The Ultimate Sales Machine is the legacy Chet Holmes left to help sales staff all over the world, by giving them 12 key strategies to relentlessly focus and execute on, in order to at least double their sales.
Chet Holmes was a selling superstar. After doubling sales
for nine divisions of a Charlie Munger company, Chet looked back at what principles
and strategies he had used to make it happen.
He then turned those into 65 training products and this New
York Times bestseller.
But you read right. “Was”. Unfortunately, Chet died at the
young age of 55, after fighting a long and hard battle with leukemia.
His daughter took over the business at only 24 years old –
but is mastering the challenge.
Here are the 3 main things I’m taking away from the book’s
summary on Blinkist:
Offer recurring trainings for your sales staff.
Don’t just sell your product, sell the whole store.
Shoot for the moon by targeting decision-makers in bigcompanies.
Time to learn how to sell!
Lesson 1: Offer trainings on a regular basis for your sales
staff.
Train your sales staff, and train them often.
A lot of companies have sales trainings, but they’re annual
events. What’s more, the topic often changes from year to year.
But how can you possibly master the pitch for the upsell
from one hour of training?
You can’t.
Chet Holmes uses a great metaphor to makes it clear why
training your sales staff on a regular basis is so important.
He says a lumberjack has two ways of chopping more wood:
Spend a few extra hours each day.
Take one hour once a week to sharpen the saw.
Both will lead to the same result, but spending a little
more time preparing up front will save you hours later.
It’s the same with sales training. Imagine you had a weekly,
recurring workshop to teach the basics, and then would switch to a more
advanced topic after 6 months.
Everyone would have plenty of opportunities to sign up and
could just go to another workshop in case they forgot something.
This not only gives your sales staff less excuses to
underperform, it also makes people feel treated well and taken care of.
Lesson 2: Don’t just sell your product, sell the whole
store.
No, I don’t mean you should sell your business to the next
investor.
Think back to the last time you came home and said “Honey,
you have to check out this store. It’s fantastic!” (long time eh?).
Why did you send your sweetie or friends there? For their
awesome chairs? Probably not.
Most likely, it was for the story.
When you’re trying to sell gardening equipment, it’s not
your job to just sell 50 feet of hose to the next guy who walks in, it’s your
job to sell them the whole brand, story, yourself, store and everything in it.
Tell them about how you build the store from a 1-person army
into a proper company. Show them the live turtles that you take great care of
in the pond section. Give them advice on how to make sure the hose they buy
doesn’t get clogged.
This is called education-based marketing, and it works so
well, because it establishes a real connection between you and your customers.
Note: This is the equivalent of content marketing online.
Teach everything you know and people will view you as an expert with a great
story.
This is what makes the difference between catching the
attention of 10% of people (3% who are ready to buy instantly, 7% who are ready
to buy eventually), or 50% of people, who can relate to the story you have to
tell.
So stop selling gardening equipment, and start selling
people the brand that will make their wildest gardening dreams come true.
Lesson 3: Pitch the people who make decisions in big
companies.
Remember the whole 80/20 thing? It’s just as true for sales
as it is for anything else. Don’t focus your energy and attention on everyone.
Instead of blast mailing every company within a 5 mile
radius, just pick out the 10 biggest ones who need what you sell, and put a lot
of time and effort into your pitch to them.
Go there, get to know them, meet them.
And when the time comes, talk to the right person.
Yes, your high-pressure cleaner will make the life of the
cleaning company’s window cleaners easier. But are they the ones to decide whether
they’ll spend the money on some?
Probably not.
Find out who controls the budget, get to know them, and
convince them of the benefits, saved time and money of your product.
It’s much easier to spend 10 hours making one new friend at
another company, who might buy 300 units, than it is to spend 100 hours talking
to every random Joe on the street, trying to sell them a single piece.
Remember: Focus is about saying no.
So say no to a lot of potential clients, and yes to a few
influential ones, and you’ll do much better overall.
My personal take-aways
Focus is about saying no. Chet was a karate master. Similar to a quote by Bruce Lee, he said mastering karate is not about practicing 4,000 things, but about practicing 12 things 4,000 times.
This metaphor probably extends to life itself and all areas
of it.
That’s what makes this book helpful whether you run sales
teams or not. Of course big companies can get more out of it than the solo
entrepreneur, but I love how the book holds a bigger message inside.
The Tipping Point explains how ideas spread like epidemics and which few elements need to come together to help an idea reach the point of critical mass, where its viral effect becomes unstoppable.
Malcolm Gladwell is your friendly, Canadian journalist next
door. Much more than that, he’s taken a massive interest in science over the years,
and you might know him from a variety of his great talks, books and ideas.
I originally “bumped into him” through his first TED talk
about spaghetti sauce. Similar to Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice, Gladwell
reveals interesting findings about happiness and choice, and how the two are
related (or not).
The Tipping Point is his debut book, and it was a massive
hit – not least due to the value it created for businesses and marketers, who
now had a first sketch of a blueprint on how to promote their ideas better.
Here are the 3 lessons from the book that will help you
spread your own ideas:
Once an idea reaches the tipping point, it spreads like
fire.
Three kinds of people are responsible for getting ideas to
tip.
Without stickiness, no idea will ever tip.
Ready to infect the masses with your idea? Let’s roll!
Lesson 1: An idea spreads like fire once it reaches the
tipping point.
Katniss said it pretty clearly: “Fire is catching.”
So are ideas.
But in order to spread like fire among dry bushes, an idea
first has to reach what Gladwell calls the tipping point.
It’s the point of critical mass, where your idea goes from
interesting to a few to must-have for everyone.
Take Instagram for example. Yes, they had a lot of growth
early on – but it was still steady growth. There was a definite moment though,
in February 2012, when all of a sudden, the entire world seemed to need an
account.
It’s in this exact moment that Instagram’s user growth curve
shoots up meteorically and it becomes the fastest growing social network of all
time.
Don’t think virality is limited to the internet though –
this phenomenon predates the web. In 1984, Sharp came out with the first
affordable fax machine for people at home, and sold a solid 80,000 units in the
first year.
Sales rose steadily, but in 1987 completely exploded – by
1990 over 5 million fax machines were in use in US homes.
Why?
In 1987, the point was hit where finally enough people owned
a fax, so it made sense for the rest of the world to get one too.
Lesson 2: Three kinds of people are responsible for getting
ideas to tip.
Why then, do some ideas go big and beyond, and others just
never click?
Pareto’s Law is once again at play here, where roughly 20%
of the “carriers” cause 80% of the infections with an idea.
