Showing personal interest is often one of the most forgotten aspects of marketing and sales.

Whether you’re an affiliate, an affiliate network, entrepreneur, or something else this is very important for you. It’s going to make you significant money this year if you actively employ this approach.

Let’s start with a little example of why I’m writing this.

Rewind a few weeks to Affiliate Summit West 2012. I’m walking the conference floor and I get pitched to by numerous affiliate networks, companies, agencies, etc. They have some really nice pitches, and they are relatively interesting. But, nothing jumped out at me and made me say to myself “I need to take action on this right away”. Do you know why? None of these companies were showing personal interest in me and my situation.

It was pretty bad to the point of most companies didn’t even bother asking me what I did, which is something they should have done with the ambiguously named description on my badge. And, even if I did have an obvious label like “Affiliate” that could have been to throw people off or because it’s just 1 of the things that I do.

Showing genuine interest in what someone does, who they are, what their goals are would be sales 101. However, it’s something that’s not taught that much these days because everyone is concerned with their OWN pitch. It’s kind of like talking to a wall, because if you don’t show any interest you’re not going to make the other person feel connected and want to work with you. In fact, you can have the world’s greatest “pitch” and if you’re pitch doesn’t personally engage them and show interest, your not going to succeed. You will not succeed if you say the exact same thing to every person and don’t know how to adjust based on their personality, their business, their goals, their mindset, their demeanor and a whole lot of other things.

We’re thinking about putting a mentor program together for a couple hand select affiliate networks, individuals and companies that really want to take advantage of the conference marketing and other tactics we’ve been talking about lately. If you want to apply you could email me at brian@dailyconversions.com and tell me about you or your company and I’ll let you know if I see a good fit to helping you grow your business with tactics that your competition aren’t using.

I was expecting a very traditional terms of service that you’d normally see online.

However, Aaron drafted me something totally different and at first I was taken back a step but after I read the Terms of Service agreement in full, I realized that it was actually quite genius, hilarious, fun and masterful all in one.

I can’t believe I’m calling a Terms of Service agreement genius, hilarious, fun and masterful but it is.

Here’s the Terms of Service draft that I’m referring to. Get ready for a good laugh and to be impressed by how he hits all the major points in a fun way. He does a great job of keeping it engaging so people can actually read through it.

DAILY CONVERSIONS TERMS OF SERVICE

1. Who, Why, What

Who:  DailyConversions.com is maintained by __________ (“DC”).   At times DC may also be referred to as “we”, “us”, or “DailyConversions.com”.  The person who is viewing or interacting this site we will refer to as “you”, “hey you”, or where appropriate “jerkface” (only if you’re being bad).

Why:  This Terms of Service Agreement (“Agreement”) is our contract with you, and tells you what you can and can’t do and what we can and can’t do with you.

What: DC is a bad ass blog about bigtime balling bloggers.  It blogs about success, failures (not ours of course), and making money online.  We make $$$$$ by: (1) telling people about some of thing you have told us about yourself (if you have given us permission); (2) telling you about people that have paid us to talk about them; and (3) selling advertising space.  If you’re buying from us, you will PAY for what you order when you order it.  Since we wear the pants around here, its up to us whether we’ll run your ad or not, and like your prom date we may reject you…so try again.

2.  VERY BAD THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT DO

We want you to like us, we do. But the internet is dangerous, and we don’t like danger spilling over onto our website. So while some of this may seem OBVIOUS, we have to tell you because sometimes its good to be reminded.  So when using our site we expect the following:

• Don’t Spam, or use this site to sell your crap without our permission.  This isn’t the classified section of the newspaper;
• Don’t give us viruses or try and hack your way into our computers;
• Don’t post comments on our blog that are useless;
• Don’t be a robot.  Robots are evil.  That means don’t use auto posters that are meant to leave things like “You blog has great informashuns!  Thank you! Best content 2007! I my wife tell me about your site, I say I no believe but she write…you best Site!” with anchor text to your crappy site about “Best Los Angeles Dog Groomers”.  Seriously….don’t.
• Don’t be a jerkface.  A jerkface is someone who discriminates, defrauds, hates, or acts like an idiot. Don’t do any of that.  We’ll ban you
• Don’t post things that you’re not supposed to or don’t have permission for.
• Don’t do other things that we don’t like, which is up to us.

