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Why Women Buy: How to Sell to the World’s Largest Market by Dawn Jones | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 1 week ago

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💡 Why Women Buy: How to Sell to the World’s Largest Market by Dawn Jones | Book Summary

Discover how to connect, communicate, and sell more effectively to the world’s most powerful consumers — women. In this summary of Why Women Buy by Dawn Jones, we break down the psychology, motivation, and emotional triggers behind women’s buying decisions.

Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or business, understanding how women make purchasing choices is the key to success. Learn how to build trust, craft the right message, and create a customer experience that resonates.

💬 In this summary, you’ll learn:

The key differences between male and female buying behavior

How emotions influence women’s purchasing decisions

Practical communication strategies for marketers and sales professionals

How to build authentic connections that lead to brand loyalty

👩‍💼 Empower your marketing strategy and unlock the full potential of the world’s largest market — women.

📚 Watch now to master the art of selling through understanding, empathy, and connection!

 

Why Women Buy: How to Sell to the World’s Largest Market by Dawn Jones

Why Women Buy provides insight into the buying process and equips readers with the best sales techniques for closing deals with women. The reader will gain the confidence to sell successfully to this $4 trillion market segment.

Introduction

My goal in sharing the techniques for selling to women is to help you be more intentional and effective in your sales process with women while operating with the highest degree of integrity.

When you are more cognizant of your thoughts and intentions towards women, you will be better prepared to handle obstacles and overcome objections that arise throughout the sales process.

Chapter 1 – Recognize How Women Differ from Men

Consumer trend expert, Faith Popcorn, says, “Companies think they’re marketing to women, but they’re not. They’re not talking to women. They don’t know how to talk to women. They really don’t realize that women have a separate language and a separate way of being.”

When you’re talking to a woman in the selling process, remember there is a relational aspect, even if you’re asking her questions. She wants to know at the very beginning of that process that your questions are genuine.

She wants to know that you are real, sincere, and unpretentious. She wants to know you’re going to ask questions that are relevant to her. She wants to know that you care about her.

Step One: Offer an initial solution idea

Step Two: Explore underlying concerns

Step Three: Decide on a plan of action

Chapter 2 – Overcome the Fear of Sales

This is one of my favorite topics because I used to be terrified of certain aspects of the sales process, such as making sales calls. I would have rather had a wasp fly into my car while I was driving down the highway than pick up the phone or walk into an office and make a sales call to some unknown organization—the dreaded cold call. Though I was an able salesperson, I was afraid to pick up the phone and make a simple call.

When it comes to overcoming the fear of sales and replacing the old unproductive patterns of the past with new productive ones, there are three important elements.

Know-how: Knowing how to sell successfully.

Leverage: Leverage is something that propels you beyond your fear.

Vision: Vision is what motivates you to take action even when you don’t feel like it.

Chapter 3 – Operate with Integrity

Perhaps you have heard somewhere in life, “Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits or behaviors. Watch your habits and behaviors because they become your character, and watch your character because it’s who you’ve become.”

If a woman believes the salesperson she is working with is disingenuous, she is more inclined to stop the sales process and leave without her prize. This can happen in several ways. She might bring the conversation to a close by saying she’s not interested at this time. Or she could say that she’ll have to come back later. She might even flat out ask for another salesperson or the sales manager.

For most women, the sales process is more than a transaction, depending on the product or service, whether cars, computers or cosmetics, it’s an experience. The bigger the ticket price, the bigger the experience she wants to enjoy—to relive those memorable moments like watching a favorite movie; she wants to savor that enjoyment and tell her friends about it. Anything that interferes with her experience spoils the movie. Which explains why she’d rather leave that metaphoric movie rather than put up with the games of an insincere or incompetent salesperson during her sales experience. A woman’s expectation of experiential service has an impact in retail stores and in the work- place.

The way to gain mastery in sales is to learn, practice, and teach.

Learn your craft: Take the necessary time to study from those who have gone before you. Listen to, watch, read, and participate in teachings that will hone and sharpen your sales skills.

Practice what you learn: Apply the knowledge you gain to your day-to-day work and life.

Teach what you’ve learned: By helping others learn and grow, you come to a whole new level of mastery within your craft.

The way to incorporate learning, practicing, and teaching into your life is to implement what I like to call the triple T’s: tips, techniques, and tools.

Chapter 4 – Ask Great Questions

Many sales-people have experienced a time when they wished they could have taken back their answer or added a great question in conjunction with their answer to keep the conversation flowing and been more effective in their communication. Her “problem” was that her questions weren’t answered, or the right ones weren’t asked. Asking great questions is especially important when selling to women because women tend to ask more questions than men and expect questions to be answered and reciprocated during the sales process.

“Did you know there are three types of questions you can ask for successful selling?” I knew when I asked you this question you could only give me one of two answers: either no or yes. This type of question, you may know, is commonly called a closed-ended or yes or no question.

The second question I asked you was, “What are they?” What are the three types of questions you should ask? This is called an open-ended question. It’s open-ended because you have no idea how the person is going to reply unless you ask a question that has only one main answer, such as, “What is your email address?”

Let’s move to the third question: “Do you want me to give you a clue or do you want me to give you the answer?” This is an either/or question because you’re giving your listener options, like a multiple-choice question. I label these blue questions because blue is like the ocean. It’s vast. It’s unending. It’s flowing. It’s moving.

Chapter 5 – Integrate All Four Communication Styles

The four communication styles are: verbal, visual, tactile (hands-on), and written word. Let’s take them one at a time.

Verbal. According to the University of Missouri, 44 percent of the people you communicate with need to hear instructions. Here’s the challenge. If that’s the only method of communication or sales that you’re using, they need to hear what you’re saying six to ten times.

Visual. This is the fastest way to teach some- one a concept. YouTube and internet videos are so popular because they show you how to do some- thing just like that—in the blink of an eye or the watching of a video clip.

Tactile. This is the best way for people to remember something.

Written Word. According to the Literacy Company, the written word is one of the most challenging learning styles because most adults are reading at a grade school level. Most adults are still reading one word at a time.

Women tend to place a higher value on establishing a relationship and a high-quality buying experience than they do on being loyal to a product or its price.

Chapter 6 – Sell to the Different Personality Types

You’ve got the direct driver type of person. You have the thinker/analyzer person. You have the social extrovert or the innovative type of person. Then you have that relational person.

Direct, driver type people tend to be fast-paced, bottom-line, get-to-the-point. These are your natural leaders. They are effective decision makers.

The thinker-analyzer personalities tend to be more detailed, meticulous, and accurate. They like things in order. I like to say they were born with a drop-down menu in their head. They have processes, and they love to have a place for everything.

The socializer or the social extroverts are creative and innovative people who tend to be fun loving, energetic, expressive, spontaneous, and the life of the party.

