chrisbrogan.com» selling

The Big Push

ceb — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:30:11 +0000

This will probably be the most self-promoting post I’ve ever written. Skip it, if you want. I’d understand.

The time has come. I have a favor to ask. If you’re interested in our book, if you support all that I’ve given you over the past several years, if you want to buy a friend (or an entire small village) a gift, I’d like to request that you buy Trust Agents from your favorite online source. This request itself is a social media experiment in trust (or I’m just asking you to buy books).

My Request to You

Over the years, I’ve done what I can to be helpful to as many people as humanly possible, without ever asking for much in return. It’s the right way to do it. But now, I’m asking for your support.

If you can buy a copy of Trust Agents (or if you’re an institution, feel free to buy in bulk at a discount), we’d appreciate the heck out of that. (We = me and Julien).

Here’s the exact needle we have to move: 768. We need 768 more sales between now and Saturday night. That’s a lot of books, but I’m only asking you to buy one. (Well, if you’re a company, I’m asking you to buy hundreds.)

Now, if that didn’t move you (and I hope that it did), I have an offer for some of my business friends and organizations:

Special Offer

I’ll limit this to five total offers and you’ll have to show a screen cap of the confirmed order to prove it: If you purchase 200 copies of Trust Agents, I’ll fly out and spend a half day with your organization for free. I’ll let you know right now that my consulting rate is far more than the price of 200 books, so it’s a pretty darned good deal, so this might be the chance for a two-fer. You can give your group some books, and you can get specific consultation about how your organization can use online tools to be human at a distance and deliver business value.

How Else to Help

Times are tough. We know. You might not be able to pick up a copy right now. If you believe there’s value in what we’ve written, and if you know a few folks who might want more information about the book, I’m asking you to encourage your audience to check it out. I’ve thought of three ways to do it:

1.) Tweet a link to http://bit.ly/buy-ta (this shows where to buy the book)
2.) Write a blog post and link to http://bit.ly/buy-ta (maybe explaining why you think the book would appeal to your audience.
3.) Or send us well wishes.

In all cases, this is the only time that I’ll make such a blatant and self-serving request in this way. I’ll promote the book over the next several months, but will keep that down to a gentle background hum. This one’s the biggie, friends. I want very much to have a chance at success with this book, and you are my key to that. ALL the credit I’ve saved up with you over the years, I’m asking for a little loan of your trust and support today.

Can you help?

If you walk into bookstores in the next week, please ask if they have a copy of Trust Agents by Brogan and Smith. It’ll give them the sense that people will want it. And hey, buy someone else’s awesome book. I review new ones every week. : )

Consider pre-ordering Trust Agents and supporting Chris and Julien Smith:

Want to put a badge up on your site? I made two. Just copy this code into your sidebar or into a post:

To get this graphic:

Copy/paste this code:

To get this graphic:

Copy/paste this code:

And truly, as always, thanks. Thank you for everything. Thank you even if you don’t buy a single book. I’m just glad you’re part of the story.

The Real Meat of the Question

ceb — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:30:11 +0000

Pete Cashmore asks whether social media can make us buy more cars. He’s asking because of Ford’s recent Fiesta Movement project, which a lot of us are watching with some interest. The question is pretty darned pertinent to a whole lot of what I do in a given week, being that I’m often asked by really big companies how engaging in social media will impact their business.

Once we get past the kumbaya answers like “everyone must join the conversation,” we drive directly into the “how exactly does this sell more tractors?” types of questions. The answers, of course, are always variable. It depends how things are implemented, how much karma the company already has stored up with us, and a variety of other factors.

With regards to the Fiesta Movement, some of the participants are our own. Jeremy Tanner, Jody Gnant, Sarah Austin, Natasha Wescoat and several more folks we know are in the game. Will this make someone who knows them feel the project is more authentic? I think so. Will it influence any of us to buy a car? I don’t know.

But what I do know is that the project is much more interesting than watching a typical car ad, no matter what. The participants in the project have to complete missions, starting April 21st. These missions will be more interesting than any car commercial.

I say “yes” to answer Pete Cashmore’s question, and Pete seems to feel that way according to his post. And now, the question of all questions: would social media help your business to sell more whatevers? Are you putting it to the test? Any results to report yet?

Photo credit Kevin Dooley

It’s All About You

ceb — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:45:02 +0000

How Do You Talk About Yourself?

There’s a huge difference between someone saying that you’re amazing and you saying it about yourself. On the one hand, you sometimes have to explain your credentials. For instance, if I’m asking you to think about what I’m saying, you might want to know my credentials, my qualifications, where I’m from. That’s why blogs have an About page (or at least, that’s the best way to use an about page, in my not nearly humble opinion). But there really is a huge difference between explaining your perspective versus outright bragging about yourself.

