In an age super-saturated with marketing messages, your prospects have developed such an aversion to being sold anything that you have to overcome resistance at every step.
They pick up your direct mail package, see what it is… and toss it in the garbage. So you add some intriguing copy or graphics to the envelope, just enough to make them open it.
They open up your envelope, see what you’re selling… and toss it in the garbage. So you include some headlines that snag their attention, capture their imagination, and keep them reading.
They read some of your headlines, recognize it as just another ho-hum sales pitch… and toss it in the garbage. So you write copy that they simply cannot put down, filled with dramatic benefits, showing them how much better their lives will be if they listen to your message.
They finally reach your call to action, see the cost… and toss it in the garbage because they don’t want to spend any money, even if you’ve managed to get them this far. So now your job is to help them rationalize what their emotions want.
These barriers of resistance are enormous, difficult to overcome no matter how breathtaking your benefits. So how do we, as marketers, get around this?
When defenses are that strong, it is senseless to confront them directly. To borrow the words of Sun Tzu, “Supreme excellence is achieved in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Our prospect is not the enemy, but his resistance is. Marketers dare not use force to overcome defenses; we’re stuck with persuasion and seduction. So we go around the defenses with approaches that the prospect does not expect. We take the argument in an unexpected direction, evoke emotions that she is not expecting, inspire her imagination, and help her rationalize her action.
In the chain of resistance, you will note that at every stage, the prospect puts up resistance when she recognizes part of the marketing process. “Oh, this is where the sales pitch starts. I don’t feel like hearing a sales pitch right now.” This method of circumventing resistance predicts when that resistance will begin–and shifts gears before it can. As in wooing and warfare, do the unexpected, and you’ll more often experience dramatic results.
At what other stages of the selling process does resistance appear? How do you overcome it? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Our weekly content roundup from around the web and around the world continues with this week’s morsels to get your week off to a good start.
Enjoy!
Teen charged after crash of horse and buggy in chase
An Amish teen who tried to flee police faces charges of alcohol possession and “overdriving an animal” after he crashed his getaway vehicle—a horse and buggy. Thanks to @RhinoRuss for bringing this to our attention.
Eeeewwww! What’s that smell?
BBC News reports that thousands of visitors turned out at a Tokyo botanical garden to witness a rare flower that finally bloomed after almost 20 years. The Amorphophallus titanium (for those of you botanically inclined) is a native of Indonesia’s Sumatra island and is more than 5 feet tall. The only problem is that at full bloom, that wonderful flower smells like “raw garbage, gone rotten.” From @SwissNetInc.
13 People fired over their tweets
This is an interesting slide show, courtesy of the Huffington Post, about 13 people around the globe who ended up losing their jobs over comments they made on Twitter. Were these actions called for or not? Via @SmartBrief.
7% of the sample who access Facebook at work “spend an average of 68 minutes per day” playing FarmVille.
5% play Mafia Wars for an average of 52 minutes, while 4% play Cafe World for about 36 minutes each day.
50% of surveyed employees ignored company social media policies at least once per week, while 27% went so far as to reconfigure settings on corporate devices to access forbidden content.
The 53rd Annual Punctuation Posse Round-up
Found on passiveaggressive.com: These office notes and plenty of other fun stuff to contemplate. The first set of handwritten notes deal with punctuation. The second typed set is a rather humorous statement about the use of Comic Sans font (remember that from last week?). This funny community site was brought to our attention by @MGStults.
Video of the Week
Mel Gibson Says the Darndest Things
That’s putting it mildly. In this clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show, they decided to have a 7-year old read Mel Gibson’s latest rants.
Did you enjoy this week’s features? Leave a comment and share your thoughts, a recipe, some crazy content or whatever. And, if you’ll be in the New York City area on Wednesday, August 4th, I hope you’ll join me at the Indian Country Noir book release party at the Mysterious Bookshop. Get more information on this fun event.
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