not only that, your job will be better; nobody likes the rejection and time consuming nature of cold calling.

Tino Buntic’s website, TradePals, is a B2B directory of freelancers, entrepreneurs, trades people, business professionals, and entrepreneurs, providing qualified sales leads without cold calling to its members.

Standing out at a Career Fair can make a difference in your job hunt. Career Fairs are starting to pick up, and Dice is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a Silicon Valley Job Faire in early 2010, 10 companies as showing up, and a major job search company has 82 career faires scheduled for 2010 across the States.

How do you stand out at a Job Fair? The rivalry can be substantial, but you can help yourself surpass from the herd with advance preparation. At AA-Careers, we have a simplified 6-step process to get ready. Planning to go? Here’s how to prepare:

First, research the organizations that are going and pick your targets. Use the web to check out the organizations that are there before you even decide to go. Go to their sites and see if they have their job openings listed. Pick a sound number to go after, and get ready to spend an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than 10 in a day, and three or four is a much more reasonable target. For each hiring organization, you want to know: recent news, key product lines, and contacts you know. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You’ll end up with a page or two of research for each company/job.

Second, if there are job openings on the web, read them to see what the organization is looking for. Create a mapping of your achievements and skills to the demands of the job. Make the nomenclature match. If the hiring organization calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The achievements should be written in the style of the hiring company.

Third, create a ‘mini sales pitch’ for each likely company/job combination. Write down a sixty second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat verbally describing why you are a fantastic candidate for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet the company at the job booth.

Fourth, modify your resume for each opportunity. The objective on your resume should exactly match the job you’re targeting. The executive summary should be a written form of your “mini sales pitch” for the job. Then choose the achievements and skills that most clearly match the job description. Especially at a Career Faire, the purpose of your resume is a sales tool for you – to get you on-site job interviews. It should be a no-brainer to see that you’re a match based on your resume.

Fifth, rehearse your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each spot - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a intelligibly marked folder. Keep them in a lightweight briefcase or folio.

Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress nicely and be fittingly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any cologne or perfume meagerly, if at all.

Remember to smile, and good hunting!

In Part 2 we discussed how to determine if a sales action is a critical sales performance competency, and we determined the following:

• It is an Action that is tied directly to the end result (Good or Bad)

• It can be individually isolated and trained to for Improvement

• It can be objectively ‘Benchmarked’ and Measured

Next, we identified that the act of communicating one-on-one to a ‘Targeted’ prospect with the objective of setting an appointment as a KEY Core Sales Competency, because nothing happens until you get in front of someone.
And the measurement of that competency was determined to be your ‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio which nationally averages out to somewhere between 4%-18%.

And if we choose to build a ‘Prospecting System’ to support a sales performance training objective to improve that ratio it would enable us to set more targeted ‘Top-down’ appointments in less time. And achieving that would allow us to obtain additional results and make us more money.
Not an unworthy mission for sure.

Additionally, we listed (6) sales prospecting reasons why the national ‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio is only 4%-18%.
Our mission for Part 3 is to isolate each of these reasons, understand why the majority of the sales population lives by the ‘Definition of Insanity’ (Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result) and then develop alternative strategies to raise our Conversation-to-appointment ratio.

Sales Prospecting Error #1

We don’t seek to first (Before we pick up the telephone) understand the Prospect’s internal business challenges parallel to our solutions offering, and then model our appointment communication approach around it.

How many times have you received a solicitation call and listened to a stranger communicate nonspecifically about who they are and what they want. Let me say that again…”Who THEY are and what THEY want.”

Just the other day I received a telephone call (I accept them ALL because they provide a great X2 training ‘Lead source’) and the nice lady on the other end of the line started to tell me all about who she was and what her company did.
I let her go on for a while and then asked her a specific, closed-ended question:

“Do you understand who I am and what I’m trying to accomplish as it relates to what you are selling?”

Well, she did not. So I kindly left the door open to her if she decided to check out my website and find out (first) “Who I am and what I want.”

Don’t you think that’s fair? After all, aren’t most business people (Business levels tied to fiscal responsibility) open to learning about ways to recover costs, improve productivity, decrease risk, increase profits or provide a measurable Return on investment as long as it gets to the point and in line with one’s own ‘Internal language’… not in a nonspecific marketing language of product/service and feature-benefit.