Gladwell specifically points out three kinds of people that
turn ideas into epidemics:
Connectors – they have a massive social network, with many
acquaintances and allow ideas to spread from one social group to the next.
Salesmen – the boast
about ideas they love and their incredibly positive energy is contagious.
Mavens – they hoard
information, in order to be a source of great tips to their network, the people
of which they greatly influence with their advice.
If you want your idea to go viral, getting it in the hands
of a few of these key players is crucial to hit critical mass.
But…
Lesson 3: If your idea isn’t sticky, it’ll never tip.
It doesn’t matter how many influencers you get to vouch for
your idea, or how many testimonials you can collect for the front page of your
book – if your book is bad, it’ll never reach the masses.
Gladwell calls this the stickiness factor. It answers the
question: “Is your idea memorable enough to make people take action?”
The concept of stickiness was first put to a proper
scientific test by the creators of Sesame Street in the late 1960’s.
When testing the show by observing children watching it,
they noticed children were quite selective about what they paid attention to,
for example toys on the floor or the show on TV.
However, that didn’t influence what they’d remember – the
quality of the content did. The kids could only give a few select looks to an
educational scene about how to spell the word “cat”, yet still remember the
lesson.
That meant unlike adults, children paid attention to TV in
order to learn and understand, not to be entertained. As a result the team
engineered the entire show around children’s attention, monitoring it
meticulously, which ultimately led to the format the show is still in today –
humans interacting with fantasy creatures.
The originally planned format, to have puppet scenes
separate from human scenes, failed to grab children’s attention and thus, their
minds.
Even though this is the last lesson, it’s really the first
point.
If you want something viral, you can’t think about making
something viral.
Just make something so great, one person who sees it can’t
live without sharing it.
Then, and only then, should you start caring about the
tipping point.
My personal take-aways
Gladwell’s writing is gripping, he weaves stories and tales
and hides baffling discoveries inside them.
I remember distinctly sitting in my armchair at my parents’
house, feeling completely awestruck at the fact that I indeed just yawned 3
times, just because, as Gladwell predicted, I’d read a section about yawning.
The Greatest Salesman In The World is a business classic that will help you become better at sales by becoming a better person all around.
I’m not good at sales. Never was, never will be. I can speak
enthusiastically of all things I believe in, but I’m very bad when it comes to
making a targeted effort to close the deal. Luckily, the internet allows us to build
careers where we can skip the in-person sales pitch some of us dread so much.
And yet, we still need the skill itself.
Being in the middle of launching my first, big product,
Write Like A Pro, I thought why not learn from one of history’s best sellers.
The Greatest Salesman In The World was first published by Og Mandino in 1968.
As opposed to offering sleazy tricks, the book suggests the simplest way to be
more convincing in all aspects of life is to become a better person in all
aspects of life.
Taking lots of inspiration from Christian spirituality, the
book helps you adopt ten valuable habits in ten “ancient scrolls.” It reminds
me a bit of The Richest Man In Babylon. Here are my 3 favorite lessons:
The most productive thing you can do to sell stuff is to
love other people.
Never give up, but never proceed unprepared.
Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, try to control your
emotions.
Regardless of whether you want to become an artist, land
your dream job, or actually sell stuff, we all need to master the art of
persuasion. Let’s learn how to do it from The Greatest Salesman In The World!
If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.
Lesson 1: The best salespeople love unconditionally.
One of my favorite writers about love, Kris Gage, says love
is an action, not a feeling. The emotional state of being in love comes and
goes, but the choice to love? That’s always available to you. So when Mandino
suggests you should “love everything and everyone,” it’s not romantic
infatuation he talks about. It means approaching everyone you meet with
kindness, appreciation, and understanding.
It’s not hard to see how this makes you a better salesperson
because it’s simply a way of improving all your relationships. These
relationships and the trust we form in them will determine how willing people
are to buy from us. Or to invest in us. Or to hire us. And so on.
Even the people who don’t like you can’t help but be
startled when you approach them with love. At the very least, their toxic
behavior towards you will eventually fade. How you best adapt this idea is up
to you. You could use affirmations, reminders, or a talisman. As long as it
reminds you to be kind, it’ll help.
Lesson 2: Always persist, but take breaks whenever you need
to.
Mandino was a big believer in taking action. In one of the
later scrolls of the book, he repeats the phrase “I will act now” 18 times. The
hardest part of sales, maybe in life altogether, is getting rejected. But you
never know which attempt is the last time you need to try in order to succeed.
That’s why persistence is always a good strategy.
However, there’s one important part of making it work:
taking breaks. It’s easy to get inspired when you read motivating words or
watch an awesome video, but the process Mandino describes in the books isn’t
about brute force. Rather than just always attack, he suggests you pause when
you first encounter an obstacle.
In that moment, you’ll notice an urge to give up, to run
away. Resist that urge and reframe the obstacle as a challenge. Once you’ve
done that, you can try tackling it. If you fail, you can simply retreat to that
initial state, observe from afar, recover your energy, and try again with a
new, positive frame of mind.
Lesson 3: Control your emotions in everything you do.
The two big components of success in anything are
self-awareness and emotional control. If you know how you function and how to
best manage your impulses, it’s gonna be hard to stop you. But if you constantly
react based on your feelings, you’ll have a hard time.
The sales example here is the frustrated door-to-door
salesman, who blows his last appointment of the day because he hasn’t sold
anything before. If you can’t contain your anger, you’ll throw it in someone
else’s face and whatever you hoped to gain from them is gone. This is also how
relationships fail, how business deals fall through, and how athletes lose the
match.
To control your emotions, you must learn to recognize them
as they arise, then use your thoughts and actions to balance them. When you’re
angry, find compassion, when you’re sad, remember a joke, when you’re
self-conscious, speak up, and so on. If you realize an emotion is becoming
excessive, think of an appropriate counter-reaction, then deploy it.
Once you can do that, you won’t just be better at sales,
you’ll also live a happier, calmer, more contented life.
My personal take-aways
If The Greatest Salesman In The World feels to spiritual for
you, remember that it was written some 50 years ago. Back then, Christianity’s
influence in the Western world was much bigger than it is today. That said, I
think all religions have things to teach us. If you can look past certain
terminology and concepts, you’ll find there’s a lot to learn from this humble
and noble approach to selling.
The Art Of Social Media is a compendium of over 100 practical tips to treat your social media presence like a business and use a bottom-up approach to get the attention your brand, product or business deserves.
