The Schmuck Vs. The Good Buddy

There’s a lot of discussion these days about frequency — specificially, how often you should email your house list.

There are two schools of thought now in the cyber-marketing community: One, the “Vikings” who treat everyone who opts in as a resource to be pillaged and re-pillaged until it’s burnt to the ground. These guys hit their list often, and without mercy.

It can work. But it has a price — namely, you will burn out the interest of your list in what you offer very quickly. For many marketers, that’s just fine. They know how to find endless veins of traffic, and lure fresh meat into their lair efficiently — where, each newbie will be forced to either act or opt out.

The other school of thought: Treat your list like a precious herd. Nurture it, and go for the long-term relationship.

This can work, too. Especially if you’ve got an inkling of the “lifetime value” of each person on your list. Sometimes a customer will buy several things from you, but not all at once. Maybe they need time to devour each product as they buy it, or maybe they just need to “come into heat” about what you have every few months, and ignore you the rest of the time.

This is called “working the back end”, and if your marketing model has lots of stuff to offer an interested prospect, you want to nurse them along tenderly rather than rape them and leave them for dead.

Like I said — both models can work. You have a choice.

But here’s something most marketers seldom consider: How welcome you are in your prospect’s life.

Neither model will work very well if you’re a pain. Both can work like crazy if you bond well.

So ask yourself: Is your “persona” a schmuck who repels trust, or a good buddy who reeks of credibility?

This doesn’t mean you have to be a Mr. Nice Guy. (Haven’t you had a good buddy before who was pretty much a beast, but still fun to hang around with?)

Most marketers are now aware of the “Rich Jerk” phenomenon — a very crafty marketer who has styled himself after the old Robert Ringer model being a very effective asshole. After you’ve been in business for a while… any business… you start to realize that being a nice person doesn’t win you any points. And yet, being a cold-hearted bastard can postiion you — sometimes — as the guy who gets the most cake.

I don’t recommend this tactic. I play hard-ball, myself… but only as far as getting the job done. I’m more like the hard-ass sarge who kicks your butt in boot camp, because that’s the fastest and most effective way to get you in shape. It’s actually an act of tough-love.

I do this, because that’s what it took to shake me out of my daze as a young, clueless drifter with zero discipline. I would have never had the “a-ha!” experience that started my now-legendary career arc if I’d taken an easier road.

Some guys, however, are mean just because deep down they’re wounded animals, and they aren’t happy unless everyone around them is miserable. They want your self-esteem as gut-shot as their own.

Anyway, that’s a different lesson.

For the email frequency thing, it’s better to think of the people in your life who you want to hear from every day… or every week… or however long you’re considering emailing your list. Really put some thought into this — what kind of personality does it take to make you welcome in your prospect’s life, as often as you’re going to email him?

I urge every marketer to work on their personality — it’s the “X” factor in wild success that most rookies miss entirely. They’re too obsessed with the flotsam and jetsam of just getting any response at all.

This is an advanced tactic, however. Think long and hard about what it would take for someone to be welcome in your life… to make you eager to open their email, every time one appeared in your in-box.

Most marketers blow this, because they ignore the social dynamics of weaseling their way into their prospect’s day. A few master it, however, and they enjoy amazingly high readership and high action.

Something to think about. Be that guy your list loves to hear from.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

P.S. I put my first podcast up at iTunes. It’s under business and marketing, and titled “How To Write A Damn Good Ad… In 9 Minutes.” Check it out. It’s free.

P.P.S. Also, I’ve fired up the RSS feed on this blog, and installed a way to be notified when I post. It’s still a fragile little option, so let me know if you have trouble, and I’ll sic my geek on it post haste.

P.P.P.S. The Apprentice double-feature was kind of lame this week, don’t you think? The basic lesson is good enough — do your detective work and research, and success is a heck of a lot easier. Plus: Making assumptions without adequate input or info is just silly.

Better tasks would create better drama, though. I caught myself yawning and able to predict the outcome.

Or… gosh… maybe we just witnessed a shark-jumping…

The Bane Of Integrity

Just now walked back into my office after… yeah, I know… watching The Apprentice.

I feel odd, too. The wonderful woman I share my life with disagrees whole-hearted with me on this, and we usually agree.

