The Pain vs. The Problem - Ari Galper

You know, I'm sure that somewhere in your career
you've heard someone in sales tell you that if you
can 'find someone's pain,' they'll buy what you
have.

What they mean is, if you ask certain questions
designed to get the person you're talking with to
spill their emotions about a need or 'pain' they
have, then all you have to do is show them your
solution and you've got them right where you want
them -- grabbing for their wallet and buying what
you're selling.

In fact, digging for the prospect's pain is still
a common 'technique' taught by many of the
old-school sales trainers today.

I don't know about you, but asking pre-designed
questions that you hope will get someone into an
emotional frenzy, so they'll jump to buy what you
have, feels very manipulative. In fact, I strongly
feel that it's flat-out wrong to manipulate
someone for your own gain.

Growing up with a dad who's a psychologist and who
made it his mission to be sure I could discern
between right and wrong really sensitized me to
these kinds of inauthentic sales techniques.

What continues to surprise me is that these
techniques are considered standard practice in the
business world and that somehow, since 'everyone
else is doing it,' that makes it okay.

History is full of lessons about what can happen
when people start going along with what everyone
else around them is doing, even though they know
deep down that it feels wrong and is wrong.

If you're asking yourself, 'If I don't try to get
at the person's pain, how am I going to sell my
solution?,' that means you're looking at selling
in one narrow way -- with only the goal of making
the sale.

If you're already one of my Mastery Program
clients, you'll realize that what I teach is how
to be a problem-solver.

What that means is having intimate
knowledge of your prospects' problems
BEFORE you approach them.

How is that possible?

Well, that's the system I teach, and it's based on
understanding your prospects' world.

When you follow the Mindset of seeking the truth
instead of being fixated on the sale, you'll find
that:

* You'll get into deep discussions with your
prospects about their problems or issues

* They'll feel understood and not pressured by
you

* Without you ever trying to 'close' the sale,
it'll happen naturally if there's really a match
between their problem and the solution you offer.

If you've haven't experienced this before, it's
something you'll never forget... it's almost
magical.

And the funny thing is, more sales happen because
you AREN'T chasing the sale.

You might be thinking, 'I still don't
understand the difference between the problem and
the pain.'

The difference is really the connection
that's created between the two of you when they
feel you understand them and don't have a hidden
agenda -- instead of trying to engineer pushing
their 'pain button.'

For me, the common belief that playing in the
'gray area' of business, which includes
manipulation, is not okay.

Why? Because when you get down to it, there's
really only one playing field - life - and the more
authentic you are with the people in your life
personally and professionally, the more you honor
them AND yourself... something to think about.

Please let me know your thoughts.

To your success,

Ari Galper
Founder, Unlock The Game

P.S. You can learn more about the
Mastery Program here: http://www.UnlockTheGame.com/LearnMore

Unlock The Game 24112 Park Casino Calabasas, CA 91302
US/CAN: 877-641-3039 UK: 020 815 6147 AUS: 0402 600 387

a FREE workshop on identifying your ideal client

Hey there,

There's probably no more fundamental question in marketing than: who are you trying to reach? It affects everything you will ever do in your marketing. Your understanding of and empathy for the people you're trying to reach is the basis of all your marketing.

Do you really get them?

Do you understand their hopes, their fears?

It's an old burned out saying but it's true: if you want to influence someone, you must know what already influences them.

Do you?

My guess is that you have some understanding but that it could be refined.

Now, to be clear: understanding who your ideal client is is NOT the same as having a marketing plan. But it is the basis of every marketing plan you will ever devise. This is the necessary and foundational spade work for your marketing.

And what's the promise of it?

Well, think of your favorite clients. The one's you just love. Now imagine that all of your clients were like that.

Interested?

If you want to get started right away, just go to:

http://www.tadhargrave.com/idealclientworkshop

And download your FREE 10 page workshop. Feel free to email me with any questions at: tad@tadhargrave.com

This is material that, until now, I've only ever covered in my workshops live. But now I'm offering it to you here for no cost.

Because I want to.

So there.

Warmest,

tad

p.s. feel free to pass this onto anyone who you think might find it of use.

Finding Your Niche - Robert Middleton

(another brilliant piece from Robert Middleton that's right on the money)

warmest,
tad


Finding a Niche
==============================

=====================

I got an email from a customer recently with this comment:

"I can't make any progress with my marketing until I know what my
marketing niche is. Until I know who my ideal clients are going to be,
I can't start with my marketing, so I really can't get any of your
products until I'm clear about this."

