CHAPTER 10
THE NATURE OF THE CUSTOMER
Understanding your customer can help you make more money.
This chapter will help you to understand what people have in
common, and also what makes us unique individuals. From the
basic urges of sex, gluttony and avarice, to the man-made
desires for money, better ad response, and a quicker way to
open an envelope, the mail order market is driven by your
customers' minds.
For any given market, try to understand what that market
buys and why. Answer the "Why buy?" question in your head
for each of these top mail order sellers.
- get-rich quick plans
- advertising
- books and reports about making money
- mailing lists
- subscriptions
- printing
- postage stamps
- condoms
Postage stamps and printing are easy enough - they're
absolute necessities. And since people have been convinced
that advertising (paid advertising), mailing lists and print
& mail are also absolute necessities, they sell as if they
were necessary (sometimes they are). Condoms? That's easy -
you don't have to look a cashier in the face when you buy
them by mail, which saves some people from embarrassment.
Get-rich-quick schemes are bought because people are blinded
to logic as a result of our society's money addiction,
(which is the sole reason for the inner circle's existence).
As you become acquainted with the mail order industry,
remember to always ask yourself why consumers buy the way
they do. It will make your success easier and faster.
PROVE THAT YOU'RE A REAL LIVE PERSON
Unless you meet them in person or at least talk to them on
the phone, all of your associates, customers and prospects
will think of you as just an idea, not a real person. When
you can convince the prospect that you are a real person,
you increase the chances of making a sale. Become real to
your prospects and customers by always listing phone numbers
with your address and making note of the fact that they are
encouraged to call any time, for any reason. If you have
your own publication, put your photograph in it somewhere.
Even a publisher's notes column in your own adsheet or
tabloid can do the trick by adding a personal touch.
If you have opinions, state them. Try to come across as
someone with a personality and well-formed opinions. You
can't bond with your customers if you come across as just
one more salesperson who's too afraid to say anything
controversial or personal.
ELIMINATE TIME AND SPACE BETWEEN
YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMER
Have you ever noticed how you can be utterly captivated by a
salesletter but save your money and not respond simply by
putting it down and forgetting about it? Well think about it
because this is exactly what your customers are doing! Phone
calls put more pressure on people. Before you call, your
customer is aware of you only as pieces of paper, but after
you call you are a real live person, with at least a voice
if not a face. A customer can throw your salesletter down
but when you are talking to them they are forced to respond,
and response is what direct marketing is all about (in fact
some call it direct response marketing!). Phone calls are
expensive, so at first limit them to calling to confirm
people's orders as you receive them and telemarketing only
to past customers. Building up your reality in their minds
will make future purchases more likely.
PUT TIME AND SPACE BETWEEN YOUR
CUSTOMER AND HIS PAYMENT
With cash and money order payments, your customer acutely
feels the loss of money as he pays you. A check is a little
less painful - the money is lost later on - right now all the
customer has to do is sign a little bit of paper; in a few
days a bank somewhere out of sight and mind will
electronically deduct the necessary amount from the customer's
bank account. Credit card payments are even better since
payment is delayed by a month or more, and that's why when you
accept credit cards you usually increase business by 50% or
more. It's also important to remember that with a credit
card, your customer can spend money he doesn't even have. The
customer doesn't feel the loss of money as acutely, since when
it comes time to pay off the credit card each month, his
purchase from you is mixed in with car payments, clothes,
dining out, and so on.
The more you allow your customer to put time and space
between himself and his payment to you, the more often, and
the higher, those payments will be. Therefore, it is
important to take very seriously the advice in chapter 13
regarding payment options.
WAKE UP THE CUSTOMER
Think of how you buy. Do you respond to ads the first time
you see them? Probably not. So I hope you don't expect
anyone to respond to your ads the first time they see them.
When a company's advertising is very frequent and you've
seen it for several months, are you more likely to respond
to it? Probably.
Think of your prospect as being comatose. It's all too
common for a marketer to tap him lightly on the shoulder
then quickly dance away, saying "Well, I guess he won't be
buying anything from me". The smart marketer approaches the
prospect with ringing cymbals and blaring horns, sits down
and makes himself at home. He is not afraid to tell anyone
and everyone that they have a world of trouble and that he
has the solution to it. He'll pour some coffee over the
comatose prospect's head, then some down his throat, and
communicate the fact that he is a problem solver for as many
months as it takes for the prospect to fully awaken. No new
advice for you here; this is just a reminder of the over and
over and over and over marketing principle discussed in
chapter 6.