Then that relational person tends to be pretty pleasant, friendly, dependable, and calm. They often take on the role of the peacemaker.

Chapter 7 – The Four Stages of Competency

Knowing where you are in your competency level of understanding your audience, the person you’re selling to, and even yourself, is the final technique in this book and the first step to building skill.

Yet there are parts of the sales process that just don’t come together for you. What I want you to think about as I discuss the four stages of competencies is where you are in the different stages of your life, and where your clients are in their understanding of what you’re trying to sell them.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence. This is where you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know it. Name an area in your life where you are unconsciously incompetent. It’s a trick question. You can’t name something you don’t know that you don’t know because…you don’t know it! These are your blind spots.

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence. This is where you get, what I like to say, the wake-up call. You now know there is something you don’t know that you didn’t know. Just as important, you know everybody around you knows that you don’t know it. Welcome to the wake-up call. With conscious incompetence, it’s embarrassing when you realize you don’t know something you didn’t know, just like in the car situation, you remember all the things you said to the driver that were totally out of line.

Stage 3: Conscious Competence. This is where you take the wake-up call, identify what needs to be changed, and implement the steps to change it.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence. This is where you’re just doing things naturally without thinking—you have formed great habits for life.

BONUS – Confidence in Selling to Women

Keep in mind that selling to women includes being confident. Now this is not to be confused with being cocky or arrogant, or faking it until you make it. This is just being confident. Coming in knowing that you are listening, you are prepared to learn, and you are also prepared to teach your client what they need. Whether you are displaying this confidence over the phone, or over the Internet, face-to-face, or when sending emails and correspondences, being confident is essential when it comes to successfully selling to a woman and making a living from your talent.

Confidence comes across in four ways including: your voice, your words, your facial expressions, and your credibility.

Voice. Your voice should be melodic yet professional

Words. Your voice says more than your words.

Facial Expressions. The third element in boosting your confidence includes your facial expressions because what’s not being said is being heard.

Body Language. Please note that women’s body language does not mean the same things that men’s does.

Listening. Men listen for facts and figures, often more focused on getting the best deal. Women want the complete story and are more interested in learning about quality and getting the right product or service to suit their needs.

Credibility. The final element of being confident when selling to women is your credibility. Being credible allows the person you’re connecting with to start building trust with you.

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What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 1 week ago

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Discover the key principles behind business success with What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan — a powerful guide that breaks down how great leaders think, act, and make decisions. In this book summary, we explore the timeless fundamentals every CEO — and every employee — should understand: cash flow, margins, velocity, growth, and customers. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, manager, or professional aiming to think like a CEO, this summary will help you see the bigger picture, make smarter business decisions, and understand what truly drives performance in any organization.

📘 Key Takeaways: Learn how CEOs simplify complex businesses into core drivers of success. Understand how to think strategically like a leader. Discover the importance of financial intelligence in decision-making. See how execution, cash, and growth connect to long-term success.

👉 Watch till the end to master the mindset that top CEOs use to run high-performing companies.

💡 Perfect for: Entrepreneurs, business owners, managers, students, and anyone looking to level up their business thinking.

What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works by Ram Charan

Completely rewritten for today’s business world, What the CEO Wants You to Know, expanded and updated, written by bestselling author Ram Charan, describes the fundamentals behind every business, from street vendors in Mumbai, to Fortune 500 companies. Drawing on stories from Uber, Amazon, Apple, Toyota, Netflix, Lyft, The Limited, Walmart, GE and Starbucks, Charan, in the most accessible language imaginable, explains the ins and outs of how companies work, from gross revenue and operating costs, to inventory and cash flow, from turnover, profits and margins, to return on capital and accounts payable and receivable, from product quality to sales. A classic in the business literature, with hundreds of thousands of copies in print, this short and engaging book is like a miniature MBA course between covers.

For everyone who wants to master and understand the levers that drive a successful business, What the CEO Wants You to Know is the perfect answer.

 

What the Best CEOs and Street Vendors Share

When it comes to running a business, street vendors and the CEOs of the world’s largest and most successful companies think exactly the same way. The complexities of their businesses are different; their approach is not. Anyone who figures out a clear way to make money has business acumen, or what some people call ‘street smarts’.

 

4 Things Every Company Needs to Master

#1 Customers

It all starts here. If you don’t have a customer, you don’t have a business.

At your company, you may talk about the people who buy your products as “customers.” But they may not be the people who ultimately use the product—the “consumers.” It’s important to understand both. When P&G develops new products, it tries to understand the needs and wants of the consumer, but many of its processes—logistics, discounts, merchandising—are geared to serve customers such as Target.

As you think about both consumers and customers, keep it simple and specific. What are consumers buying? It might not be the physical product alone. Maybe they’re buying reliability, trustworthiness, convenience, service, or the entire customer experience, whether in the store or online.

 

#2 Cash Generation

Cash generation is one of several important indications of your company’s moneymaking ability.

 

Don’t lose sight of cash generation—the difference between all the cash that flows into the business and all the cash that flows out in a given time period.

An astute businessperson wants to know: Does the business generate enough cash? What are the sources of its cash generation? How is the cash being used? Businesspeople who fail to ask these questions and/or don’t figure out the answers eventually stumble.

Cash generation can be a problem for even the largest companies for any number of reasons: margins are too low, expenses are too high, or it takes too long to collect receivables, for example. The automobile industry has a history of having problems with cash generation. Chrysler ran out of cash in the early 1980s; Volkswagen did, too, in the late 1980s. And the classic example is probably GM, which was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2009. When you don’t have enough cash and you can’t borrow, you go bankrupt.

 

Running out of cash is also a common problem for start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. It takes longer to get the product into the marketplace than expected, or the costs of getting under way are substantially higher than budgeted.

 

No matter what kind of organization you work for—a for-profit company, a nonprofit, or a government agency—understanding where the cash comes from and where it goes is important. All people in an organization, not just those in finance, need to know how their job affects cash generation (or consumption) if their career is going to thrive.

 

#3 Gross Margin and Return on Invested Capital

A key part of cash generation is understanding gross margin.

Gross margin is calculated by taking the total sales for the company and subtracting the costs directly associated with making or buying it. Those are things such as the cost of the material used to create the products along with the direct labor costs.

 

In the early days of the personal computer, the PC industry enjoyed gross margins approaching 38 percent. Then came the era of intense competition. The price of a PC fell dramatically, which shaved gross margins dramatically to 12 percent. To survive, PC makers had to change their entire business approach. IBM got out of that business, and Dell went private, which relieved it of the pressure from shareholders to deliver quarterly earnings as it shifted its strategy.

 

Another key part of cash generation is understanding return on invested capital. Return on invested capital is calculated by taking the net income and dividing it by total capital – your money plus any money you’ve borrowed. Keeping track of this number is critical because there is often a perfect correlation between how well a company uses its capital and how its CEO is perceived.

