Rainmaking Secrets

I am often asked how long it takes a customer to fix on their impression of a sales person.

I used to answer, “4 minutes.”

This reply was based on research on the time it took job interviewers to make up their mind on the suitability of a job applicant.

However, I now answer “10 seconds.”

In their remarkable studies, social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, have shown that we often form positive or negative impressions of people in a mere “blink” or “think slice” of time.

After subjects watched three two-second video clips of professors teaching, their teaching ratings predicted the actual end-of-the-term rating by the professors own students.

To get a feel on someones energy and warmth, the researchers concluded just six seconds is usually enough.

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I keep dipping into Clancy and Krieg’s, Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, and found this gem of a fact.

Three years ago, Clancy and Krieg’s firm, Copernicus Marketing Consulting, hired Dr. David Lloyd, a content analyst to examine 400 different prime-time television commercials.

Lloyd’s remarkable finding;

“Only 7 percent of the commercials communicate a clear and compelling selling message.”

No wonder so few consumers when asked, could say much about the two leading brands in the 50 largest product categories that Copernicus Marketing Consulting surveyed.

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A man is stumbling through the woods, totally drunk, when he comes upon a preacher baptising people in the river. He proceeds to walk into the water and subsequently bumps into the preacher. The preacher turns around and is almost overcome by the smell of alcohol, whereupon he asks the drunk: “Are you ready to find Jesus?”
The drunk answers: “Yes, I am.”

So the preacher grabs him and dunks him in the water. He pulls him up and asks the drunk: “Brother, have you found Jesus?”
The drunk replies: “No, I haven’t found Jesus.”

The preacher, shocked at the answer, dunks him into the water again for a little longer. He pulls him out and asks again: “Have you found Jesus, my Brother?”
The drunk again answers: “No, I haven’t found Jesus.”

By this time, the preacher is at his wits’ end and dunks the drunk for about 30 seconds. When he begins kicking his arms and legs, the preacher pulls him up and again asks: “For the love of God, have you found Jesus?”

Gasping for breath, the drunk wipes his eyes and splutters: “Are you sure this is where he fell in?”

Doesn’t this preacher remind you of so many presenters and salespeople who try to swamp you with words and powerpoints?

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The Mills Group and our Drilling for Diamonds program uses the acronym POSEM to highlight the 5 key steps in creating a marketing plan.

Present Position: Where are we now?
Objectives: Where do we want to be?
Strategy: How do we get there?
Execution: What specific plays do we implement?
Measurement: How do we know we have succeeded?

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I can’t help quoting and raving about Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg’s “Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head.”

Perhaps it’s because the authors agree with so many of my prejudices. They remind us the marketing plan is an essential document for all businesses of all sizes– from large corporates to start-ups.

“The marketing plan is to company success as a road map is to car travel.

It can act as a tracking mechanism, to determine the budget, and as a scale against which the company can measure marketing effectiveness.

And it is an internal communications tool that everyone understands where the business is going and how it plans to get there.”

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Marketers and advertisers define positioning in a number of ways.

According to Clancy and Krieg;

“In plain English, its the sales message, the elevator pitch designed to motivate to buy your brand… A positioning statement must be a few words, phrases or sentences about your brand that you want to fix in the minds of your target prospect.”

Enough said.

Can you describe your brand’s positioning in a single, succinct statement?

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This is the title of Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg’s latest book.

The subtitle “How disciplined fact -based marketing can drive extraordinary growth and profits” says it all.

Clancy and Krieg paint a compelling case for treating marketing as a science. The authors show case-study after case-study that instinctive gut-based marketing more often than not leads to dumb decisions. No wonder most CMO’s hold onto their jobs for just 23 months.

All professional marketers should own this book.

My only reservation is most of the examples apply to consumer goods and brands rather than services.

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Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro in their book The Three Tensions tell us about the daily pressure managers have to produce short-term earnings. To meet short-term targets some 81% of managers surveyed said;

“they would cut back on R&D, marketing or IT if necessary to meet a short-term earnings goal.”

More frighteningly;

“77% said they would often, or sometimes delay a project to meet a short-term earnings goal, even if the project would be profitable.”

Dodd and Favaro show the excuse most mangers offer for focusing on the short-term - that capital markets are biased towards short-term earnings - is largely a myth.

Managers create their own problems by projecting unrealistic short-term targets. They would be better off setting realistic goals based on sustainable earnings.

The trick is;

“to manage the long term by managing how the short-term is produced.”

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