But this time, I actually felt something other than raw amusement at the end of the show. I’ve always known that Trump is just a royal prick, and I have zero respect for him. If you’ve heard him speak, and you have a different opinion, I would be astonished.

He’s very insecure, he’s a bully, and he surrounds himself with oily sycophants whose main job is to kiss his butt and fluff his sour ego. If Trump was an oddity in business, it would merely be entertaining. But he’s just the most visible example of a breed that dominates capitalism.

Emulate him if you must… but know that you will be required to kill off every scrap of integrity in your soul to attain his position in life.

The guy he fired tonight, though a bit of a fool, at least has integrity. He threw himself on the barbed wire, and part of me respects him for that. In that kind of situation — trapped in a game where someone has to be sacrificed, and no one deserves it… the good leader steps up. People make fun of alpha apes in the wild, because they’re lazy and selfish… but when danger approaches, they never hesitate to throw themselves in harm’s way.

I’ve talked with a lot of guys who’ve been in deadly combat. And they all say the same thing: You cannot tell beforehand who will chicken out, and who will step up. The big, strong guy with the beligerent mouth can turn out to be a coward… and guys like Audie Murphy — who was described as looking like a girl scout — are dismissed and ingored and belittled… until they prove themselves, astounding their doubters.

It’s not ego and bragging that grease the skids of success. It’s action. Maybe you believe Trump is a man of action and decisiveness… and maybe you could prove it to me. But I’ve seen a lot of people in power in my time, and I’ve become a fair judge of character. And Trump doesn’t measure up. How do you think he would have acted, put in the situation of the guy he let go?

Tonight’s episode had all the trappings of a Shakespearean tragedy — lots of choices to make, none of them easy or good. The young man who got the boot understood, and protected those he felt responsible for. So far, he’s the ONLY contestant who’s shown a scrap of leadership and integrity.

And it got him fired.

Yeah, he screwed up, a bit. And yeah, it’s a silly game, after all. (The absurdity of asking young people to become experts at jingles in a single evening is like a plot designed in hell — and when you add the fact that veteran admen know jingles are mostly worthless sales tools anyway, the situation becomes farce.)

In my career, I have studied under the best in the biz — legendary salesmen and writers and entrepreneurs who have an uncanny sense of being able to work themselves into a position to be successful, against all odds. And yet, I’ve seen them take the fall, too. Even when they could have taken the easy way out.

Seeing that, in my learning years, kept me in this crazy meta-game of business. Much of what I saw during my time behind the thrones of so many corporations actually sickened me. I have a romantic side that I just couldn’t squelch, and often I felt that quirk would eventually disqualify me from being successful.

Because so many of the truly successful people I encountered were just rotten bastards.

Fortunately, I found heroes scattered among the selfish cowards and bullies. People who didn’t flinch when tough decisions had to be made… and that jived with how I was brought up. To take responsibility, even if it meant getting burned.

Screw Trump. He may have the bucks, but he’s hollow. And like the cowardly blowhards of talk radio, he cannot handle confrontation. (It’s true — look up the story about him and Merv Griffin, a business opponent Trump thought he could demolish easily… until Griffin ate Donald’s lunch, over and over. Then look up the recent lawsuit Trump has brought against a small-time author who said some things he didn’t like. Petty, ego-driven nonsense. Real men don’t “get even” when they’re wrong.)

It’s complex, I know. The kind of romantic “stand up for something” attitude I’m talking about is what got the Light Brigade butchered in the Crimea… they became legends, but they didn’t live to know it.

You gotta make your own decisions in life. Right now, the guys hogging the limelight tend toward the Machiavellian rather than a more pure code of honor. In game theory, that’s what works much of the time.

But winning is about more than just amassing bucks and beating down the other guy. Please trust me on this.

I guess I have “beer” morals in a world dominated by “champagne” entitlement.

I can’t believe this episode riled me up so much.

The only thing I wish had happened… was that the guy who got fired had the sense to stand up and turn his back on Trump before he could deliver his patented “Yer fired!” bombast. In other words, fire Donald, and quit with dignity.

Or, screw dignity. Give The Donald the finger as you leave the boardroom. Get the last word in, and live in infamy.