Guy Kawasaki is a name that rings a bell for almost anyone.
Yet, most people don’t know why he originally became a public figure.
In 1983, Guy joined Apple, and became their chief
evangelist, responsible for the marketing of the Macintosh at the time. As an
evangelist, it was his job to spread the word about the Macintosh through
articles, talks, speeches, demonstrations and presentations.
In this way, Guy created a base of incredibly loyal fans and
customers, who spread the word as much as they could on their own, thus
generating huge network effects.
Over the years he’s become an angel investor and expert in
social media, as he was involved in many platforms early on. The Art Of Social
Media is his practical guide to helping people succeed in this industry.
Here are 3 very actionable lessons for your own social media
presence:
Treat your social media with professionalism.
Provide content your fans want to see, not only what you
want to create.
Let your various accounts talk to each other for
cross-promotion effects.
Ready to become a social media maverick? Let’s do this!
Lesson 1: Treat your social media presence like it’s a
business.
Why does your softball team never win and make it to the top
of the league?
Because it’s your hobby.
Be honest. You don’t take it seriously. You want to go to
softball, hang with friends, throw some balls, and drink a few beers
afterwards. That’s okay.
But then you shouldn’t complain about never winning. If you
want to win, you’ll have to start training seriously. Double practice, show up
early, stay late, round up the team, and really focus on ironing out those
mistakes.
Yes, whether in sports, or in social media, if you want to
succeed, you’ll have to treat it as if you’re trying to go pro.
So remove your WhiskeyWilliam handle, drunken party profile
pic and stop posting jokes about your mum-in-law.
Use your full name (for example my website is
niklasgoeke.com, so people will remember my name and start googling it), make
sure your picture clearly shows your face and you smile, and start posting
things that are relevant to the people you want to connect with eventually.
Lesson 2: Give your fans content they want to see, not only
what you want to create.
Speaking of content, most people use their Facebook profile
like it’s a megaphone for their opinions.
It’s not.
You’re better than that.
Who cares about yet another rant about Donald Trump, or what
you think of the latest Miley Cyrus scandal? Exactly, no one. Just like you
don’t read that stuff when other people post it, no one will read yours, if you
do the same.
That doesn’t mean you can’t say what you think on social
media, but make it a mix.
Give your opinion on things that matter. For example if you
want to establish yourself as an Apple expert, give detailed reviews of
specific features of the latest iPhone and why you think they’re good or not.
In addition to your own reviews, share things with people
they want to see or learn about.
You can find out what people are already discussing with
tools like Buzzsumo, which show you the most shared articles on any topic, and
then re-post those and start talking about them with your fans.
Don’t just spout off opinions. Mix and match your own unique
perspective with content your audience wants to see.
Lesson 3: Let your different accounts talk to each other for
cross-promotion.
First of all, when I say different accounts, I don’t mean
10. I mean 2, or maybe 3. We’ve all been there. We signed up for 10 different
platforms and ended up so overwhelmed with maintaining them all, that we
eventually dropped all but 3.
If you’ve already got that behind you, then good, let’s work
with the 3 you’ve got.
If you’re just starting, avoid this mistake. Pick 2 and be
done with it.
Facebook and Instagram. Twitter and Snapchat. Youtube and a
blog. It doesn’t matter. Have 2 accounts on social media platforms you like,
and then drive your audience from one to the other.
I see this all the time on Instagram these days. Someone
posts a video announcing that they’re gonna be sharing something on Snapchat.
If you want to find out, you have to follow them there, and vice versa.
You can send people to your blog from Twitter, and people to
your Twitter from your blog. Use every chance you get to cross-promote yourself
and you’ll build your audience a lot faster.
My personal take-aways
Everyone is a media company. The cost of starting to market
to an audience is zero. You can start a TV show today, thanks to Youtube,
self-publish a novel, thanks to Amazon, release your own music on Soundcloud,
or post your photographs on Instagram.
Self-branding is real. Whether you like the term “personal
brand” or not, people are making hundreds, thousands, in rare cases even
millions of dollars through social media, because they jumped on the content
train early.
The best part? All of these platforms just get more valuable
as they get bigger. Yes, you’ll have to work to stand out, but that’s always
the case.
At 1.5 years old, Guy’s book is already a bit outdated, but the fundamentals remain the same. Many of his tips apply today, and if you’re a social media newbie, it’s a great and light read with a lot of return for your money.
1-Sentence-Summary: Start With Why is Simon Sinek’s mission to help others do work, which inspires them, and uses real-world examples of great leaders to show you how they communicate and how you can adopt their mindset to inspire others yourself.
Simon Sinek’s first TEDx talk from 2009 is now the 3rd most
watched TED talk of all time, sitting at well over 25 million views. I first
came across it in 2012 and was instantly hooked on the idea.
The reason his mantra is so magnetic is that it’s incredibly
simple, yet very universal – many of history’s most inspiring leaders seem to
have internalized his idea of the golden circle and communicate it the right
way.
Here are 3 lessons you should take away from Start With Why:
If you want to inspire others, always communicate your why first.
Excited employees are the best resource for any business.
You don’t need sleazy sales tactics when you start with why.
Buckle up, it’s about to get inspirational!
Lesson 1: If you want to inspire others, always communicate
your why first.
This is Simon’s key idea in a nutshell: “People don’t buy
what you do, they buy why you do it.”
Every company in the world knows what they do, which is why
it’s the first thing they tell people about. But rationale is a weak way of
trying to get us to make decisions, probably the weakest of them all.
That’s because emotions trump reason every time. When we
make a decision based on a strong why, we own it.
Only when we know why we do things, will we feel a sense of
belonging, and that’s why it’s a much more powerful way of getting us to
decide.
Once we are sold on the cause of an idea, we’ll go above and
beyond to support it, with our money, with our time, and in the cases of some
movements, even with our lives.
Great leaders and companies naturally get this right by
starting all communication with why they do things, eventually followed by how
they do things, until finally revealing what it is they actually do.
Apple is a great example. First they tell us why they’re
here to shake things up, then they tell us how (with easy-to-use, beautifully
designed products) and finally we find out what they make: computers, phones,
tablets and mp3-players.
By the time they get to their what, we’re long sold on their
cause and are ready to support them in every way we can.
If you want to inspire others, start by telling them why you
do things, instead of what you do, and you’ll see a massive change in
engagement.
Lesson 2: The best businesses are built by excited
employees.
Which business wouldn’t want their employees to go above and
beyond for the company’s success?
The way you do it is by building your business around a
cause, and then assembling people who share your why.
