EIGHT SELF-DEFEATING BEHAVIORS CRIPPLING YOUR
MARKETING... AND HOW TO GET RID OF THEM AND MAKE MORE MONEY!
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
You'd think business owners would be doing everything
possible to improve the return on their marketing --
especially given this punk economic climate. But I'm here to
tell you it just isn't true. Stationed as I am in the
marketing lighthouse, I daily see supposedly intelligent
business people literally throwing their money away by
engaging in a series of entirely self-defeating, completely
avoidable self-defeating marketing behaviors. Indeed, so
severe is this problem I've now come to believe such
behaviors are more prevalent among businesses than the kind
of unrelenting, client-focused behaviors which ought to
distinguish any enterprise. See for yourself: how many of
these behaviors characterize your efforts?
Self-Defeating Behavior #1: You're Condescending
The only way you're going to get rich through your business
is to make a certain number of profitable deals with a
precise number of customers. Why then are so many business
owners so ridiculously condescending to their customers. I
think, for instance, of a recent encounter I had with a
gallery selling old master paintings. I collect such
pictures and had determined to acquire one I'd recently
seen. Such paintings, as you perhaps know, are not
inexpensive; indeed, they represent very considerable
investments. Most of the negotiations for this acquisition
were handled by fax. In each fax, I provided my name, title
and address. In each response, the marketer deleted my
title, demoting me from "Doctor" to "Mister." When he spoke
to me, he further demoted me from "Mister" to "Jeff," a name
I loathe.
Some might argue that all this was merely his attempt to
establish some kind of rapport. I see it, instead, as a
subtle form of the condescension which is all too prevalent
in business today. Other manifestations include:
## not returning phone calls, even when you indicate they
are most important;
## not answering your letters in a timely fashion, if at
all;
## promising things you cannot or will not deliver;
## not looking at your customer when you're talking to him;
## allowing yourself to be endlessly interrupted while
talking to a customer;
## allowing your customer to stand by while you gossip with
others.
As customers, all of us have been victimized by such endemic
behaviors. What's worse, as business people all too many of
us perpetrate them. Customers are the people who make us
entrepreneurs wealthy. As such they deserve our utmost,
concentrated attention and not the witless condescension
which today characterizes so much of American business.
Self-Defeating Behavior 3: You're Not Prepared For The
Marketing Response You Get
Business these days is amazingly disorganized, and in no
particular more so than responding to people who want to
hear more about the products or services you sell. Why,
just the other day a woman told me she'd run an ad and
received about 850 responses. She was complaining because
she'd managed to close only one of these responses. What,
she wailed, was wrong?
Closer examination showed that:
## she had no proven response package... in other words
she'd never bothered to see if what she was sending out
actually worked; ## she'd farmed out the responses to a
series of people who were to make the closes... but who had
received no training at all in how to do so;
## she'd never bothered to listen to or instruct the people
she'd selected to make the closes. She had, that is, no idea
whether they could do so... or, indeed, any idea about what
they were doing.
Net result? She was in despair about the process. In truth,
she should have been in despair about her own methods,
because it was her own failure to create an organized,
tested closing process that produced the truly disastrous
results she experienced.
It never ceases to astonish me how little marketers consider
the entire process of marketing, how little attention they
give to each necessary and inevitable component of a
successful marketing effort. While large amounts of time may
be given over to the consideration and production of
marketing copy, only a fraction as much is devoted to such
essential elements as where and how this copy should be
used... how responses should be tabulated and logged... how
responses should be followed up... and what further follow
up there should be beyond this. Yet each of these is a
crucial component of profitable marketing.
Consideration of these issues should take place before --
not after -- you execute any marketing tactics. You need to
walk through and consider in the most focused way each
element of the entire marketing process. Otherwise, you'll
end up like the ELM marketer I talked to the other day who
spent a very large amount generating leads... and nothing on
the package to close them. He was surprised that he closed
so few of his prospects... but no one else could possibly
be.
Self-Defeating Behavior #3: You STILL Don't Know The
Difference Between A Feature And A Benefit And STILL
Keeping Trying To Sell Features
Really, it is most irritating to me that this point should
have to be here, but it still needs to be. Pick up any
business brochure, cover letter, ad, proposal, flyer and
what will you see? I'll lay odds that you'll first find the
company's name, logo, address, a photo of its location, a
motto... in short, something about the company itself, its
product, its mere existence. But I ask you: who can make
company better off: the company itself, or its customers.
Obvious, isn't it? And that's why every business, for every
one of its products and services, needs to concentrate on
benefits -- which are of interest to buyers -- and not
features -- which are nothing more than descriptive
components of what the company is selling.