Okay, I’m done. I feel better, too. Something about this integrity thing just got my blood moving.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

P.S. I had to disable the comments for a while, because some Swedish spammers were sending tsunami’s of spam. Beat them down, and comments are again welcome. Feel free to rain on my parade or support my hair-brained notions, to your heart’s content. Always happy to hear what people have to say…

Just Check It Out, Already

I have been hot and heavy into experimenting with online selling lately.

Good Lord, it’s wicked fun.

Profitable, too.

Wow.

Now, I’ve been screwing around on the Web since the mid-1990s… and actually wrote one of the first Web-based sales letter, waaaaaaaaaay back before there was a Paypal and before Google became a verb. I’ve done damn well, too, and helped a lot of other people get their act together online.

It’s a little different than other direct marketing vehicles… but, then, ALL the ways direct marketing is used are a little different than each other. There are quirks and separate rules you need to master in the mail, in print advertising, in the Yellow Pages, on infomercials, selling door-to-door… and, gosh, even the Web has some weird twists and turns to the “standard” salesmanship model of saying “Here’s what I’ve got — how many do you want?”

I’m as hip as anyone about what works on the Web today. Over time, my instincts have proven correct on vast numbers of issues that people used to argue with me about. For example: Allowing links to interupt your sales message… relying on audio or video as “eye candy” without making the graphics “earn” their place in your pitch… and cramming good (not lame) testimonials into the first “screen page”. (The now-common design element of having a long damn list of testimonials run down the right hand column is all mine, I don’t mind saying. And they laughed at me when I first did it…)

What spurred this latest love-affair with testing and experimenting is simply having a good friend decide to do some joint-ventures with me. I “tricked” Stan into getting excited, by cavalierly inviting him along to a seminar my colleague Harlan Kilstein put on recently in San Francisco… I knew that getting a taste of the potential profit picture available online would put ants in my friend’s pants.

Stan dove into the technical side of getting sales via the Web with a passion that’s contagious… and now I’m all nervous and giddy again, eager to get back after this brave new online world.

Frankly, business had started to drag for me. I’m always tempted to retire, and go write bad novels or start another bar band, whenever I get bored with marketing and advertising.

But the reason it gets boring, is because I get too isolated sometimes. There’s NOTHING boring about great marketing, and making tons of money. I love it.

And mostly, I love the daily grind of doing business. Unless it gets too predictable… or too frustrating.

Being an entrepreneur takes care of the predictability problem — there’s nothing like working without a net on hair-brained projects to get your blood moving.

But over the last year, I’ve just had one bad experience with “technical guys” after another. I searched out the best geeks around, got personal recommendations, paid them a lot of money, even gave them marketing help. Still, each one failed me, miserably. Disappeared for months at a time without finishing projects for me, left nagging details unresolved no matter how often I talked to them about it, and generally behaved like high school kids with spring fever.

My sites languished without name capture pages put up. Simple copy changes never got implemented, resulting in embarrassing mistakes that affected sales. And critical links sent people off into the ether, never to be found again.

I absolutely hate working with jaded, irresponsible people.

I have finally found some technical assistance I can not just rely on… but I can also enjoy being around. Having a pal get involved is refreshing… and seeing the potential of the Web through his blossoming excitement restores my sense of wonder and awe at this amazing marketing machine that has changed our lives so thoroughly and deeply.

(I’ve also found another techie who — amazingly — has a brilliant understanding of how the Web “works”, combined with true old-style professionalism. And I will never reveal her name, because I cannot stand the thought that she might get too busy to remain the reliable veteran she is.)

Anyway, I’ll be sharing what I learn (mostly in my newsletter, the Rant) from this latest bout of experimentation and testing. One of the great things about online marketing is that there’s plenty of opportunity for everyone, and it’s just silly to be selfish with discoveries and information.

Right now, I’ve fooling around with offering some screaming deals via a new website: www.marketing-rebel-edu.com. The “edu” is my attempt at humor, mimicking the “.edu” of educational sites.

Actually, what we’ve got at www.marketing-rebel-edu.com is a market test. My “insider’s list” had first peek through a special email blast several days ago… and now I’m alerting you. Hop over there, and see what the fuss is all about.

Not sure how long the site will be up during this test. We’re experimenting with little details and paying attention to how every design and copy tweak affects results.

