www.poludas.com

We live in a world that for many has become technology
advantaged in business and life. Imagine, for a moment,
just how communication, science, art, medicine, automation,
supply chain and products have all been reinvented.

Even consumers’ behaviors have been unearthed and changed
beyond recognition. Consumers have become more assertive,
demanding, highly skeptical, and more cynical, less
trusting and with less loyalty to brands and companies.

With all the reinventing and shifting in a diversity of
industries and cultures we find however, little has changed
in the process of how marketers and sales proceed to
understanding why consumers’ buy and how they think.
Most marketing methods and selling techniques probe for
surface understanding and not the core emotions and
feelings of consumers’ behaviors.

Marketing and sales people rely on worn-out familiar
campaigns and techniques that simply obtain less than
marginal results and then place blame on their products,
services or the economy. This become more apparent with
sales and marketing people in hot industries where demand
exceeds supply - sales skyrocket with little effort or
skill on the part of sales and marketing. Then, when supply
exceeds demand and there are too many sellers chasing too
few consumers’ — the blame sets in and the excuse making
erupts, causing products and services to fail or drop
dramatically below projections.

Change doesn’t come easy when you’re entrenched in deeply
rooted behaviors of which takes much courage to change.
Change means thinking differently about how one does
things, which sometimes goes against all that you were
brought up to believe in. People who hold stubbornly to
their view and can’t envision a different world will fight
to maintain their current one.

To maintain a competitive edge in your business will
require stepping outside your comfort zone and the
traditional methods of conducting yourself in business. The
world has become a melting pot of various nationalities and
cultures creating the backbone of our economy. Regardless,
if you have a world vision of your business or not, the
effects of you succeeding are influenced by your
understanding of how consumers’ think and how they buy.

Consumers’ ask for one thing and do another. They make
illogical leaps of judgment and come to unreasonable
conclusions based on their experience, memory and
unconscious thoughts. The truth is most customers form
opinions about you before you ever get a chance to deliver
your service or product. That opinion is formed mostly
unconsciously.

Customers’ are your only business and requires you to reach
beyond product features, benefits, quality and reliable
delivery methods. Sales and marketing people service their
consumers in a more efficient manner when they understand how consumers feel,
think and experience you and your products and services.

The interaction between the confidence of your marketing
message and the confidence of a salesperson in his/her
product or service sets the stage for how, when and why the
consumer will or will not purchase goods and services. When
a salesperson conveys confidence in his/her company,
product and service, it delivers subtle nonverbal cues to
the consumer. That confidence, if perceived by the
consumer, as authenticity on the part of the salesperson,
adds great persuasive power to the decision making of the
consumer.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and scientific brain
research showing that human emotions and the unconscious
plays a major role in consumer selection of products and
services. As our multi cultural society matures; it becomes
evident that those companies and individual who what to
advantage themselves in sales and marketing must understand
the perception and mind of other cultural groups. That will
require a better understanding of your conscious and
unconscious mind - how memory, experience, and associated
emotions exert a force on the thinking and buying behaviors
of consumers.

According to Gerald Zaltman, Professor of Marketing at
Harvard Business School — says that 95 percent of
consumers’ thinking occurs in their unconscious minds. Much
thinking surfaces through metaphors and consumers’ memories,
which are much more malleable than previously thought –
which is why “confidence” adds great persuasive power.
Artificial confidence does not work, but authentic
confidence will decisively engender a winning edge every
time when a salesperson truly believes in his/her products
and services.

Fostering a shift in sales and marketing will require a
deeper understanding of how pervasive the unconscious mind
of the consumer works. Breaking into new ground requires
breaking out of traditional thinking about features and
benefits selling. You need to enter into the mental
activity of unconscious thoughts, feelings, memories,
intentions, metaphors and just how they direct consumers’
attention, influence perception and manipulate their
decisions and actions.

6 key strategic solutions for sales and marketing.

1. Metaphor making in the mind of the consumer is a
powerful fundamental that helps them make sense of
information received. When eliciting information from a
potential client. I asked him what success felt like. His
metaphor was; “Success feels like the power of driving a
Porsche down the highway at top speed.” Tying his metaphor
to several service benefits closed the sale securely.
Understanding and having collected a large range of
metaphors consumers’ use to think about you, your services
and products enable you to sculpt a more effecting
communication strategy and increase the potential of a
purchase.