No, you can’t really cheat by restating what others have said about you. That’s still basically going to come off as bragging (to me). And this works on the personal scale as well as the company scale.

Which works better? An ad about how awesome you are, or an ad about how awesome your customer is?

Keep the Conversation Focused on Your Customer

In advertising and marketing and all business communications, think about your customer. One way the iPod won the MP3 war was they came up with a way for customers to think easier about the product. It fits 1000 songs. That was wayyyyyyyyy easier to understand than number of megabytes. Thus, the conversation was from the perspective of the customer.

Think of the old cheesy car salesperson. “Can you see yourself in this baby?” There’s a reason they say that. It works. People think from their own perspective.

In talking about yourself, talk instead about others, if you can.

I really loved what John Andrews was doing with his customer of the day blog posts for his little bistro. (Then again, I just read that John’s shop closed down, so does that make it a bad strategy?) John had the perspective that by praising his customers, they’d feel motivated to return. Seems reasonable to me.

Mick Galuski, who I wrote about as asmall town superhero, earns and keeps my business because he customizes his communication to me to make it about my interests. In turn, I praise Mick all the time, and talk with him about business, and give him potential ideas for future efforts.

What This Means to Personal Branding and Self-Promotion

In situations where you’re talking with others, do your best to talk more about them. Learn about them. Ask questions. The smartest people are those who plumb the depths of the other person, and come away knowing them deeply. We seem to fear, as humans, that the other person in a situation won’t hear us. We get worried that we’ll leave a conversation somehow unequally.

Strangely, the most “important” people (in at least the public business sense) I have ever met in my life have all asked me more about myself, and even with me trying hard to turn it around, they were gracious and interesting and still worked hard to know more about me than themselves. People like Vinod Khosla, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and many more have always started with more questions about me than about themselves.

If that’s how they roll, why wouldn’t you do the same yourself?

It’s certainly something I notice more often when meeting people, or learning more about them on the web. While writing this post, I was distracted twice to do other things, and in one case, I read someone’s about page on their blog and choked on how self-important they seemed (and hey, read mine and call me out if you think I seem stuck-up). The other was a request from someone whose event I once attended, where he spent the first 10 minutes doing a strange “you love me, you really love me” type performance. Great guy. Super smart. Off-putting as all hell to start an event that way.

What do you say?

Things In My House No One Pays Me to Love

ceb — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:52:48 +0000

I’ve written a lot about content marketing, about blogger relations, about the various projects I’ve done to learn how bloggers can make money and how companies can engage online media organizations. I wanted to just take a moment and talk about things I love that have nothing to do with that. Just because.

Books

I love books. I read about 2 a week right now (slowed down due to all the work). I’m fortunate that people send me books, but I also buy books, get them from my library, borrow from friends. I’m a book kind of person and have been since I was born.

Movies

Yes, I have a thing for superhero movies, but I watch all kinds. My all time favorites are Fight Club and The Usual Suspects. Jaws is probably the scariest movie, though the rubber shark isn’t holding up so well in recent viewings.

Bags

I admit it. I love computer bags. This is my VertiGo from Waterfield. I got it because Jared Goralnick sold me on it easily. He loved his, and told me all about how custom things could be. I think it’s the coolest bag I’ve ever owned. But that wouldn’t stop me from looking at other bags. : )

Peanut Butter

That’s Teddie peanut butter. Ingredients: peanuts, salt. That’s it. Check your label. What does your have in it? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t eat a lot of this right now because I’m into a fitness program and I use my fat intake wisely, but yum. Truly.

Things Without Pictures

Canadian Club. – What’s weird is that the ads got me back into it. My grandparents used to both drink it, mostly around the holidays, and when I got a glass after seeing those “Damned Right Your Father Drank It” ads, I ordered a glass of it with ginger ale. Love it.
My Alvares Acoustic Guitar – I bought it in 1999 and it’s still in great shape. I play it every rare now and again. If you went to PodCamp Boston 3, I played it there a bit.
Comic books. – I’m not going to name them or whatever, but I am happy to be able to pick up the occasional graphic novel and read something that has nothing to do with marketing, social media, or anything meaningful.
My Macbook and iPhone. – Nick Saber got me into using an iPhone. I didn’t want to do it. I was a BlackBerry guy, but I can’t deny the location-based app goodness. I’ve been a Mac guy since 1984. I saw Guy Kawasaki speak to the Boston Computer Society at MIT in 1983, and was passionate about Macs ever since then. (He hates when I tell that story).
Nintendo Wii. – I bought this off Geoff Livingston when he mentioned he was selling it on Twitter. Best purchase ever. My kids love the hell out of this game system, and it’s instant fun. The other big systems are beautiful , etc, but they’re nothing like the Wii for addiction value.
My Saturn Vue. – I’ve driven Saturns since 1993 (okay, it’s not in my house – it’s out in the yard. Sue me). I love the company more than I actually love the car. I loved the idea when they first launched, and I love the no-hassle purchasing experience. (Note to every car seller in America: if you sold no-hassle, I’d consider you).