If you follow the rules, you can stay. If you don’t, we can kick you out, haul your ass to court, or tell the Alphabet boys what you’ve done so they’ll put you under surveillance.  Our failure to enforce against one person is not a waiver to enforce our rights at any time for the same or different offenses.

3.  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Don’t steal our stuff.  By stuff, we mean the awesome content, advice, pictures, videos, sounds (ummm, not sure what kind of sounds we’ll make…but you can be sure you can’t have them without our permission) (altogether known as “Content”).  So our Content is protected by all the freaking laws you can think of.  Seriously. This includes US Copyright Law (17 U.S.C.A Section (weirdsquigglythinginsertedhere) 107).  This means don’t use it, think of using it, or even stare at it with the intention of doing something we didn’t give you permission to do.

 

If you’re giving us content for our site, you’re pinky swearing that it’s yours or you have permission to use it in the way you’re using it.  Violations of other people’s “stuff” is not taken lightly here at DC, as we don’t like it when people jack our Content.  So if you jack someone else’s and try and pass it off to us like “oh hey bro, it’s cool you can totally use this”  then you’re going to pay for anything bad that happens to us, our employees, our advertisers, vendors, family pets, or agents.

 

Since we are opposed to copyright infringement we are registered in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to receive notices of copyright infringement or if you otherwise believe your intellectual property rights have been violated.  To send us a DMCA takedown notice, please contact us through our contact form on the site.    The DMCA notice should identify in the subject line our website, the words DMCA Notice, the name of the copyright owner and if applicable, your name if you are someone other than the owner, the title (and preferably URL, if Internet-based) of the work being infringed, the location of the infringing material on our site, and the following statement:

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.  The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

You must sign the notice, and if you send it by e-mail, an electronic signature is fine.

4.  RESPONSIBILITIES AND YOU BREAK IT YOU BOUGHT IT.

DC may allow you to post content.  You agree you will only post in accordance to this Agreement, and agree to remain responsible for anything that you post.  By posting your content you’re giving us the right to use that content via a license to use it how we please.  Seriously, we can take your content and hack the crap out of it, spin it, and even make money off of it without paying you a dime.  We’ll send you a fruit basket though…maybe…actually probably not.  This “license” is not revocable and goes on forever and ever and ever and ever.  But wait, there’s more.  If anything bad happens because of something you submit, you agree to pay us, our legal bills, or other bills that may result because of what you submit.

5.  U MAD?  GONNA LAWYER UP BRO?

We have lawyers.  A whole team of them that are ready to knife fight on a whim, but we’d rather resolve this like gentlemen.  So if you have a problem you will first come to us and tell us about this problem.  We may talk about this problem for awhile, and if neither side is happy with the result then we can duke it out in Court.  The Court must be in California, and will be decided based on California law.  Any law that applies or controls this contract is California law.   YEA DOG, that’s right, you just got hometurfed broseph.  But you’re agreeing to this hometurf being California because we have to have one universal location to resolve disputes in.  Oh, and the winner of any dispute or lawsuit is entitled to have their attorneys’ fees and costs paid for by the loser.

6.  SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD….AGREEMENT

Sometimes, people mutually agree to stuff that courts just won’t uphold.  That shouldn’t affect the intent of our contract, though, so you agree that if a judge declares a portion of these Terms of Service of no effect, the rest of the Terms of Service will stay in effect as much as is still possible without the part that the judge struck down.

7.  THIRD PARTY SHARING

Our site may have links to third party websites that we have no control over, such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace (seriously..who uses myspace anymore?).   We have no responsibility over this content (although I those companies want to give us free shares in their company we’re cool with that) and therefore you have to take up any problems you have with those sites with their owners.  Leave us out of it.

