The Most Practical and Down to Earth Sales and Marketing Manual Ever Written

Sales and Marketing Tools That Really Work

Wayne Lundberg CMfgE
Sales and Marketing Tools That Really Work

(Guarantied[1])

If sales and marketing were really difficult humanity would still be in the hunting/gathering tribal state of being. Sales and marketing is no more difficult than the most elementary of all social activities - getting a date.

To some, this simple act of getting a date, may be frightening, challenging, scary and may create nightmares. But by and large most of us figure it out and eventually join the crowd, make babies and live in relative harmony.

If you can sell yourself to a mate, you can succeed in sales and marketing. The principles are the same.

A major problem is the cultural belief that sales and marketing is difficult, requires a lot of math, is expensive, requires specialists who charge a ton of money, and can only be performed by those anointed with an MBA. The major problem in sales and marketing is having your own mental roadblocks - usually.

Let’s get to the point.

The secret to a successful sales and marketing strategy is in your ability to visualize the emotional reaction of the person who will be using your product, idea or whatever it is you will be selling.

Since this statement is so obvious, so simple, so uncomplicated, most will ignore it and read on searching for the real meat of my claim that this is the most practical and down to earth sales and marketing manual ever written.

Stop now!

Everything will depend on how well you visualize the emotional reaction to the person on the receiving end of your efforts.

Do it now and look for the answers to the following questions as you imagine that end user of your offering. What age, how are they dressed, where do they live, what is their family income, what is their educational background, what do they do to pass the time, are they readers, are they couch potatoes, are they healthy, do they have imagination, are they leaders or followers, what made them buy your offering, what will they do with it, how will they explain the expense to their most significant other, how long with they be interested in it, will they share their joy with others, will others listen to them, can you come up with something later to keep them interested in your offerings, will that person be a customer?

Now, where in all of these questions is there a single word about the quality, price, specifications, details of your offering? Where is there a mention of cost of production, cost of distribution, cost of advertising, profits and loss? Please go to the end of this booklet for insight into new product development and market analysis. This portion of the text is aimed at the actual marketing of your idea or product.

Yet it is in these last items that the overwhelming majority of books on sales and marketing focus.

Let’s recapture your visualization and tackle a few of these questions.

First of all, once you have profiled your end user you have defined your target market. You have identified the kind of people most likely to buy from you.

You will discover that successful sales and marketing is nothing more than breaking down every element of this visualization into projects and into tasks; each a step toward success. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Next is the absolute must in all sales and marketing efforts. Convert this visualization exercise into a daily ritual in which you spend no less than 20 minutes with eyes closed, in a quiet place, to experience the pure unadulterated joy of sharing the good feelings of your customers enjoy your offering. See them in great quantities, in all parts of the world, of all races and cultures, of all political beliefs. Explore the many ways these customers enjoy the results of your work, your business. Believe it to be true. See it as reality. Let your inner self believe it is true. Block out any negative thought by replacing it with enthusiastic and positive images of joy.

Immediately after your visualization period, take a piece of paper, lay it horizontally, draw an ellipse in the middle of the page and write a single word for the strongest intuitive message or feeling you have at that moment. As ideas spring into your mind draw lines from the ellipse to the edge of the paper and write a word or two to name the picture in your imagination stemming from the intuitive message.

Stop and do an experiment in visualization now. Take a few deep breaths and exhale slowly, tell yourself you will be visualizing people using your product, service, idea with joy; happy to have it. Begin the visualization and linger as an invisible observer reading their mind, sensing their feelings. Let your imagination run wild. Even if you do it for a few minutes you will be rewarded with some new insight, some new idea that will help you make this vision come true[2].

This is the secret of the whole process. To get new insights that will lead to projects and actions to make the visualization a reality.

Nobody knows your offering as well as you. You can’t delegate sales and marketing strategies to outside consultants. This is something only you, the inventor, the entrepreneur, the commissioned sales rep can do. The strategy must come from your passion, your sincere belief that your visualization is reality and all you have to do is make it happen.

Michaelangelo is said to have told his patron that his David was in the block of marble and all he had to do was remove the excess marble to reveal the completed statue.

The same with sales and marketing. You must believe it is already in place in order for you to make it real.

