The Great Email Backlash

I hate it. We all hate it.

Email has turned into the digital telemarketer during dinner. It's too much, too often, and - in my lowly estimation - too cheap. I wish they'd charge for it so the spammers, slammers, and scammers could just go bother someone else.

In the meantime, you and I nearly dread the return from a vacation, finding inboxes crammed with promised millions, Viagra offers, male "enhancements" and some scandalous promise from the marketing world. (Yes, probably even me on occasion.)

So, the legitimate emailers of the world are sort of trapped by association. This very e-newslettter goes through massive filtration to keep out of the trash (though we lose a few every issue) and has gotten 'dressed up' mightily over the years to maintain a credible presence. We've taken steps to greatly increase readership, some get by the "wrong" filters though.

Measurement That Matters

We're warned that pride is a bad thing. And I fully understand. Pride entraps its victim in a blanket of mock superiority on its way to personal doom. Boasting becomes pride. Pride becomes conceit. Conceit becomes no one.

Funny, but the ever-boasting blowhard of self-achievement 'thinks' that their accomplishments make them more attractive, more fun to be around, more likable. None are true. Just as this paragraph started, they make you a blowhard. Knowing all this...

My son graduated from High School this past weekend. I am proud of him. There, I said it. He got a scholarship in an honors program. He won the headmaster's Award for Excellence. And all this was achieved with at least half of his parents not being all that great of a student (guess which one!).

If my chest pokes out any further, I will have Eva Mendez' profile... or snap a rib. So I'll stop.

The thing about school is that they 'measure'. Scores are scores, grades based thereupon, college acceptance/scholarships directly correlative, segments sliced accordingly. "Oh, you made a 33 on the ACT test? You go in this stack. And you with the 18, you go over here."

In the job world, the surface measurement is usually money. This - along with pride - is another set up for the Scriptural Sin Grab Bag. Sure, many worthy alternative definitions of success abound: title, influence, responsibility, result, impact. All are important; all worthy of your focus. Harder to measure, but worthy.

Yet here is THE problem with most contractors' measurement and focus Click to see how many thousands of people he can offend in 2 sentences or less...

Clearly Unclear

Old cars are like young children. Highly dependent, often naggy, hard to predict. Okay in that light, they're like older children too. Yet one of my strange old vehicles needed a windshield because it failed to avoid a 70 mph rock. Silly car. Since it was already having some other mechanical needs tended, I figured I'd get it all done at once.

So, I did what any modern consumer does, I opened the Yellow Pages. HA! Good one. I went to Google, clicked the top couple of names, and actually found one that listed my glass and at a reasonable price. "Wow, I thought. This is so easy." Any time you make a statement like that to yourself, you have doomed the outcome to sheer bedlam. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Proceeding ignorantly - my favorite way - I place the order online. It totals my order, and even politely mentions, "This price includes the windshield, gasket, and all labor. If we find you don't need a new gasket, this amount will be deducted." Soooo easy, said the Titanic's most oblivious passenger.

Afterward, it asks me to pick a "convenient" time. I scan for the option that says, "Never" but then notice THEY can go to the CAR while it's in the mechanical repair shop. "Now that IS convenient!" I say to myself, like getting a ride to a Vampire's blood drive, with much the same outcome.

So, I have the part, the installation price, the date, the place... it's all set! Whoohoo. The internet makes things SO EASY.

Soon after the "confirmation" email (translation: "a wild guess with legal language attached") things went weird. Their CSR (translation: Customer Service Repellant) called. From there, all online promises were off, chuckled at in their dismissal. Just goes to show two things: a) Your marketing and your service had better be consistent, and b) The internet's 'ease' of commerce is commensurate relative to the 'ease' of any customer's communication with the world. Case in point...

Connected Disconnection

During GM’s darkest hour in July of 2009, Bill Gates groused at some international Geek-Fest that if GM had kept up with technology the way the computer industry had, they would be selling higher quality, less expensive cars and be more profitable.