8.  LOUD NOISES

WE HAVE TO USE CAPS LOCK FOR THIS SECTION BECAUSE SOME DEAD GUY 100 YEARS AGO PROBABLY SAID IF WE DON’T THEN IT DOESN’T COUNT.  SO WE CAN’T GUARANTEE THAT OUR SITE WON’T BREAK YOUR COMPUTER OR THAT YOU’LL FIND IT AMUSING OR THAT IT WILL HELP YOU MAKE MONEY.  WE TRY OUR BEST, BUT THAT’S ALL YOU GET JUST LIKE WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING AT A RANDOM GARAGE SALE…YOU’RE BUYING IT “AS IS” EVEN IF IT BLOWS UP OR FRIES YOUR BRAIN.  SO EVEN IF SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND CATASTROPHIC HAPPENS BECAUSE YOU VIEWED OUR SITE, YOU CAN’T SUE US, OR ANYONE THAT IS CONNECTED WITH US. SINCE WE’RE IN CALIFORNIA, AND YOU MIGHT BE CALIFORNIA WE HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THAT FANCY LAW THAT SAYS IF YOU GIVE UP YOUR “GENERAL” RIGHTS TO CLAIMS YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS TO CLAIMS THAT YOU COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN ABOUT (MAKES SENSE RIGHT?) WEL GUESS WHAT YOU ARE GIVING THOSE RIGHTS UP BECAUSE THIS IS A CONTRACT AND WE JUST TOLD YOU.  SORRY!  SO WE’RE DISCLAIMING ALL WARRANTIES AND LIABILITY FOR ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, WHETHER OR NOT WE KNEW OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN PSYCHIC AND KNEW.  KING OF THE CASTLE MEANS THAT WHEN YOU COME INTO OUR SITE, YOU PLAY BY OUR RULES AND IF WE END UP BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR SOMETHING WE’RE NOT GOING TO PAY YOU A PENNY MORE THAN WHAT YOU MAY HAVE PAID US IN THE PAST MONTH, OR $50 WHATEVER IS SMALLER.  IF YOU’RE FROM ONE OF THOSE WEIRD STATES THAT SAY YOU CAN’T HAVE PROVISIONS LIKE THIS IN A CONTRACT, OR THAT WE CAN’T LIMIT WHAT WE PAY THEN OUR DAMAGES ARE LIMITED TO THE SMALLEST, TEENIEST, TINIEST, BIT ALLOWED BY LAW.  WOMP WOMP.

 

 

9. MISC THINGS

IF YOU’RE FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY, WELCOME..GUTENTAG, NEI HO, BONJOUR, JAMBO, HOLA……we’re going to be transferring your information from our country to yours, so you’re ok with us transferring this information by virtue of having visited and used our site.  Unless you’re from Germany, then…well…..let us know and we’ll figure out what to do with you.   Headings to these sections are meant to be for entertainment purposes only and have no binding effect.  We can transfer our rights and obligations in this agreement whenever we want.  Just because we don’t put someone in a burlap sack and beat them with a sock full of quarters for violating any section of this Agreement doesn’t mean we’re waiving our right to enforce our Agreement, it just means we’re cutting someone some slack.  It doesn’t mean we’ll do the same for you or anyone else.  Too bad, we do what we want because we’re the honey badgers of bloggers.   Follow the law and don’t be a jerkface.

It’s geared toward getting you lots of connections and making more money in under 30 days, and it doesn’t require any real “work”.

The only work that is required is contacting people that you don’t know or don’t know well.

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Pick 50 target prospects that could drastically help your business.

• These can be a mix of people in your industry or in an industry you want to get into.
• You must not only pick the targets, but collect their contact info where you can have a live conversation. This can be in person, on the phone or on a live online chat like Skype. Email doesn’t count because it’s not live.
• Have a mixture of targets that you think will be easy to get a hold of for a live conversation and a mix of people that you think will be harder to get a hold of. Don’t pick all easy or all hard targets.

Step 2: Create a plan.

• What are you going to say to these people if you only have 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 30 seconds, etc to tell them about you?
• Create a plan that will allow you to have something to say even if you are given tight time restrictions with each person.
• Resist the urge to “sell” yourself or your product. Rather tell them something interesting about you and have a genuine conversation.
• Don’t create a pushy plan, the idea is just to get these people to remember you and be intrigued to contact you back.

Step 3: Start contacting them.

• Remember, you need to have a live conversation. Face to face, voice to voice or as a last resort an online chat program. No email, text messages or letters.
• At least 10 must be in person, at least 15 must be over the phone. The more in person and then second best, over the phone that you reach out to the better the results are going to be.
• You have 30 days. GO!

The goal of the whole exercise is to put you outside of your comfort zone and make new business contacts. People will appreciate genuine conversation about business without being pushy. Make sure to give people a chance to talk about themselves and what they have going on, don’t push just your agenda.

I’ll make you a challenge that if you follow through on this and don’t get a single dollar of new business that I’ll personally give you a free consulting session. But, if you do get new business you owe me something good.