As always, things are changing at lightning speed online. I’ve been advising people not to get too stuck on any technical trick or model, no matter how successful it seems to be. Because tricks and models mutate. Right now, there are some amazing marketing models involving Google Adwords (done right, not done poorly), name capture pages (again, done right), and super-clever follow-up to buyers and non-buyers.

Also, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in foreign sales on all my sites — especially in Asia and Europe.

This has me thinking about putting on a European seminar. That’s how much this new excitement has changedmy attitude — from being ready to retire, to getting jiggy with bold plans to conquer the world again.

Check out the market test, will you?

Thanks.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

Empty Bragging, Noxious Excuses

I promise not to obsess on using The Apprentice as my main subject in this blog… but, gosh, it’s just so damn juicy with great story lines.

You don’t have to even watch it to fathom the main lessons, either. Just listen in to the water cooler chat, and you’ll get the gist.

Couple of quick insights to how ego and self-delusion can destroy you: First, last week the obnoxious beefy guy got the axe. Not much of a surprise there — he’d alienated his entire team, and was clearly in the midst of a personality breakdown.

What I found interesting was his “guarantee” of not getting fired. He said, to the camera, “I guarantee I will return from the boardroom.” And he said it so emphatically that spittle rained toward the camera. (“I… WILL… RETURN… etc.”)

Emphatic. Believe me or else.

This effort to twist reality by sheer impotent force of will echoed in the ad created by his team for the cereal product project. Now, these apprentices can be forgiven for not having advanced marketing chops — if they were already drop-dead experts, they wouldn’t be dancing for a spot in Trump’s hierarchy.

So I don’t fault them for being lame. Rather, I want to point out that, as utter advertising rookies, the copy they came up with is dangerously close to efforts I see while critiquing my Insider’s ads: Introducing The Next Generation… Finally, The Cereal For Everyone.

Honest teachers will immediately try to beat the urge to use “introducing” type headlines out of you for good. It’s weak copy, and makes Barnum (the guy who really knew how to introduce something to a gullible public) roll in his grave every time it gets dragged out.

Rookies get confused. They’re told the company is introducing a new product… and after hours of banging their heads against the wall trying to be “creative” and “clever”, they end up trying to bull their target audience over with the force of being emphatic.

The beefy guy’s emphatic promises were hollow, despite his vehemence. And the team’s ad was stupid, despite their delight in pretending to be a circus ring-leader.

As kids, I remember many times betting someone a million dollars that I was right about some minor point or another. It was supposed to carry the power of a double-dog dare, and blow him away — who, after all, could withstand the confidence of a boy willing to bet a million dollars on something?

Didn’t work then. Still doesn’t work in the adult world.

Second interesting point: A couple of shows ago, a team member lost the project by insisting they could cross Manhattan in twenty minutes to reach a crucial meeting in time. The irony was that the guy actually lived in Manhattan, and should have known better. They missed the meeting by forty minutes, and the fed-up executives they were supposed to interview just split.

That guy got fired, as well he should have.

But there’s a deeper lesson there, too. Namely, professionalism.

This is a serious point of contention for me, because I hate having my time wasted, and I took the trouble to discipline myself not to waste anyone else’s time, either.

It ain’t that hard.

My idea of professionalism is simple: You are where you said you’d be, when you said you’d be there, having done what you said you’d do.

In school, you can get out of being graded harshly when you fail if you have a good excuse. That’s a piss-poor fall-back position to bring into the business world, though.

You miss a deadline, and it can cost vast sums of very real money. And ruin your reputation in very real ways.

Some people are chronically late because they relish the power. It’s a passive-aggressive thing… and if you suspect someone is chronically wasting your time for the small thrill of holding you hostage to their sick need for control, leave now.

Other “late people” are just victims of thier own delusion. They remember the one time they got across town in twenty minutes, and ignore the four hundred times it took longer. There’s a reluctance to summon the energy required for the trip, and a reluctance to begin gearing up for whatever new kind of thinking the meeting will drag out of you. So you put it off as long as possible… and often longer.

If you’re chronically late, you need to change your behavior NOW. And you cannot accomplish this by simply being emphatic with yourself about it.

Even you won’t listen to your bullshit promises.

