Month: December 2014

He picked up his guitar, sat down on the edge of the drummer’s stage, and played the first chord.

Instantly, his face lit up.

His eyes scanned for me in the crowd, lighted on me, and he smiled a tiny smile while making a “perfect!” signal with his hand.

It was the first time his band had employed a roadie who played the guitar – and therefore was actually able to tune one to perfection.

Dude was happy. So was I.

I remember standing there, listening to the song.

It was a funny yet romantic tune: About how fish crawled onto land, evolved into earth-dwellers, evolved for millions of years, finally culminating into the summit of perfection: You.

Aw… so romantic.

Clever little number, it was.

My point?

Get the right man for the job. Any job.

If you want your guitar tuned fine, fit to play sweet songs, get a guitar-playing roadie, and not a Harley-riding hulk who sets up the drum kit and then wanders off to flirt with some girl in the audience.

(I saw it happen. The whole band was calling him from the stage. Hilarity ensued).

If your car breaks down, get a skilled mechanic.

If your Large Hadron Collider breaks down, get a Quantum Mechanic (credits go to Colin Beveridge for that one).

If you want to eat vegetarian food, don’t go to a steakhouse and pick the single veggie dish on the menu (seriously).

If you want to get your website designed right, get a designer who understands marketing and can go beyond creating  ‘pretty things’.

And if you want to learn how to market, promote and sell your work – without having to resort to sleazy, car-salesman tactics, get the LEAP Newsletter.

Because like I always say: Marketing in itself isn’t dirty – it’s only the unethical bastards who give it a bad name.

Or, that James Bond quote: “It isn’t the bullet that kills – it’s the finger that pulls the trigger”.

Marketing is just a method for showing up to people – whether it’s good or bad depends on your own ethics.

And that’s something you control.

Do it right, and people will actually thank you for it.

How do you do that – doing it right?

That’s what you learn each month, when the LEAP Newsletter lands on your doormat.

And here’s where you can make sure that happens –> http://martinstellar.com/leap-to-more-sales/

Cheers,

Martin

“People distrust salespeople, but they trust their doctor”.

I looked at him and thought about what he had said.

It’s curious, but it’s true.

And while I agree that we should be able to trust our doctors, the wholesale, 100% blind faith that many people put in their doctors can be grossly mistaken.

Without even getting into all the things that are wrong with the pharmaceutical and medical industries: A doctor is a human being.

He’s not all-knowing, and he’s not perfect. Doctors make mistakes, just like we all do.

Second opinions exist for a damn good reason.

But, people often place blind faith in doctors, just because there’s a diploma on the wall.

Because that diploma gives the doc unmistakable authority.

Sales people, or vendors, or indeed entrepreneurs like you and me, we don’t have that going for us.

We might have testimonials, a license, or a diploma of some sort – but we don’t wear a white coat and stethoscope.

Which means that for guys and gals like us, it’s mighty difficult to get a prospect to trust us enough to do business with us.

Added to that is the veritable army of uncouth salespeople in the world – you know the kind: they’ll happily sell you an encyclopaedia no matter how little interest you have in owning one.

You go buy a second hand car, and it turns out to be a lemon.

And by and by, ‘selling’ acquired a terrible reputation, as if the very act of exchanging something for money is bad.

Whereas actually, a GOOD salesperson has your best interest in mind. If he’s got any ethics and humanity.

It’s silly how things have turned out, since selling is a fundamental aspect of human nature.

It’s part and parcel of society.

In the hunter-gatherer days, you would bring home your harvest of berries, and I’d let you warm yourself by my campfire.

Sale = made.

The fact that these days we use currency in the exchange is immaterial.

The mechanism is the same as ever.

You give me something that solves my problem, I give you something in return.

Tell sell is human, as per Daniel Pink.

What’s not immaterial is how badly the mechanism, and human psychology, are being, and have been, abused by loathsome unethical marketers.

Which makes it all the more difficult for good and righteous people like us to sell our product or service.

But it can also give us an edge over the baddies.

Because if we do put our ethics to use, and we make it our business to solve problems and avoid – or even outright reject – a sale when it wouldn’t be right, we stand out like an honest man in Congress.

