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| Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip,
October 2014
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October 30, 6 pm, Holyoke, MA: I’ll be exhibiting Business For a Better World (and selling my books) at Pioneer Valley Innovation Nights, at the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center, 100 Bigelow St, Holyoke, MA 01040—(a terrific facility—if you haven’t seen it, this is a great chance. It probably houses more computing power in one building than the entire world had when I was a teenager—and it’s powered largely with clean local hydropower.) Since it’s the night before Halloween, you get to dress as your favorite innovator (optional). No cost, but RSVPs requested. https://pioneervalley.innovationnights.com/content/pioneervalley-innovation-nights-pinsmass02
And *whether you attend or not,* please vote for my entry! Click on the products tab, go down to my blurb, and click the red “love this” button. (Note: this was not implemented as I go to press. Hopefully it’s working now.)
This is my first time exhibiting a concept as opposed to products and services—the idea that not only should we and can we solve hunger, poverty, war, and climate change, but business can make a good profit in the process. I feel like a 6th grader doing a science fair! If you live in Western Massachusetts, I’d very much appreciate it if you came by and said hi.
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This Month’s Tip: Do You “We, We, We All the Way Home”? |
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Remember that old nursery rhyme, “This Little Piggy Went to Market”? Remember the last line, “And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way home”?
Well, it might work for telling nursery rhymes to a toddler, but too many marketers try to adopt this line in their marketing. Instead of “wee, wee, wee,” they “we, we, we all the way home.”
You’ve seen it. You open up some brochure or webpage, and you read, “At ________ (insert company name), we think ___________ (insert platitude).
There are several problems with this, not the least of which is the way it shuts down creativity. It’s very hard to fill in that second blank with anything that’s actually interesting.
But the biggest problem is about perspective. This is all about THE COMPANY. But the Reader, the Website Visitor, the Prospect, or the Customer—I’m deliberately capitalizing this time, because I want you to perceive these people as people—doesn’t care about the company. That person, who you’d like to convince to buy from you, cares about his or her own issues. All your prospects have a need or desire to fill, a problem to solve, a goal to achieve—and they want to read copy that’s talking directly to them—helping them solve that problem or accomplish that goal. And blather like “At Acme, we care about our customers” isn’t going to cut it.
So when you “we, we, we all the way home,” instead of establishing yourself as the trusted expert, you actually turn that person away. Your prospect is left thinking, “all they want to do is brag. They’re not going to solve my problem. They’re not going to advance my goal.” And in today’s world, where attention and time are super-precious, they’re gone with a click, never to return. Next!
There is one big exception, though. If you can create copy that has the reader feeling that he or she is a part of your tribe, that you’re both in this together, the “we” is very appropriate—because THAT kind of we is inclusive. It draws in that reader—makes him or her feel special, valued, maybe even loved—and speaks directly to the problem or aspiration. Here’s an example:
“As one green business owner to another, we’ve all experienced the problem of trying to convince someone who just doesn’t get it about climate change. Maybe it’s time we tried a different approach.”
That example is rather general. More specific targeting would be much more powerful—for instance, rallying organic farmers against allowing the organic label on GMO foods (a real proposal, unfortunately) or getting renewable energy companies involved in preserving the energy credits that make their businesses much more viable.
And if you want help crafting powerful messages that speak directly to your prospect’s hopes, fears, and dreams, drop me a line or give me a call. It’s what I do for a living and if there’s a good fit, I’ll be happy to help. shel AT greenandprofitable.com, shel AT principledprofit.com, or 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern Time)
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| Friends/Colleagues who Want to Help |
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Global Oneness Day 2014, Friday, October 24, will be an amazing program with respected global leaders including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Marianne Williamson, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Dr. Larry Dossey, don Miguel Ruiz, Ken Wilber, Jean Houston, Ervin Laszlo, Neale Donald Walsch, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lynne McTaggart, Dr. Deborah Rozman, James O’Dea, Rinaldo Brutoco, Steve McIntosh, Humanity’s Team and AGNT leaders on the front line and many others.