2. Improve your mental outlook about you, your products and
services. “You Are The Message.” Eliminate negative clues
by preparing yourself with the confidence of a winner. Use
friendly language and genuine enthusiasm; reflecting
energy, trust and openness will open up the consumer when
probing for their thinking and core metaphors. Assertive
and outgoing personalities, regardless of ethnic
background, will outpace those people whose characteristics
display shy and timid behaviors.

3. Design your office, retail store layout, waiting rooms,
ads and brochures that reflect the Metaphors of your
market. Example of how one Doctors office focused on
outpatients care as being more nurturing and responsive.
Patients view rooms with chairs lined up in rows as boring,
frustrating and long waits. The office was rearranged to
promote friendliness and privacy and was supplied with
several TV’s and a computer. The results were a decline in
waiting time complaints and patients felt they were
receiving a better quality of care, referral rates
increased more that 18 percent and patient cancellations
decreased by 23 percent.

4. Build into your oral and written marketing/sales
communications stories using metaphors gathered from your
market.

5. Probing the mind of your customer/client requires you
uncovering the metaphors they use when thinking about
purchasing your products and services. Once you have
uncovered their metaphors you can identify some or most of
the important and hidden drivers of your customer/client
buying behaviors.

6. Develop an organizational climate and a workplace
attitude that strengthens sales and marketing creativity.
This requires breaking into more boxes and not applying the
metaphor that suggests you step out of the box. Breaking
into more boxes enables you to gather gleaning new
knowledge and will help pry you loose of conventional
thinking. How you think is more important and will produce
more productive and innovational ideas than what you think.

Don L. Price: Coaching Minds to Succeed — Author, Sales/Marketing & Positive Change Solution Provider, International Speaker & Mental Fitness Coach http://www.donlprice.com

Invite Don to speak at your next Convention, Meeting or Retreat. Optimize your Power to Succeed with Strategic Performance Marketing/Sales and Success Coaching, for Reaching Higher Performance in Your Personal and Business Life.

– Seminars, Keynotes, Retreats, Consulting —
http://www.donlprice.com

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As an entrepreneur, one of your greatest challenges is the
choice of where to put your advertising and marketing
bucks. Who/what/where is my market? How do I reach
them? What do I say to excite them? The wrong answers
can cost a lot of useless expense and time as you learn this
critical field. Many companies have gone under for lack of
mastering these efforts.

TV COMMERCIALS

Have you ever watched a TV commercial and thought to
yourself, “Who on earth would buy that?” If so, you’ve seen
an ad carefully targeted at a group which has different
needs and desires than you do. If your response was, “Boy!
I’d sure enjoy that” or “I’m going to call them tomorrow,” the
ad had YOU squarely in its sights.

SELLING VIA PAIN

Advertising agencies discovered long ago that the fastest
way to move someone into action (buying) is to discover
something that is very painful to them, then disturb that
person about it. If they stirred up emotions about a wound
(i.e., a deep desire going unfilled or an unaddressed fear)
and then showed the prospective customer how to heal that
wound or fulfill that need through a product or service, the
person felt COMPELLED to buy … buying became a MUST!

This discovery has been refined over the last fifty years into
a fine art. The purpose of the following is to introduce you to
this system so that you can discover people’s deepest
needs, wants and wounds and heal or satisfy them with
your product/service.

IT WORKS

Advertisers understand this. It helped AT&T increase their
long distance calls over 500% in certain areas. This is what
helped Dr. Pepper move from the #9 soft drink to #5. Levis
501 Jeans used this information to double their sales in a
six month period of time.

As a result of this information, you will:
1. Be able to determine the distinctions used by advertisers
to motivate our entire nation. You’ll never see a commercial
again without determining its target market(s) virtually
instantly.
2. Be able to create power levels of rapport by
knowing a person’s deepest emotional needs.
3. Be
able to determine who is your actual target market.
4.
Use this information in your direct mail, face to face
negotiations, in and outbound telemarketing, advertising
and marketing campaigns, strategic alliances…and in your
personal life.

FOUR MAJOR LIFESTYLES

There are four distinct lifestyles, the last broken into two
slightly differing types.