It also seemed that the trend was to throw small private parties to do networking in smaller groups. The Affiliate Ball and the Affiliate Fight Night although both extremely cool, were also extremely crowded and you couldn’t really do much networking. The Fight Night in particular was very impressive in terms of entertainment.

David’s Aff Playbook meetup was really good. They had a nice suite at the palms and it was a smaller controlled group. It was a good size to the point that I played a game of pool and there was more than enough space, not person to person packed in like sardine cans like some of the “everyone’s invited” parties. They had delicious cookies too!

Aaron Kelly also invited me to the Badger Ball, which was also fantastic. They had a funny event occur during the night, which we all thought was just some crazy drunk guy that snuck in off the street but it turned out to be a prank, it was pretty hilarious. Some guy waited for Aaron to be around and then had face planted onto the floor (ouch?) and when asked how he got there or who he was with, he pretended to be ridiculously drunk. He did a good job, he fooled me too as I was standing right there.  The networking was great there too, it was a small but quality controlled group of friends, business acquaintances, etc.

Affiliate Fight Night was amazing entertainment. It brought back a lot of awesome memories from when I was involved in the Ryan Bennett Memorial Fund years ago, raised a ton of money for his family and then they showed thanks by having a private dinner with Randy Couture and Big John McCarthy for us. Randy then drove us to his gym now know as Xtreme Couture, which at the time was only half finished and not even open. We spent the afternoon with Randy and it was an awesome time. Great memories, thanks Affiliate Fight Night.

I noticed a lot of the same problems that affiliate networks, traffic companies and others are facing at these events. They don’t really know how to put on a good promotion to get results from their conference spend. They setup these elaborate booths, and then their “pitch” is horrible, and they have no real “draw” to get people there in the first place (or to get them to stay) other than lame gimmicks. One recurring gimmick that I see every year is “Win an iPad” (or similar prize) by dropping your business card. The companies think that they are getting leads by doing this, and they are, but they are getting bad leads mostly. Of course everyone and their uncle is going to drop a business card to win an iPad, but that doesn’t mean they are targeted leads to what you are selling.

Affiliates are smartening up and realizing which networks not to work with, and which ones are around for the long haul. At this point, if you’ve been in the affiliate game for any length of time you are savvy and know how to spot a scam or low quality network a mile away. A pretty obvious point is when you see “standard” sales pitches and sales messaging. It’s a pretty obvious sign of a start-up network. And if that’s the case, you have to be really careful that you’re dealing with someone that’s not just going to go out of business when the first advertiser blows off a payment for 6 months or more. Too many affiliates are left footing the bill lately when advertisers don’t pay and networks can’t afford to float. I wouldn’t work with anyone that couldn’t afford to float some money and is making me wait for their advertisers to pay. That’s the whole point of the affiliate network!! Otherwise they are doing absolutely nothing for you that you couldn’t do yourself with a direct deal!

I ended up catching a few sessions and I was pretty impressed with Shoemoney’s closing Keynote. I thought the message he was trying to get out was great for new people to the industry. I thought his message also applied to entrepreneur’s in general, which I think was a good think.

I’ll be back for the next Affiliate Summit, no doubt about it!

I personally would buy almost any product that Apple has, just because it’s Apple and I know they make products that I like. Though, I know a lot of people wouldn’t.

This means that in 2012 I will most likely buy an iPad 3, iPhone 5 and maybe even an Apple TV. It’s almost a certainty that I’ll be buying the two former items, less likely on the Apple TV, but I might.

Why am I so loyal to Apple? Why do I keep buying their products? Good question.

In my opinion, Apple in particular has something that a lot of other companies don’t have. You don’t see them polling customers on what the should innovate next, they just do it. They are the visionaries, not me. Sure, I can help them think of some better features for an existing product to make it faster or smarter but I don’t think I’m going to have the vision to create something revolutionary for them. And, they’ve revolutionized gadgets and phones many many times over.

Paying a premium for a brand that you love?

Part of the phenomenon with Apple in my view is that people are attracted to them and extremely loyal because of the premium quality that they instill based on price (and quality.) I think there’s a perception that since they are the most expensive, in the tablet world for example, that they must be the best. This isn’t exactly true in the phone world, but their prices are up there for those as well. I think it adds to their brand and makes it strong, rather than selling them for Kindle Fire kind of prices. Though, I hear that the introduction of the iPad 3 may push down the prices on the iPad 2. Either way it’s making people loyal. Also the fact that they are constantly innovating and improving their devices.