Having just exorcised my computer from a crippling virus, I’d like to offer that if GM had made cars in accord with Microsoft’s self-professed “progress”, their cars would randomly crash several times a month. Further, the dashboard would occasionally go completely blue forcing you to either replace the engine or throw the car away and start anew… without apology or culpability from GM. Yeah, thanks, Bill – that’s exactly what GM needs.

Perhaps I took this a little personally, this attack on my personal computer.

More deceptively, this particular virus ACTED LIKE IT WAS MY FRIEND. It said, “Malware detected. Click to quarantine.” And since we’ve got every virus protection this side of wearing radioactive-proof puffy clothes, I clicked. Bad idea.

My mouse became possessed and disobeyed my commands. It was doing the digital equivalent of dropping mouse droppings on my desk while giving me a rude paw signal. Soon enough, a recorded female voice suggested I purchase “Malware protection”. I sensed evil in her tone and a realization of defeat. I shut her down, but the damage was done.

I had 3 thoughts (A new record for me!). The first was understandably murderous. The other two suggest there can be life after disconnectedness… and benefits galore.

My first thought: who exactly benefits from the infliction of viruses? Who has time to design these and sit back and hope random damage occurs? The same smarts that created these could certainly do something more productive.

My second thought: Now what? We’re all so computer/email/social media entrenched that I felt like an adult-sized umbilical cord had been unplugged. I fired up my ‘non-networked’ laptop to create documents and limp through my responsibilities. Yet a few times that first day, I found myself with hands perched atop my now-dead keyboard in some robotic trance. My former desk mate and connection to community was a lifeless appliance. It was like finding out your dog had actually been a stuffed toy all along.

My third thought: How can I use this for good? Though my initial feelings were ‘loss’, in time those shifted toward ‘freedom’. Untethered to the constant inflow of emails all screaming “Pick me! Pick me!”, I could actually complete a thought. An editorial. A line of responsibility.

I could catch up on my ever-overflowing pile of valuable though less intrusive mail. (There’s a lesson in that last sentence for you dear contractor marketers. Hint: Mail readers spend 2.4 times more to reading printed mail than emailed equivalents. Source: Digital Age, 2/10, ‘Are You Worth the Trouble?’)

I read my marketing newsletters, trade journals, plus several promotional letters and magalogs. I found it interesting that several “online” marketers have shifted more focus toward direct mail and done so quite effectively. The smartest ones overlap on and offline.

I made time to finish the book, 24 Hours That Changed the World, about Jesus’ last days. My suffering ‘seemed’ like a big deal, but sort of paled to betrayal, wrongful accusation and flogging. You don’t really have to look far to see someone worse off, ever. Also gave me time to finish up related Sunday School lessons for my class of largely disinterested 11th graders. And I thought contractors were a tough crowd. Whoa.

I then relearned how to use a pen. Remember those? Ink flows out of one end and scribes “words” on paper. Then people blessed with the ability to decipher “cursive” (an ancient communication font) can actually read.

And since my Outlook reminders had ceased, I put notes in my DayTimer (ask your grandparents). Works fine. Speaking of remembering, there was a time that a normal human being could remember 20-30 phone numbers instantly. Now it’s done for us. The same person could remember several birthdays, anniversaries (Oops!) and appointments, sans nano-nanny. They could compose paragraphs in clear, successive thoughts, with infrequent misspellings that neither required massive re-edits, paragraph rearrangement, nor any need to use a splchkr.

The fusion of the brain line-links that made us able to do this are evolutionally eroding, suggests author Joshua Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein, How to Remember Everything (a book I just remembered was on my nightstand!). Lack of focus, electronic memories, and regular interruptive distractions caused by our love affair with computers and now hand-held versions thereof, are eating our ability to think.

There is even suggestion that our sway toward “being more efficient” through gadgetry has crossed a line of diminishing returns. That is, more efficient machines are yielding less-efficient people.