So What?

In 2006, I wanted badly to launch a site where people could go on and talk about the brands they loved. I had the idea that it would be much more interesting to sell (via affiliate marketing, but I didn’t know that term back then) things we were passionate about, instead of sticking plain old ads up against one’s site.

While I was on the treadmill at the gym this morning, I watched a few celebrity endorsements of products. The sports stations seem to run informercials in the morning, so I listened to my iPod and watched people pitch juicers and exercise programs and fat burning pills, etc. We all know the deal. The person gets paid to be in the ad. They at least marginally vouch for the product. Some people see the celebrity and think, “Well, if SHE uses it, it’s good enough for me,” and they dial.

Don’t you wish that wasn’t the formula?

And yet, the moment money comes into it, in any form, that’s the question. Right? For example, if I looked really hard (or just went to Amazon), I’d probably be able to find a link where you could click and buy one of everything up in my list (if you buy a Saturn VUE, thank you!). But then, you’d think, “oh, he’s just trying to make money.”

What if I’m not? Or what if you’re not?

It’s just thinking.

Meanwhile, I’m quite happy just loving the things I listed above because I love them. And by love, I’m happy when they’re around. I could live without them. (Maybe not the Macbook.)

Sell Benefits Not Features

ceb — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:27:26 +0000

Twitter isn’t amazing. The ability to connect to many voices in a collaborative way is amazing. Facebook isn’t the future. Having mutual social environments that permit deeper understanding of each other’s interest is the future. It’s important that we learn how to talk in terms of benefits and not the features.

This was an old sales lesson that I learned from Jason Chudnofsky, the CEO at Pulvermedia. He had a course that he’d been teaching for many years on that exact point. It’s not the various features that convince someone to buy. They might influence your purchase, but you buy benefits. With this car, you’ll save on gas. With this car, you’ll draw lots of attention. With this software, you’ll stay closer to the pulse of the larger community.

Do you see the difference?

Far too often, I hear social media enthusiasts talking about the software from the perspective of its features, but we’ve already proven that features don’t trump benefits. Twitter has fewer features than Pownce and Jaiku, and yet, we’re all on Twitter.

Blogging isn’t cool because you can tag, because you can use RSS, because there are all kinds of hot templates. Blogging improves a company’s organic SEO, gives their leadership a voice in the conversation, brings potential wide-funnel sales activity into a business.

Are you with me?

Target Marketing

ceb — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:20:24 +0000

Here are some things that are true: people don’t read. And when they pretend to read, they skim. Comprehension and context are at an all time low. We’re snackers, and it’s adding up. Where this hits us the worst is when communications professionals attempt to match their idea of me (and by me, I mean you) with their “target.”

It’s deeper than not reading. Part of it is not caring, because we can’t care. In sales, if you’re trying for a number, you have to scrap and scratch and push hard and do all those volume-based things that will drive a number or you’re on the street.

It’s deeper than not caring, because we don’t have enough hours in the day, so we can’t even find the TIME to care. How can we read and care and do all this other stuff when we’ve got products to sell and deadlines and goals?

It gets worse. Kind of.

Guess what? 2009 is just about here. Economically, the US is in for quite a shake, and all my friends from all over the world (because I do appreciate you being part of this conversation) are also in for a crapload of un-fun. Your customers are cutting back. They aren’t paying. They can’t meet their commitments.

You are in retention mode. Now, if you’ve treated me like a target all this time, do you think I have loyalty or any kind of need to keep on as your customer? If you don’t know anything about me, do you have the handles you’ll need to preserve your relationship with me as a customer?

Build. Relationships. Now.

Learn the tools. Understand how to re-humanize communications. Learn how to scale differently. And put your efforts into relationship mode.

The cost: a cutback on the mass approach.
The reward: deepening of relationships (and potential sustained or augmented sales) with your client base.

Math wise, if the dial is already going down related to things you can’t much control, you’ve just earned a little time to convert to a relationship-based mode.

Or don’t, because I’ll love me a good fire sale on your database.

What do you think?

Photo credit, NickyFern

They Will Remember You in the Bust Not the Boom