1. BELONGERS - 38% of the country.

LIFESTYLE: Hard working, 9-5 types. Midwest values,
traditional, blue collar workers. They DO NOT LIKE
CHANGE. You’ll find no Mercedes in this group, no use of
crystals. These people are NOT out to change the world.
They belong to social clubs, play softball, shop at K-Mart
and Sears. Their primary automobiles are - you guessed it -
Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler.

HIGHEST VALUE: FAMILY (Is it any wonder the major
political parties constantly push “family values,” though they
carefully *never* define what those values are?)

PSYCHIC WOUND: Traditional values are not happening
any more.

KEY WORDS: Picnic, time together, patriotic, family.

Typical commercial appealing to this group: AT&T’s “Reach
Out and Touch Someone” series. They’re warm and fuzzy,
*very* family and friend oriented and appeal to the desire for
connectedness. Family scenes tend to be country and/or
small town oriented with lots of children and grandparents.
Also recall the Kodak Moments series. Can you see how
these ads appeal to this large group? The political ads,
conversely, are aimed at how these things are under attack
or no longer valued. They appeal primarily to fear.

2. EMULATORS - About 10-15% of the country

LIFESTYLE: Young, the 16-38 age range. They model
themselves after successful people. They are money and
business motivated, materialistic and “wannabes.” They
tend to move quickly, feel driven towards success and have
strong sex motivated desires. In cars, their choices include
Camaros, Mustangs, Firebirds and maybe leased late
model Beemers.

HIGH VALUE: Desire to be confident.

PSYCHIC WOUND: Lack confidence (and know it).

KEY WORDS: Someday, I’m going to… I want… Be like…

Typical commercials appealing to this group: Coors Lite.
It’s action driven, sexy, young. ZIMA Malt Drink follows this
pattern. Nike ads, too, featuring Michael Jordan. Cool.
Action driven, often young people in the series doing cool
things. Especially watch for ads which have young, beautiful
and sexy people. Calvin Klein’s ads are targeted to this
group. And just watch Melanie Griffith in her Revlon series
about “Don’t lie about your age…defy it.” Almost all cosmetic
ads are in this group. Notice, too, the driving music behind
these ads.

3. ACHIEVERS - Again, about 10-15% of the country

LIFESTYLE: #1 in their fields, know they’re the BEST.
Economically top performers, $100K+ annually. This group
tends to be 40-55 years of age. Their auto choices? Top of
the line Mercedes, Jaguar, Rolls Royce. And guess what
brand of mustard they prefer?

HIGH VALUE: Being unique, standing out, king of the hill.

PSYCHIC WOUND: Don’t want to be one of the pack, part of
the herd.

KEY WORDS: Unique, decision maker, leader,
international, CEO, prestige, quality, different, take it to the
next level, being in the vanguard.

Typical commercial appealing to this group: Lincoln
Continental. Note its tag line: “Make Your Mark.” Cadillac
also targets this group, as do the DeBeers diamond ads
which often speak of 25th wedding anniversaries. See how
they go straight at this age and financial range?

4. SOCIETALLY CONSCIOUS - (Two types)
10-15% of the market, fastest growing segment in the US.

LIFESTYLE: Not money oriented, tend to be college grads,
grew up in the 60s, don’t trust government programs.

Type A: Never left the 60s, long hair, not into career,
sandals, Tie-dyed T-Shirts, Grateful Dead concerts. They
often prefer used cars, VW vans.

Type B: Got into the system, cut their hair (not always) or
trimmed their beards neatly, some wear suits, believe in
“change-the-system-from-within.” Their car choices are
Volvos, Saabs and Subarus. (From direct observation, it
would seem that Berkeley, CA, is the Volvo Capital of the
US!)

HIGH VALUE: Intelligence, Integrity

PSYCHIC WOUND: Being seduced or manipulated by the
system in any way.

KEY WORDS: Mission, change the world for the better,
natural, balance, nuturing, good person, outdoors,
environmental, poor, homeless, global warming, recycling,
pollution, etc.