You might want to substitute your own concern: "I don't know what
my services are yet," or "I don't really know what the ultimate
outcome is that I provide for my clients," or "I don't know what
makes me unique yet."

And with this declaration of what you don't know, your marketing
grinds to a screeching standstill.

My answer to this customer was the following:

You don't find your niche. Your niche finds you. And this goes for
your services, ultimate outcome, uniqueness, etc.

What I mean by this is that you can't really figure it out in your head.
You need to discover it. And the way you discover it is to jump into
the process of marketing.

I know this might not makes sense to you, but stick with me here,
because this is really one of the biggest issues Independent
Professionals face.

I've seen it hundreds of times.

I've seen people completely stuck because they can't figure out their
audio logo or perfect marketing message. And they "know" that
when they figure it out, all their marketing will fall magically into
place.

Utter nonsense, I'm afraid.

Here's the big secret that nobody has told you: You take your best
guess, give it a shot and see what response you get. That's all,
really. You don't get it right. You get it wrong - maybe for a long
time - until it finally falls into place.

My customer is confused about which clients she should go after. But
she doesn't have to decide - yet. All she has to do is take a mad
stab at it and say, for the time being: "These are the clients I'll work
with for now." And then build a marketing message around that.

She'll discover soon enough if it's the right niche or not.

She'll talk to a lot of people. She'll use her newly created audio logo,
ultimate outcome, etc. She'll get responses or not. If not, no
problem, back to the drawing board.

If she gets a few clients in this niche, she'll soon discover if they are
ideal or not. She'll learn as she goes, and fine tune her message
along the way. After awhile the niche will find her. She'll stumble
upon it. Aaha! that's it! And then the next version of her marketing
message will be right on target.

Let me give you an analogy in another field.

A new music student says: "I can't learn music until I know what
composers I'm going to play. I'm really conflicted. Will I play Mozart
and Bach, or Betthoven and Brahms? Difficult choice. But when I'm
clear on who, then I'll start to learn music.

Wouldn't we roll our eyes if we heard this? Then why do we take the
declaration so seriously that someone can't find their niche? It's nuts.

Sadly, the chance of the above person ever becoming a musician is
pretty slim. And with this approach, the chance of my customer ever
becoming a successful Independent Professional is pretty slim as
well. The good news is she's willing to try.

And starting is easy.

Get a book, manual, or tape program, or attend a course. Start with
the first lesson. Do the homework. Apply it the best you can to your
business.

You won't be a marketing genius in a week or two, but you'll be way
beyond where you are now. So get out of your head, let go of the
need to have things perfect, be willing to fail fast and just do it!

*

The More Clients Bottom Line: You don't figure out all your marketing
strategies first and then start marketing. You start your marketing
with one imperfect message at a time and figure it out as you go.

*

What holds you back from starting your marketing? What could you
do to get started... now? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

http://www.actionplan.blogs.com

===================================================
Marketing Tools to Get Your Marketing Started
===================================================

One of the most frequent questions I hear from customers is "What
Action Plan Marketing product or service should I start with first?
The answer is that is depends upon where you are in your business and
marketing. Here are some suggestions:

The InfoGuru Marketing Manual - This is for Independent Professionals
who are starting out, who haven't done much marketing or who
haven't had much success with their marketing.

http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html

The Web Site ToolKit - This is for any Independent Professional who
wants to create a high quality web site - the first time. I will walk you
through every step of the process of developing your content and
then give you guidelines for getting it designed.

http://www.actionplan.com/wstk.html

The Action Plan ToolKit - This is for Independent Professionals who
need some support in getting their marketing off the ground. It will
guide you in creating targeted marketing action plans.

http://www.actionplan.com/aptk.html

The MAPP Program - This is a live teleconference program held over
six weeks and seven sessions. It's for Independent Professionals who
want to accelerate the implementation of their marketing.

http://www.actionplan.com/mappwkp.html

Audio Programs - These programs are recorded interviews with
marketing experts on specific aspects of marketing your services and
are appropriate for anyone who wants to increase their skills in that
area.

http://www.actionplan.com/teleclasses.html

All of our products and services are very hands-on and how-to. They
get to the heart of how to attract more clients and how to make
marketing less of a struggle. They all come with a money back
guarantee, so it can't hurt to check them out.

Just click on any of the links above to learn more about these
products and services and to order on our secure shopping cart
system.

