How Easily Are You FOOLED By An Idiot In An Expert’s Costume?
John Edwards, the psychic medium known for talking to people’s dead relatives, makes millions selling tickets to two-hour events all over the world where he performs (key word: PERFORMS) his psychic feat to people wanting to believe in the afterlife, the ability to connect with lost family members and who have an intense curiosity to discover if he’s the real deal. What he’s actually doing is called a cold read, where a “psychic” can propose a vague statement (“I sense someone with a G or a J name…?”) and then watch for confusion OR confirmation, asking the subject to interpret the image he’s seeing. This is exactly what Chris Voss describes as a “label” in his book Never Split The Difference. You make a statement (“It seems like you’re uncomfortable about the price?”) and watch their reaction. Either they agree they ARE, which opens the discussion, OR they CORRECT you. Either way, you learned something.
What Edwards has working for him is that the people who attend his event WANT to believe and ARE searching for a connection; therefore, one is made. What you also don’t see on the videos and TV shows is that much of the session is carefully edited, sections cut and pasted together, so it appears everything he says makes a connection. The “hit” that lands and surprises the person is filmed, then their reaction is replaced again and again in the same sequence, making it appear that everything said is met with surprised confirmation. Read full article and comment →
When you want to show how filthy rich and successful you are, details matter. That’s why you need to have gold-plated staples, sold in packs of 24 for $175. Or how about a Tiffany tennis-ball-canister … for $1,500? And if you really want to show off on the courts, you can hydrate yourself with a $60,000 bottle of Icelandic glacier water that has been mixed with 5 milligrams of real gold dust. ALL of these are real products that people really buy.
One night in 1936, Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma, sat in his office trying to figure out how to get customers to buy more groceries. Observing clients as they shopped, he noticed that many of them were struggling to carry the normal shopping basket provided, particularly the moms with kids. Once they got to their limit of what they could carry, they stopped shopping. That’s when he came up with the idea of the first shopping cart with wheels.
I WISH I could show you the marketing example I’m about to tell you about, but I must have accidentally thrown it out. It was an EXCELLENT example of why you need to be meticulous about cleaning and validating your lists BEFORE you send any kind of direct mail campaign to it. It was a rather elaborate (expensive) mailer sent to my OLD address advertising pool maintenance services. For starters, the address is over two years old, which shows they didn’t run this through the NCOA (National Change Of Address). Second, they didn’t verify I was a pool owner. Yes, I am NOW, but the letter was mailed to the OLD address where we didn’t have a pool, and my name is not on any “pool supplies” website or list because I’ve never bought pool supplies. We get everything through our current pool company. My guess is they simply rented a list of higher-end homes in the area and mailed it instead of renting a list of people who have purchased pools supplies, toys, tools, etc. Just wasteful and stupid. That’s probably why it was the one and only promotion I’ve ever received from this company – it “didn’t work.” 
At every Rapid Implementation Workshop (
The other day, as we were talking, a client shared with me an e-mail campaign sent out to close to 400 prospects WITH phone follow-up that generated a big fat ZERO. To be clear, not one of MY campaigns, but one they received from a vendor. After reviewing it, I saw that it violated almost every one of the “10 Commandments” of good IT services marketing. Unfortunately, I see this a lot; campaigns hastily slapped together without any strategy or understanding of what it takes to get a response. Time and money wasted. Therefore, I thought it would be beneficial to provide a slightly revised list of “MUSTS” for every campaign. 
Email marketing during the 1990’s was a gold mine.
“Have you ever heard the phrase life is hard, but it’s harder when you’re stupid?” One of my favorite talk show personalities Bill Handle asks listeners this often.
The United States government is the largest customer in the world. They buy millions of dollars in services and products every year.
You’re pulling 80-hour work weeks but not getting the results you want. You think you’re setting smart, business goals but failing to achieve them. You’re frustrated, even unhappy, about the state of your IT services firm and struggling when selling managed services. What can you do?
There is no doubt about it: Robin Robins has helped more MSPs and IT services businesses to double – even triple – sales, profits and MRR growth than any other marketing consultant in the IT services industry, period.As a trusted advisor to over 7,000 IT services business owners for over 12 years, Robin knows a thing or two about what it takes to grow sales, recurring revenue streams and a profitable client base for an IT services business.