We are being conditioned daily to watch television, to listen to radio, to read, to be passive. To receive information but do nothing after receiving it. What are we expected to do as we watch a terrorist hold hostages? Our body and mind are conditioned to accept and not to do. It is imperative that we must break this yoke, this tougher-than-steel prison and escape into a world where we are in charge. You start by imagining it. Flip Wilson said it years ago: “What you see, is what you get” Change in the way we think is an imperative.

Don’t think of the cost of advertising, sales or marketing at this point. If you think of limitations you will limit your imagination and block your success from the get-go. Imagine you have a magic wand in your hand and that with the tapping three times on the kitchen table you will receive everything you have visualized. Then visualize as though the magic wand did it’s thing.

Nobody really understands what happens but like electricity and magnetism (which nobody understands at all) we can see the results. They are as predictable as are the mathematics of electricity and magnetism. How clearly you see it, how strong your ability to self-hypnotize yourself of it’s reality, is in direct proportion to the end results. There is no force on earth greater than the power of the inventor. The inventor who simply will not take no for an answer. Which is the common characteristic of successful people.

You have now set into motion the motor, and the fuel to make your sales and marketing come true. Now to the actual steps to make your dream come true.

By invoking the infinite intelligence you have opened your imagination to ideas that go beyond the normal. You are no longer being blocked by prior models of what is standard and routine. You will be getting flashes of insight from outside the box of normality. Only through innovation can you hope to achieve success. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart says it most eloquently. “Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you’re headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.”

The process for converting a vision into reality is called Project Management.

Select a date from sometime in the future, write it down, and write the sales volume you will be realizing on that date. Don’t try to be realistic by thinking of costs, money, staffing. Be bold and let the numbers reflect what you really want. If you have not done this before, do it now.

Take a piece of paper and draw an XY graph, for example:

Future Sales

Today’s Sales

Today’s Date

Future Date

Divide the bottom X axis into yearly or monthly segments by writing the dates, divide the Y axis into segments and write the figures.

This is now your roadmap upon which every activity by you and your organization must live by. Every action and every decision must be bounced against this map with the following question: “Will what I am about to do take me even one step closer to my goal?” If the answer is yes, then do it. If the answer is other than yes, then redefine your proposed action. Here is where you apply the rules of doing what is important or doing what is urgent (usually the urgent is something of benefit to someone else or because something is broken and must be fixed).

Your next step is to build a path to your success. The elements to a project are time, objective, resources and activities. You have written the time and objectives, now you must develop the resources and activities. Some resources – such as a loan from the bank – will be the result of carefully planned and executed activities. As you will see, when a firm goal is in mind, you will be able to get all the resources needed to make it a reality.

With your imagination enjoying the trips to that day when as many people in the world as you want are using your product/service/idea, start a list of things that need to happen for it to become reality. Don’t worry about costs nor even think about the ‘reality’ of such tasks. Just make a list of things that need to happen for you to succeed. Believe in the simple truth that deep within you and from the infinite intelligence you will clearly define each item along with the cost in time or money to reach your objective. This is the most important lesson in this paper; that through this questioning and these activities, you will discover the exact things you need to do to make your goal a reality.

Please notice that there has been no discussion on personal wealth, getting rich or the like. It is a universal law that wealth will come from the results of your passionate quest to bring joy and happiness to your customers through your offering. Yes, you will be counting money and using money but primarily as a means of getting your idea to market and to satisfy as many end users as you have visualized. If you do it right, you will end up with a percentage of the sales dollars you generate. This applies to a one person business as well as to Bill Gates and Microsoft and everyone in between.

You must have a profitable company if you intend to make your dream a reality.

The biggest mistake made by most businesspeople is in focusing on money rather than the purpose of the business which is to grow customers.

Yes, grow customers should be the natural objective of your efforts.

Let’s get into the money aspects.

What would be the loss to your enterprise for the loss of one single customer on that day in the future when you have achieved your first major goal?

Do the math. If you are a grocery store you know the average family buys something like $100 a week. Your margins (not profit) are something like $15 on that $100. Thus, a typical customer buys $5,200 a year leaving you with $780 in cash to cover rent, insurance, wages and the like. Over the life of a good customer, say 15 years, the cash lost to you for one customer is $780 times 15 years = $11, 700 Dollars. Apply the same basic thinking to your own business and write down a figure you can believe in. The cost of loss to your company for losing one customer that day in the future when business is booming.

Now shift your thinking and look at it from another point of view. What is the wealth creating capability to your organization for each customer you gain? The answer should be exactly that of the cost of loss.

