September 2001
Greetings, it's been a while.
What's In It For Me? How to turn your
ego into sales.
Us humans are a bunch of selfish
egomaniacs. All we really care about is what's in it for us. No matter
what we do, it ultimately comes down to self-satisfaction. At work, when
interviewing for a promotion all we think about the new salary, what we
will buy with it. We think about the prestige the new position will get
us. You read this newsletter because you hope that there might be a hint
that will help you get what you want, not because you want to feed my
ego by reading.
People come to my seminars not to pay
me money because I want to make money, but for the same selfish reasons.
Hoping that I might have some tidbit of information that they can use
TODAY to get more stuff. The money part is of secondary importance. An
expense of getting what THEY want.
We start businesses with the goal of
getting independence and money. We want to set our own hours. Look at
all the marketing out there - it's all about US. What we do. How we do
it. Internet marketers are the worst offenders. Most web sites I look at
has been written because the web site owner wants something. He or she
wants to make money by selling books. Tapes. Courses. Products. When we
talk with friends, family or colleagues we can't wait to get the floor
so we can talk about what we want. Stuff that's important to us. Who
cares what they talk about!
I have done some research lately. In
conversations with friends I have slowly gotten away from topics that
had anything to do with the people I was talking to. I wanted to see
when exactly their eyes got blurry and they lost interest. It doesn't
take long! It's when the topic has nothing to do with them, their
interests or concerns. The minute I start talking about topics beyond
their sphere of interest they get glassy eyes and simply wait it out
until they can get back at me. Some people are better at listening than
others. I am pretty good at it, I can often think about my own things
when people talk to me about stuff I really don't care about.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk to
eachother! It's good to "dump and unload" to friends. That's
what they say anyway.
So what does that mean? It means that
if we could take a small percentage of the energy we spend thinking
about what WE want and channel that effort into understanding what THEY
want I think we can become more influential and get better results.
On web sites it's simple. If you could
understand your target prospects better, understand what they WANT and
what their PROBLEMS are you could simply say:
"You want more business so you can
make more money. Here's how". And people would respond.
Bottom line: Eat your ego if you want
something. Feed THEIR egos. If you can meet their wants and needs while
satisfying
yours - you win. They don't necessarily
need to know your needs either. So why bore them with them? Saying that
you want to be the best web designer in town does not produce results at
all. Who cares? Saying that you want to help folks make money from their
web sites is better. Having others say that your'e the GURU that made
their web site productive is best.
Take care of your ego - it's what's
drives you but take a moment to understand what your prosepct's wants
are. They are the ones with the money you want!
Ingvar.