I’ve personally learned enormous wisdom from Houston and Hubbard, in particular, and have benefited from several of the others. I feel so good about bringing this to your attention that I’ll be sending a solo mailer on that, closer to the time.
Come join Global Oneness Day and hear thought provoking discussion about our common bond, our Oneness with the Divine and all of life, and visions for how we will organize in the emerging new world. Join us and be part of the new consciousness that is transforming our planet and the way we live.
Register Now for Global Oneness Day
https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GlobalOneness14/
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Connect with Shel on Social Media |
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About Shel & This Newsletter
As a green business profitability/marketing consultant and copywriter…award-winning author of eight books… international speaker and trainer, blogger, syndicated columnist – Shel Horowitz shows how green, ethical, and socially conscious businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green, less-socially-aware competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/ publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors.
Shel Horowitz’s consulting firm, Green And Profitable, is the first business ever to earn Green America’s rigorous Gold Certification as a leading green company. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.
He began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way).
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| “As always, some of the links in this newsletter earn commissions—because I believe in the products and services enough to promote them (I get asked to endorse lots of other programs I don’t share with you, because I don’t find them worthy).” |
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| Another Recommended Book—Story Based Selling: Create, Connect, and Close |
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Story Based Selling: Create, Connect, and Close, by Jeff Bloomfield (Select Books, 2014)
This is a basic book about selling to the right side—the emotional side—of the brain, similar to many books I’ve read over the years, starting with Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by America’s Best Companies by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja—which I read in 1988!
But Bloomfield’s advice is still worth paying attention to, because I’m still encountering salespeople every day who don’t have a clue and are still trying to sell with methods we knew about in, say, 1958. And because, unlike other human-centered sales books I’ve read, he bases his research in neuroscience, yet presents it very accessibly.
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| Borrowing from a minister named Nathan Hurst, he lists 18 characteristics of a great communicator. Some of these are left-brain obvious, like content, credibility, and preparedness. Others are decidedly right-brain: passion, intensity, and self-revelation. And others are just plain surprising: the ability to speak without notes, and to incorporate humor, and movement for instance. Storytelling makes the list, of course. And so do brevity, pauses, and asking the audience for some sort of personal decision to change something.
Right from the beginning, Bloomfield grabs the reader’s attention by saying “a character will always deliver a greater impact than a pie chart.” That’s an appeal to emotion, to the right-brain. He follows up a few pages later, presenting essentially the same conclusion but framing it in intellectualized, left-brain language: “We train people incorrectly…to sell features, facts, and statistics. These all appeal to logic and are interpreted by a part of the brain that drives skepticism.” He points out that great communicators “all speak to dreams and aspirations, not fear or anger.”
In a sales context, this means that you choose stories that will establish trust with your listener—and you’ll need to choose those stories individually, as a natural part of the conversation. You can’t just trot out the same canned stories in every sales encounter.
—> And this means you have to be a really good listener. Jamming inappropriate stories into your sales narrative not only feels inauthentic, it will repel your prospect. (The importance of listening well is made in every sales book I’ve ever liked.)
His basic point is that we hunger much more for connection than for transactional encounters, and telling stories is a great way to do that—particularly when you include personal illustrations, metaphors, analogies or similes, and visual aids or props. He also identifies five elements of a story: purpose, connection, barrier, “aha factor,” and of course, resolution.
But all is not Kumbaya. Bloomfield says the brain actually needs a certain level of conflict, and will reject anything that seems too perfect. In the sales process, this means listening not only for the spoken objections, but the unspoken ones. You can’t address them until you can draw those objections up to the surface, and you won’t make the sale while the prospect has legitimate objections. Showing your own vulnerability is one way to build that trust, to break down the prospect’s feeling of isolation.
Bloomfield concludes with the stirring advice to be willing to go off-script, to embrace imagination as an ally. He challenges his readers, “Do not check your right brain at the door when your workday starts.” |
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