 

#4 Growth

Today, no growth means lagging behind in a world that grows every day. Either you are growing or you are dying.

But growth for its own sake doesn’t do any good. Growth has to be both profitable and sustainable. Sometimes senior management inadvertently encourages unprofitable growth by giving the sales force the wrong incentives.

One $16 million injection molding company rewarded its sales reps based on how many dollars’ worth of plastic caps they sold; they were not accountable for profits. Everyone was excited when the company landed $4 million of new sales from two major customers, but these large contracts were on slim margins, not enough to generate the cash needed to fund the sales.

 

This Is What the Best CEOs Do

Superior CEOs use their business acumen to test the logic of their priorities and the path they are setting the business on. They consider what will happen to the company’s moneymaking as a result by revisiting the basics—customers, cash, return on invested capital, and growth—as they shape the future.

 

Take, for example, Steve Jobs and the invention of the personal computer. The necessary components—the monitor, disk drives, mouse, keyboard, microprocessors, software, and printer—all existed in the mid-1970s. The seeds had been planted, yet Apple caught the office-automation giants like Wang and Digital Equipment off guard when it introduced its first computer in 1976.

 

Jobs, working with Steve Wozniak, had the ability to see the moneymaking potential of a machine that promised independence and freedom. No venture capitalists were needed to get Apple off the ground. It made money in its first month and hit a billion dollars in sales within ten years. Today revenues are well over $200 billion and the company’s net profit margins average 20 percent.

 

Execution In a Nutshell

Here’s a quick primer on how to work efficiently:

  1. Be totally clear on what you want to accomplish.
  2. Break goals down into time segments (“We will have this done in a week; that in a month”) and milestones (“We know we will be halfway there when we do X”).
  3. If you run into an obstacle, ask for help.
  4. Constantly monitor progress, and follow through.

That last one may be the most difficult thing to do. Bright people hate following through. For one thing, they believe it is micromanaging. For another, they think it is somehow demeaning to their subordinates to check up on their work.

But you have to follow through to make sure that what you said is clear and that progress is being made.

 

The Right People in the Right Jobs

Every business needs the right people in the right jobs. The modern corporation is built on the idea of “professionals” who use their particular talents to help the business succeed. No matter what the job, if the person making decisions is.

Leaders who deliver results consistently over a long period of time are the ones who recognize what an individual can do best. They link the business need and the person’s natural talent. They take the time and effort to place individuals where their strengths can have the most impact.

If you were Sam Walton and you were trying to build your business, how would you select people to run your stores? You would look for employees who truly want to understand the customer and who are fixated on selling reliable goods at a price lower than the competition’s. Making money in the retail business means managing margin and inventory velocity and growing volume. If you can’t find people who understand that, you will never achieve your dream of becoming a retailing giant.

 

Sam Walton carefully selected people who met those criteria, and he developed and trained them. Employees were taught to watch revenues, price, inventories, and customers like the proverbial hawk. And they had considerable autonomy to make decisions and take action.

You want to also consider the mindset of the other person. Does he or she have an inner drive to succeed? Is the person open to change?

For example, you want to know the mindset of a plant manager. If he’s used to two inventory turns a month and you tell him you’re going to thirty turns, how will he react?

 

Coaching

People who do well in a job also need attention. A true leader expands such employees’ capacity by helping them channel their talents and develop their abilities so they can advance to the next level.

Perhaps you think you give people feedback when you do their annual performance review. In reality, performance reviews are rarely used to develop people. Most of the time they’re simply a way to communicate a salary change based on last year’s performance, or they’re used to justify a promotion. That is not the way to help people grow and develop.

So what is the right way? Building on the person’s strengths with feedback that is honest and direct. No sugarcoating. Use every encounter as an opportunity to coach. The sooner the better.

 

Your Part in the Big Picture

Link your own priorities to the big picture.

If you’re in human resources, for example, you can help people break out of their silos, and coordinate efforts with people elsewhere in the company to help ensure that the company has the right people in the right jobs.

If you work in information technology, maybe you can create links with customers and suppliers so your company can collaborate more easily.

An in-house attorney can help by keeping up to date with legislative changes globally and staying alert for new opportunities that might arise as a result.

Those in finance can assist with many kinds of decisions—whether to add capacity, how to improve pricing for better margins, where best to deploy cash, and the like—by providing accurate and timely information.

Maybe you can break new ground by coming up with a novel idea that relates to the overall business. Maybe you can help by simply reframing an issue, bringing the underlying assumptions to the surface, and challenging them.

What does it mean to reframe an issue? Here’s an example.

Say you work for a car company and there is a need to cut costs on next year’s model. Put on your businessperson’s hat and ask, “Are there features that customers don’t care much about and that can be eliminated to reduce cost?”

Instead, you can ask what customer needs are not being met. If you can meet them, would that create value, allowing you to raise prices? If so, how would that affect volume and utilization of manufacturing capacity?

Don’t be afraid to take a step back to get a total picture of your business. You always want to look at things from different vantage points to try to broaden the range of moneymaking options. Apply your common sense. And your business sense. You will be surprised how many good ideas you can generate.

 

It’s Your Turn

Don’t let what you read become just another intellectual exercise. Be prepared to answer this question:

What are you going to do to help your company’s moneymaking efforts in the next 60 to 90 days?

Let the excitement begin!

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The Art of the Click by Glenn Fisher | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 4 weeks ago

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The Art of the Click: How to Harness the Power of Direct-Response Copywriting and Make More Sales by Glenn Fisher

 

Every business making sales online is engaged in a battle to get customers to click. More clicks equals more sales equals a more successful business.

How do you write copy that will encourage more people to buy from you? How do you persuade customers over the line to make that final buying decision? What is The Art of the Click?

The answer lies in the power of direct-response copywriting.

In this entertaining and highly readable guide, copywriting expert Glenn Fisher boils down over a decade of experience to present a huge array of techniques, tactics and industry secrets to improve your copywriting, get more clicks… and ultimately, get more sales.

You will discover:

— The single thing every great writer must do if they want to improve.
— How anyone can learn to write a headline that will stop all potential customers in their tracks.
— Where to find inspiration and how to feed ideas.
— How you can get a customer physically nodding along with every word you write.
— How to avoid waffle and make your copy more succinct.
— How you can write irresistible offers than no one can refuse.
— And much more!

Pick up The Art of the Click now to improve your copywriting. You’ll soon be wondering how you ever made a sale without it…

 

All great copywriters start here

All great copywriters start at a swipe file – a file that records a copy you have. A swipe file can contain both good and bad copy. Good copy so you can take inspiration and bad copy so you can avoid making the mistakes. That’s the aim of a swipe file – to inspire and to avoid.