FOUR THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT CUSTOMER PSYCHOLOGY
What follows is a discussion of some human psychological
characteristics which relate to marketing. Before launching
into this, I must tell you why I'm telling you all this (ie.
"what is this doing in a mail order how-to book?"). Three
reasons:
1) sometimes your customer or prospect will act (write,
talk) in such an extreme fashion that he immediately exposes
his personality characteristics. You may be able to
understand him or her better, and be able to respond
appropriately, by reading the information below. This is
never easy, and you may only find it worthwhile to evaluate
and respond to individual personalities when you're engaging
in very important correspondence that can mean a lot of
money in the long run.
2) you may, from now on, wish to create your sales materials
to appeal to a wider cross-section of personalities, to
attract and persuade as many people as possible.
3) to clarify and confirm ideas put forth elsewhere in this
book, and further urge you to immediately make the necessary
changes in your marketing plans.
I - RAPPORT
In your business career, there will be some people that grow
to like you after first contact, for one of 2 reasons:
- you are like them (and therefore they are like you), or
- they want to be like you.
In other words, they experience "rapport" (a comfortableness
and willingness to communicate; a feeling of similarity)
based either on reality (being like you) or fantasy
(imagining being like you). One way to "be like" somebody
else (and therefore to create rapport) is to mimic them.
When in the other's presence, this means matching the tone
of their voice, key words and expressions, amount of eye
contact, etc. If you mirror the other accurately enough, you
will actually create a close approximation of their mental
experiences. What better way to understand what the customer
needs and therefore be able to make an appropriate sale than
to experience what he's experiencing? Sound mystical or
unbelievable? It's nothing of the kind! Let me explain. All
human beings are basically the same. Everyone's brain is
built the same way. What creates different belief systems,
different personalities, different levels of success, is the
way that brain has been programmed, by genetic makeup, by
ourselves and by our lifetime experiences. A good analogy is
that two different musical tapes can have completely
different types of music on them, but appear to be exactly
alike on the outside.
To illustrate rapport building: Suppose you're rich and
confident, and you're talking to a poor embarrased beginner
who can't seem to sell anything. You want to sell him your
book on marketing so that he can get out of his rut, but
first you're going to want to get inside his head. So you
mimic his actions and voice, words and phrases, etc. (Don't
worry about people noticing that you're doing this on
purpose. Believe me, they never notice). In mimicking him,
you notice yourself feeling a little embarrassed yourself.
You're remembering what it was like to be in his position,
because COPYING THE BEHAVIOUR PRODUCED BY SOMEONE ELSE'S
STATE OF MIND, WILL ALLOW YOU TO EXPERIENCE THEIR STATE OF
MIND.
Now you have established rapport with the potential
customer. In mimicking his behaviour, you notice yourself
feeling the way he does. In turn, the prospect is noticing
that you're not so different from him after all. And he buys
your book from you, or your service or widget. Or, if he
cannot afford what you sell now, he will certainly come to
you in future.
II - GET A COMMITMENT FROM YOUR CUSTOMER
Many successful world figures knew something crucial about
the masses. Get a big group of people to do something,
anything, and they will believe in you. Billy Graham asks
audience members to walk down the aisles towards him - walk
now, believe later. But walk NOW. Hitler convinced millions
of his countrymen to wear uniforms, parade around in the
freezing cold, fight a war, and commit countless atrocities.
As the Germans went on year after year behaving like this,
the Nazi belief system grew stronger and stronger.
Graham and Hitler are opposite in personality and intention,
but they were both held in awe by millions for the same
reason. But what did they both know about people that
resulted in their mass popularity? It is simply this: get a
commitment from people, and you will dramatically boost
their respect for you.
The common belief about attitudes and behaviour is that a
person's attitude determines their behaviour. What is not so
commonly known is that you can change a person's attitude by
getting a behaviour out of them (that is, by getting them to
do some specific thing). Once you've elicited the action you
want out of them, their attitude will automatically adjust
to justify their actions. We all know that happiness will
make you smile. But did you know that forcing yourself to
smile will actually make you happy? To my mind this is one
of the most significant discoveries ever made in psychology.
A teenager who doesn't want to drink or smoke may start
anyway because her peers pressured her to act that way. But
once the drinking or smoking begins, she will trick herself
into believing that she wanted to do it, and that drinking
and smoking are enjoyable. This is how behaviour can affect
attitudes. If attitudes always determined behaviour, she
wouldn't have started drinking or smoking in the first
place.