You think I’m longing for a return to the stone-age? Could be were in the “stoned-age” as we speak:

• Office workers spend 28% of the workday dealing with interruptions (2.1 hours on average).


• The average recovery time from any interruption is about 4 minutes.


• Employees devote just 11 minutes to a project before being sidetracked.


• The IQ of workers who juggle email messages and work falls by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana! (If your staff begins lobbying hard on this point, time for another random urine test.)


• 53% of workers check their email more than 6 times per day. 34% check it constantly. The word ‘constantly’ leaves little room to be doing any other actual work. Is ANYTHING that urgent. What, are they expecting a message that says, “You’re currently on fire!”?
  

Honestly, my 3 days of “email time out” and virally imposed disconnection was fabulous. My desk is neater, my brain more full, my appreciation for contemplation in a normally NON-contemplative environment increased.

A popular method of running a faster marathon among those who do? Run a mile. WALK a mile. Rest, recharge, contemplation, prayer. Call it what you will. Even God disconnected on the 7th day. Try it.

Disconnect from the network; reconnect to yourself. I bet you’ll like yourself more than you remembered.

"You Just Have To"

My resistance to this phrase may be a remnant from childhood.“You HAVE to eat your vegetables” comes to mind, with Broccoli leading the charge. Aside from the fact that Broccoli has the identical silhouette to a nuclear explosion, it reeks. Disguising it with melted cheese is no help; like pouring chocolate sauce on liver. What a waste.

The directives came in waves. “You have to brush your teeth; You have to make up your bed; You have to quit shaving the cat.” That last one was probably true. For months people asked if that cat had recently undergone surgery.

Yet most people – especially those of us faking adulthood - don’t like being told what they “have” to do. Seems like an optionless, foreboding request. We tend to reel back, sensing a plot in the making. The following was no exception.

I got an “automated call” on Saturday. Nothing I love more than chatting with a robot, especially one convinced I was “Myrna Stanley” and telling me “Your prescription is ready to pick up at the pharmacy.” The robot didn’t care I was detailing my boat, layingupside down, with carpet cleaning vapors in my nose.

To prevent being called Myrna by another robot, I call the unnamed pharmacy whose initials and motto could be “Customers Vaguely Satisfied” to let them know a) The real Myrna is probably wondering why your robot hasn’t called her and b) I really need to get back to snorting carpet surfactants.

When I relayed the information, the first words out of her mouth were, you guessed it… “You HAVE to call Customer Service at 1-800-…”

From there, it didn’t go all that well. Yet look at what you’re told you HAVE to do, in business, and what if any of it is really true? The HAVE TO’s of the world are usually thinking “because that’s what the crowd is doing” instead of thinking strategically toward independence.

So I offer “4 Common Marketing ‘Have To’s You DO NOT Have to Do”

1.You HAVE to be in Social Media – Correction: you have a life and business to run. If the brain drain and TIME invested in social media doesn’t pay off, why bother? (Or if you’ve yet to meet a business to MODEL who has achieved worthwhile return) no need to immerse yourself. If dollars per lead (in staff time) don’t yield a suitable ROI (around $75), change strategies or find a media that pulls better. Succeeding in Social Media isn’t as simple as “just showing up” as some would lead you to believe. Plus, there are great ways to minimize the time on Social Media by ‘auto-publishing’ the content to multiple places. (Get a report on Success in Social Media at the link)

2.You HAVE to be in the Yellow Pages – Bull Droppings. You can choose to have a presence, and it’s recommended you spend less than 15% of your Total Marketing budget in there, using a Direct Response format, and strategically linking respondents to your website, capturing email/texting contact information on every call. This is how the ‘new’ Yellow Page ads clobber the ‘old’ ones, even though they’re way smaller, less costly. Want to get your Yellow Page ad critiqued for maximum results per dollar? Click to request.