Think of it this way: a feature is like a sentence beginning
"I have..." or "It is..." "I have a location at 308 Main
Street." Or "It is three inches high." Interesting as these
facts may be to specialists, they rightly elicit from
prospects the deflating "So what?" response. "What's in it
for me, cub?" That's where the benefits come in. Benefits
are sentences beginning with the far more motivating words
"You get..." This is what your prospects want -- not facts
about you -- but things they get. That's why you need to
turn every feature into a client-centered benefit. How about
that location on Main Street? "You get free parking at our
easy-to-reach location at 308 Main Street, right in the
center of town." The fact, in short, of no intrinsic
interest or value in itself, has now been transformed into a
client-friendly motivator. Which is just what must happen
with every feature for each one of your products and
services.
The sad fact is that most so-called "marketers" can't do
this... which is one major reason they have such a hard time
motivating the numbers of people they need to buy their
products and services.
Self-Defeating Behavior #4: You STILL Don't Provide A Cogent
Reason For Your Prospects To Take Immediate Action
It sickens me just how many marketing communications are on
the wrong track. Most still say nothing more significant
than, "We're here. We think we're great. Buy something from
us." Now I ask you, is this motivating? Of course not!
What motivates people is not just the benefits of a product
or service... but a special offer that motivates them to
take faster action to acquire it. I've discussed these
offers in many places: they must offer a real benefit and
must be limited in some way, as with amount or in time. The
importance of the offer is that it provides the final push
to a prospect... the oompf that he needs to take faster
action.
"Act now," you're saying, "and get not only this BENEFIT...
and this BENEFIT... and this BENEFIT... but also this
SPECIAL OFFER with its MEANINGFUL BENEFIT." Now you stand a
reasonable chance of getting the slothful, and all too often
cash-poor consumer, to take faster action. Note: have you
noticed this recession just how creative many offers have
become? These people have made a calculated decision to do
whatever it takes to get through this distressing period of
our lives as comfortably and profitably as possible. If
you're not doing this, you're apparently decided to slice
your wrists and quietly bleed to death.
Self-Defeating Behavior #5: You're Unwilling To Assume
Responsibility For Acting
How many times have you responded to a marketing
communication, calling, say, for information. What are you
told by the idiot at the other end of the receiver, "Signor
Importance is not available. Leave a message?" What I've
discovered in many instances is that this grandee doesn't
need to be involved in the reckoning at all. You may simply
be calling for "inform-ation." You may have the most basic
of questions that anyone with a grain of intellect could
answer. Why then must you leave a message?
Your message must be left because the marketer hasn't
adequately thought through what he needs to do and what
members of his staff can do. These days too many of my once
proudly self-reliant countrymen now do a self-defeating
dance of responsibility avoidance and irresponsibility. Sure
they could tell you what you want to know... Sure they could
find out. But it's "not my job." And so they don't, thus
throwing the all-important prospect/customer into limbo.
Thus, make it your credo that you will not only assume
responsibility yourself but instruct those in your operation
about how they, too, can act in a way that expedites the
closing of business. This is never just the responsibility
of a single person in an organization -- unless there is
only a single person in that organization. It is always the
responsi-bility of all, and the sooner this is generally
recognized and implemented the better.
Self-Defeating Behavior #6: You're Slow To Respond
This self-defeating behavior is, of course, closely linked
to the one above. It perplexes me, I confess, just how
torpidly businesses respond to queries which could, if
properly handled, make them money. Why, just the other day I
had occasion to call a service provider whose talents I
needed to employ. When she didn't call me back within a
couple of hours, I tried another provider and made a deal.
Four days later when the first provider finally returned my
call, I told her she was long out of luck. Predictably, she
did not express her regret about her inadequate business
practices; instead, she drawled something about needing a
rest! Really, it's no wonder we're in the middle of an
interminable recession with attitudes like this!
These days, with the advent of the computer, modem, all-
pervasive telephone systems, fax and overnight mail
services, there is absolutely no reason why every request
cannot get the exact level of responsiveness it requires. To
gather further details or respond with simple information,
call immediately. When the prospect needs more detailed and
lengthy information, a fax is tailor made. On the other
hand, when you need to get bulkier information to the
client, depending on the seriousness and potential value of
the assignment, an overnight or second-day air service may
be called for. In short, there is absolutely no reason why
the response cannot be as quick as the seriousness of the
prospect calls for -- and as thorough.
Yet, as we all know, this isn't at all what happens. Call
most businesses today and you'll quickly learn just how
deplorably lax their response practices are. Yet these are
the very people who bemoan their cash flow and cannot seem
to fathom why their sales are off. Sure, an adverse economic
cycle takes its toll. But lax response practices weaken and
kill in all seasons.