No, you need a plan. It sounds simple, but it escapes a lot of people just the same.

If you must be somewhere at 4 pm, you will be late if you start getting ready to leave at 4 pm. Yet, I know people who do this.

In fact, if it takes forty minutes to get where you’re going, you are late if you’re still in the office at 3:20. The Theory of Relativity does not bend just because you’ve got rotten planning skills.

Here’s the pro rule: If your meeting’s at 4, you are not walking into the room at 4, nor pulling into the parking lot at 4, nor sitting at a traffic light a block away at 4. At 4 pm, you have already been sitting calmly in the place you’re supposed to be for at least five minutes, with your thoughts gathered and your friggin’ shit together.

You do not “lose” the time you spend waiting for a meeting to start. It’s still your time. Meditate, read, work on notes, or just sit and enjoy being alive. But do it where you’re supposed to be… not back in your office or home getting ready, pretending you can navigate forty minutes of traffic in ten minutes this time.

Figure out the worst time it’s taken you to get across town. Then add ten minutes.

This way, you won’t have to watch for cops as you speed, you won’t be a menace trying to blow lights you’ve missed, and you won’t arrive with an adrenaline level through the roof.

Remember: No matter how good your excuse is, the people waiting for you don’t want to hear it.

If you’re late, you’re going to have to rely on your history. If you’re chronically on time, you’ll be forgiven. If you’re a “late person”, all you’ll ever get are eye-rolls as you waste more of their time trying to make your boring tale of wrecks, detours and slow tourists sound believeable.

This kind of simple discipline is not hard to pull off.

It’s just rare.

Stay frosty…

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

‘Nother Glitch

Quick note: If you have emailed me in the last three days, there is a good chance your missive was sent into “Nowhere Land” by ghosts in my machine.

Despite having backup behind backup — fortified by multiple firewall, virus and cookie protection — some sneaky ass little application tunneled into my hard drive and is happily chewing up my productivity. Massive tech help is on the case, and I expect things to return to normal this afternoon… but be advised that any silence on my end probably means your email never arrived.

It’s like the old Silk Road, back during the days when info and goods had to travel by caravan. No matter how smooth the ride would be in a perfect world, it’s a dangerous adventure in the real world. Thieves, con men, viruses and the perverse humor of Nature all conspire to keep anyone from reaching Grandma’s house without incident.

Keeps life interesting.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

Lessons From The Donald

Okay, I’m now completely sucked into this round of The Apprentice.

By the laws of Hollywood, it should have jumped the shark already… I at least expected the show to start obsessing more on the personal relationships of the group, to amp up the “soap opera” element for viewers too dim to follow the business lessons.

But the producers have resisted doing that… and good for them. They’re right to gouge deep into the “personalities” of the participants, because that’s a huge part of real business life. And this is a competition, with a lot at stake.

And yet, show after show somehow manages to present actual marketing lessons, interspersed with the mayhem and back-stabbing.

I like the whole approach. It’s riveting for a marketer.

This past show was good on several levels. The wonderful woman I share my life with — who is a marketing expert in her own right (but in the corporate world, not the entrepreneurial realm I lurk in) — noticed last season that the producers were “fore-shadowing” during the show… so, if you paid attention, you could actually predict who got it in the end.

Not so this season. There’s a tasty element of the board game “Clue” here — it’s nearly a murder mystery type of plot, with each character playing their role to the hilt. It’s Grand Guignol high theater.

And yet, it’s also real life. These people weren’t assigned roles, and aren’t reading from scripts. These are the types of deliciously-perverse characters that you can only hope populate your slice of the business world at some point or another.

During a dinner I hosted for the experts at my recent seminar, the table was packed with one of the strangest cast of real-life characters ever seen in one place. It was a legitimate version of the Algonquin Table… with all the clash of egos and flash of genius wit you only get when you’re really, really lucky.

I’m used to it, but it was refreshing to be reminded how lucky I am to have such larger-than-life people in my circle.

Let me tell you — it’s never boring when your colleagues include brilliant nut-cases and charming drama junkies.