Like that clothing company last week: I coulda gotten the sale. He’d have paid, and I’d have done the work.

But it wouldn’t have helped him and so I turned it down.

Trust starts with you.

With knowing that you’re there for the other person, not just for yourself.

And if you consistently communicate that message, people will over time come to trust that your solution is right for them.

Takes time, but it’s worth it.

Learn how it works in the next issue of the LEAP Newsletter, which you can get your hands on right here –> http://martinstellar.com/leap-to-more-sales/

Cheers,

Martin

“Oh but Martin, this cat would just be perfect for you. Purr-fect”.

She was, almost literally, purring.

“Yeah but I told you: Right now, I don’t want any cats”.

She went on: But he’s so charming and sweet and likeable. Really your kinda cat”.

“Sure. But I really don’t want any cats.
Besides, I’ve seen two cats die of feline leukaemia and it’s not pretty.

“If I’m going to have another one, it’ll come from a home and I’ll have it immunised right away.

I don’t want another stray cat with that disease.”

Feline leukaemia is also called cat-Aids, and it’s highly contagious. Hence my insistence on getting a clean one, this time round.

Which I wasn’t about to, but still.

And she went on: “But how can you know until you see him?

“Really he’s special”.

Bored, I changed the topic of conversation.

What was happening there is that she had an agenda: this cat comes into her house and demands food.

Which she gives since she’s a kind-hearted person.

But wouldn’t it be just great if she could offload the lil gremlin on me?

She didn’t tell me that, but it was clear enough.

Tried to bore me into accepting.

It’s the worst possible thing you can do when you try to sell something.

You can’t go and be pushy.

You can’t hide your agenda.

And, you can’t allow your prospect to get the feeling that you’re desperate.

All those things, they break trust.

When people get the feeling that there’s something more important (meaning: you) behind the sale, more important than their own problem getting solved, there’s no sale.

No trust? Door closed.

And, next time they’ll need to find a solution for something, they’ll look elsewhere, because you left them with a niggling feeling of ‘something not quite right’ – if not ‘don’t trust ‘em’.

Trust matters.

It’s why Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote Trust agents.

And they’re no dummies.

So, put your cards on the table.

Explain what you can and can’t resolve for people.

Ask for the sale.

And thou shalt profit.

As will the buyer, by purchasing something that actually solves their problem.

LEAP #8 deals with trust, which is why it’s aptly called ‘The Trust Issue’.

You can get it here.

If you want – because I ain’t about to get pushy about it.

http://martinstellar.com/leap-to-more-sales/

Cheers,

Martin

Here’s a story about someone I’ll never trust again:

The moment I tried to get out of bed, I knew something was very wrong.

It was made clear by the fact that as soon as I woke up and tried to roll out of bed, a hideous and sharp pain in my back took away my breath.

Ouch very much.

The day before, I had gone to a yoga class.

Not just regular yoga, but Tibetan Yoga.

A lady in town had given me the impression it was A Very Spiritual Thing.

Not that I cared about that part: After 12 years in a monastery, I’d become to be pretty cynical about what people in the world tend to call spiritual.

Good exercise though – now that was a different thing. I sure needed some.

And Tibetans aren’t stupid people, so I figured the system might be wholesome and thus I went and gave it a try.

At some point, doing the triangle posture, I knew something wasn’t right. I could feel it.

Imagine you stand with feet apart, arms outstretched.

Bend sideways, till your fingers touch your feet.

In normal yoga, you bend and stay that way, breathing a number of times before carefully coming back up.

In Tibetan yoga though, you go down, and up, and down, and up again, like 5 or 8 times in a row.

That’s really heavy on the lower back, so in order to prevent damaging yourself, you need to carry part of the strain with your abdominal muscles.

Which I didn’t. How was I to know?

The answer is that I shouldn’t have known: it’s her task as a yoga teacher to notice that I’m doing something wrong.

And, she did notice.

But she just didn’t tell me.

Which can be quite dangerous in a sport where you routinely bend yourself into a pretzel.