As Radical as We Wanna Be

The Secret to Being as Radical as We Want to Be is to Finance the Revolution Ourselves

If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors – and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt marches or cotton boycotts, so as not to offend key donors. To sharpen his annual pitch to foundations, he would be constantly dreaming up new one-year projects on narrowly focused topics, perhaps a one-time conference on English human-rights abuses, or a documentary on anti-colonial activities in New Delhi. To ensure that various allies didn’t steal away core funders, he would keep his distance and be inclined to trash talk behind their backs. In short, there’s little doubt that the British would still be running India.

The problem with activism today is that it is largely funded by grants and gifts from rich foundations and individuals. The long-standing assumption that you can take the money with few strings attached, and then run, needs to be fundamentally reexamined.

Building a philanthropic base of support can cripple an organization’s mission and wreck it altogether when the well runs dry. Most nonprofits have engaged in a kind of fundraising arms race in which our best leaders focus more time, energy and resources, not on changing the world, but on improving their panhandling prowess to capture just a little more of a philanthropic pie that actually expands very little from year to year. Armies of “development” staff spend as much as a third of an organization’s resources, not to advance the poor, but to cultivate wealthy donors. Significant numbers of our colleagues create campaigns, direct-mail pitches, telemarketing scripts, newsletters and other products exclusively to “care and feed” prospects and to frame positions that will not offend the rich.

Nonprofit structures dictated by this mode of funding also burden organizers with the heavy regulatory hand of the state. To qualify for tax-deductible contributions, for example, US nonprofits must agree to limit lobbying and not to campaign for political causes of candidates.

We believe it’s time for North American progressives to break free from the philanthropic plantation. Those of us serious about social change increasingly must get down to business, figuratively and literally. Every social change group may not be able to generate all its funding through revenue-generation, but every nonprofit certainly can generate a greater percentage than it is doing now. In other words, we should become our own funders. Once we start generating our own resources, we can invest them politically – as corporations do now – largely without limitation, without wasting our time on fundraising appeals, without worrying about that next grant, without apologies.

To get a sense of the possibilities, check out Cabbages & Condoms, a popular restaurant in Bangkok. As your senses become intoxicated by the aromas of garlic, ginger, basil, galangal and lemongrass, you cannot avoid noticing the origins of the name. On top of each heavy wooden table is a slab of glass, under which are neatly arranged rows of colorful prophylactics. Posters and paintings adorn the half-dozen large rooms, all communicating the restaurant’s central message: the AIDS epidemic afflicting Thailand can be checked only through the unabashed promotion and use of male contraception. With balloon animals made from carefully inflated and twisted condoms and the after-dinner candies replaced with your own take-home “condom-mints,” even teens cannot escape the message prominently framed on the wall: “Sex is fun but don’t be stupid – use protection.”

What makes the five “C&C” restaurants unique, along with an affiliated beach-front resort and numerous gift shops, is that they are all owned by the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a rural development organization that has been a leader in promoting family planning and fighting aids in Thailand. Seven out of every ten dollars spent by the PDA on such activities as free vasectomies and mobile health clinics are covered by the net revenues from its 16 subsidiary for-profits. Were the PDA dependent on funding from the Thai government, the World Bank or even the Rockefeller Foundation, it no doubt would be told to tone down the message. Jokes on its website – like “the Cabbages and Condoms Restaurants in Thailand don’t only present excellent Thai food, the food is guaranteed not to get you pregnant” – would certainly be discouraged.

The cash flow gives the PDA a measure of confidence and boldness. The founder, Mechai Viravaidya, has no qualms about his decision to employ for-profits: “Unlimited demand is chasing limited supply [of charitable donations]. No longer are gifts, grants or begging enough. From day one, thirty years ago, we have been acutely aware of sustainability and cost-recovery.”