3.You HAVE to use your co-op for ‘our’ ads – I’m probably about to get yelled at (oh, like this’ll be the first time) but hear me out: Offer to test ‘your’ preferred ad vs. the factory ad on sales results. Then see if they’ll co-op ‘your’ winning ad over the one designed by people who may have never met an actual customer. If you’ll approach the manufacturer this way, you BOTH get what you want: more leads, more sales, from the same or less marketing cost. (Plus, you’ll have a unique ad instead of the ‘me too’ stuff the others are running.)

4.You HAVE to use Slick Mail pieces – Could this advice be any worse? Who made this up? We regularly trounce this silly notion, side-by-side tests, with multiple times the dollars resulting. The point is that you only HAVE to be sane about your ROI.

5.You HAVE to forward this issue of SMI to at least 3 friends. Well, yes, this one is absolute fact. If you don’t, somewhere above your now-balding head, a hole in the ozone layer will open up. Don’t risk it. (Seriously, we DO invite your friends and colleagues as subscribers. Hit your Forward buttons now!)

Contractor friends, you don’t HAVE to do anything in marketing that doesn’t:

•Have a measured outcome that you desire.
•Have a track record worthy of emulating
•Get you closer to YOUR goal (instead of sacrificing your goal to meet someone else’s!)

Builders and Breakers

There I was, sitting on the beach, minding my own business. We were at Spring Break in northwest Florida, otherwise known as the Redneck Riviera. We took our 11th grade daughter and friend, plus our 12th grade son who didn’t stay with us, but came by for necessities like food, money, and directions to the hospital.

Since there were tens of thousands of teenagers per acre, there was rampant glandular overload. When any traffic would back up, car stereos would impulsively compete for “Dude, Where’s My Eardrum?” Then all youths within earshot – meaning closer than Connecticut – would gyrate and flail about rhythmically, occasionally spilling their fake IDs but never their real beer.

As I watched, I reminisced about my youth. Yet just before acceptance set in, I had an increased desire for a custom Taser with night-vision goggles. That’ll take gyrations to a whole new level.
Anyway, the beach was my escape. It was peaceful, beautiful, with gentle waves in the background. Families strode by, the pace slowed. Yet the contrast was too much, so I decided to liven things up a bit by building a 30 foot sand alligator.

My interest shifted from building the thing to people’s reaction to it. Several dozen people stopped by. Most were complimentary; others just didn’t know what to say to a crazy person who’d do this. Little kids were amazed. And after I’d leave, others took delight stomping on it. Though I briefly considered adding Punji sticks as a fun surprise, destruction happens.
Got me to thinking about building up and tearing down.

You get a great business idea; someone shoots it down saying, “That’ll never work.” Sort of like Twitter. Or you think you can write, and a dozen editors say you stink. Sort of like J.K. Rowling.
Maybe you question yourself, then talk yourself out of what had formerly seemed a good idea. Then you see someone else break through and wonder, “Gosh, I could’ve done that.” And it happens again.

You don’t have to look far for someone to tear down an idea. Here are two examples of contractors who DID NOT LISTEN to the Demolition Crew. And their sales soared. Get ready for something different …

“That’ll Never Work You Silly Nincompoop Person”

Don’t tell that to these people. Read between the lines of how these contractors broke through ‘normal advice’ to create new sales paths.

1. Neill Worlsely (I can’t pronounce it without spitting either) had heard all he needed to hear about Social Media.

“Everywhere people kept telling me, ‘you should do it’ but no one said exactly ‘how’. Also, not one of these people ever said they’d gotten an ROI.”

So Neill applied a Direct Response strategy (courtesy of your favorite marketing firm) in his blogs. “We just did the classic 2-step marketing. First to give away advice, which got us readers and followers. Second to follow up with those people on a service or item for sale."

Of course people said it would never work because he was “giving away” information, some of it controversial such as ‘How to Avoid a Service Call’, and ‘How to Spot a Contractor Scam’.

“I had competitors tell me I was ruining the market. But customers were appreciative and a bit surprised, which gained us the differentiation you always advise.” Results?