Instead of “Who you are and what you want,” try switching to “What you know specifically about ‘Me, Myself and I’; MY responsibilities, MY business objectives and how you think you can help ME meet them.

The web is a great resource tool for investigating general business objectives of a company; items like business web sites, 10K reports, annual reports, investor sections, Press releases and published articles. Scanning those items prior to picking about the telephone is your first winning step in the process; “Who they are”.

Now for the second part; “What they want.” Think of this in terms of title of responsibility and how your offering (if the shoe fits) can help them meet their personal business objectives or what I like to phrase ‘Marching Orders’. If you don’t know, go get some Business Acumen training around the title of responsibilities you choose to call on. Because you want to be able to discuss specific business challenges as it relates to their title of responsibility.

Or if you are a self-directed person, do what I’ve done for years. Interview each new client and ask them what type of communication would make them sit up and take notice coming from a stranger’s initial business contact. Develop a stock series of questions to allow you to document what is important to them as it pertains to accepting business appointments and outsourcing solution providers.

You’d be amazed at the amount of valuable data you can collect just by asking for 5 additional minutes after closing a new sale. ‘Go to school’ on your new clients and earn a Masters degree in ‘Business Title Insight’.

Sales Prospecting Error #2

We settle for a business level of contact that has no direct fiscal authority.

Your ‘Playing Field’ is who you decide to call on and why. And there are basically (2) strategies in picking your ‘Playing Field’; a ‘Bottom-up’ approach or a ‘Top-down’ approach.

The following is an example of a Bottom-up approach. A Telecommunications rep initiates a telephone call into a company and asks the question “Who handles your telecommunications needs?” Guess where they are sent? If you said ‘office manager’ you guessed right. If you said ‘Head Janitor’ you weren’t far off. Is there anything ‘wrong’ with that? Not really; it’s legal and a lot of folks out there do it.

But let’s think through this option as a ‘Business person’ would. Historically, a bottom-up approach promotes a:

• Lower 1st appointment to Proposal ratio

• Lower Closing ratio

• Higher Sales cycle

• Lower Average revenue per sale

That being said, from a Business person view, if we had our choice, we would choose a ‘Top-down’ approach; meeting with the highest appropriate level of contact for our product/service.
And this is important. If our product/service is tied to a measurable Return on Investment, in soft or hard dollars over time, we need to be initially engaged with the correct title in our Prospect company. And that’s the fiscal authority that can make a business decision in line with our business solution.

Sales Prospecting Error #3

We sell our ‘product/service’ instead of selling the diagnostic steps in our ‘Evaluation’ Process

So far we have decided to call on the highest appropriate level of contact for our service offering, someone that is tied to the P&L; simply, they have some ‘Skin in the Game’. And we know with a ‘Top-down’ strategy we need to understand who our target Prospect is and what they’re trying to accomplish as it relates to what we are selling. And that’s BEFORE we pick up the telephone, right?

Imagine now we make that prospecting call and start to talk about our ‘Widget’; meaning our Product’s features and benefits, our excellent customer service, how many years we’ve been in business and our fantastic customer retention rate.

Are you beginning to understand now why the average ‘Conversation-to-appointment’ ratio is 4-18%? You might as well read off your Marketing Department’s latest brochure. This is a major sales prospecting mistake because it doesn’t speak first to the correlation between what your Prospects general business challenges are (By industry and title of responsibility) and how your service has helped other business people with the same titles and internal challenges.

The $100,000 question is how one goes about transitioning from a Product/service specific conversation to a ‘Business Reason to Meet’ conversation.

My answer to this question is to communicate your company’s service solution as a ‘System’. One definition of a ’system’ is a series of Components and Elements that when working in unison affects a required result. It makes things better. It lowers that ‘Business Challenge’ wall.
Those ultimate business results could be cost recovery, lower overhead, higher employee production, increase profit margin, more return on investment, faster time to market, etc. That depends on your particular system’s solutions and what business challenges they are tied to.

The ‘Components’ of your system are sub-systems comprising a series of elements that deal with particular business issues. As an example, if you were a Security Solution Provider your components might be themed Loss Prevention, Business Operations and Risk Management, each again dealing with a relevant business challenge.