What behaviour are you going to get from your target group
of potential customers, which will cause them to form a
positive opinion of you? It is just this: get them to
respond to your advertising, your press releases, and your
articles. Let them come to you. Having produced this action,
your prospects will form or strengthen the attitude that you
are trustworthy and sell good stuff. They will do this
because the only alternative is to believe that they have
just stupidly wasted time sending an inquiry or order to an
untrustworthy dealer selling shoddy merchandise.
Nobody but nobody tells themself that they have just done
something stupid (unless it's undeniably true). By putting
him or her self on your list, the prospect/customer is
probably forcing him or her self to believe that you are
well worth doing business with. That is the simple reason
why it makes more sense to advertise than to direct market
to uninterested targets. A mailing list is more powerful if
it consists of people who have come to you - it puts you in
a position of greater control, so that you don't look like a
dog begging for a bone.
III - CLASSICAL CONDITIONING - HOW
ADVERTISING WORKS
A good TV advertisement requires something which creates a
strong and automatic positive emotional state. Some
examples:
- a delusional fantasy (the Marlboro man riding off into the
sunset on his horse),
- a popular musician,
- half naked women
The product being sold is then closely associated with the
resulting emotion - lust, high adventure, greed, aesthetic
pleasure, etc. Just like Pavlov's dogs over 70 years ago,
people are then conditioned to react to the product in a
favourable manner. People will react positively to thoughts
of the product, because they have learned to associate it
with the thrill of fantasy, or music, or sex. It might be a
little hard to convince an extraterrestrial that you could
really sell fabric softener or beer this way, but you see it
for yourself every day. Believe it. It works. As further
proof that the average person leads a rich fantasy life,
consider the fact that millions of teenage girls nearly
commit suicide when their favourite rock stars get married.
Think about it.
The only similarity between mail order and television is the
visual aspect. Television includes motion and sound, as
well. This makes it a lot easier for a television commercial
to create an involuntary emotional response - to hit the
prospect where he lives. Some are becoming downright
pornographic. Some beer commercials are beneath contempt.
But never mind them; what can the direct marketer do to
arouse emotion?
It takes a lot of practice to be able to write sales
materials that actually arouse a prospect's emotions. Yet
that is exactly what marketing experts tell us to do with
our mail order sales pieces - create emotional response. And
it is what you must do! This is why in chapters 6 and 7 I
tell you to list benefits, not features or pointless
chatter, in your sales material. By telling a person that
what you are offering is not really a money game, book,
mailing list, 1-800#, insurance policy or fishing lure, but
a way to have a better life, you are cutting straight to his
or her basic instinctual, illogical emotional side. That
always means more sales.
IV - UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER'S PERSONALITY
A) THE PLEASURE SEEKERS VERSUS THE PAIN AVOIDERS
There are hundreds of ways to divide up human behaviours.
Here is just one of them: behaviours that GAIN PLEASURE and
behaviours that AVOID PAIN. Ask a person why they want
money, and their response will either be a "moving away"
response (avoiding pain) or a "striving towards" response
(gaining pleasure). Note the world of difference between "I
want financial independence because I hate working for other
people" and "I want money because then I'll be able to
afford a Cadillac".
Some marketing experts advise to emphasize to people what
they have to lose by not buying your product. Emphasize the
negatives in their life, and how the negatives will stay
until they solve their problem (by purchasing something from
you, of course).
There's also the gaining pleasure approach (an approach
which is, to my mind, grossly overemphasized), where the
marketer emphasizes pie-in-the-sky fantasies of getting
women, land, cars, and making everyone jealous.
When you aim your advertising at one group of people (either
pain avoiders or pleasure seekers), you'll generally miss
the other group altogether. My advice here is to mix the two
in your advertising. (Another perfectly acceptable
alternative is to "specialize" in either selling to the pain
avoiders or the pleasure seekers - but not both). Don't just
tell a person that you can get them out of debt - tell them
that you'll also help them raise $200,000 in 1 day. This is
a good combination of pain avoidance and pleasure seeking.
Emphasize all the pains to be avoided with your product or
service, then list all the pleasures to be gained.