The really interesting thing about brand loyalty to me is that not many other companies other than Apple have made me this loyal. I mean, I have an Apple laptop, Apple desktop, Apple phone, used to have an iPod and I’m likely going to be buying an Apple tablet this year.

For example, I’ve loved all the cars I’ve had but I have yet to have two cars of the same manufacturer in a row. My first car was a Mitsubishi, followed by a Subaru, followed by a BMW and Mercedes, and now an Infiniti. I wasn’t brand loyal on my cars, even though I loved all of them.

My conclusion here is that even though I loved those vehicles, I wasn’t addicted to them like I am with Apple. They were missing the addiction factor. I mean, Apple has literally changed my way of life and I’ll never go back. All of my content is sync’d to my other devices, making my life much easier. I NEVER have computer problems, or computer crashes like I used to. Everything is “easier” to use and simpler. And, I used to HATE Windows operating systems because of these and other problems. I would be frustrated and miserable all the time when using an Windows OS, and I would just be waiting for the next time it was going to crash because of the extremes I push  my machines to. I mean to the point of throwing monitors out windows because I was so frustrated with Windows OS.

Are you extremely brand loyal to anything? A certain affiliate network? Google PPC? Facebook Ads?

If you think about the following, it makes a lot of sense. Why would you want to listen to your customers thoughts on what features they want to see in your product/service and then implement those? Your competitors might be out there inventing the future that you’re customers can’t predict. And, your customers are just going to tell you what features they know of in the existing marketplace, that they want to see. So, at best you’re just going to get a list of better features that they know of from other products. You’re going to be playing a losing game of catch-up.

Tech luminary Alan Kay says “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

You’re either a business or service that is inventing the future or you’re a business that is just playing catch up with things that are already out there. You’re customers are busy in their regular jobs, regular lives, they aren’t going to invent the future for you. You are the entrepreneur, you are the visionary, don’t put your future in your customers hands.

This has been true for me all my life and it wasn’t too long ago that I finally realized it. Almost every venture I’ve been involved in, whenever I would ask my customers about something, I would get good comments and feedback, but they were never there to help me innovate and advance my business. That’s my job. Case in point, I get a lot of great comments on the blog and a lot of great conversations are sparked from it, but I don’t expect readers to write a comment that’s going to show me how to add 8 million in revenue to my bottom line and innovate online marketing.

Accessibility is still a profitable trait.

There’s something else I’ve learned from Mark Cuban that you would think is a contradiction to the above philosophy on not listening to your customers. I learned that staying accessible is a very profitable business practice. A lot of “known” and successful business people are somewhat hard to reach. Mark Cuban and I are relatively easy to reach (brian@dailyconversions.com). I’ve personally exchanged emails with Mark and was surprised to see that he wasn’t very hard to reach. Even though I get dozens of emails per day, I still try to at least respond to each email and every now and then a new business or a new project is sparked from someone that just blind reached out to me. I should point out that I get a lot of crazy emails too with people pretty much just begging me to give them work or train them in something for free. It’s hard to tell people no, so that’s another side to it that you have to be good at saying no.

One thing to point out about accessibility is that you can’t let it consume you. I employ a practice that I learned from Tim Ferriss (the 4 Hour Work Week) and I batch my emailing and listening to voice mails to only a couple set times per day, that’s why I’m not sitting around looking at emails all day or spending too much time on it. I also limit how much time I spend responding to inquiries from people that I don’t know. I’m not going to spend hours and hours responding to someone I don’t know, that has never helped me make a dollar when I have other matters to attend to.

Never “listen” to your customers. Stay accessible.

I’m headed down to Affiliate Summit West 2012 in about a week and believe me it’s going to be a very busy event. Not only do I have to check in with clients, and talk to some new potentials to see if they would be a good fit for me, I’m also going to be looking closely at clients (and my own) competitors to see how they are running their marketing.

A good percentage of exhibitors at Affiliate Summit in particular are way behind the times for marketing anyways, some are stuck on tactics that worked several years ago for a limited number of affiliate networks/companies. They wrongfully think that because a certain company or two has blossomed using an aggressive tactic, that it should work for them too. But, the reality is that no two companies are the same and no one marketing tactic is not going to work the same for everyone. The potential is limitless and companies are incorrectly making the same mistakes.