A week later I told her I’d been in bed for two days, and was still in enormous pain.

“Yes, I noticed you weren’t doing it right.”

I was gobsmacked.

She knew, and she didn’t tell me?

“I’ll make sure to tell you next time”, she concluded.

Meanwhile, I thought to myself: “I’ll never put my trust in you again”.

A teacher is someone you should be able to trust.

Especially a yoga teacher.

But as a business owner, you need to be trusted as well.

Because if people don’t trust you, they don’t buy your stuff.

And achieving that trust can be hard.

Because we have an amygdala – cutely known as ‘the lizard brain’.

It’s an area in your head that runs mostly on autopilot, and its main task is to keep you safe.

It’s always on, always looking out for you.

When you have a hunch, when you feel that something isn’t right – that’s your amygdala talking to you.

It’s a highly paranoid, incredibly alert piece of kit – and it’s fast.

It puts your foot on the break even before your conscious mind sees the brake lights go on in front of you.

The lizard brain sees danger everywhere, and it activates reflexes as soon as something is wrong.

It also send signals to your subconscious, when something isn’t right.

Which for you as a business owner is a problem: Something as simple as not having your phone number on your site can be enough for a visitor to doubt.

And when there’s doubt, there’s no sale.

Trust matters a lot.

More than you might think.

And, it’s incredibly easy to break it, right at the moment someone is trying to convince themselves to buy from you.

Which is why the January issue of the LEAP Newsletter is going to be all about trust, and how to earn more of it.

How it gets broken, how it’s built, how you can increase it – and how to avoid making the mistakes that destroy trust (and sales).

So that in 2015, you’ll know how to be more trusted online, and how to get more sales as a result.

Access here –> http://martinstellar.com/leap-to-more-sales/

Cheers,

Martin

Yesterday a writer asked me on the Twitter what my favourite word is.

If you sing at a harp, it sings back to you.

Your sound causes resonance and that causes new sound.

Resonance.

It’s a massively important word.

In science, in life and also in business.

Much – MUCH more important than you might think.

The term ‘resonate with your audience’ is being flung around by all and sundry, but mostly people have no idea what they’re actually saying.

See, everything is energy.

Matter too is a form of energy, this much has been shown to be true.

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.

“Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality.

“It can be no other way.

“This is not philosophy.

“This is physics.”

Sounds like the words of the venerable master Gwan Djin Hoo, spoken 3000 years ago in his cave atop Mount Everest, doesn’t it?

Nope.

That was Albert Einstein.

Interesting, no?

Resonance happens all the time.

Every movement, every action, every thought causes a reaction of some sort.

And in many of those reactions, something vibrates, resonates, because of that initial action.

Some can be measured, some can be felt, and most reactions are completely imperceptible, and will stay that way until we invent more advanced measuring devices.

Much like Infrared light was invisible until someone invented an infrared spectrophotometer.

There’s resonance in everything.

Everything you do will have some sort of effect.

What you say to your website visitors, and the way your site is designed, and the page load time – every element affects your visitor in some way.

What you present causes them to resonate with the overall message.

If it’s strong resonance – they like you, and trust you – that’s beneficial and they’ll sign up and buy from you.

But conversely, if the resonance is small, or not positive, they’ll leave.

You throw a popup at them, and some folks will instantly close the page.

Others will read it, and take action.

That way, you filter people into two groups: you determine who will and won’t resonate with that particular tactic, and you let those who don’t resonate with it walk away.

A strategic choice.

And just the same, every element of your site is a way to create resonance – or not.

Which means that if you want your site to work for you, and get you people who sign up or who buy, you need to make sure the overall strategic conjunct aims for the right kind of people to take the action you want them to take.

Because if it’s not built right, you attract the ‘wrong’ type of people, or none at all.

Complicated?

A little, yes.

But I’ve got your back because it just so happens that I study resonance and messaging and psychology and persuasion every single day.

So if your site should work harder for you, why not let me write up a custom conversion optimisation report for you?

Get some real resonance with your visitors –> http://martinstellar.com/convert-your-site-into-a-conversion-machine/

Cheers,

Martin