Self-Defeating Behavior #7: You're Afraid To Talk Directly
To Your Prospects And Gauge Their Intentions
Too many businesses assume that all people responding to
their marketing communications and expressing an
introductory interest are real prospects, that is people who
have both the desire and capacity to acquire the benefits
the company is offering. This is a mistake.
When you become as aggressive a lead generator as I am, you
will quickly come to learn about the large numbers of people
who respond to waste their time (which doesn't matter) and
yours (which does) answering everything. Such people are
business parasites and ought to be rigorously rooted out.
There are many reasons why they're not, including:
## a misdirected courtesy. Many business people reckon that
if a person says he's interested, we ought to take him at
his word and behave accordingly. I do not agree. Only real
prospects deserve your serious attention and investment.
## a fear of upsetting the prospect. Real prospects want you
to be focused. Parasites simply want to weaken you. When
you seek to ascertain from a real prospect whether he really
wants the benefits you have available, he under-stands what
you're doing and approves. After all, he doesn't want to
waste his time and money either. Parasites get irritated,
because when you prove them frivolous, they must go. No
wonder they huff and puff when you cut to the chase.
## fear of rejection. When you get focused with prospects,
you risk rejection. Get used to it; that's just the way it
is.
## thinking sending "information" is your job, rather than
closing prospects. Sending "information" is never anyone's
job; indeed, mindless mailing of information packets is to
be avoided whenever possible. The job is always to offer the
most focused client-centered benefits and to figure out if
the prospect is interested in them and has the ability to
acquire them now. That's all that marketing is or ever will
be.
Your job is to generate the maximum number of prospects with
the benefits you have available and with a highly
motivational offer... and then to talk directly to the
prospect and see if he wants to do what it takes -- if he
even can do what it takes -- to acquire them. The most
focused you are, the more you have a right to insist that
the prospect be equally focused and prepared to deal with
you directly.
Self-Defeating Behavior #8: You Don't Treat Routine
Marketing Tasks In The Most Efficient Fashion
The Objective of profitable marketing is to create a process
that:
## identifies the right prospects for what you're selling,
namely the people who want the benefit you're selling and
have the means to acquire it;
## identifies them in sufficient numbers to meet your profit
quota;
## markets both motivating benefits and offers;
## responds in increasingly efficient ways thanks to better
use of improved business machines and office procedures to
close more prospects, more promptly.
Towards this end, you should concentrate on handling all
routine marketing tasks as efficiently as possible. But,
you, say, I AM! I doubt it...
Have you, for instance, fully integrated the computer into
all your marketing activities? That is, when a prospect
calls, do you have the correct response immediately
available on computer? When you need to follow up, is that
letter on computer? If one of your employees makes
telemarketing calls, is his script on computer? How about
boiler plate for proposals and contracts? In short, it all
should be immediately accessible on computer. If it isn't,
you're not as efficient as you can be.
Do you have a computer record where you log all your
marketing activities, the dates you did them, the responses,
the results? Or are you continually playing guessing games
with this crucial information, like an organization I know
which can never tell you which marketing gambits have worked
and which have not, because the director of this business
absolutely refuses to get organized and use the technology
and people at her disposal?
One of the crucial things I have learned about marketing in
the last fifteen years is how important it is to establish a
profit-making process, a set of simple and easy-to-run
procedures which predictably bring in money and regularly
bring you closer to the degree of wealth you desire. While a
certain dash of creativity may well have been necessary to
establish this process, more mundane and predictable traits
are called for to perfect and administer it. Unfortunately
all too many "marketers" give way to the siren song of
"creativity" seeking instead of perfecting client-centered
benefits, motivating offers and a process of prompter turn-
around and focus. This is a serious error. But like the
other errors outlined here, it's one you are now saved from
making!
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Dr. Jeffrey Lant is one of America's best-known marketers.
Tens of thousands of people are profiting right now from his
many money-making books, tapes and Special Reports like
MONEY MAKING MARKETING: FINDING THE PEOPLE WHO NEED WHAT
YOU'RE SELLING AND MAKING SURE THEY BUY IT (285 pages,
$39.50 postpaid); HOW TO MAKE A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN
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"HOW-TO" INFORMATION (552 pages, $39.50), and NO MORE COLD
CALLS: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GENERATING -- AND CLOSING --
ALL THE PROSPECTS YOU NEED TO BECOME A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE BY
SELLING YOUR SERVICE (600 pages, $39.50). Get all these --
and a free year's subscription to his quarterly 32-page
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