Instead of relying on big paychecks, threatening deadlines
or highly qualified graduates, look for the people who are already motivated by
the same reasons as you are and inspire them even more.
Who would you rather have working for you?
Excel pro Johnny, who’s only here to collect his consulting
fee, or Lisa, who needs some time to learn, but wants to see the world change
in the same way you do?
Hire people for their cause, not their craft, and watch your
business bloom.
Lesson 3: When you start with why, there’s no need for
sleazy sales tactics.
Why do companies use sales funnels, red discount signs,
limited time offers, and social proof to trick you into buying their products?
Because they work!
But sadly, these kinds of psychological manipulations are
just as short-lived as the joy these businesses get from making yet another
sale.
They don’t create trust, but evoke skepticism and they sure
don’t create trusting or loyal customers.
When you start with why and just communicate from the inside
out, you’ll build a group of customers that trust you, true fans, 1000 of which
can make your business last a lifetime.
They’ll always prefer the product of their favorite creator
or company over cheaper or even better solutions, because they believe in you
and your why.
So don’t waste time with sleazy sales tactics, spread your
why and let true connections follow.
My personal take-aways
Simon’s TED talk made me question a lot of things, and is
one of the many bits and pieces that got me started on the path I am on today –
towards freedom and work I’m passionate about.
So first of all: go watch his talk – it’ll change your life
or at least your perspective on it.
After reading the summary of Leaders Eat Last already, this had to get a re-run. The set of blinks is short, and I’m really curious to see more of the examples that were used there and in his talk, I’m very much inclined to get the book. He also offers a course, which looks interesting and includes a hard copy of the book. If you want to see Start With Why in action, look at the intro video of the course – Simon is a master of communicating his why
Start
with Why by Simon Sinek
Print
| Hardcover | Audiobook
Start
with Why Summary
The
Book in Three Sentences
The
ability to inspire those around you and to achieve remarkable things starts
with WHY.
Any
organization can explain what it does; some can explain how they do it; but
very few can clearly articulate why.
Those
who start with WHY never manipulate, they inspire.
The
Five Big Ideas
Your
WHY is your purpose, cause or belief.
Every
inspiring leader and organization, regardless of size or industry, starts with
WHY
People
don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
Knowing
our WHY is essential for lasting success and the ability to avoid being lumped
in with others.
When
your WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the growth,
loyalty, and inspiration that helped drive your original success.
Start
with Why Summary
Great
leaders are able to inspire people to act. And those who are able to inspire
give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any
external incentive or benefit to be gained.
“Most
businesses today are making decisions based on a set of incomplete or, worse,
completely flawed assumptions about what’s driving their business.”
“There
are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can
inspire it.”
“Though
positive in nature, aspirational messages are most effective with those who
lack discipline or have a nagging fear or insecurity that they don’t have the
ability to achieve their dreams on their own (which, at various times for
various reasons, is everyone).”
“Peer
pressure works not because the majority or the experts are always right, but
because we fear that we may be wrong.”
“If
a company adds too many novel ideas too often, it can have a similar impact on
the product or category as the price game. In an attempt to differentiate with
more features, the products start to look and feel more like commodities. And,
like price, the need to add yet another product to the line to compensate for
the commoditization ends in a downward spiral.”
“Loyalty
is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better price to
continue doing business with you.”
For
transactions that occur an average of once, carrots and sticks are the best way
to elicit the desired behavior.
Every
single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. Some
companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Very few people or
companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do.
By
WHY, Sinek means what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company
exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?
Every
inspiring leader and organization, regardless of size or industry, thinks, acts
and communicates from the inside out.
“People
don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”
When
communicating from the inside out, the WHY is offered as the reason to buy and
the WHATs serve as the tangible proof of that belief.
“Knowing
WHY is essential for lasting success and the ability to avoid being lumped in
with others.”
“Knowing
your WHY is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to
maintain a lasting success and have a greater blend of innovation and
flexibility.”
“When
a WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the growth,
loyalty, and inspiration that helped drive the original success.”
Instead
of asking, “WHAT should we do to compete?” you need to ask yourself, “WHY did
we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring
our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities
available today?”
“No
matter where we go, we trust those with whom we are able to perceive common
values or beliefs.”
“We
are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they
believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special,
safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.”
“Companies
that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only
empirical evidence.”
“Great
leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art
before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start
with WHY.”
“If
a company does not have a clear sense of WHY then it is impossible for the
outside world to perceive anything more than WHAT the company does.”
“When
the WHY is absent, imbalance is produced and manipulations thrive. And when
manipulations thrive, uncertainty increases for buyers, instability increases
for sellers and stress increases for all.”
“For
values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs.”
“Only
when the WHY is clear and when people believe what you believe can a true loyal
relationship develop.”
“The
goal of business should not be to do business with anyone who simply wants what
you have. It should be to focus on the people who believe what you believe.”
“When
we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY,
trust emerges.’
“Trust
begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is
driven by things other than their own self-gain.”
“When
employees belong, they will guarantee your success. And they won’t be working
hard and looking for innovative solutions for you, they will be doing it for
themselves.”
“What
all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their
organizations—those who believe what they believe.”
“Unless
you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their
job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll
be stuck with whoever’s left.”
“The
role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a
leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”
“If
the people inside a company are told to come to work and just do their job,
that’s all they will do. If they are constantly reminded WHY the company was
founded and told to always look for ways to bring that cause to life while
performing their job, however, then they will do more than their job.”
“When
people come to work with a higher sense of purpose, they find it easier to
weather hard times or even to find opportunity in those hard times.”
“Energy
motivates but charisma inspires. Energy is easy to see, easy to measure and
easy to copy. Charisma is hard to define, near impossible to measure and too
elusive to copy. All great leaders have charisma because all great leaders have
clarity of WHY; an undying belief in a purpose or cause bigger than
themselves.”
“Charisma
has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY.”
“Regardless
of WHAT we do in our lives, our WHY—our driving purpose, cause or belief—never
changes.”
When
a WHY is clear, those who share that belief will be drawn to it and maybe want
to take part in bringing it to life.
“Don’t
forget that a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize
that belief and WHATs are the results of those actions.”
“For
every great leader, for every WHY-type, there is an inspired HOW-type or group
of HOW-types who take the intangible cause and build the infrastructure that
can give it life.”
“For
a message to have real impact, to affect behavior and seed loyalty, it needs
more than publicity. It needs to publicize some higher purpose, cause or belief
to which those with similar values and beliefs can relate. Only then can the
message create any lasting mass-market success.”