Consider some US examples of social entrepreneurship:

• Housing Works in New York uses its Used Book Café to generate more than $2 million annually for its work, which prioritizes advocacy for homeless people with HIV. The organization runs clinics, conducts public policy research, lobbies federal and state officials, even leads sit-ins. It is fearless, aggressive and stunningly effective – and its $30 million of annual work would be impossible were it not for its vast range of real estate, food service, retail and rental companies that help pay the bills.
• Pioneer Human Services is a community development corporation based in Seattle that assists a wide range of at-risk populations, including the unemployed, the homeless, ex-convicts, alcoholics and addicts. The organization serves 6,500 people a year and generates nearly all its $55 million budget through a web of ambitious subsidiary nonprofit businesses: cafes and a central kitchen facility for institutional customers, aerospace and sheet-metal industries, a construction company, food warehouses, a real-estate management group and consulting services for other nonprofits. Most of the jobs in these businesses are awarded to its at-risk clients, allowing it to further its mission to integrate clients back into society.
• The Rocky Mountain Institute, a leading promoter of alternative energy technology in Snowmass, Colorado, created E-Source in 1986 to provide in-depth analysis of services, markets, and technologies relating to energy efficiency and renewable energy production. In 1992 RMI secured a program-related investment from the MacArthur Foundation to move the work into a for-profit subsidiary. By 1998 it was generating about $400,000 for the parent nonprofit, but rmi decided it could do even better under new management, so it sold the company to Pearson plc in Britain for $8 million. Today, RMI assists and benefits from other for-profit spinoffs, such as Hypercar, Inc., which aims to create a lightweight body architecture to improve the efficiency of the entire US automobile fleet.
• Judy Wicks’ White Dog Café in Philadelphia is as much a community organizing center as a restaurant. Radical speakers from around the country provide a steady stream of public lectures. An adjacent store sells fair trade products and will soon be introducing a line of locally made clothing. The White Dog itself embodies principles of social justice and environmental stewardship by paying all employees a living wage, insisting on humanely raised meats and eggs, using locally grown ingredients and running on wind electricity. Twenty percent of profits from the restaurant go to the White Dog Café Foundation, carrying on the café’s mission through nonprofit activities.

These examples embody many possible models. A for-profit subsidiary can generate money for a parent nonprofit. Or, better still, a for-profit can become the change it seeks, by producing and selling socially important goods and services.

While we reject the libertarian argument that every human problem has an economic solution, many social-change issues clearly have economic dimensions that are susceptible to creative business plans. Hate nuclear power? Launch energy-service companies to spread conservation measures, or build local wind farms to take control of your own electricity future. Concerned about the poor, minorities and women having equal access to credit? Create more community banks, credit unions and micro-enterprise funds. Troubled by pharmaceutical prices that make life-saving drugs unattainable for impoverished people across the globe? Start, as several companies based in the developing world did, companies that mass-produce affordable generic versions of high-priced American drugs.

Socially responsible business should be not just a boutique sector of the private economy, but its mainstream. We have been impressed in recent years by the growing number of local businesspeople who not only “walk the walk” of social justice in the small details of their operations and products but also tout the virtues of local ownership. This third generation of entrepreneur-organizers is being led by groups like the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and by the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA). Each promotes local ownership of business, champions social justice and neighborhood revitalization, and pushes for new public policies that remove the tilts in a playing field that favors badly behaved big business.

Sooner or later, the concepts of social-change organization and of social-responsibility business should become indistinguishable. Truly responsible businesses would be owned by all members of a community (rich and poor), hire locally, expand local skills, comport with local labor and environmental standards, produce goods and services that meet urgent local needs and become allies of social justice movements. What better way to help the poor than to transform them into the captains, worker-bees, shareholders and customers of community-friendly business?

If foundations and donors had never existed and professional panhandling had been outlawed, social-change groups would have been forced to turn to creating and running new enterprises or new networks of local businesses, and our movement would be considerably healthier than it is today. Progressives have become the classic 20-something kid still living at home, expecting an allowance from deep-pocket parents for a few basic chores, while agreeing, as a condition for the chump change, to obey someone else’s rules on social change. It’s time to grow up and strike out on our own.

Here’s a challenge to activists (one we take seriously ourselves): let’s try to wean ourselves from the charity habit, say by three percent per year. Think about just one piece of your agenda that could be framed as a revenue generator, dream about it a little, develop a business plan and give it a try. If you lack the skills, skip your next fundraising class and instead attend one of thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurship programs around the world. Or hire someone who might start the entrepreneurial subsidiary of your nonprofit.

Gandhi understood that the key to freeing India was to transform his fellow citizens into economically productive agents by spinning their own cloth and taking their own salt from the sea. Martin Luther King Jr. implored African Americans to form their own credit unions and community development corporations. The secret to being as radical as we want to be – and as radical as we need to be – is to finance the revolution ourselves.

Michael Shuman is the vice president for enterprise development for the Training and Development Corporation. Merrian Fuller is a managing director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. This article was adapted from “Profits for Justice,” which first appeared in The Nation.