The ‘elements’ of your ‘System’ are the individual products/services that you provide your clients depending on their unique business challenges and where they may have some ‘leaks in the ship’. Communicating to individual elements specifically during a prospecting sales call will take you down the ‘Slippery slope’ of low sales appointment conversion ratios and low sales commissions.

In-between your Components and elements you have internal Business issues. In the same Security Solution Provider example, your prospect’s business issues could be Fire/Life Safety, Theft, Sweet-hearting, Vandalism, Sabotage, Robbery, and Harassment just to name a few.

It’s your responsibility for an ‘effective’ prospecting sales call to sell the ‘Diagnostic steps’ in your evaluation process; to appraise if your ‘System’, with its series of Components and elements can facilitate lowering your prospect’s ‘Business Challenge’ Wall; effectively gaining a Return on investment in a measurable way; because ‘Business people’ are accountable to ROI.

In Part 4; How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time, we will discuss the final 3 Sales Prospecting Errors and outline some proven solutions that will head us toward our worthy goal of spending Less time to achieve more targeted ‘Top-down’ sales appointments.

Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and the Developer of the X2 Sales System®, a blended training system that teaches sales professionals the competency of setting C-level business appointments. Jeff can be reached at jeff@convertmoresales.com. Calculate your sales team’s ‘Sales Performance Competencies’ here: http://convertmoresales.com/marketing_blitz.php Submit your numbers for a complimentary 30-minute performance consultation with Jeff Hardesty: http://convertmoresales.com/roi_survey.php

A friend’s teenage son laughs all the time.

He’s the most cheerful, and possibly the goofiest young person I’ve encountered, but his mom is concerned.

“He’s not serious enough,” she complains.

“Serious enough for whom?” I ask.

“For adults,” she replies.

“Well, he’s only 15, so apart from his teachers, who does he have to impress with his seriousness?”

“Good point.”

Of course, mom is thinking about his future. Who will hire him if he seems so utterly simple, affable, and unrealistically upbeat?

A smart sales manager will!

Apart from being in comedy, selling is one of the only occupations that comes to mind where you can laugh your head off all day long and be paid handsomely for it. A good friend of mine, who used to sell in the cubicle next to me at a leasing company, was actually trying to break into comedy, and I was his foil and audience.

I can’t tell you how fast the days passed by, with him doing impressions while I was trying to have serious discussions over the phone. He did well, as a salesman, and no matter what came down the pike, in terms of management edicts, new policies, or competition, Alan was jubilant, because there was a joke in it.

So, to bend a song title from Willie Nelson–Mamas, do let your babies grow up to be salesmen–especially if they have a great sense of humor!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

How many times has it happened to you? You walk through the doors of a place of busineess and here he comes - perfectly groomed with a smile planted across his face in greeting. Within two minutes he has talked non-stop and promised you everything, including the stars if you purchase his project. You lift and eyebrow, and think to yourself… “Yeah, right!”

The distrust between consumer and salesman is a longstanding feeling. After all, you know they are wanting to make a buck off your purchase. Sure, you don’t mind them making a few dollars… everybody has to make a living… but heck, it would be nice if they were at least a little concerned about what your needs are too!

Let’s face it… customers aren’t likely to buy from you unless they feel confident that you will deliver. There are a few easy steps that you can take to give them the confidence they need to take the plunge.

1. Let Previous Customers Make The Claim

The proof is in the pudding… No one can say that you deliver and make good on your promises like a satisfied customer. It pays to use customer testimonials. Now, we’re not talking about blindly pasting testimonials everywhere… a little business sense and organization will be helpful in making the most of them.

Choose testimonials that are exact and talk about specific aspects of your business. “Thank you so much for your hard work!” is wonderful, but “Thank you for spending 2 hours with me yesterday. Your personal attention is greatly appreciated.” says a lot more. Yeah, the reader knows that you are willing to take whatever time it takes to help them through the purchasing process.

Be sure to get your customer’s permission to use their testimonial as part of your advertising campaign. While you’re at it, get as much personal information about them as you can. Their occupation, city, etc., create a more realistic appeal to their testimony.