“Clarity
of purpose, cause or belief is important, but it is equally important that
people hear you.”
“For
a WHY to have the power to move people it must not only be clear, it must be
amplified to reach enough people to tip the scale.”
“A
clear sense of WHY sets expectations. When we don’t know an organization’s WHY,
we don’t know what to expect, so we expect the minimum—price, quality, service,
features—the commodity stuff. But when we do have a sense for the WHY, we
expect more.”
“A
symbol cannot have any deep meaning until we know WHY it exists in terms bigger
than simply to identify the company.”
“For
a logo to become a symbol, people must be inspired to use that logo to say
something about who they are.”
“If
WHAT you do doesn’t prove what you believe, then no one will know what your WHY
is and you’ll be forced to compete on price, service, quality, features and
benefits; the stuff of commodities.”
“It
is not just WHAT or HOW you do things that matters; what matters more is that
WHAT and HOW you do things is consistent with your WHY.”
“If
a company tries too many times to “seize market opportunities” inconsistent
with their WHY over time, their WHY will go fuzzy and their ability to inspire
and command loyalty will deteriorate.”
“Achievement
comes when you pursue and attain WHAT you want. Success comes when you are
clear in pursuit of WHY you want it.”
“For
passion to survive, it needs structure. A WHY without the HOWs, passion without
structure, has a very high probability of failure.”
“If
you give people the right tools, and make them more productive, then everyone,
no matter their lot in life, will have an opportunity to achieve their real
potential.”
“When
people know WHY you do WHAT you do, they are willing to give you credit for everything
that could serve as proof of WHY. When they are unclear about your WHY, WHAT
you do has no context.”
“Finding
WHY is a process of discovery, not invention.”
“There
is a difference between running with all your heart with your eyes closed and
running with your all your heart with your eyes wide open.”
“When
you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you
compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”
“What
if we showed up to work every day simply to be better than ourselves? What if
the goal was to do better work this week than we did the week before? To make
this month better than last month? For no other reason than because we want to
leave the organization in a better state than we found it?”
Recommended
Reading
If
you like Start with Why, you may also enjoy the following books:
Purple Cow explains why building a great product and advertising the heck out of it simply doesn’t cut it any more and how you can build something that’s so remarkable people have to share it, in order to succeed in today’s crowded post-advertising world.
Gary Vaynerchuk has a fair point when he simply introduces
Seth Godin as “the legend” on his show. You know you are one when you can type
in just your first name into Google and your own blog shows up.
Seth Godin caught the magnitude of what the internet would turn
into from day one, and boy, was he right. His first startup Yoyodyne, which
used giveaways and contests and games to market companies to online users back
in 1995 (can you believe this?) was eventually acquired by Yahoo in 1998 for
$30 million and Seth got a fancy new job as Director of Marketing there.
Even before, but especially after quitting that in 2000,
he’s created a plethora of companies, written 18 bestselling books, and owns
the number one marketing blog in the world, which counts 6,000 posts.
Here are 3 lessons from this particular masterpiece of his:
We live in the third era of advertising, where marketing is
mainly done through word-of-mouth.
Not taking risks is riskier than taking risks.
If you want your product to succeed, focus on early adopters
as your first customers.
Ready to make your marketing remarkable? Here we go!
Lesson 1: Today marketing is mainly done through
word-of-mouth recommendations.
Seth walks us through the history of advertising and says
there were three distinct periods.
Before advertising was way back in ancient times, when
people could only spread the word about great deals with their mouths.
For example in ancient Rome, when one of the vendors on the
market sold particularly good fish, everyone who bought one would of course
tell all their friends and family. Likely, the next time they’d go to the
market, they’d visit that same vendor.
During advertising was the time during the 18- and
19-hundreds, when advertising seemed to work like magic and the only limit to
how much you could sell through it was how much you were able to buy.
Billboards, ads in magazines, TV commercials, they all fall into this category.
But by now we’re in the era after advertising. Consumers
completely ignore ads now and are already blind to banner ads online. Unless
they’re looking for something specific, for example a car, people won’t look at
car ads.
In the era we are in right now, we’ve gone back to
word-of-mouth marketing, only that the word is now exchanged online, which
makes news about good and bad products spread a lot more quickly, thanks to
social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Lesson 2: Not taking risks is riskier than taking risks.
Because we live in a post-advertising world and the internet
is such a noisy place, you have to be truly remarkable to stand out – like a
purple cow among brown, black and white cows.
Seth calls this remarkable marketing and without it, your
product is doomed to fail.
That’s why the riskiest thing you and your company can do
right now, is to not take any risks at all.
Following the trends and trying not to make any noise, won’t
make you stand out, it will make you invisible.
For example, Ford is a steady company, but they’re not very
innovative. They do what they know to do, again and again, which is why their
stock price has merely changed in 10 years. They’re a boring company.
Take Porsche, and you see a company that’s always at the
edge. In 2013, Porsche took a massive risk with the 918 project.
They built a car with hybrid technology, which they’d never
done before, the car cost eight times as much as any of their normal models,
and they limited production to 918 units.
But what they built was truly remarkable, the car caught
major attention for it’s space-style design and also set an all time record on
the Nurburgring.
The car completely sold out.
It’s your choice.
You can never take risks, and never build something that’s
so great everyone will eventually want it, or you can work at the edge,
occasionally fall, but rise all the higher in the long run.
Lesson 3: If you want your product to successfully reach the
masses, focus on early adopters first.
When I hear the word early adopters, I always have to think
of Simon Sinek and his talk.
The gist of it is that you need to communicate why you do
things before you tell people what you do, because that’ll help get your
product into the right people’s hands.
In both Seth’s and Simon’s case, these people are called
early adopters.
Traditional marketing shoots its advertising right at the
majority of people, when a new product comes out. The mistake with this is that
the majority isn’t ready for it yet – they want a proven product, not some new
gimmick.
Instead, build your product in a way that makes it
attractive to innovators and early adopters, the tech geeks, the people that
stand in line for 24 hours to buy an iPhone, and let them spread the word.
When you do this and make sure that your product is easily
shareable, you’ll make sure your product eventually reaches the masses through
diffusion, and they won’t turn you down at the door.
My personal take-aways
You can’t possibly comprehend Seth by reading one summary,
watching one talk, or even reading one book of his. He describes himself as a
lifetime of projects, and I think he’s quite spot on.
I like the inherent call to greatness in Purple Cow, it
really carries a “get up and do something great” vibe which resonates well with
me.