It is very important for you to go through this mental gyration of cost of loss and revenue potential from each customer. This will be the key element in driving your projects to completion. It will be the cornerstone upon which you will finance your operation. You must get money to make money. Or, you must convert your only other asset – your time – into some form of wealth, or cash to finance your business and/or expansion. For example wealth -- the grocer who leaves the store to knock on doors and recruit customers. Each new customer is $11,700 in the ‘future’ bank. A clear case of converting time into money. Build on this logic for your own business. Figure out exactly how many customers you need to grow in order to achieve that objective you have set for yourself. If you don’t do this you will simply be going round and round in circles never knowing where you are going nor when you get there.

Sales and marketing is a numbers game as well as a psychic one. As you make calls or respond to ads and referrals you will begin to discover how many contacts you must make before developing a customer. As a salesman for cemetery lots years ago I knew I had to knock on 12 doors to get one appointment and from three appointments I made one sale. If I wanted my weekly goal I had to sell three families a week. How many doors did I have to knock on?[3]

The important thing here is to recognize that once you have discovered the ratio, your mind-set can easily accept the 97 “Not interested” for the 3 “Thank you so much!” My commission in those days was $30 (factory workers were making $0.90/hr). So in effect I made a Dollar for every door I knocked on - which only took a few minutes.

You get money from converting your time to cash through commission sales or swapping your expertise for something of value. Or you get it from Aunt Martha as a gift or purchase of stock, or you go to the bank for a loan or you sell stock on the open market. Most businesses are started today using savings, funds from friends and family and credit cards. Expanding a business will require a line of credit from a bank or an infusion of capital from investors or factoring purchase orders into working capital among other options.

Maybe we’re jumping ahead just a tad. Let’s get back to the idea of project management for a moment.

You must take each item on the list and break it down into the following segments: Time when it must start - usually depending on some other task which must take place first. Resources in the form of people and money required to pull it off. And the expected measurable result once completed.

You then draw a line to represent the time for each on a Gantt chart such as:

Project Name

Task	Resp	Jan	Feb	Mar	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct
Design factory	all
Buy Land
Contractor
Build
Buy Machines
Install
Hire
Train
Start production

These two graphics are vital to your success. They are the tools which best communicate your goals to yourself and to the people who will be joining your effort. Everybody must fully understand where you are going and what it takes to get there. When everybody knows where you are going, it is easy for them to help. These two charts keep you on course, keep you focused, makes your efforts measurable, gives you immediate feedback to allow for course corrections before it is too late. These tools, the visualization, making of lists, converting lists into action items, knowing where you are going, are the building blocks to your success. You see how really easy this whole thing of success in sales and marketing can be?

The thing is, that when you have a plan, you don’t waste energy in useless stuff. The difference between success and failure is only a 10% matter. It’s not what most people believe - some huge luck factor or genius factor or wealth factor that differentiates success from failure. It’s a matter of 10% better focus.

Let’s see what happens once you have done the above.

You’re at a party sitting next to Mr. Bloe. You’re chatting away and Mr. Bloe suddenly says: “You’re such an enthusiastic person, why are you so happy?” To which you reply with a gleam in your eye with the fabulous service you are providing an endless number of customers around the world. Mr. Bloe will want to be part of the action either as a customer or advisor or employee or friend. Your energy has just recruited a customer. You have just put $11,700 Dollars into your bank. That’s the value of a customer, remember?

When you call on a supplier the gleam will be in your eye and the salesperson will want to do everything in their power to give you the absolute best deal. The gleam will be in your eye when you interview your first employee and that employee will be totally committed to your vision if you give them a chance to play the game with you if you make them part of a winning team. Your prospects will see and feel that gleam in your eye and soul and will want to be part of it as well.

Yes, it may take time. But your schedule is on the wall for you to see every day and it will encourage you to take that extra hour to visit an extra prospect or write that extra letter or make that extra phone-call. This is where the formula for success in sales and marketing really hits gold. The power of your imagination to see your product, service or offering as a value added something to so many people that you are compelled to do the impossible for them to enjoy those fruits.

Let’s move ahead.

There are several cultural lies which you must recognize and once recognized do everything in your power to not be influenced by them any more.