The key to keeping an effective swipe file is not just keeping for the sake of it. Analyze each piece of copy in your file using the insights you’ll learn in this summary.

 

The importance of rote learning

When it comes to finding successful long copy sales letters, a good resource is affiliate networks like Clickbank and JVZoo. Put it simply, they’re a marketplace for people to sell their goods and in doing so, you’ll find hundreds of good long copy sales letters there. Not all of them are good but you can see from the sales figures which ones are worth looking at.

 

Understanding your audience

Write with a specific reader in mind. The more specific you can be around this reader, the better your copy will be. In targeting your copy at a specific person you already know, your copy will sound more human, authentic  and instantly relatable to a wider audience.

If the product is intended for an  older generation, write as if you’re speaking to your granddad. If it’s intended for a younger generation, write as if you’re speaking to your niece.

 

Doing your research

When researching for a copy project, split your job into two parts.

Part one is the research itself. This is where you read books and look up social media and the Internet. At this part, you’re not really an expert and because you’ve only looked at stuff online, everything is potentially interesting to you. Once you’ve done your part one, you’ve got to go deeper.

In part two, you’re looking into the points of interest you discovered and figure out which of them are already known in the industry and which are genuinely new discoveries. The key is to understand the value of that part one research in bringing you up to speed in the industry you’re writing for.

 

The importance of good ideas

James Altucher, the author and entrepreneur, argues the brain is like any other muscle and you need to exercise it if you want to grow it. Exercising a brain is as simple as keeping a pen and paper and jot down at least ten ideas every day. They can be completely random, either related to what you’re working on or anything else that pops in your head. This daily ritual keeps your brain active. Think about it for a moment.

If you generate ten ideas a day, you’ll have generated 3,650 ideas by the end of the year. And at least one of them is bound to be great, and hopefully many more besides.

 

Features versus benefits

If you’re writing copy in an industry you’re not familiar with, don’t just rely on your assumptions. It’s possible to draw out some benefits yourself but you’ll be able to tap into much more interesting and authentic benefits if you speak to people who use the product firsthand. They might even give you the details you wouldn’t have normally thought about. And this tiny detail might just be the thing that really hits home and helps others relate to your product at a deeper level.

 

Promise, picture, proof and push

The four Ps – promise, picture, proof, push – is pretty universal. The key is to use the four P as a guideline, not as a commandment. Sometimes, to invigorate a piece of copy, you need to break the rules. If you find a copy isn’t hitting the mark, try leading with a picture or a proof, instead of starting with a promise. Assuming the key elements are all still included, mixing up the order of the Ps doesn’t really make a difference.

 

Urgent, useful, unique and ultra-specific

If you’ve ever stuck with a headline that’s not working as well as you hoped, look at it again with 4U. But you should think about the 4U – urgent, useful, unique and ultra-specific – only after you finish writing the first draft of your copy. Copywriting is ultimately a creative act and creativity is all about finding the strange cave of secrets in your subconscious. One you’ve got the weird and wonderful ideas from your subconscious, that’s when you apply the 4U concept to your copy. Use them to direct, not dictate.

 

Grabbing and holding the reader’s attention

When writing a long piece of copy such as a blog post or sales letter, you need to create a hook for people to notice. It’s natural for any reader to get distracted no matter how good your copy is.

We live in a world of constant distractions and it’s important to regularly engage your reader. You can do this by breaking up your copy with exclamations such as “Wait! Did you just read that right?” or “What you’ll read next will shock you!”

Alternatively, well-designed images and a series of short, punchy bullet points can also draw the reader’s attention back to your agenda.

 

Salutations, fellow cop writer

When you write any piece of copy, make sure you start with a salutation in your draft and finish by signing it off, even if it doesn’t have your name at the end.

Doing so reminds you that you’re writing for a human that will be read by a human. Even a basic salutation like Dear John helps remind you to keep things human. This is especially handy because when we hide behind a laptop screen for hours, it’s so easy to get lost in our own head and forget who we’re writing to.

 

The importance of narrative

When it comes to direct response copywriting, try to write in second person as often as you can. Do so and your copy will be much more compelling for the person reading it. That strange but effective second person viewpoint brings the reader into writing. It makes the reader the hero of the story.

Even if your grammar teacher disagrees, do your best to go with what’s engagingly good, not necessarily what’s grammatically right.

 

The paradox of testimonials

Embrace the negative testimonials, instead of shying away from them. Providing the product or service you’re writing for is good and you can stand for it, don’t be afraid of using negative feedback in a positive way. Address the concerns they raise and give counter arguments as to why the customer may have not had a good experience. When done successfully, overcoming objections this way can be extremely authentic and compelling.

 

Making an offer

Present the price in a way that makes it seem more palatable.

Spending $100 on an e-reader may sound like a lot, but if you say “30 pennies a day to read all the books you need”, it instantly sounds more reasonable.

Alternatively, you can transfer the cost to something the customer already knows and takes for granted. Spending $100 for a  year of access to expert financial advice might sound expensive, but when you consider it’s less than you’d spend on a cup of coffee each day, it seems a much better value.

 

If in doubt, cut it out

Ask a couple of friends, families, coworkers to review your writing. The key is to have a group of people who can openly criticize you and won’t be offended by any disagreement you might have. Honesty is essential. If you haven’t got a peer group yet, try to cultivate one as soon as you can. It’ll make you a much better copywriter.

 

Time management tips for writing copy

When you learn your content isn’t working, before you throw it away… stop and think. Despite the initial failure, you have something black and white on your hands. You know the copy doesn’t work but the problem could be one of these three things:

  1. People aren’t just interested in the idea.
  2. It’s the wrong time for the idea.
  3. People don’t understand the idea.

If people aren’t interested in the idea, you’ll only waste your time tweaking something that’s fundamentally broken. If it’s not the right time, again you’ll only waste your time convincing the time is right. In both cases, set your copy aside and make a note to revisit when the situation changes. The good news is if people don’t understand the idea, you can try a different headline that more explicitly expresses the idea. If you don’t see any improvements, chances are that people are not getting it and now you can spend more time rewriting your idea so people do.

 

Sell or share?

Sure, copywriting is sometimes a lonely game. But as much as you want to picture the cliched image of a lonesome writer in their ivory tower, a good copy is never the product of a single person.

A good copy is a collaborative effort that represents a multitude of experiences and mindsets.

So next time you lock yourself away with your laptop, think about it. Avoid the restrictive nature of working alone and find ways to bring others into your work. Be open to ideas and share yours too. You’ll be almost guaranteed for a stronger copy.

 

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Business & Marketing Personal Development

The Only Skill That Matters by Jonathan Levi | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 4 weeks ago

FOLLOW US HERE > |YouTube | Podbean | Website


The Only Skill that Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLearner

by Jonathan Levi

 

 

In the next ten years, every knowledge worker on earth will become one of two things: invaluable or obsolete. No matter the industry, the pace of progress and new information is faster today than ever before in human history—and it’s accelerating exponentially.