2. Be Specific In Your Claims

Specific claims are more believable than vague, generic brags. Order today! It’s Fast, Easy and Cheap! sounds much better when you say… Order Today! Take 2 Minutes to Fill Out Our 7 Step Order Form and Save 20% on Your Purchase!

Specific numbers don’t always come out even. In fact, readers tend to believe numbers that have decimals are more accurate than whole numbers… even if the real number is exactly a whole number!

3. Be Realistic

Don’t alienate customers with claims that sound too good to be true. Yeah, we all know the old saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unrealistic claims steal your credibility and leave the customers with a raised eyebrow.

Think of it this way… what if you do understate the beneifits? When your customer finds out the truth, he’ll just be that much more satisfied! Marketers suggest that you under promise and over deliver to create the greatest customer satisfaction.

Customers who believe in you aren’t afraid to buy from you. That means higher sales numbers and greater profit.

Copyright 2006 Cutts Group, llc

Who is Allyn Cutts, and why should you care?
Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers. Allyn is a marketing and sales fanatic, providing measurable marketing solutions that drive huge results for small-to mid-size business clients. Allyn works personally with clients to design and deliver off-line and on-line direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://www.AllynCutts.com and you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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Do you ever feel that when you are doing direct sales you find yourself not getting respect from the local businesses? They are busy and you are an interruption of course, yet at the same time, it does slow you down. Smart direct sales marketers carry clipboards into offices to sell and take orders. Clipboards come in many colors and styles; plastic, aluminum, clear, etc. These clipboards should have your company logo on the bottom. They should also have calculators on the clip. The logo should be made of vinyl lettering in your company colors. They should be durable or high tech plastic clipboard which can be dropped from six feet without breaking. They should also have a company pen attached which contrasts such as a yellow pen with blue ink or red ink inside. The sign-up sheets for orders or receipts should be on top and attached to the clipboard.

The format on the sign-up sheet can be created in Microsoft Word. This way reproduction ready artwork is only a move of the mouse and a click on the printer icon away. Use bright colors which stand out for order sheets perhaps even; Astro-Bright Solar yellow. You should have matching uniforms, flyers and business cards to the logo or sign-up sheet.

The sign up sheets should be printed in black ink because blue ink turns into green under most printing processes. Order receipts should use blue ink. The sign-up forms should be printed on both sides so you can compare the morning with the afternoon hours for volume and money. These forms should be in card stock since it will make them more durable and won’t crumple or rip if they get wet even though you are writing on both sides. If an salesperson pushes too hard on the pen they will not go through. This saves money. It costs ten cents for one side and fourteen cents for both sides. This saves two-thirds on the printing costs. Perfect efficiency. It also is environmentally good, saving trees. Yeah! Also, it gives you a pretty good indication of how many units are sold during the day, how much money you have made if you were doing only cash sales.

This decreases also the possibility of employee pilferage from the sales team and helps you determine how much money you’ve made. If you are in a business which receives tips; this, of course, is the best way to judge how good of a job you are doing and how happy your customers are. Twenty percent in tips is a good number.

The order or sign up form should be left blank at the top two inches. That way the clip doesn’t cover up the name or logo of your business. Many times the customer will watch you write down the information they give you. This is another reason we use blue or red ink only. Both are very contracting on yellow. Red is more commanding and factual while blue is pleasant and caring. Both work fine for our model. When a customer is watching you write information down, many times they will watch you check boxes. They will probably want to watch you check all the boxes. This also gives you the opportunity to upsell. It works 70% of the time and it’s easy. Anyone can do it.

Every crew should be trained to do this. As the people watch you check boxes, they will also want you to check the “paid” box. This is great. Get your money in advance. It saves time running back in after you’re completed with a service or deliver the products sold. Another way to get paid up front is to leave money on the clipboard. If there is a lot of money on the clipboard, one’s, five’s ten’s, they won’t have to ask you if you have change. They can see you do. Many customers carry large bills, fifty’s, hundred’s. There will be no doubt that you have something worthy you are selling and you are able to make change.

If you have lots of money on the clipboard you must have a great product or service; thus building consumer confidence. You must be a successful business person and everybody loves a winner. It also build’s your confidence as a sales person and it must be a good deal, everyone else seems to be doing it, therefore you must be reputable because people trust you with their money.