B) MATCHER VERSUS MISMATCHER PERSONALITIES
The best way to tell a matcher from a mismatcher is to ask
someone: "Are this nickel and this penny alike?". The
matcher will say yes - they're both small round metallic
currency. The mismatcher will say no - they're different
sized objects made of different materials and worth
different amounts. We've all met an extreme mismatcher or
two in our lifetimes. The bitter, grouchy person who
responds to such comments as "Have a nice day" and "This
glass is half full" by immediately replying "I don't have to
have a nice day" and "No it isn't, it's half empty". Such
people are thankfully few and far between but you will
encounter them during your career as a businessperson. The
simple rule of thumb here is to make sure the person takes
as little of your time as possible, since he'll be too busy
criticizing you to ever buy anything from you.
To teach a mismatcher that your product is worthwhile, tell
him about its superiority based on its differences from less
satisfactory products or services. To teach a matcher that
your product is worthwhile, tell him about its similarities
to other existing products.
Most people, when it comes to matcher-mismatcher
orientation, are what's called "sameness with exception"
people. These people need to be told that your product has
basically the same benefits as others of its kind, but is
better because of some additional characteristic.
C) INTERNAL VERSUS EXTERNAL FRAME OF REFERENCE
A person with an internal frame of reference (what I like to
call an "instinctual" frame of reference) will know he's
succeeded by how he feels about what he is doing. It is an
automatic response which tells him "I've accomplished
something good for myself". For this type of person, the
best selling approach is "I don't know what's right for you,
but I'm sure you do, so I'll ask you just one question: "Is
there anything specific about mailorder you need to know?".
If the individual has an internal frame of reference he will
immediately have questions for you; if not, there will be an
awkward hesitation, which you should break by saying "If you
don't have any specific questions yet, I'll just give you a
basic idea of what I can do for you ...".
A person with an external frame of reference is the sort of
person who is destined to work in the middle of a busy
office for the rest of his or her life. They're somewhat
like mirrors - they are a reflection of other people's ideas
about them, and don't know they've done something right
until somebody tells them. Note the dramatic difference
there from the internally-referenced person, who forms his
own opinion about himself.
With the externally-referenced person, you just tell them
what they want, and they'll want it. Tell them enough times,
and they'll buy it from you.
D) MORE MODALITIES = MORE SALES
The word "modalities" as I use it here means the different
communication channels you can use to try to sell to a
prospect. There are five communication modalities for humans
- tactile (touch), smell, taste, hearing and sight.
In selling by mail, contact is often limited to sight - the
material your prospects and customers receive in the mail
from you. This is unfortunate, because some prospects will
respond more readily to sound or some other modality. Some
people naturally prefer to engage in visual communications
such as reading your salesletter. Others may be especially
susceptible to experiences of smell, taste or touch - which
makes it doubtful that you'll be able to target their
vulnerabilities with a direct mailing piece!
The preferred line of communication will also be the KEY YOU
WILL SOMETIMES USE TO BOOST SALES. A person's preferred
communication style tells you what it takes to convince them
- to affect their perception of your product or service, by
appealing directly to their unique personality. A visual
person needs to be convinced visually. An auditory person is
better convinced with a telephone call.
If someone calls you, don't brush them off and tell them
you'll write them a letter of response. Instead, stay on the
phone with them, which is what they want - and which is what
will allow you to get what you want from them - a sale.
When someone uses the words "see", "looks", "picture" etc.
in written correspondence to you, use those same words right
back. Re-read the rapport section above if necessary to
understand why.
Mail order is primarily a visual medium. But you can
introduce the auditory component by talking to people on the
phone. When I started mail order I often had trouble taking
it seriously. Then a well-established dealer called me on
the phone from Missouri. From that day forward, mail order
became more real to me, and I make excuses to phone people,
especially if they are quite far away, to remind myself that
I am networking with real people all across North America,
not just with names on paper. It turned out that this simple
fact of hearing human voices was necessary to make me feel
that my participation in the mail order industry was
complete!
So put a phone number on your sales material, to allow
reluctant readers to switch to the auditory channel of
communicating with you. And give an address on your
recorded phone messages and audiotapes, to allow reluctant
listeners to switch to the visual channel of communicating
with you (by mail). If you're selling subscriptions to
chocolate-of-the-month club, sending chocolate-scented
salesletters would make a world of difference. In selling
information products, you can cover the range of both visual
and auditory modalities by producing both a paper and ink
version, and a version on audiocassette. Consider the fact
that people will pay $100 for audiotapes instead of buying
the same material in a book for $20. People will pay
handsomely to be able to absorb information the way that's
easiest for them. A valuable lesson for people selling
information by mail.