In this new reality, how can we possibly hope to keep up? How can we learn, unlearn, and relearn fast enough to stay relevant in the world to come?

In The Only Skill That Matters, Jonathan Levi unveils a powerful, neuroscience-based approach to reading faster, remembering more, and learning more effectively. You’ll master the ancient techniques being used by world record holders and competitive memory athletes to unlock the incredible capacity of the human brain. You’ll learn to double or triple your reading speed, enhance your focus, and optimize your cognitive performance. Most importantly, you’ll be empowered to confidently approach any subject—from technical skills, to names and faces, to foreign languages, and even speeches—and learn it with ease.

 

The Explosion of Information Overload

Whereas it used to be only doctors and programmers who struggled to keep up with the pace of their field, today, it’s almost everybody. Marketing managers who aren’t caught up on all the latest consumer psychology research. Sales professionals who haven’t learned the latest features of their software of choice. Professionals in every industry who want to take their career to the next level but are struggling to keep up with the work they already have—much less make time for leisure learning.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. A way to not only choose the right things to learn, but to absorb them with relative ease—and actually remember them! Fortunately, you can become a super learner.

 

The Only Skill That Matters

‘Learning’ is the only skill that matters. After all, if you can learn effectively, you can learn—or become—anything you want. With these skills, you can go from being a depressed social outcast to a happy and successful entrepreneur. You can go from being a struggling young professional to a leader in the company of your dreams. Most of all, you can go from wherever you are today to wherever it is you aspire to go. And that’s why, now, it’s your turn to learn

 

Learn like a Caveman

You see, the types of information that gave our Paleolithic ancestors a survival advantage didn’t come from textbooks or Bible verses. It was olfactory, gustatory, and visual information—in other words, smell, taste, and sight.

The most innovative schools, from the established Montessori to the new-age MUSE, know this and have modeled themselves accordingly. Students in these schools don’t learn geometry from a textbook; they learn it by building real structures and observing real phenomena. They don’t study biology by listening to a teacher drone on; they learn it by cultivating gardens that feed the entire school. Fortunately, it is not too late for you to claim your birthright as a super learner. You just need to return to the basics. To learn like a caveman. But first, let’s examine what it actually takes for your brain to learn something.

 

10X Your Memory: The Power of Visualization

If you want to improve your memory tenfold, create novel visualizations, called “markers,” for everything you wish to remember. As a general rule, the markers you come up with should abide by the following rules.

Rule #1 Create Highly Detailed Visualizations

First, picture as much detail as possible. By creating a high level of detail, you ensure that you are adequately visualizing a vivid, memorable image in your mind’s eye.

Rule #2 Opt for the “Out There”

Next, wherever possible, your visualizations should include absurd, bizarre, violent, or sexual imagery. Though it might make you blush, the truth is, our brains crave the novel.

Rule #3 Leverage Your Existing Knowledge

The next important principle in developing our visual markers comes from our dear old friend Dr. Knowles. Wherever possible, you should make use of images, ideas, or memories you already have.

Rule #4 Connect It Back

Finally, it’s important that as you create visualizations, you also create logical connections to what you’re trying to remember. Obviously, a visual marker is no good if you can’t remember what it stands for.

For example: instead of trying to memorize the word caber, or “to fit” in Spanish, we can come up with a visualization of a taxi cab trying to fit a bear inside.

This is an example of a truly perfect marker. First, it has the sounds: “cab” and “bear,” which allows us to work our way back to the sound of the word. Second, it’s ridiculous! If you saw a bear hanging out of the window of a taxi cab, you’d remember it—wouldn’t you? Finally, what’s so clever about this marker is that it has the meaning, “to fit,” baked right in.

 

Never Forget Again: The Power of Spaced Repetition

Spacing effect states that things become infinitely more memorable if we repeatedly encounter them. You should also meet its supportive cousin, the lag effect. It states that the spacing effect is compounded when encounters are spaced out for extended periods of time. Learning something once, no matter how well you do it, just isn’t enough. In his early work, Herman Ebbinghaus found that there were tremendous benefits to continued review—even if he believed he “knew” the material. He called this technique overlearning, and it’s an essential part of creating memories that stick. Fortunately, there’s a smart way to do this—a way that minimizes wasted time and cuts things down to the minimum effective dose.

Today, there are a range of spaced repetition systems (SRS) out there. These include the completely free Anki, the former memory champion Ed Cooke’s Memrise, and even new upstarts, such as Brainscape.

 

The idea behind digital SRSs is quite simple. Create flashcards—or download someone else’s—complete with audio, video, pictures, and text. Then, start reviewing. For each piece of information, tell the software how difficult it was to answer, on a scale of one to four. The algorithm then considers your answers and reaction times and predicts when you’re likely to forget that card. If you answer “easy” within a few seconds, you’re unlikely to see that flashcard again for weeks—or months! If you struggle before admitting defeat, the flashcard will come up again during that study session. In fact, you’ll see it again and again, until it’s easy. Then, it will come up again tomorrow, and the day after that, until you can consistently answer quickly and confidently.

The end result is a whittling down of the amount of review necessary to learn large amounts of information. This allows you to either save time, if the amount of information you need to learn is fixed, or to pile on new information sooner.

 

Use Both Visualization AND Spaced Repetition

Visual mnemonics are not enough without spaced repetition. Well, it turns out, the converse is also true. Always create visual markers—even if you don’t add pictures to your flashcards. Where appropriate, remember to place those markers into a memory palace. This will supercharge your spaced repetition and save you even more review time.

 

Priming Your Brain: The Power of Pre-Reading

The skill we call pre-reading is actually two processes in one: Surveying and Questioning

Pre-Reading: Surveying the Situation

When we pre-read a text, we’re essentially skimming. But not your normal type of skimming. Instead, we’re spending a couple of seconds per page, skimming at a speed of about five to eight times our current reading speed. We are not reading the text—or even trying to. Instead, we’re looking for titles, subheadings, proper nouns, numbers, words, or anything that doesn’t seem to fit in. When we pre-read, we gain an understanding of the structure of the text, and we build a sort of mental map. If there are cutaways, or terms that jump out at us as unfamiliar, we stop our pre-reading and gain a better understanding before resuming.

 

This means that when you actually read the text, all you have to do is fill in the rest of the details. This skill takes time to fully develop, but it’s a pivotal one in speed-reading—or reading in general. Practice it diligently, and it will make you a much more effective and focused reader.

 

Pre-Reading: Question Everything

How will I use this information? As you pre-read the text and begin to get a feel for its contents, try to envision scenarios in which it could affect your life. Imagine how you could benefit from having that knowledge. How could you use this knowledge in your day-to-day life? Who are some people in your life with whom you could share it? When might it be useful for sparking up a conversation? It sounds basic, but simply giving your brain this “why” is often the difference between intently focusing and feeling your eyes glaze over.