And the current Apprentice cast isn’t boring, either. It’s like watching a good novel being written, and the characters evolve. There’s the arrogant smart guy (who gets his ego handed back to him in a bloody mess the first show)… the stout guy with the social skills of a chimpanzee (targeted as “must go” by the rest of his team, despite his proven ability to survive and see his enemies crushed instead, ala “Art of War”)… the sociopathic woman (shocked, shocked to discover her looks aren’t keeping her safe in this raw environment, and coming to terms with being out of control for the first times in her life)… the innocent kid, the jaded Israeli soldier, the scheming lawyer, the brewing emotional basket case…

It’s just fabulous theater.

Last week, hubris again won out. That seems to be standard operating procedure early in the show, because it’s happened a lot — project managers obsess on getting rid of someone they hate, and refuse to put their “friends” at risk in the boardroom (forgetting this is a game first)… and Trump tells ’em to take a hike, based almost entirely on the stupidity of not bringing the right people back in front of him to be fired.

God, it’s Shakespearean.

After the first few rounds of blood-letting, we no longer get to see the stunned faces of people who have never been told “no” in their lives before coming on the show… they all seem to get culled early.

Coming from humble beginnings myself, and surmounting a fair amount of adversity to get where I am, I cherish those moments of the privileged running face-first into a nasty life lesson like that. If they’re smart, they’ll allow the lesson to help them grow.

However, in the cab ride out, given the opportunity to have the last word, most choose to exonerate themselves, blame everyone else, and refuse to acknowledge they could have possibly been wrong about any decision they made.

Sounds like our current political landscape. The country is overflowing with hubris these days.

The Apprentice wannabe’s who survive to fight another round get to examine their belief systems more closely than at any other time in their careers. You can believe you’re an “idea guy”, or that your mere presence in a brainstorm meeting is magic because that’s what you’ve been told, or that “attitude” is what it’s all about… until those beliefs get shaken.

This group is lucky. They’re getting their belief systems rocked, hard, often and early. The opportunity to learn massive lessons in business are in their face every day.

Back when I was a slave to The Man in the corporate world, I would sometimes imagine myself being a character in a movie… just to survive the inanity and bullshit of the average day in the office.

I realize now that the tactic is actually a clue on how to live well. Count yourself lucky if you are surrounded by interesting characters, and your business presents a little drama now and again.

Life is about challenge.

So, if you’re gonna waste a few hours watching the boob tube, why not watch “deep” and learn more about the game of life. The Apprentice — for all its faults (including the jackass Trump, bless his larger-than-life heart) — is a giddy, exciting, real-time mystery novel I can’t wait to watch again.

And remember: The personalities you despise the most are likely reflections of your own personality. Maybe the dark side, maybe the side you’re just oblivious of right now. Pay attention to your reactions — your emotional response gauges only go ballistic when they recognize familiar behavior.

Something to think about.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

PS: I see that someone, in a past comment, defended The Donald as being “real” or something. I never said he isn’t real, and he’s certainly a success. My warning is about his ideas on business — he really doesn’t have much to say in the way of useable advice, because he’s so full of his own platitudes (which he never actually follows himself). Maybe you could pick up a few good tricks from him, but mostly he’s about leveraging money and using inside contacts.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that most entrepreneurs aren’t in a position to leverage money. They’re more about making it in the first place.

No. My beef is that Trump is just the ringleader of a great circus. He’s amazing entertainment, but not the reason the shows works like it does. The genius belongs to the producers, who set up the circumstances and games, and and stock the show with fascinating characters.

Martha Stewart is just as savvy as Trump… maybe more so, considering she actually did rise from nothing (where Trump was a privileged guy handed a headstart)… but her show bombed because she isn’t entertaining. She spouts the same platitudes as The Donald, but without the venom and viciousness.

Trump is almost a cartoon character, bullying and alpha to a ridiculous degree.

But, as a character, he shines.

I don’t like the man, but I love the character.

Done. Next.

Yawn…

Finally got a full night’s sleep here, after all the rigamarole and anxiety of putting on such an intense event like the Hot Seat Workshop last weekend.

It was a blast, and by all incoming accounts a fabulous success. Glad I did it, had fun, and no, I don’t think I’ll do it again. Sorry if you missed it.

