In response to my post about Nisus and fear, Charles Jolley writes that most people don’t care.
Actually, I think it’ s more accurate to say that most people don’t care enough.
The enough is critical.
People didn’t used to care enough about coffee, or gas mileage or ski bindings or Darfur. The challenge of marketing is to get people to care enough… because deep down, most people care. Just not high enough on their (your) priority list of life problems.
I wonder if the sales call has a lot of life left in it.
Before you faint, let me get my terms straight: I think a sales call is a meeting (in person or on the phone) when a salesperson endeavors to sell something to a prospect, and where the prospect is doing the salesperson some sort of service by being there.
Today, though, with streamlined organizations, there are plenty of people who no longer have the time to politely listen to a sales call in order to not offend a b2b salesperson.
And with so many shopping options available, I’m not sure many consumers have the time or desire either.
Instead, I think we’re seeing the rise of the buying call.
I have a problem. I’m willing to talk to a buyperson (okay, bad neologism) to help me solve it.
My factory needs to be more efficient. I want to buy a solution. I call a salesperson.
My publishing company needs to grow. I’m eager to have a meeting with an author who will show me a new book that will help me do that.
What changes more than the words is the posture. If you ever find yourself in a meeting, arms folded, barely paying attention, waiting for the salesperson to leave, the right question to ask yourself is, "Why did you bother wasting your time by going?" If you’re going to go to a meeting with a salesperson, the new expectation is that you’ll come armed with questions, eager to learn what you need, ready to buy the moment you find the right solution.
An unprepared salesperson should be shown the door. What about an unprepared or unmotivated buyer?
When a salesperson gets asked, "Hey, are you trying to sell me something," the best answer may be, "I sure am, and if you’re not here to buy something, we should both be somewhere else…"
So, there’s no version of Word optimized for the new MacBook. In
fact, my copy keeps crashing my crash-proof machine. I just switched to
Nisus.
Let’s see, it’s faster, cheaper, compatible, more reliable, optimized
and friendly. And yet, almost no one with a MacBook has switched.
The other day, my family saw the supersized version of Scrabble, which comes with a bigger board and more tiles. We played once. We hated it.
Just because something is newer or better or bigger doesn’t mean you should switch. In fact, one of the big fears people bring to the table is investing the time to figure out if it’s worth it (the other fear is that switching will just wreck everything.)
Getting someone to switch to super-sized Scrabble is hard. Getting them to switch word processors is almost impossible. Fear is a huge barrier, no matter what you’re selling.
Peter Magelssen points us to CHOPIT!: The Seattle Times: Motoring: Putting the show in business.
Infomercials are not interruption media. They’re not really ads. They are product pitches that people choose to watch. Good for him.
Link: Things That Make Me Angry. Best advice on what you should be given to play golf:
a shovel, a pool cue, and a wooden leg
Not sure anyone does…
The FDA just approved the Gardasil vaccine, which protects women against cervical cancer and some sexually transmitted diseases. It’s a breakthrough that could save thousands of lives every year.
The thing is, it costs $360 and needs to be given by injection to girls before they become sexually active–about 12 is what they’re recommending. And, since it’s a vaccine, there are fears about long-term effects.
So, let’s try to imagine that conversation taking place across the dinner tables and examination rooms across America… The idea that parents can be reached and then persuaded to confront these issues, in our culture, is a little overwhelming.
A reminder that marketing is always about a lot more than just facts.
Heath has the news: SquidBlog.
So, the New York Republican Party just nominated a candidate that by every judgment is to the right of the party as a whole and far to the right of this very blue state. Odds of winning: close to zero.
And it happens all the time.
The same way a few people will write in to a magazine to complain bitterly about a new design.
It’s easy to confuse people who are passionate and loud with the majority.
The people who care a lot show up. They vote in the primary, or at the convention. They write letters to the editor and bash your products on their blogs.
If you want your idea to spread, you need these people. They are the ones with otaku, the ones who care, the ones who will take the time to spread the word.
But don’t confuse them with the majority. If you need to win an election or sell a ton of products, this group (call them the early adopters) will almost always steer you wrong. As Brad Feld said, listen to what they say and do the opposite.
Important to note the part in the preceding paragraph about "need." I think most of the time, you don’t need to have a majority. Most of the time, it’s deadly to even try. Catering to the passionate is exactly what you should do.
When I type your brand or your name into youtube, what do I find?
What about technorati? or flickr?
You can fix all three of these things today.
It’s easy to worry about Google rankings, but hard to change them. Now, though, there are dozens of horizontal search tools that you can populate yourself. They’re not hiding. Are you?