 

Check Yourself

Dr. Malcolm Knowles, adults learn much more effectively when we have an immediate application and a pressing need for whatever it is we’re learning. This, more than the actual format of the test, is probably why studies show testing to be such a boon to learning. After all, as the saying goes, “Learning is not a spectator sport.” So why not develop our own “tests” in ways that are fast, fun, and effective.

 

Let’s say you’re learning a musical instrument, and you wish to improve by a certain amount. You could always hire a private tutor to “test” your knowledge of the piano. But in reality, this will be much less rigorous than a form of testing that requires analysis, critical thinking, or even your own creation. What if you instead committed to testing your skills by learning a friend’s favorite song for their birthday? Better yet, what if you committed to composing an original piece for them? Now that would be a powerful test of everything you’ve learned, from key signatures to tempo, and it’s bound to be more rewarding than some boring online quiz.

 

Done this way, “testing” yourself can not only be fast but also fun. It need not feel like a waste of time; it can be practical and useful. Sure, subjecting yourself to a more traditional form of testing is certainly advisable and is definitely worth doing, if you can bear it. With that said, to truly become a super learner, you need to take a broader view of what “testing” means.

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Business & Marketing

Marketing Rebellion by Mark Schaefer | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 4 weeks ago

FOLLOW US HERE > |YouTube | Podbean | Website


Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company by Mark Schaefer

 

“Marketing Rebellion” is a wake-up call. Now that our customers have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of their hands, they expect something more from us. They don’t want to be interrupted, spammed, or intercepted. They need us to come alongside them at their point of need.

This book helps you tune-in to the new world of consumer realities and offers inspiring, actionable steps for your business to connect to customers in meaningful ways. Backed by extensive research and expert interviews, “Marketing Rebellion” started a movement in truly human-centric business practices.. Highlights include:

  • How cataclysmic consumer trends are a predictable result of a revolution that started 100 years ago.
  • Why businesses must be built on human impressions instead of advertising impressions.
  • The five constant human truths at the heart of successful marketing strategy.
  • Why customer loyalty is dying and what you need to do about it right now
  • How to help your best customers do the marketing for you.
  • Actionable steps to provide an immediate course-correction for businesses of any size.

Through new research, singular insights, and inspiring case studies, this entertaining book challenges your view of what it means to be a marketer today and provides an innovative blueprint for business growth. The Marketing Rebellion is knocking at your door. Are you ready?

 

 

The rise of the marketing rebellion

Modern marketing consistently sees the trend in consumer resistance against the marketers. Take for example. People are developing algorithms (such as Adblock and pop-up blockers) to stop marketing messages from getting through. This in turn encourages the marketers to come up with even more sophisticated methods to deliver their messages across. The result is a war that never ends and no common ground in the end.

 

Meet the Human-Centered Marketing (HCM)

Human-centered marketing requires empathy because it puts customers experience at the center of all marketing and sales efforts. It begins with understanding customers perspective, desires, and motivations so the marketers are relating to them as humans and not objects they’re trying convert.

Under human-centered marketing, every marketing endeavor must touch at least one of the five innate human needs:

  1. Belong
  2. Be Respected
  3. Be Loved
  4. Protect their self-interest
  5. Find meaning in their lives

A community is a byproduct of brands paying attention to people.

 

People want to find meaning in their lives.

If your brand shows integrity and consistency in standing up for what it believes in, your customers will not only stay loyal to you, they will also bring you more people with the same set of beliefs.

Take Nike for example. In 2018, Nike ran a campaign featuring Kaepernick. Nike ran the numbers, knew there was going to be a backlash and that it had to take a stand anyway for what it believes in. In the following day of its controversial campaign, Nike valuation dropped whopping $4 billion. However, seven days after the initial loss, Nike ended up with $3 billion valuation more than where it started.

 

Culture is driven from the top.

There’s no such thing as a grassroots organizational change. As an organization leader, the new human-centred marketing starts with you. So, be willing to roll up your sleeves, get out there and get your hands dirty. Once you’re committed to understanding the needs and concerns of your customers, it’s a matter of time everyone at your organization follows your steps.

 

Companies are judged so strongly along the lines of warmth and confidence.

‘Warmth’ and ‘confidence’ factors alone account for half of all purchase intents, brand loyalty and likelihood to recommend the brand. Take for example – Pepsi thought that the new generation were not searching for a new beverage, they were looking for a new place to belong. And so Pepsi designed their marketing messages to instill a sense of fun and warmth into the young consumers.

 

3 myths of customer loyalty

  1. Customer wants to have relationship with brand.
  2. Customer engagement builds relationship.
  3. The more interactions with the customer, the loyal the customers are.

The truths are:

  1. 77% of consumers don’t want a relationship. They want discounts.
  2. Customer engagement does not build relationship. Customers are already suffering from information overload.
  3. There’s no correlation between the number of interactions and the customer loyalty.

 

Marketing Myopia

Train companies used to think that they were in the railroad business until they were quickly overwhelmed by cars, trucks and the new highway system. Unfortunately, it’s too late. Most train companies were already irrelevant when finally learned to see beyond their vertical. Had they seen that they are in the transport business, they could have seized the opportunities that the automobiles presented.

This phenomenon is known as ‘marketing myopia’ – a nearsighted focus on selling products and services, rather than seeing the “big picture” of what consumers really want.

 

Anyone can generate customer buzz with some efforts.

  1. Customers delight is at its highest peak right when they bought it.
  2. Customers trust other customers’ product photos than the brand or retailer photos.
  3. Customers are more likely to engage a brand when it’s easy to find.

What does this mean for you?

  1. Encourage customers to share their delight at peak moment.
  2. Encourage customers to share brand photos. For instance, ask your new customers to film their first day with their new vehicles or their first impressions of their cosmetics.
  3. Meet where your consumerist are. Take for example – social media has made it effortless for brands to interact with their customers, without costing a dime.

3 Steps to Word-of-Mouth Marketing

  1. Through insight and research, establish the stories about your band that are authentic, interesting, relevant and repeatable.
  2. Connect those stories to audiences who will share your stories organically as opportunities arise.
  3. Build an environment for people to share in face-to-face settings.

 

4 Ways to Enable Peer Observation

  1. Use distinctive branding. A notable identity can help us distinguish what product is being used. (example – Apple earbuds, Guiness beer)
  2. Appeal to groups. Group discounts can win the group and reinforce the purchasing decision is accepted by friends.
  3. Expose normally invisible customer behaviors to peers. On websites, adding counts and statistics of how many people are buying increase both sales and the price the customer are willing to pay.
  4. Build peer observation into product launches.