Typical commercial appealing to this group: Chevron
“People Do” ads showing scenes of environmental purity
next to refineries. Coors Regular with cool, clean flowing
streams. Ads which are low key and which stress “You
Already Know What’s Right,” or “You Can’t Be Fooled.” So
even though this group detests being manipulated, they, like
everyone else in the world, can be approached
psychologically.

GENERAL CATEGORIES

Note that these are all general categories. People are not
totally one thing or another, so individuals can be part of
more than one grouping. Often you’ll see commercials or
ads which are targeted toward more than one group using
mixed words and images. The viewer simply picks out
those which appeal directly and rejects the others…or
doesn’t even see or respond to them.

So observe the advertising going on for awhile, see how it is
put together and then go forth and do likewise. Find YOUR
target market and aim all your advertising, marketing and
promotional energies and dollars specifically at them.
You’re bound to have success!

Mr. Eric Barnes is President & General Manager of Capital
Funds Group Ltd., a Canadian based consulting firm
specializing in Putting Companies and Money
Together. They also work with non-US companies
to take them public rapidly and inexpensively, then getting
them funded. Visit our
Web Site

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Does the thought of marketing your business drive you to chocolate? If “getting the word out” makes you feel overwhelmed, you’re not alone. After coaching over 1,200 men and women the last four years I’ve discovered big differences between the genders and how we handle the challenges marketing throws at all small businesses.

Women Still Not Taken Seriously in the Business World

Did you know women are starting businesses at 2-4 times the rate of men? Women-owned businesses employ more people than the Fortune 500 combined. But businesses owned by women are often still not taken seriously.

My book, “Testosterone-Free Marketing: The Yin and Yang of Marketing for Women” is about why marketing and sales make many women uneasy and what they can do about it to enjoy more success and put more profits in your purse.

Can’t Relate to “Testosterone-Heavy” Marketing?

Many women can’t relate to pushy sales and marketing tactics about guns and guerrillas found in most marketing books, tapes and seminars. Women want to create relationships, not warfare. The rest of our lives are about building connections and extending a hand in friendship. We hate being pushy or annoying. So we wait for others to initiate a purchase. This is especially true for women raised to be “a good girl” and not “toot their own horn.” Our conditioning and how we were raised as girls impacts our success and cash flow.

Talented Women at the Crossroads of Success

One woman I coached had a delightfully outgoing personality and a network marketing business. She is an amazing story of a person who used her company’s products and was cured of two chronic, debilitating disease conditions.

Susan was comfortable signing up people to her business opportunity who she believed would benefit from her company’s product. These people became customers and ordered the product faithfully. But to create a business that would generate a full-time income she knew she must recruit business builders. She asked, “Gosh Denise, why would they possibly be interested in me?”

It was difficult for her to admit, but Susan realized with the people who needed the product for their health she felt a bit superior, needed and adored. She even gave the product away but her husband put a stop to that. With business builder types she didn’t feel superior, adored or even equal.

We all have something of value to offer others even if it’s not as easy to see on the surface as being beautiful or being rich. Your uniqueness will be the reason people will want to do business with you. If you feel inadequate when you compare yourself with others, it’s not a business problem - it’s a self-confidence issue.

I’ve helped many women in a myriad of businesses from professionals with doctorates to business newbies to boost their sales and enjoy more freedom. To discover how my “Testosterone-Free Marketing” can help you, go to http://www.MarketingForHer.com and click on “Get the Book!”
Nurturing Women Can Have Abundant Cash Flow, Too

Women often bring to their home-based businesses the same nesting, nurturing characteristics as at home. They also bring the expertise they have around their products and services. Marketing and sales is out of their comfort zone. But more “product knowledge” will not help most women to sell more and create more cash flow. Marketing and selling skills absolutely necessary to create abundant cash flow even if we do it far differently from the men.

The Secrets of Asking and Receiving in the Business World

Marketing is about asking for what you want. In personal relationships its often wise counsel to wait for others to call you, in business it’s counter-productive. We can’t wait for customers to approach us the way we waited for the cute boy who sat next to us in high school History class to call for a date. Yet, I’ve talked with countless women business owners who do this. “Testosterone-Free Marketing” will teach you to ask without asking so it’s painless and more profitable.

Business will come to you, when you let the world know you are here, you are competent and you are ready. To get the book go to http://www.MarketingForHer.com and click on “Get the Book!”

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