Considering this book is from 2003 is mind-boggling, a lot of ideas from it still haven’t reached the masses today – but they will – because just like his advice, his book is – remarkable 🙂
Pitch Anything relies on tactics and strategies from a field called neuroeconomics to give you an entirely new way of presenting, pitching and convincing other people of your ideas and offers.
Oren Klaff had to make quite the journey to arrive at the
insights he presents in this book. After devouring every book on marketing,
blog post and online training he could find, even taking on a position as an
analyst with a billionaire, and still not having found what he was looking for,
he eventually discovered neuroeconomics.
This branch of psychology and science is entirely dedicated
to studying how the human brain makes economic decisions and it provided him
with the material he needed to well…pitch anything.
As a result, he came up with a way to sell stuff that’s not
busy throwing facts at our rational computing software, but that instead
focuses on the very irrational, basic principles our ancient brains rely on.
Here are 3 lessons to help you pitch and sell anything:
Your pitch must speak to your audience’s neanderthal brain.
Make yourself the prize.
Use multiple so-called frames to trigger a gut decision inyour favor.
Whether you’re in baseball, singing, or selling, this’ll
teach you the perfect pitch! Actually, maybe not for baseball or singing – but
for presenting yourself as an MLB or Hollywood star for sure 🙂
Lesson 1: Make sure your pitch speaks to your audience’s
ancient (kinda stupid) brains.
Our brains as they are today have evolved in three stages,
leaving us with three levels to process stuff on.
The oldest one is what Oren calls the croc brain (short for
crocodile), which is stupid, but efficient at keeping us alive. It reacts to
new, exciting and potentially threatening cues in our environment and can
trigger strong emotions. Seth Godin calls this lizard brain. If you have a
freeze, fight or flight response to something, your croc brain is in charge.
The midbrain developed next, which helps process more
complex visual and auditory information, enabling us to have social
interactions with others. It also regulates complicated bodily functions like
sleep and temperature.
Our neocortex was the very last part to develop and it’s
what’s made the tremendous progress of civilization of the past 100 years
possible. This part of your brain is in charge of abstract thinking, analyzing
complex situations and logical reasoning.
When you’re pitching someone, you usually try to explain all
these awesome, but complex features of what you’re selling. You’re using your
neocortex to communicate – but this isn’t where your message first lands. Your
target will first pick up whatever you’re presenting with their croc brain,
which is why what you say must first of all be simple.
If you’ve ever been hit with a 180 page slide deck starting
with complicated graphs and instantly zoned out, you know this is true.
Instead, make sure you bring something new, exciting and positive to the table,
so the croc brain will pass on the new inputs to system 2.
Lesson 2: Turn yourself into the prize, instead of chasing
your target.
Once you have attention, it’s time to convince. And do you
know what’s the most convincing? Someone who doesn’t try to convince us. If you
can position yourself as the prize instead of the contestant, you’ve already
won (pun intended).
This means showing your audience that while you want to work
with them, you’re not desperate to sell and don’t depend on anyone. Part of
this is to qualify your customers – why should you do business with them? What
do they have to offer to you in exchange for your awesome product or service?
Manufacturers of luxury goods often do this by limiting
units of handbags, or serving only a very small group of people. Car makers do
a good job at this too. For example, even if you have the cash you can’t just
walk into your local dealership and buy a Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, or
even an M4 GTS. You need a pre-existing relationship with the company and in
some cases have to agree to not sell the car for a while, have it serviced
regularly, etc.
Don’t come across as someone who’s desperate for another
sale. Know your worth and become the object of desire.
Lesson 3: To get people to make a gut decision in your
favor, use multiple frames.
A core concept of Oren Klaff’s philosophy are so-called
frames. You can think of them as lenses, through which we view any situation,
and when people come together, frames collide, with one eventually winning over
the other.
If you can get your audience to see the world through the
same lens as you, you win. To do this, Oren suggests frame-stacking: throw multiple
frames into your pitch to make your point of view strong.
For example the prize frame mentioned above (“We’re not sure
we can sell you one of these cars, we only have so few, what will you do with
it, if we decide to sell to you?”) can be combined with an intrigue frame – a
compelling story (“During the development of this car, I rode shotgun for some
Nürburgring laps, and I can tell you that breaking the 7:30 mark felt unlike
anything I’ve witnessed before!”).
Slap on a time frame (“We expect this to sell out by next
month.”) and you’re likely to trigger something called hot cognitions.
This simply means your audience will make a gut decision in
your favor. We hardly ever wait for all the information before making a
decision. We usually go with our intuition and then justify it later.
Frame-stacking is a great way to achieve just that.
My personal take-aways
A lot of powerful stuff, and I haven’t heard much of this
before. I like that Oren came up with his own terminology for a lot of this
stuff. I don’t agree with everything in this book, some of it is downright
manipulative. It’s a sales book, so that’s to be expected, but still.
Nevertheless, there’s a lot to learn here, not just for actual selling but also
for presenting your ideas in general – and that’s something we all need to do
in today’s world.
Permission Marketing explains why nobody pays attention to TV commercials and flyers anymore, and shows you how in today’s crowded market, you can cheaply start a dialogue with your ideal customer, build a relationship over time and sell to them much more effectively.
Seth Godin is no stranger here on Four Minute Books. In
February he made his debut on here with Purple Cow. Now, he’s back (and you can
expect quite a lot more from him).
Permission Marketing is a book that talks about today’s
common marketing practices: getting permission to market to your audience, for
example via an email list, and then building a relationship, before eventually
making a sale.
The staggering part is the year the book was published in:
1999. Once again, Seth caught the wave early, to say the least.
The lessons from the book are still as rock solid 17 years
later. Here are my favorite 3:
Ads that rely on interrupting people are dead.
By giving people a chance to volunteer their attention, youend up with a much more targeted customer group.
The internet makes permission marketing extremely easy, soget started!
Do we have permission to take off? Great!
Lesson 1: Ads that rely on interrupting people are dead.
Man, looking back, marketing in the 1950’s must’ve been a
dream. Color TV became available on a big scale and people’s eyes were glued to
the tiny boxes in their living rooms.
This era and the following 50 years were mostly coined by
what’s called Interruption Marketing. It works exactly like it sounds. As a
consumer, you’re being interrupted in whatever you do and told: “Hey! Watch
this soap commercial now!”
Why did it work so well for so long? Because peoples’
attention was already there. When you’re watching Little House On The Prairie
anyway, you might as well sit through the 5 minutes of soap, cooking and car
commercials.