This year I’m setting a personal goal to work with several new companies, get involved in a new venture or two, and utilize new marketing tactics that I haven’t used before. I’m expanding my horizons, setting new goals and making new dreams and plans – setting my future how I want. I think that readers should be doing the same with their businesses, setting goals, trying new things and continuing (or starting) to prosper.

I talk to a lot of other consultants and marketers that seem to have it in their mind that they have been successful because of a certain marketing tactic that they have learned really well. And, I find that to be a ridiculous concept, because in my consulting business I’ve been successful by being innovative and always pushing clients (and myself) to try new things. Companies don’t get ahead by doing the same old thing and copying everyone else, they get ahead by making new relationships, truly pushing the envelope and innovating their marketing.

I hope you all have a great holiday season, shoot an email to brian@dailyconversions.com if you’re going to be at Affiliate Summit West 2012 and we’ll talk!

This scenario is repeated over and over with many companies that I’ve helped over years and years, across many industries and niches and the answer is virtually always the same.

The main key to successfully standing out from your competition is far less complicated than many people make it out to be. The main problem is that we have been taught from years and years how to be competitive in business by the same people and everyone has come to utilize these tactics. And, if everyone is utilizing the same old tactics, how do you stand out? It gets really complicated and really difficult and you’re forced into a scenario to lower your profit margins, fight/beg/steal customers and it can be a very stressful situation.

I’ve been perfecting my tactics for years now and these suggestions that I normally give to my clients comes from 10+ years of experience in everything from affiliate and internet marketing to offline businesses.

I’m going to set this up for you in such a way that it’s applicable to you whether you’re an affiliate marketer, affiliate network, ad network, entrepreneur or otherwise.

Most business clients will come to me giving me their big problem, usually it’s something extremely confusing that ultimately breaks down to a simple “make more money”. My first step is to break this down and figure out what it is that they actually need to achieve that. Is it more sales, is it less expense, is it fixing price points, is it industry contacts, whatever I determine that they need. Often times it’s extremely simple to me but for them it’s extremely complicated. My job becomes making it extremely simple for them too and actually getting them to take action on it.

Here’s where standing out from your competition comes into play.

Once I determine what they actually need, it usually comes back to making more sales (getting more affiliates and then getting those affiliates to generate conversions for affiliate network clients) by standing out from their competition. Standing out from competition is something that 90% of companies get wrong in most industry, affiliate marketing being no exception.

Here’s what usually happens next. I’ll start talking to the client about what they think makes them unique. Using affiliate marketing as an example, here’s what the average client would say: “We are different because we have more exclusive offers, higher payouts, better training, better affiliate managers, better offers with higher conversions, yada yada yada” aka the same sales message 90% of your competition has, and none of your prospects believe.

At this point I usually shake my head. Believe it or not this is the same in most industries, everyone copies everyone else, and is playing follow the leader with whatever sales message the “big dog” in that industry has. And, thinking of it like a sales message might be part of the problem, especially in these super competitive niches. (hint hint)

Remember when you were single (maybe you still are?) and that annoying girl/guy came up to you at the bar/club/wherever and the whole time this person was annoying you, you just wanted the attention of the girl/guy in the back of the room that was paying no attention to you?

Is your company “trying too hard” to get people to work with you? Is your company that annoying girl/guy that just won’t leave you alone and spitting out the same pick up lines as everyone else?

I’ve worked with a number of clients that have implemented a “no sales”, sales strategy. Prospects are literally coming to them because of their perception. They are positioning themselves “right” by not being forceful and seeming needy.

Does your company seem needy? Think about this over the holidays and contact us if this sounds all too familiar with the issues your company is facing. I can’t make any promises right now as I’m only picking up 1 new and I know a lot of the smarter companies out there are going to reach out when they hear that I’m offering services again. However, I do encourage you to start a dialogue with us to get things back in order for your company.

The challenge was to go to a crowded movie where there were only a few remaining seats, sit dead center in the middle of the theater and influence the crowd to not sit next to me. Oh ya, there was one more condition, I couldn’t ask anyone to not sit next to me. I had to influence them all through body language and conversation with a friend that I brought with me for the experiment who was also sitting next to me. The goal was to get nobody to sit next to me, or my friend, and have nobody in front of or behind me.