 

3 Characteristics of Elevated Moments

  1. Turn up the volume on sensory appeal. Things that taste better, look better, sound better or feel better usually are better.
  2. Raise the stakes. Add an element of productive pressure, such as competition, game, performance, deadline or public commitment. We feel most comfortable when things are certain. But we feel most alive when they are not.
  3. Break the script and violate expectations about the experience. If they’re taking pictures, that must be special.

 

Build Psychological Ownership

  1. Enhance control by allowing customers to have a hand in designing and making the product. (example: a T-shirt company can have the customers design and vote for the best, then selects the best design and reward the winner).
  2. Encourage investment of self by making products customizable. (example: Coca-Cola let the soda fans create their names on Coca-Cola cans).
  3. Offer intimate knowledge of the product to make customers feel like insiders. (example: Star war fans are notorious for their psychological ownership of the film franchise they know intimately).

 

“Social media is not a place people like to be marketed to. Brands should aim to organically join in the social sector with the human voice.”

Sadly, this is not the reality today. Most businesses still hold an outdated focus on me-centric posts, random acts of content and misguided attempts to manufacture engagement.

 

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Personal Development

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy by Luminita D. Saviuc | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 4 weeks ago

FOLLOW US HERE > |YouTube | Podbean | Website


 

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy: An Inspiring Guide to Discovering Effortless Joy

 by Luminita D. Saviuc

 

Based on a phenomenally popular blog post, a simple and counterintuitive approach to finding true joy

When Luminita Saviuc, founder the PurposeFairy blog, posteda list of things to let go in order to be happy, she had no idea that it would go viral, shared more than 1.2 million times and counting. Based on that inspiring post, this heartfelt book gives readers permission to give up–that is, to let go of the bad habits that are holding them back from achieving authentic happiness and living their best lives. Lessons include-

Give Up the Past
Give Up Your Limiting Beliefs
Give Up Blaming Others
Give Up the Need to Always Be Right
Give Up Labels
Give Up Attachment

 

 

Give up the PAST

Your past doesn’t have to equal your future, unless you want it to.

If you cling to the past and keep on using it as an excuse for not moving on with your life, then yes, your future will be very similar to your past. On the other hand, if you give up the past and allow yourself to be present and engaged in your day-to-day life, while at the same time having a clear vision of what you want your future to look like, then your future will be nothing like your past. It’s all up to you. You have the power to decide. The future of your life is in your hands

 

Give up your FEARS

You can’t hold on to fear and expect to feel loved.

If you want to be happy, if you want to experience the many wonders of life, and if you want to feel what it really feels like to be fully alive, you have to let go of fear. You have to tear down all the walls you have built between you and the world around you and you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You have to allow yourself to be fully seen. You can’t serve two masters. You have to choose one—fear or love—and based on the one you choose your life will either be happy or unhappy

 

Give up your LIMITING BELIEFS

Beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies.

They shape our reality, they make us who we are. And if we really want to create a better life for ourselves and for those we love, we have to make sure that the beliefs we hold on to are serving us well and that they aren’t sabotaging our happiness, health and well-being.

 

Give up your EXCUSES

A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use.

Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kinds of excuses—excuses that 99.9 percent of the time are not even real.

When you’ve lived most of your life in an environment where excuses were part of your everyday existence and where most people perceived themselves as victims of their circumstances, it can be quite challenging not to perceive your excuses, fears and limitations as truths. But you have to be willing to let go of your excuses if you want to create something new, something fresh and something better

 

Give up your RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing.

Life is meant to be fully experienced, with good and bad, with both ups and downs, and the more you try to keep life from happening by resisting and fighting change, the more you will continue to suffer and the unhappier your life will get.

Change is a natural process. You can’t run away from it, just as you can’t run away from life. And if you try, you’ll miss out on life and you’ll miss out on the great opportunity to know yourself, to be yourself and to love yourself.

 

Give up BLAMING

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.

You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, the president. There is no peace in pointing the finger and making others responsible for how you feel and for what your life looks like. There is no peace in giving your power away to forces outside of yourself and making them responsible for the quality of your life. There is no peace in putting your life in other people’s hands and expecting them to live it for you.

If you continue to blame outside circumstances for the way you feel and if you continue to put your life in the hands of other people, you will continue to be at the mercy of other people and you will continue to be a victim of your circumstances.

 

Give up COMPLAINING

Complaining not only ruins everybody else’s day, it ruins the complainer’s day, too.

Complaining, just like blaming and criticizing, sucks us dry. It keeps us in dark places, and it continues to feed this false idea that our lives will never get better until outside circumstances start to change. But the truth is that it’s not the outside world that determines how we feel on the inside, but rather how we feel on the inside that determines how we perceive the outside world.

 

Give up CRITICISING

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

People grow together with love and appreciation, not blame, judgment and criticism. Relationships flourish when there’s respect, understanding and support between the people involved, and they perish when those things are missing.

Our job is not to criticize what others are doing. Our job is to focus our energy on healing, accepting, loving and embracing all that we are. Because the moment we make peace with ourselves, we also make peace with all those things, people, places and experiences that once caused us to feel hurt, unloved and neglected

 

Give up LIVING TO OTHERS’ EXPECTATIONS

Life needs you to be YOU—the unique being that you were born to be, nothing less.

It’s true that our families, friends and the many people around us expect a lot of things from us, but it’s also true that we have our own heart to please and our own life’s purpose to fulfill. And if we waste our lives trying to be whatever everyone expects us to be, we can no longer honor the relationship we have with our own heart and soul, with our inner divinity, and we can no longer fulfill our own destiny.

 

Give up SELF-DEFEATING TALKS

You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think. —WALTER ANDERSON

A toxic mind has the power to create a toxic life. It has the power to sabotage our happiness, our relationships and our lives, and it has the power to constantly re-create the same painful experiences, either in the same places with the same people, or with completely different people and in completely different places.

It all starts with you. It starts with how you think about yourself, with how you talk to, and about, yourself, and with how you expect to be treated by those around you and by life itself. And once you give up your self-defeating self-talk, once you purify your own thoughts and your heart, the world around you miraculously gets purified as well.

 

Give up CONTROL

Our lives aren’t meant to be difficult, but we make them so by constantly doubting ourselves and interfering with the natural flow of life.

Life knows a lot more than we do, because life is a lot wiser than we are. And even though our minds might try to convince us that we need to control everything and everyone, and we need to make sure that things always go our own way, the truth of the matter is that life is meant to be lived, not controlled; people are meant to be loved, not controlled; feelings are meant to be felt, not controlled. And by giving up control and allowing life to guide us, we will be able to experience, understand and know this truth.

 

Give up THE NEED TO ALWAYS BE RIGHT

Don’t let your ego get in the way.

There is nothing healthy in arguing with someone over who is right and who is wrong. There is nothing healthy in damaging the quality of our relationships and causing a great deal of stress and suffering for ourselves and for others, just so we can be right and label the other person wrong.