I want to publicly give out a big, sloppy “Thanks” to all the world-class experts who attended and lent their savvy and insight to the Hot Seats: Dean Jackson, Harlan Kilstein, Sam Fishbein, Stan Dahl, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero and of course my good friend David Deutsch. In that amazing group, you have top copywriters with controls for the largest mailers in the world, recognized salesmanship gurus, consultants to huge companies like Exxon and Wells Fargo, and cutting edge marketers who for years have been the first to exploit the most advanced online tools available.

It was a stunning two-day display of insider secret-sharing, and going deep with the good stuff that makes marketing outrageously exciting and embarrassingly profitable.

Easily the most fun I’ve had in a seminar… and I’ve produced and co-produced something like fifty of the suckers in my career. This was something special.

And now, for my next act… another nap.

These events are exhausting.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

Important News For Snow Wimps

Two quick points:

1. All the slots in my big damn Hot Seat Workshop are filled. I couldn’t wedge anyone else in if you bribed me — in fact, it’s so full because the last guy I accepted had the good sense to bribe me to get squeezed in.

So, please — no more attempts at bribery for this event. She’s locked up tight.

2. Now… about those hysterical reports of an incoming storm. This is for all the attendees coming in from overseas and across the continent: THE STORM IS A BUST.

It must be a slow news day. I just fielded a call from my pal Dean in Florida, who was wondering how many feet of snow he’d have to plow through to reach the hotel.

Answer: Zero.

The storm is a total loser, folks. There’s some brisk (okay, icy) air swooping down from Canada as a lame-ass low pressure system attempts to stumble across the Sierras. But any snow we get will be a light dusting.

It’s no big deal. Check www.weather.com for Reno, NV before you leave home, if you need an update. And relax already.

Heck — I moved to this little patch of high-desert, nestled in the bosom of the gorgeous Sierra Nevada range, because of the mild, but still vivid, actual seasons. The spring and fall around the valley is just stunning, the summer appropriately toasty, and the winter cold and wet, like God intended.

Before the move, I lived on the beach in Los Angeles during a ten-year drought, when the temperature seldom went above eighty or below fifty-five. Yuck. It’s nice for a vacation, but boring longterm.

Give me a little raw, invigorating nature once in a while.

Not too much, mind you. Enough to keep the mountains snow-capped and the air bracing.

Real weather.

If you’re coming to Reno, prepare yourself before walking out of the air terminal — the sight of the Sierras in front of you will take your breath away.

Just wear a coat, okay?

Okay.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

Shut The Hell Up Already

I honestly tried to stay away from the latest round of The Apprentice. The Donald continues to remind me how easily money can turn you into a fuzzy-headed, sleazy jerk… and his ideas on business are almost absurdly infantile.

Hark unto this: He did NOT earn his wealth with savvy business decisions. He cheats.

Anyway, that’s what the latest best-selling expose of the man says. And Trump is suing the author for saying it… which not only boosts sales of the book and gets the author on all the talk shows (smart move, Donny), but also leads one to believe there must be at least some truth to the allegations to cause such an over-reaction.

And yet… I have been sucked into the pathos of the show once again.

It’s like junk. One glance, and you just gotta see who gets fired.

Tonight was yet another great unintended business lesson, as it turns out. If you didn’t catch the show (and really, I only perk up during the last half hour, when the blood-letting begins in earnest), the zaftig princess talked her way into getting the boot. Donald was working up a lather over the incompetence of the self-annointed “Mensa genius” boy wonder sitting next to her, so close to firing the twerp that the “f” was burbling in his throat… when the princess piped up, trying to wedge some not-very-clever back-handed compliment into the ring.

Donald told her to shut up. She persisted. He tried to quiet her again. She simply could not close her yap.

And so he fired her. Just to shut her up. Was pissed off she made him do it, in fact… and he snarled at the boy wonder on his way out, threatening him with future abuse. Trump really, really, really wanted to fire the boy… but the princess forced his hand.

The lesson is just a bit deeper than the old “Art of War” saw about not interupting the destruction of an enemy.

When I was coming up the ranks, I sought out older salesmen who had honed their chops in the street, doing door-to-door sales. These guys — a vanishing breed — understand human behavior better than most psychotherapists.

And here is what they taught me: The biggest problem rookies have is not saying enough to make the sale. My friend Jeff Paul is a natural salesman, and he tells a story about his own training — when he was sticking to a script during his first face-to-face sales session with a prospect… and his gut just insisted that he add a final piece of salesmanship to the pitch.

