Marketer’s Mind Memo – Issue #56

Originally published in 2016

It popped up on my phone yesterday…

I haven’t spoken to KC in almost 8 years.

We met when I was in my early twenties.

I was working for the health club company and KC was brought in as the new sales manager. He was the new hired gun.

He grew up in the industry selling memberships for another health club company known for their aggressive sales department. And he was good. Charismatic. Gregarious. An extreme extrovert. And built like a brick house.

I was simultaneously intimidated by him and taken in by his confidence, charm, and swagger.

For the first year or so working together, KC was a role model for me. I admired the way he was able to work a room, deliver motivational sales meetings, and hit numbers. He was the epitome of success in that world.

Over time, KC and I became friends. Then good friends.

We routinely grabbed lunch together — either sushi or the local Chinese buffet — and would talk business, sales, and hunting (his choice, not mine).

In a future memo maybe I’ll tell you about the one and only time Kenny took me hunting. Let’s just say… it was the dead of winter, I was wearing a camouflage jump suit three sizes too big for me, and I was stuck in a tree stand swaying every time the wind blew. Needless to say, for an animal lover, not a pleasant experience. Hence, my last.

Inspired by KC and my newfound love for what a good sales system could do, I transformed my own department at the fitness company (i.e. personal training) into a replica of his sales department.

I implemented a full sales presentation, metrics for everyone, daily quotas, prospecting, numbers reporting, and hardcore sales training.

Over the following handful of years my department became a well-oiled machine.

And it was then that KC and I were each promoted to Vice President of our respective departments… and given the opportunity to continue to run our departments in every new facility the company opened. Ten separate locations in total when all was said and done.

Then, I was introduced to the world of direct response marketing. And that’s when things really took off for me.

At the peak, I had seventy trainers, ten managers, and two regional directors working for me. And we were doing over 3 million dollars a year in sales.

My department, thanks to the original inspiration from KC and the addition of direct response marketing, became the best, most successful department in the entire company. The poster child for all the other departments. Ironically, even for KC’s.

That’s when our roles reversed (sort of) and KC began coming to me for advice and guidance on how to better his own department. Of course, I happily obliged.

Fast forward some years, and KC and I each moved on from those initial positions, each to pursue a different entrepreneurial venture. Me, information publishing. KC, his own fitness facility.

Then yesterday, KC sent me that text message.

He had sold his club and was now interested in sharing his experience and knowledge as a club owner with other struggling owners. He’s ready to jump into the world of consulting.

“So, I decided to reach out to the expert in this area I know. You,” he said to me after about 15 minutes of us catching-up and laughing about old times. “And I need to make this happen quickly,” he continued. “And the only person who I know that gets things done faster than me is you.”

For KC to recognize that and still remember it after all these years is clearly an indication of something.

Now, I’m not sure if KC's assessment is accurate. But, I would certainly agree that I’ve always been about speed and getting from idea to implementation as quickly as possible.

Once I select the destination, I have one thing in my mind — let’s get there as soon as possible. Period.

I believe time is the enemy of ideas.

It’s the enemy of motivation.

It’s the enemy of passion.

And it’s the thief of our dreams and goals.

The longer we let things sit… the longer it takes to go from started to finished… the longer we contemplate and ponder… the less likely we are to ever get there.

Success — especially today — requires action. A lot of action. Fast action. Speed.

It allows you to quickly get past the learning stage. It allows you to quickly get all the mistakes out of the way...

It allows you to quickly identify the things that don’t work. It allows you to quickly get to the one of out eight marketing winners...

It allows you to quickly grow and develop...

And it allows you to beat your competitors to new opportunities, new gaps in the market, new prospect segments, and new trends.

Looking at business as a battlefield: The slow warrior gets chopped down. The fast warrior lives another day to battle.

With that, let's get to this week's goodies...

MY FAVS THIS WEEK

• 100 Simple Truths
  
  Don't know much about the person behind these little gems. I think the person may be a designer of some sort.
  
  Regardless, almost every simple truth shared could... and probably should... give you reason for pause. 
  
  Good stuff.
  
  Enjoy!
  
  
• IBM's 4-Step Sales Qualification System
  
  I certainly don't think this is a perfect... or even complete... sales qualification process for most entrepreneurs.
  
  But, BANT is a great starting point.
  
  And, while this article isn't written for the average entrepreneur, hopefully it'll make you question how well you're currently qualifying your own prospects before trying to convert them into buyers.  
  