We started with under 20 fans on Facebook, but after 5 months of a weekly blog that was about 70% advice and maybe 30% mild promotion, we picked it up to 260. In that time, we generated 61 appointments directly attributed to two-step approach, for about $25,000 in sales. “The way I figure it,” Neill concluded, “this is $25grand in sales we’d have never gotten without this approach, and it costs us roughly zero $. In the same time, I spent $9000 in Yellow Pages <$1800/mth> and its produced only slightly more phone calls, but fewer sales. We’re kind of ‘alone’ in Social Media.”

Bottom Line: Two step Direct Response has worked for eons. Why would it be any different now?

2. “My manufacturer builds awesome systems, and their customer support through the distributor is second to none. But they are not marketers” said Ron. (I can’t use his last name because of some of the info is not terribly flattering.)

“They kept telling me to run their co-op ads in their way and I kept telling them, ‘You’re wasting your money and mine. Let me market differently and we’ll both come out ahead.” They didn’t listen.

Ron got creative and this is important. “I said, ‘I’ll pay for my own ad, done my way, in my choice of media. If I don’t sell more than your method, I pay for my mistake. If I do, I’ll ask you to reimburse me for the ad. Fair?” (Editor’s note: Always negotiate toward the solution the other side wants as long as it gets you what you want.)

After two days of posturing, the distributor called to say, “Fine. We’ll do it. So what are your plans?” When Ron told them he wanted to do an FSI (Free-Standing Insert) in the newspaper, she chuckled. ‘Last time we did that’ she said, ‘we thought the phones had been disconnected. In the entire Pacific Region, we got less than 2 dozen phone calls for 80 dealers.”

Ron gulped, but did it anyway.

“In two days, we got 24 calls, set 16 firm appointments, sold 11 HVAC systems for $37,400.” Not bad for a $600 ad, which the stunned distributor gladly paid, though she said it was probably “a fluke”. Ron went with his instincts again.

“We went on to do a nick under $100,000 in sales, during a fairly slow time off that insert. Then our competitors tried to copy us, and we moved into direct mail. That’s the key. Do the ‘different’ thing – without fear – and you’ll stay ahead of the copycats.”

Bottom Line: Differentiation is a key component of marketing superiority. Following the crowd gets you an amalgam of their results.

Folks, it’s your business, your path, your destiny, your decision. Be willing to understand that there are people who ‘build up’ and those who ‘tear down’. Take sound advice and apply proven strategies, regardless of whether its ‘popular’. (NOTE: Reread the above and note who the ideas were initially unpopular with. Was it customers?)

Questions for You

1. What is something you’ve been ‘thinking about doing’ but haven’t tried? Why not? What – exactly – is holding you back? If it’s the ‘opinion’ of your peers, ask someone else.

2. Why – exactly – do your customers choose YOU over the competition? Convenience, habit, price (I hope not), company image? Whatever list you come up with, build on those strengths and other customers will come in droves. That question, by the way, is the basis of a two-hour consulting call. I just saved you $560, or you can call me and I’ll charge you that to ask you the same question in person.

How to Go Bankrupt

Mary B’s Family Buffet closed down last week. This place had been a near institution in my town, having come around when the ‘buffet style’ eatery was born.

Back then we called them Cafeterias, but that name faded about the time that Shopping Centers got renamed as Strip Malls. (Sort of like Hobos became Homeless and Getting Fired became a Downsizing Victims, except those phrases conveniently shift responsibility. Discuss.)

This place just fell out of favor, failed to change. I’m fairly certain that at least one of their baked potatoes had been there since opening in 1964. I’m positive a couple waitresses – and their hairdos – were original. Yet so too was the décor, the menu, the ‘cattle call’ feel of eating there. Plus another thing never changed:

Their patrons. It was routine, in the best and worst ways. As their average age approached ‘deceased’, tables no longer filled. Groups of 5 dwindled to 2. Multiple table turns became singles… on a good day. Dinner went from a bustling nighttime family occasion, to a late afternoon salt-free and mostly flavorless event. You could tell this from the outside looking in.