Huge companies like Procter & Gamble used interruption
marketing for decades to target as many people as possible. Whether they were a
good fit for their products wasn’t important. If you reached enough people,
you’d make enough sales.
But not anymore. Interruption marketing is dead. There are
ads plastered on supermarket floors, car roofs, gigantic walls and bus stands,
and we see…none of them.
We’ve long crossed the point where huge companies market so
much to us, that our brains have decided not to pay attention to any of it,
because it’s too much information to even filter.
You can save that money you were going to spend on posters
and flyers, Seth has a better idea.
Lesson 2: Give people a chance to volunteer their attention
and you’ll build a much better customer base.
We now live in the age of Permission Marketing. Not only
does it sound a lot nicer, if done right, it’s also much more effective than
the old ways. Here’s how it works:
You invite people to learn more about your product by making
a unique offer.
You start talking to the people who accept your invitation
on a regular basis.
Once you’ve established a relationship, you can ask for a
sale.
If you know your marketing 101, you’ll now instantly think
of email marketing, but that’s by far not the only use case, just the most
popular one. For example, you could do permission marketing in a TV commercial
by describing your product and then inviting people to learn more on your
website, call a phone number, or send you an email.
You’re still making the initial contact, but then you put
the ball into the customer’s hands and say: “Your turn.” This empowers people.
Instead of being forced through 30 seconds of airtime, they now get to choose.
They can contact you and take you up on your offer, or not.
The reason this makes your marketing 10x as effective is
that the people you actually end up talking and trying to sell to are much more
likely to buy from you, because they expressed interest voluntarily.
When people give you their contact information voluntarily
and tell you it’s okay to send them more, that’s when you know you have
permission to market.
Lesson 3: Permission marketing is free and easy, thanks to
the internet, so what are you waiting for?
With permission always comes a mission – you have to fulfill
your promise! If you said you’d give them a 10% coupon, give them a 10% coupon.
If you promised an ebook, deliver the ebook.
Thanks to the internet you can now make and deliver on your
promises 24/7/365. Best of all, it’s free, or costs a few $ at most.
Take the homepage of Four Minute Books, for example. The
promise is simple:
Each Saturday I’ll send you 7 new book summaries, so you can
learn more in less time.
That’s it. No more, no less. And that’s exactly what you’ll
get. For the past 3 months, I’ve sent out an email every Saturday (except one).
If you’ll give me permission, I’d love to send them to you too, tomorrow’s the
next issue.
People can go to that page, sign up, receive their bonus,
and get the next round of summaries whenever they want. Whether I sleep, work,
or eat, people can give their permission at any time.
Sending messages at scale has never been cheaper, with
social media and services like Mailchimp, which lets you build an email list of
up to 2,000 people and talk to them regularly for free.
Your customers can also reach you a lot easier, all it takes
is a click on the response button and soon, you’ll have built a solid
relationship with someone who was a stranger just days before.
So if you haven’t started, please, please, please, I beg
you, create something online.
My personal take-aways
I would never have become interested, nor involved in any
marketing activities whatsoever, if permission marketing wasn’t around. It’s
such a fun way of basically making a whole lot of friends, who end up
supporting you financially, because you help them.
We can let honesty, hard work and great service rule and
work with the people who choose to work with us. No need for scams and
marketing bullshit.
The book is packed with much more insights, details and case
studies, but the summary gives a great overview of the history of marketing and
how permission marketing works in specific cases. Thumbs up for both!
Make A Killing On Kindle shows you how you can market your self-published ebooks on Amazon the right way, without wasting time on social media or building a huge author platform first by focusing on a few key areas to set up your book for long-term sales in just 18 hours.
Michael Alvear is a TV personality, LBGT rights activist and
writer on all things sex, dating and relationships. He used to host a show on
British television where he and his co-host installed cameras in couples’
bedrooms, who had problems with their sex life, and then gave them tips and
homework to help improve it.
It’s a sensitive topic and taboo to talk about, but if we’re
honest, it really deserves our attention. After all, sex is a crucial part of a
good relationship, if communication matters anywhere, it’s here. Eventually,
since he was writing so much about sex, he figured why not try self-publishing
books about it?
His ebooks went on to be successful, selling over 100,000
copies to date. Now, with newer options like the Medium Partner Program,
self-publishing isn’t the only way writers can make money, but it’s still one
of the newest and most interesting ones. In Make A Killing On Kindle, he breaks
down his marketing process.
Here are 3 lessons to help you make money with
self-published books:
Forget social media and author platforms when you’re just starting out.
The two things you absolutely mustn’t screw up are your book’s title and cover.
You should get a handful reviews early on for each book, as they drive sales a lot.
Ever wanted to self-publish a book on Amazon? This is your
checklist for making sure it’ll sell (and not just on launch day).
Lesson 1: Social media and author platforms suck for
beginning authors to sell their books.
There’s a million websites out there, claiming to teach you
how to make a living selling Kindle books. But because there’s a plethora of
self-publishing authors right now (since it’s so easy), marketing your book has
replaced actually writing it as the toughest part of making this business work.
Most authorities in this space tell you to market your books
in two specific ways:
Be on all social media.
Create an author platform.
According to Michael Alvear, both of these SUCK for
first-time authors. Here’s why: While they both have great long-term upside,
they’re useless in the short term, because their effects only kick in at scale.
For example, while it’s very hard to directly sell on social
media, the effects from having a brand and people discovering your work are
real, even if Twitter accounts with 200,000 followers just get a few clicks on
their tweets. But nobody has 200,000 followers if they’re just starting!
The same with author platforms. Even if you get 20% of
people to open your emails and 10% of those to click on links to your articles
and books, that’s just a 2% potential conversion rate – meaning you need 10,000
email subscribers to sell just 200 books. Those won’t land on your mailing list
over night.
But what should you do instead?
Lesson 2: If you screw up your book’s title or cover, it
doesn’t matter if the content’s great.
Well..how about focusing on the very basics first and
starting with not screwing up your book’s title or cover image (which is
something most people get wrong, including myself).
In terms of title, I think I almost did alright with my very
first Kindle ebook “How To Google: The Ultimate Guide To Finding Everything,”
but with the cover, not so much (designed it myself, HUGE mistake).
People on Amazon scan, they don’t really read, so your title
must be short, clear, attractive and descriptive. If I don’t know what your
book is about in two seconds, my eyes have already moved on to the next one.