  
• This Advertising Satire Skewers The Commercial Pitching Process
  
  Absolutely hysterical!
  
  Take eight minutes and enjoy this.
  
  You'll thank me after. 

🚨SWIPE OF THE WEEK

This week's Swipe File is a great example of a fairly formulaic sales letter which can be modeled for almost any info-product or training course.

It's from the folks over at AWAI. So, of course, the letter is well written.

If you pay attention to nothing else, pay close attention to how the letter presents benefit after benefit after benefit after benefit.

It's relentless.

Recommended Resource

WHAT I'M TELLIN' MY TEAM

This week on our internal Team Marketing Training...

I taught the guys a couple of ways to ethically demonstrate speed of results within a marketing campaign. Two questions your prospects have -- which need to be answered honestly in your copy -- are:

(1) How easy will this solution be for me to use?

(2) And how fast will I see results from it?

Obviously, the easier your solution is to use, and the faster it produces the payoff, the more attractive it is. And, of course, the more attractive your solution is, the higher your sales conversion rate will be.

But, what do you do to demonstrate speed of results when the result you're promising has a long timeline (e.g. losing 100 pounds)?

Like... what if, for example, the time to experience the transformation is a year?

Does this mean you can't talk about speed of results without lying?

Not at all. We just wouldn't talk about the speed of results in terms of the complete transformation.

So let's say, for example, we helped people lose 100 pounds in one year. Well, we could talk about the speed at which our approach begins burning fat...

Or how quickly their metabolism will start to speed up...

Or how quickly they'll begin losing inches...

Or how quickly they'll start getting compliments from people. 

In this instance, think of it like this:

We're talking about demonstrating speed of results, not necessarily speed of getting to the finish line.

Team Takeaways In Three Bullets:

• In an ideal situation we would engineer all of our solutions to be easy to use and deliver fast results. We would bake these in from the start. So, we should always be thinking, "What's the fastest and easiest way we can help our market solve XYZ problem?"
  
  
• No matter how big, bold, and exciting an outcome or promise is, very few people are going to be excited to buy it if it's difficult and time consuming to use and takes a long time to experience any benefits.
  
  
• The easier a solution is to use... and the faster it produces results... the more valuable it becomes. Meaning: Ease and speed of results have an impact on price. Difficult and slow begets low price. Easy and fast begets high.

MY ADVICE

A question posted inside the E5 Nation Facebook Group...

Below is my response:

No. Webinars are most certainly not "dead".

However, in many markets, testing has shown higher revenue per registrant with "instant access" webinars (i.e. on-demand) than with the traditional "live on X date and time".

I don't find this surprising.

With access to more and more streaming services, people are becoming more accustomed to on-demand access. They don't want to wait. Delay is viewed as a negative, an inconvenience.

So, I'd speculate this is the reason why attendance rates are lower than ever with many live webinars.

With that said... we're still seeing much higher conversion rates with live webinars than with on-demand.

So, it's a give and take.

With live webinars you'll see a lower attendance (consumption) rate than with on-demand. But, you'll usually see higher sales conversion rates.

So, at the end of the day, no... webinars are not dead.

You just need to test to see which version produces the highest revenue per registrant.

The on-demand version with higher consumption and lower sales conversion... or... the live version with lower consumption and higher sales conversion.

***
NOTE: If you're not in the E5 Nation Facebook Group with us yet, you're missing out on the opportunity to have me answer your questions. Not too mention, some killer content and live streams only shared inside the Group.

Go here and join us inside the E5 Nation Group (it's FREE!). 

ROCKSTAR RESOURCE

I love the idea of sending a personal thank you video to every new client. I hate the idea of the labor involved.

Well, enter Windsor.io... personalization at scale.

Windsor is an app that allows you to send a personal video to thousands of prospects, after recording a single video.

According to their site: "Windsor's AI technology can personalize video they way Mailchimp can personalize emails."

I've yet to test this. But, hopefully, will be on-boarded sometime this next week.

If you're interested, go here and request an invite. 

PIC OF THE WEEK

Since Thursday night I've been in Virginia...

Here for a leadership meeting about the next phase of growth for our new E5 media buying agency.

Damian, a partner in the agency... and present at the meeting... loves to cook. It's a passion of his. 

So, he decided to whip-up a little breakfast treat for all of us:

Greek yogurt scrambled eggs. Black Forest bacon. Herb fruit salad. Whiskey apricots. Rye toast. Roasted baby potatoes.

Delicious!

A perfect way to kick-off the morning before digging in to some spreadsheets.

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