This is an interesting case study because it required me to think on my feet the entire time and make a quick judgement call on each person entering the theater and what I would have to do to influence them to not sit next to me.

I’ll give you a couple of the tactics that I used throughout the case study, why I used them and what type of people I used them on if applicable.

• Talking really loud – This was used on quiet/shy looking people and older demographics that looked like they wouldn’t want to have to confront me if I kept up the talking throughout the movie. Granted this was still before the previews had even started so this didn’t work on everyone. Some people probably assumed I would quiet down.
• Putting my feet up on the chair in front of me and taking my shoes off slowly – This seemed to work on just about everyone, nobody wants to take the change of sitting in front of someone with their shoes off and smell someones feet right behind them the whole movie.
• Talking loudly to my friend about my  “illness” – I would use this when nothing else worked and someone got close to sitting next to me, they would immediately divert or sit several seats away.
• Coughing/sneezing uncontrollably – This was a universal tactic that I used when nothing else worked or if I couldn’t think of anything else for the type of person that came near.
• Talking to my accomplish about tall people that “always sit in front of me” – this would keep people clear of the seats in front of me if they were even remotely tall.
• Rocking in my seat - This would keep almost everyone from sitting behind me, they wouldn’t want to be distracted the entire movie from someone obnoxiously rocking in their chair and most people want to avoid confrontation of having to ask me to stop.

All in all this was a very fun case study. It was mostly doing different degrees of obnoxious acts to get people to steer clear. In a theater with several hundred seats, I managed to have the lefts to the left of us, right of us and in front and behind myself clear. This were the only 4 seats open except for the very first row aka stiff neck alley.

There were a few other tactics not listed that I just can’t remember, and as an adult and accomplished marketer repeating this case study probably isn’t a great idea. However, it is an interesting piece to look back on and get my mind going on how negative things can influence someone not to do something. If you know how to get someone not to do something, you can probably reverse that and figure out how to get them to actually DO something without the negative. I think as marketers it’s crucially important to understand both ends of the spectrum of postie and negative influence.

Now the big question. How can you reverse this tactic to instead of steering people away from something, steer them towards something? And, can you use decoys of your own to steer them to another product/website/etc of yours?

Context is critically important. One of the first lessons we learn is the importance of context – there is a time and place for every message.  Anyone caught passing a note to the cute girl in the front row in first grade and facing the embarrassment of having the note read aloud by your teacher can relate.  Mitt forgot that he was not only in front of millions of potential voters, but an army of social media pundits eager to pounce on any mistake.

For those of us who live on the internet, realize anything we post becomes part of the permanent record.  When running a promotion or committing anything to writing, think about the impact of your words in various contexts – from the front page of the New York Times to being rebroadcast by your least favorite political talk show host.  You can never assume a sentence will always be placed in context.

Consumers interpret moments in unexpected ways.  After the bet comment, the debate hall had moved on to the next question.  If you read the wire service or newspaper coverage that evening, the bet was not even mentioned.  But by Sunday morning it was the most talked about moment of the debate.

Again, when you make your living with words in public places, you have to think beyond your perspective before you post.  One of the most important lessons I am learning these days is the impact of culture on perception.  Take two people from different regions with different backgrounds, and they can see a message two totally different ways.  You know your audience, but you must also continually educate yourself on cultural impact on marketing.  Know your dominant culture, and experiment with writing in the voice of other cultures.  Work at reducing your risk of misinterpretation.

Don’t over commit.  (Or is it co-Mitt?).  Mitt was convinced he was right and Perry was wrong.  The bet proved he stood behind his opinion.  Naming any amount of money was unnecessary. Mitt is working to build a reputation as the trustworthy candidate, the non-fire bomb thrower.  He is working hard to make his word means something.  So he should have just offered Perry a bet.  Extend his hand to show he’s putting his word behind it.  Naming an amount of money, no matter the amount, was not required.

The risk to marketing people is over commitment.  To confuse truth with spin.  To go from selling the sizzle on your steak, to selling the sizzle on someone else’s steak.  And every time you cross that line, you run a risk.  In my career, I’ve learned to work hard to promote my product or service, squeeze every benefit and advantage out of the copy, but don’t overreach.  It seems to always cost more than $10,000.

This was a post by Rj.