Not changing sounds ‘safe’; yet it is the riskiest of all business propositions, and a complete illusion to the practitioners. It is the precursor to certain demise.

It’s funny. Change frightens most of us, but “new and improved” are the best-selling words in advertising, have been for eons. There’s an important distinction here that will help you sell more, in any environment, at any time, to anybody. Ignore this principle and you too can become the forgotten baked potato of contracting.



What is the Distinction?

We may not embrace personal change readily, but we expect and pay for change in the things we buy, own, and use. The reason is the same: Don’t make me change if this has done the changing for me. Brief example with the ‘answer’ contained in these behavioral files…

For Example: Training seminars for businesspeople were at one time about “movements”. The movement from the employed downtrodden to the eager employee primed for advancement. Then the star had to actually ‘fit in’ so the movement went from the frightened and incommunicable to the Toastmaster. The Toastmaster could speak well enough, but lacked confidence to “do”, so the Self-Actualization movement of the 70’s helped people meet a job task with confidence.

By the 80’s, this false confidence was deemed impotent (at best) and thus Personal Power emerged, mostly out of the EST (Werner Erhard) and NLP (Tony Robbins, its most famous spokesperson). The “you can do it if you see yourself doing it” and mental power over obstacles enlightened nearly 20 million people to buy the Personal Power audio training series. Self-help exploded with product.

By the 90’s, we were exhausted from doing it ourselves. The motivation and self-actualization waned; we just wanted someone to do most of it for us. “Kits” and “Packaged solutions” were born.

You could Deal-A-Meal your way to weight loss, you could lie on the Ab Roller and get a washboard stomach, you could stick on a patch and quit smoking… will power be darned.

Now we’re fully into the “just do it for me” zone. I want a personal trainer who’ll do everything but actually lift the weight. (I guess that’s next.) Instead of teaching me the principles of sales mastery, I want a sales coach in my ear, telling me what to say to each prospect. Better yet if you just come and close the sale and give me credit. Millions upon millions are spent on coaches – and deservedly for the good ones – to “unstick” us from our complacency to where we started this…

Change.

The ‘rule’ is that either you’ll change or the world will change for you. And if you haven’t picked up on it, the “mass” behavior hasn’t changed an iota. Sure, each stage sounded like a solution, but throughout there are the “changed” and the “unchanged”. The money flows FROM the second group TO the first group. Happens every time.

The cool thing is that just realizing this can change your money flow.

Pondering and productivity are rarely linked. Actually doing the steps takes you to change. Yet most don’t. They sit, they “wait” to be changed, they “wait” for the crowd to come back. They wait, and eventually turn the “OPEN” sign the other way around.

Sears Holdings. Borders. BlockBuster. OfficeMax. Pier1. And yes, Mary B’s Homestyle Buffet.

Your Action Plan:

1) if you’ve been “thinking about” getting better at something for the last few years, look around. My guess is others had the same idea and a few did it. So, your “thinking” is great; your implementation may lack. Get a coach and follow the advice.

2 ) If you’ve “wondered about” online marketing, or retention marketing, or consultive selling, or contractor publicity but didn’t know where to turn, your curiosity is asking the right question; but incomplete research has become an excuse for you.

We keep a list of “hot” advisors in most every topic related to contractor sales and marketing. Doesn’t matter to me where you get help as long as you’re willing to change for the better.

3) If you’ve had a “Nagging concern” about any topic in your business related to change, your subconscious (or the Holy Spirit) has dropped that on you for a reason. It is trying to get your attention. Seek those who have been through this same challenge because they love to tell the story of how they changed and beat it. (If you’re a contractor consultant and wonder how a lazy pig like me who doesn’t love travel gets to have the best job in the world and be with his family every night, email me. I’d love to tell you.)

It has been said that you can tell the age of a man by measuring his resistance to change. I say you can equally foretell his proclivity for business irrelevance by the same measure.

Get out of the buffet line. A feast awaits those willing to change.