The first is that work is a pain. Most people have been duped by the labor union movement and actually believe that hard work is for the dullards of the world - to be avoided. Yet we all know that real happiness comes from achieving something worthwhile. If you believe that work is a miserable state of affairs you will communicate this to your first employee who will gladly make your concept a reality. But if you know that work is one of the best ways to happiness then you will share this concept and hire only those who agree with you. Suddenly you will be working with people who enjoy work.

The second great cultural lie is that great ideas and major improvements come from above, from the established companies, from authority. Nothing can be further from the truth. Change invariably comes from the outside, from the entrepreneurs who are quick to see an opportunity and who are willing to risk it all to see it come true. No vacuum tube manufacturer ever shifted to transistors, no buggy whip maker shifted to making tires, the Swiss watchmakers lost 85% of their market overnight when the world went to quartz even after their own people had invented quartz timepieces. The list is long - Bell was laughed out of Western Union offices - they didn’t want a toy! - Kodak and IBM fussed over dust left by Carlson’s Xerox device on their desks after his demonstration - telephone switching was developed by an undertaker because the town operator was the competitor’s wife - nylon losing out to polyester - the PC revolution. Just a few reminders.

The third major cultural lie is that you motivate people and that you can correct their errors through a good chewing out. False! A chewing out is a form of reward to nearly a third of the population. Since recognition is at the top of the human needs list. Think of the sandwich brother; a favorite baby for a while, replaced by the new baby who gets all the attention later. What do they do? They break things to get a spanking since that’s the only way they can get attention.

As to motivation, you don’t motivate anybody. People come to work motivated. Then slowly through this rule or that they become demotivated. The best you can do is to let their energy blossom by listening to them and making them part of your team. The truly motivated people are the people who are allowed to do things, who are allowed to participate, who are listened to and who are permitted to contribute!

Chew these cultural lies until you fully appreciate their true destructive power in our society. Then use that knowledge to build a truly exceptional team because you can’t grow without getting people involved either as helpers or buyers. Breaking these cultural lies will make you a leader.

OK, let’s go back to the first page of this paper. Take another look at your horizontal page with the ellipse and the lines with the names of mental pictures. Visualize again the kind of person who will be enjoying the fruits of your labor. Make some lists to define the various characteristics. This will become your prospecting guide and advertising guide. Your sales and marketing efforts will be directed to this kind of person. Where will you find them? How will you reach them with your message?

Decide now and forever never to advertise in any medium without the ability to measure results and without the ability to test one version of your sales message against another. Direct marketing is the fastest growing method for getting things into the hands of the customer and one of the reasons is that it is completely measurable and very cost effective.

The trend in the world today is to bypass middlemen and go directly to the end user. You see it every day as Gevalia Coffee, Gourmet Wines, PCs, music, books, teas, clothing, electronics and a zillion other things are delivered to your home by the mailman, UPS guy or other.

Which will be your method of delivery? How will you put your stuff in your customer’s hand. Here again, your power of visualization must determine exactly how it will be done. As you put yourself in the customer’s shoes you will see, feel and hear how they got it.

Prove it to yourself right now. Make a list of the things you’ve bought over the last few months. Make an analysis as to value added as you see it, and money spent in actuality. Your own experience and your imagination will determine how your idea will be sold and marketed. Again, no consultant is required.

Direct marketing is not the same as direct mail. The image we have in mind when thinking of direct mail is the tons of junk mail and our response to it. Direct marketing on the other hand is a method in which the buyer place their order by phone, fax , mail or email and receive the product via mail, package delivery or the like. The thing that gives you the information about the product could be magazine, radio, television, magazine, direct mail, email, home-page, blimp in the sky, sky-writing airplane, etc. Direct marketing should create an image in your mind of factory direct to consumer via the quickest way.

In international trade we are seeing a major movement toward one-on-one marketing. Kino from Nigeria saw a reference to pottery in a newsgroup. He followed the string and ended up in Creative Industries Potter’s Wheel home page. He jotted a short query in the response section of the page. Next day he got a reply, one he liked. He asked for price and delivery information. Later he paid with a credit card and back in El Cajon, California, a shipping clerk loaded a disassembled potter’s wheel onto a FedEx truck. Gone are the days of complex paperwork, middlemen and banks getting in the way of simple transactions between maker and buyer.

If you pick up on this trend in marketing you will succeed.

Sometimes you may need a direct salesperson to make that informational call on the prospective buyer. Your magic may have to be demonstrated as vacuum cleaners were once demonstrated before they became commodities. But even commodities are being bought and sold via direct marketing.