Sometimes a secretary will be very busy on the phone, can’t talk and makes a half acknowledgment of your presence. By holding up the board, she will know exactly why you are there; something important has now arrived. As soon as she hangs up the phone, she will be on the P.A. announcing “Anyone who wants a ..come to the front desk.” By creating a sense of urgency, being in uniform similar to UPS or Federal Express and having an electronic device (the calculator or the credit card machine) along with money demands recognition. It lifts the direct salespersons status of a special delivery, C.O.D., high tech worldwide type courier. It works and it works well. People forget that it says no soliciting on the door. Instead, they put you in their mind as someone who is supposed to be there. You will be surprised how many companies will ask you to come back next week rather than throwing your but out on the street this week. Think about it.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The laws governing telemarketing calls have been toughened due to the outrage of people who have been constantly harassed by telemarketers calling them at all hours of the day and night. One of the most complicated and convoluted of the telemarketing laws are the laws that pertain to telemarketers who make calls on behalf of fundraising organizations. In order to better understand these laws so that you, as the consumer, know whether or not your rights have been violated, what follows is a brief summary of telemarketing fundraising laws. Please be advised that these laws may be slightly different based on where you live. These are general FTC guidelines.

First of all, it is important to know just who is and who isn’t covered by these laws. If you are a telemarketing company making calls on behalf of a fundraising organization and you are doing this for profit on behalf of a non-profit organization then you are covered by these laws. If you are a non-profit agency then you are not.

If you are covered then you must honor what are called in-house suppress requests. This means that you must eliminate numbers of prospects and customers to call who specifically request not to be contacted by your company. This is according to Article # 31, DMA Guidelines For Ethical Business Practices.

After that has been done then the next restriction is that you can only call people between the hours of 8 AM and 9 PM. This is according to Section 310. Each individual state may have different additional restrictions as far as legal calling hours.

When making the call you must transmit your caller ID and cannot block this transmission. You must include, in the transmission, the phone number of the seller, service bureau or customer service number that would be answered if somebody wanted to call during normal business hours. The name of the seller or service bureau must also be included if the technology allows for it.

The call, if put through by an automatic dialing system, must be connected to a live caller within 2 seconds of the completed greeting by the system. The greeting itself can be any length of time but after it is completed a live person must speak within 2 seconds. If this doesn’t happen it is considered an abandoned call.

Once the call is transferred to a live representative, the identity of the caller must be given immediately. After that, the purpose of the call must be given to the customer. Finally, the goods trying to be sold, in this case solicitation for fundraising, must be disclosed. Any attempt to misrepresent the purpose of the charity, tax deductibility, percentage going to the program itself, any aspect of prize promotion, or affiliation with government agency, is in violation of Article 8 of the DMA Guidelines For Ethical Business Practice and Section 310.

These are only the most basic of the regulations regarding calls made by companies for charitable organizations. There are also additional laws based on the type of campaign, such as negative option and continuity programs, or free to pay conversion programs, but the main rules apply to all of these.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Telemarketing

When talking about business sales leads, it is important to understand the buyer, and to create a customer through this understanding. Buyer behavior studies can play a pivotal part in this regard. A lot of time and effort have been spent on this relatively new discipline. And every buyer-study has unfolded some new dimension of this discipline. The subject has been approached and analyzed from different angles and under different premises. Different inferences have been formulated. But the subject, too complex to beat, still remains a theorem without a proof.

What motivates the buyer? What induces him to buy? Why does he buy a specific brand from a particular shop? Why does he shift his preferences from one shop to another or from one brand to another? How does he react to a new product introduced to the market, or a piece of information addressed to him? What are the stages he travels through before he makes the decision to buy?

These are some of the questions that are of perennial interest to business firms regarding the sale of their products. It is around these questions that the product and promotion strategies of the business firm ultimately revolve. In all of their strategies and plans, firms make assumptions as to how the buyers would behave and respond to marketing programs. Knowledge of the buyer and his buying motives and habits is thus a fundamental necessity for getting business sales leads.