Arguing with people over who is right and who is wrong is nothing but a waste of time and energy. Life isn’t about doing things that make sense and feel right for others. Life is about doing things that feel right and make sense for us, and allowing others to do the same for themselves.

 

Give up THE NEED TO IMPRESS

You already are enough.

We live in a world that teaches us to look for external love and approval—a world that teaches us that in order for us to feel truly happy, we have to please those around us by behaving in certain ways, and by surrounding ourselves with all kinds of expensive and shiny things. As a result, “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like,” as Dave Ramsey has so aptly observed.

Your job here on earth is not to spend your life impressing those around you. Your job is to be yourself, authentically and unapologetically, to live your life in a way that makes sense for you—to love yourself and honor yourself more than you care about impressing those around you.

 

Give up LABELS

Once you label me you negate me. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD

It’s true that we live in a world where labels need to be used so that we won’t have chaos and madness present all around us. And it’s true that many of the labels we use are meant to help us manage and guide our conduct, to navigate the many decisions we have to make and to contribute to a clear and healthy communication between us. But it’s also true that labels are often meant to divide us from one another, creating a false sense of separation between us, causing us to perceive some people as being more important and more valuable than others.

We are all in this together. This planet belongs to all of us, and there isn’t one human being on this earth who is more deserving than another.

 

Give up ATTACHMENT

Learning to live is learning to let go.

When you hold on too tightly to everything and everyone, when you desperately try to cling to things, people, places and experiences, you take the life out of them and you keep life from taking you where you need to go. Everything in life changes. Nothing stays the same. And the more you try to cling to things, desperately trying to control and change the natural course of life, the more you will suffer and the unhappier your life will get.

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Business & Marketing Personal Development

Indispensable by Joe Calloway | Book Summary

By Michael George Knight — 4 weeks ago

FOLLOW US HERE > |YouTube | Podbean | Website


  • Indispensable: How To Become The Company That Your Customers Can’t Live Without by Joe Calloway

 

  • A five-step strategy for turning a commodity into a necessity

    When products and services become interchangeable, price becomes the ultimate determinant for consumers. Indispensable shows businesses how to break out of that cycle by using The Five Drivers-a strategy that takes companies to the next level of performance. Renowned business consultant Joe Calloway looks at how real companies have made their product or service “mission critical,” and satisfied customers in the process.

    Indispensable goes straight to the heart of the issue and reveals how successful companies-of any size, in virtually any manufacturing, selling, or service endeavor-achieve market leadership through The Five Drivers of fierce customer loyalty. Indispensable shows readers how to:
    Create and sustain momentum: overcome organizational inertia and keep moving forward
    Develop habitual dependability: make consistency of performance a defining characteristic
    Connect continuously
    See the Big Picture Outcome: create compelling customer experiences
    Engage, Enchant, Enthrall: make magic in the marketplace

  • Stake out your turf and master it
  • Eg 3 pizza restaurants lined up on the same street: One with huge sign that screamed “Best Pizza in the State”, the next “Best Pizza in the City”, the next with a very small sign “Best Pizza on the block”.
  • Your turf may be a product category or an area of expertise.
  • The goal is to become that default choice in the minds of your customers.
  • Get them to act on instinct. Cause tunnel vision, stop them thinking.
  • Today’s customers place high value on dependability and consistency of performance
  • Many customers don’t have the time, patience, or money to waste on any company that can’t get it right the first time
  • Focus on one thing. Master the category. Become a category of one to your customers. Ask:
  • What do we do best?
  • What do we loveto do?
  • What do our customers value?
  • A classic mistake in business is to go after more customers by expanding your product or service offerings too far.  Before you start to think outside the box, take care of what’s inside the box. Master the basics before you spend money, time and energy on innovation.
  • Before diversifying to add products and services to develop new business, master the product and service you already offer. Getting better at your core will provide you with a much greater return in new customers and increased business with existing customers.
  • You can be great at something you absolutely adore doing, but if nobody is willing to pay you for it, what you’ve got is a hobby, not a business

Context for employees

  • Create a context for employees so they can execute to the best of the ability in context.  Help them see the link between what they do day in, day out, and how the company is trying to change the future through her and her contributions. That creates a powerful force to be reckoned with.
  • Tell them they cannot fail. Empower them to take risks, try new approaches, find their own way.  It is so encouraging to work for someone who truly believes in you and supports your decisions

Six New Basics

  • Say “why not” continuously.
  • “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought”
  • The restaurant boss who thinks it’s his job first and foremost to make his employees job the best they have every had
  • Why not use products and services for which you’ve always charged to invite customers into a much more profitable relationship based on higher margin sales?  This provides indispensable service that locks them in (only a very small number of customers take advantage)
  • Get back inside the box.
  • Instead of saying “let’s be different”, say “let’s be really good at what we do first, thenwe can be different.”  All the differentiation in the world will be wasted unless you have mastered your core business

Partnerships

  • Do clients come to you for advice on things that are outside my range of services? They must trust your judgement
  • What other businesses in your market are complementary? Give your product or service away through them.  Generate interest for them and new customers for yourself.  Who else do your customers do business with?

Selling is dead

  • The idea of talking someone into buying your product is dead. It’s cumbersome and inefficient.
  • Get to know your prospects business inside out.  It’s not selling, it’s about people buying.
  • Find out what your clients objectives are, and offer a product that helps them meet those objectives

The 5 Drivers of behaviours that result in becoming indispensable

  • Create and sustain momentum (Decide. Take the next step, then the next, then the next)
  • Develop habitual dependability
  • Continuous connection
  • Big picture outcome
  • Engage, enchant and enthrall

More Ideas

  • When you create an indispensable business, you create hundreds or thousands of walking commercials – infinitely more powerful than a full-page ad
  • Create value, then give it away. If you have good stuff, people want more. Charge them for the high end.
  • Give your best effort everytime.  It might be the 100th mortgage of the week, but it’s my only mortgage in the world
  • Be willing to be wrong. Mistakes always give you information.
  • Wake up and smell the personalisation. It’s better to initiate one hundred incredibly personalised marketing efforts rather than one thousand “one-size-fits-all” version.
  • Stay in front of customers and prospects with something that they can learn from, that is valuable. When they are ready to buy, you are right there staring them in the face
  • Don’t just claim in some ad or mission statement that you exceed my expectations. Make me say “Wow. I never would have expected that.”
  • Become one less thing to worry about. Provide consistent performance, dependability.  Instil great confidence that issues will be resolved when they are handed to you. Make their lives easier.
  • To do: Some up what you do for your customers in six words or less is more powerful than any 3 paragraph mission statement
  • Look at other indispensable businesses and look beyond the differences to figure out what your version of what they do is.

 

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