Now that you know the method for letting your prospects know of you, and how you intend to fulfill their orders you may want to think of the message itself.

You see how everything works backwards in this business?

First you see the end result, clearly, in your imagination. Then you make it come true.

So what is that message that will encourage your future customer to buy from you?

Well – back to your visualization and sensing the emotional pleasure your customer is getting from using your (fill in the blank________________). The message in your sales presentation, ad or press release will tell the reader they will have this feeling once they have bought your (fill in the blank ________).

It all boils down to this fundamental piece of information. Not price, not quality, not competition – but how your customer will feel once they have it and how easy for them to get it.

You see it in car advertising. It’s sex, glamour, being better than the neighbor, sense of beauty, power – you name it. Could be good health, happiness, joy, escape. Could be faith, wealth, luck or anything in between When you sell life insurance you’re selling an idea that the wife will have something when you’re gone. It’s a form of expressing love. It’s not the insurance, it’s the promise of love. When I sold cemetery lots while working my way through college I did not sell holes in the ground, worms and back to dust ideas. I showed, through words that created an image in my prospect’s mind, the wife not having to go out in a blizzard to select a burying spot for her beloved husband. The husband would do anything to prevent such a thing. It was their love that was the force behind the purchase of a cemetery lot years and years before either would need them. Today, some thirty years later, some of my customers are beginning to use that which they bought and paid for years ago – at bargain basement prices compared to today’s inflated prices. So you see, we all win when the idea is sound and there is something of value for all.

Customers are your best source for future business by either buying more, buying more frequently or referring you to others who will benefit as they did. Make this another cornerstone of your sales/marketing strategy. Customers love to brag when they have discovered a business that delivers Wow! into their lives. You must put into motion some form of method to capture this information. Some form of frequent flyer miles or the like. A gift for every referral. Another year warranty on your PC for each referral that buys something, anything, from you.

The only real asset of any company is the client base. Protect your database under lock and key. Do not leave it unattended. Ever. Each customer is – as we discussed before thousands of Dollars in your asset column even though not yet cash. Customers are your only reason for being. When you assign a value to the gain or loss of a customer you have the accounting you need. All other accounting is for tax purposes and both are seldom the same. One dollar in fines is a loss. One dollar in getting a new customer is an investment. Yet on the standard accounting sheet it is shown as advertising expense. You must separate the two accounting systems by inventing one of your own which properly expresses the value of a customer over the value of assets, cash in the bank, commissions and the like. Then you run your business on the other-than-tax system.

What you are reading may not sound much like other things you have studied in sales and marketing. And that is good. You should take the time to think both approaches through and using your own gray matter come to conclusions. The key element is that the secret to your sales and marketing plan is within you and your life experience. My effort has been in helping you reach into your inner self and into the infinite intelligence to find the formula best suited for your particular and unique problem. Few books or articles do this. Thus, I hope to be one voice in many that will be heard, understood, and above all – be of value added.

Some Sources and Some Ideas

Now that you have profiled your target market you should do the next logical thing – which surprisingly, few people do, even though it’s free – write a press release and send it to the magazines, periodicals, radio and TV stations that beam their messages to that kind of audience. In visiting with dozens of clients each year I have yet to find more than one percent who actually take advantage of this tried and true method. Ad salespeople in the media are always looking for new prospects. They know a free press release will generate some interest for your product. This makes it easy for them to knock on your door to sell you space or airtime in their media. It’s a win-win kind of thing that few people know about or are afraid to use. A good color photo of your offering and your emotion packed message is all it takes.

Mailing lists are available for virtually every kind of profile you come up with. Search the Internet for keywords such as “mailing lists”, “profile lists” and the like. Check your library magazine rack and reference desks. Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages and call a few direct mail companies who will gladly quote you list prices plus printing and mailing to 500 – 1000 – 5000 or however many pieces you want to get directly into suspect’s hands.

Everyone in your organization should make it an absolute and inviolable rule to take the name and all particulars of everyone they meet socially, in business, on the golf course, plane, train or bus. A person to person contact followed by a personalized note with a brochure of your offering could easily generate a good portion of your business. Keep track of these names in a computerized database such as Q&A, Alpha Four, Access or the like. You will be using it again and again. Remember, this database is the true wealth of your company.

Any advertising on the Internet or through any media should be interactive. This means it must be easy for your target au