For example, which one gets your attention more:
You Can Do It! The Power Of Managing Your Inbox Down To Zero
Daily Inbox Zero: How To Eliminate Email Overwhelm
The first one you’d have to read all the way to the end to
even know what the book is about. The second one gives you the end result
instantly – and thus makes you perk your ears (and eyes) up.
Speaking of eyes, the next thing you see after the title is
the cover. Don’t design it yourself. Just don’t. Spend whatever you can afford,
whether that’s $50, $100 or $500, but please, get a professional to help you
with this.
Lesson 3: Get a handful of reviews right when you launch it,
so Amazon starts to pick it up and promote it for you.
With a good title and solid cover to make sure people who
see the book actually buy it, what remains is to get Amazon to show it to more
people.
The number one way in which you can do this is by getting
reviews. The more reviews, the higher a book ranks, the more sales it makes,
the higher it ranks. Getting just 5-6 (good) reviews in the first few days of
launching your book can take it all the way to your category’s top 10.
Organically, only a tiny fraction of people reviews books on
Amazon. Even Harry Potter books are reviewed by just 0.0002% of all buyers.
However, having just 2-3 reviews more will greatly increase your sales ranking.
What you can do is when your book launches, ask friends and
family to write 4-5 great reviews for your (5 stars), then get 1-2 with 4 stars
and 1 with 3 stars (it’ll happen sooner or later anyway) with some proper
criticism and you’re off to a good start!
My personal take-aways
Make A Killing On Kindle has been updated and revised in a new, 2018 edition. That’s good, because in internet years, something that was published originally in 2012 is already considered old and quite possibly outdated. The principles, however, are still sound regardless. They’re mostly about what makes a book a good book in general, with focus on how specifically this translates to a book on Amazon. Don’t throw a lot of money down the toilet – this book really tells you all you need to get going and publish your first 2-3 books, then you can learn more.
Made To Stick examines advertising campaigns, urban myths and compelling stories to determine the six traits that make ideas stick in our brains, so you don’t just know why you remember some things better than others, but can also spread your own ideas more easily among the right people.
Some siblings just play extraordinarily well together. Like
Chip and Dan Heath, who both turned out to thrive in an academic environment,
ending up teaching at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Duke University,
respectively. If you had a brother and you both taught business at two of the
most prestigious schools of the country, what would you do?
Of course, write a book about business! They’ve done just
that. Three times. This was their first book, which ended up being translated
into 25 languages. Often mentioned in the same breath with absolute bestsellers
like The Tipping Point or Built To Last, it describes a simple way of getting
others to pay attention to your ideas.
Chip and Dan found six simple traits, which all sticky ideas
share. Here are 3 of them, so you can get your friends and co-workers to perk
their ears up when you speak:
Sticky ideas are always unexpected.
Use curiosity gaps to keep your listener’s attention.
The best way to get your ideas to stick is to tell great stories.
Want some mental duct tape for your best thoughts? Sure,
here you go!
Lesson 1: A sticky idea will always make us listen up,
because it’s unexpected.
For something to stick, you have to notice it first. If an
article’s headline isn’t good, neither does it matter if the rest of the
article is, because you’ll never even start reading it. The same thing holds
true for advertisements, books in a book store, or products in the supermarket
– if it doesn’t stand out, it’s as if it’s not there. People have long become
blind to online banners too, so whatever doesn’t take us by surprise gets left
out in the cold.
That’s why sticky ideas are always the ones you don’t
expect.
For example, imagine instead of the usual humdrum speech a
flight attendant gives, she’d suddenly say: “I know there are more than 100
ways to leave your lover, but there’s just one off this plane.” Would that get
your attention?
Or a banner ad that showed nothing more than a mysterious
symbol? How about a book with a bright, orange cover, that sticks out from the
rest? Or a coffee brand that comes in elegant capsules, all black on black?
To get people to perk their ears up at your ideas, you have
to risk sticking out like a sore thumb. No risk, no fun!
Lesson 2: You can use curiosity gaps to keep your listener’s
attention, once you have it.
If you think getting peoples’ attention is hard…then you’d
be right. However, once you have it, it gets even harder, because now, you have
to hold it. The reason people run on autopilot in the first place is that they
think they know everything they need to know right now. However, if you can
convince them that they don’t, guess what’s going to happen? Of course, they’ll
do whatever it takes to find out!
Showing people that there’s something important they don’t
know yet, and giving them a way to find out is a very powerful way to make your
ideas stick, and it’s called a curiosity gap.
So when Marvel asks you on Twitter whether you’re #TeamCap
or #TeamIronMan, the first thing you want to know is who else is on each team
and what the heck the two camps are even about. Typical clickbait headlines on
sites like Buzzfeed use the same principle, by asking you thought-provoking
questions, like “Can We Guess Your Favorite Season Based On Your Favorite
Disney Princess?”
Present powerful facts, figures and questions as your
opening line, and you’ll have poked your audience’s interest.
Then, it’s storytelling time.
Lesson 3: The best way to get your ideas to stick is to tell
great stories.
Every time I read the word or the phrase, I hear a roaring
Gary Vaynerchuk in the back of my head, screaming at the top of his lungs:
“TELL STORIES FOR THE YEAR WE LIVE IN!!!” or something along those lines 😀 He continues to tell great ones, and
there’s always one you haven’t heard.
In 2016 and beyond, I truly believe the best thing you can
do, if you want to market something, anything really, whether that’s your
product, your service, or yourself, is to stop marketing and start
storytelling.
Creating good slogans and advertisements for your idea is
important, but even if you’re a billion dollar business like Subway, being able
to share a story of a guy who lost 200 pounds eating only your food is
priceless.
Chip and Dan say there are three common, well-suited
patterns to tell your stories, which are timeless:
Challenge – when an underdog beats an incumbent, a David vs.
Goliath kind of story, which gets people to take action.
Reaching out – when an unfamiliar character, a “Good
Samaritan” helps a stranger in need, which speaks to our empathy.
Creativity – when a problem is solved in a creative new way,
giving us a chance to look at things from another angle.
The best thing you can do to get more people on board with
your ideas is to just practice telling stories – every day. No matter whether
you do it in writing, speaking, video, or whatever other format you can think
of. The point is to just start.
My personal take-aways
This book was very refreshing. Simple, to the point, and
didn’t feel like it was fluffed up. Their SUCCES model describes six traits of
sticky ideas and how you can position yours accordingly, that’s it. No matter
whether you have a business or not, today, we’re all selling something. Chances
are, you can learn a lot about how you can do better work from this book. Give
it a go!