It needs to be emphasized at the very outset that there is no unified, well-defined, tested and universally established theory of buyer behavior. What we have, today, are certain ideas on buyer behavior. Some of these ideas have taken their cue from economics, others from psychology and yet others have drawn cues from several of the social sciences simultaneously.

Selling is just a whole lot easier when you know what people really want.

But unless you’re psychic, or know how to do the Vulcan mind meld, “getting into their brains” is HUGE!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve racked my brain trying to make sense of consumer opinion, & up until this point, I have to confess. Ain’t got no voodoo.

But here’s what I know.

Having the right product is certainly important, but it’s not nearly enough. What people really purchase are positive feelings that they associate with ownership, and they rarely express the connection between those feelings & product ownership plainly in consumer opinion polls. You must read between the lines.

People will look at the same identical product in a variety of ways. Is each one really searching for something different?

Actually, there are usually four or five common things that the majority of people in your market are looking for, and statistically speaking, those things are more or less important to them. On the surface, these things seem infinitely varied. But there’s always a common theme lurking under the surface. People at the very core of their being, are driven by human nature, instinct, and emotion. Show me a marketing campaign that doesn’t stir up these things at some level, and I’ll show you one that probably doesn’t work.

It’s easy to sell people what they want. The tough part is mining & gauging consumer opinion to find out what that really is.

A couple of suggestions,

Method One - Testing

Here’s a story from Elmer Wheeler’s “Field Word Laboratory”.

Elmer was asked by the Barbasol Company to come up with some effective sales talk to be used in selling shaving cream at retail counters. Were men at the Sears Roebuck toiletry counter looking for a clean shave, a quick shave, a cheap shave, a safe shave, a shave that didn’t bother their skin, a precise shave to detail their designer mustachios?

Out of 146 sentences tested, it turned out that sales increased an astounding 102% when the clerks approached the customer with “How would you like to save 6 minutes shaving?” Sales increased still further, with “How Would You Like to Cut Your Shaving Time in Half?”

Testing is one way to find out what your customers are after, and how best to dangle it like a carrot in front of their noses. What you’re really looking to determine is a hierarchy of wants. The top want should go in the headline. The second one in the opening lines. The third in further into the piece, and so on. Powerful stuff!

Of course testing is a process of elimination, so it’s a painstaking process. Here’s a tip. Start out with benefits that appeal to one of these three most basic & powerful of all human motives. Self Preservation, the desire for romance, & the desire for money. Can you think of ways to tie a quick shave to these? I’ll leave that to your imagination.

The order of the benefits you’re presenting is also extremely important. If you’ve got it wrong, you’re loosing too many potentially interested prospects. You need to grab them by the lapel with the most statistically relevant top benefit! And then send them careening down a slippery slope to your order form, with the rest.

Method Two - Just Ask

Have you heard of Socrates, and the Socratic method? Here’s a guy who figured out how to answer a question with a question with a question, until the cows came home.

Unfortunately, people no longer have time to hang out under olive trees, and they only accept interrogation from their analyst.

Pity.

So what you need is a little quid pro quo (One thing for another).

Consumer opinion is gold! What can you offer your prospects, or clients in return for it?

“Two Little Words That Never Go Out Of Style!”

Of all the conversations going on inside people’s heads right now, I can tell you with certainty that “How To” is dead front & center. At the time of this writing, 68.8% of the questions received at “Selling to Human Nature”, contain this phrase.

So here’s my advice on collecting consumer opinion. Trade information about “How To” solve problems with your product or service, for consumer opinion from your customers. If you want to know exactly “how to” do this for maximum response, I strongly recommend you look at the work of Robert Collier.

Chapters 1 & 9 of my new ebook, which studies his technique, show you how to not only elicit the opinions & preferences of your market, but also make sales doing it. He did this time & time again with amazing result!

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto Canada. Recently, Daniel & world-renowned publicist & copywriter Joe Vitale teamed up to co author “Million Dollar Online Advertising Strategies - From The Greatest Letter Writer Of The 20th Century!”, a tribute to the late, great Robert Collier.

Let the legendary Robert Collier show you how to write words that sell…Visit the below site & get 3 FREE Chapters!

http://www.Advertising-Online-Strategies.com/ad-strategies.html