He said — after delivering the memorized script of the “standard” pitch for the product — this: “Now, got get your check book and a pen.” This almost caused his trainer to have a coronary. It was too ballsy for most salesmen.

Not for Jeff. He sensed, correctly, that the pitch needed just a bit more oomph. And he provided it. He got the sale, and used that line forever after.

Most rookie marketers are way too timid about asking for the sale. They clam up too soon, and hope the prospect will fill in the blanks of the pitch — or just take certain things for granted. But that’s a piss-poor way to make a sale.

This is why long copy works. It’s a sales pitch. You have to establish a lot of things, like credibility, proof, features and benefits, plus lots and lots of urgent reasons why you should buy this stuff right now.

Skip the critical stuff, and your prospect simply doesn’t have enough ammo in his brain to make a buying decision.

But there’s another part to this equation: Once you have covered all your main points… and countered all the large objections to the sale… shut up.

Even if the silence seems deafening.

Even if every nerve in your body squirms, and you have to choke back words.

Even if you think you’re “losing” the sale by remaining quiet.

Just shut the hell up.

Here’s why: No one buys because a salesman talks them into the sale. You can’t sell by arguing, or by badgering, or by overwhelming the prospect with information.

Ultimately, the decision to buy happens inside the prospect’s head. Beyond your control.

All you can do is make the best pitch you can, and present your case as powerfully and urgently as possible.

Then, you have to let your pitch percolate in his internal juices.

If he buys, it will be because your pitch answered the main questions in his mind. You cannot predict what those questions will be (which is another reason you need long copy, or a long sales pitch). Often, I’ve discovered that out of several dozen bullets I’ve put into a piece… just ONE made the sale with most folks.

It might be the price, which you’ve justified in a way that he knows his wife will understand. It might be the opportunity for him to show up an arrogant brother-in-law you don’t know about. It might be the vague sex appeal, or the dream of telling his boss to go stuff it, or any of a thousand other reasons.

And guess what? Even if you were clairvoyant and KNEW what that “clinch it” reason was… you still couldn’t use that knowledge to force your prospect to buy.

Because he’d still have to go through that inner conversation deep inside his noggin.

Tonight, the princess believed she had something to say that would force The Donald to do what she wanted.

It was a rookie mistake. All she needed to do was note the laser focus Trump had on his target, which wasn’t her. And shut the hell up.

She couldn’t pull it off.

Hey — it wouldn’t be a good lesson if most people intuitively understood it, and did the right thing.

In the real world, this is advanced salesmanship.

Live and learn.

Stay frosty…

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

The Rest Of Your Friggin’ Life

I caught some of the Olympic games, here and there, over the past two weeks. Kinda hard to get excited about curling, and it seems they’ve sucked most of the fun out of skiing, even… but the snowboarding chaos has some real promise.

I watch more for the unfolding human drama.

Not the drama of the games. Rather, the drama of the network coverage… which gets more hysterical and over-the-top each broadcast.

It’s a great lesson in human behavior.

I grew up wanting to be a journalist. I created “pretend” newspapers as a kid, and was on the newspaper staff in both high school and college. (Although, once it was known that I could draw cartoons, that became my “job” at both publications… which isolated me from the reporters.) Some of my favorite writers have been newspapermen — Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, “Red” Smith, Herb Caen.

But, geez Louise, I can’t imagine a kid wanting to be a reporter today. Writing well and getting to the bottom of things is, like, last on the list of what newspapers do now. It’s just ridiculous how little actual insight is provided into anything the media touches (“60 Minutes” excluded).

If I were growing up now, I’m have dreams of being a blogger — the only writers left on the planet who can escape censorship and actually think for themselves.

Anyway, the “story lines” invented by the media about the Olympics are getting very, very, very boring and predictable. That’s the fault of the reporters and the media overlords, who struggle to find something to please the “mass viewing audience”. In almost every human endeavor, pleasing “most people” means downgrading the quality to abysmal levels.

What’s worse, to my mind, is that the people doing the reporting (Bob Costas included) seem to regard athletes as alien species, so impossible to understand that all we can do is… well, make up stuff about them.

It’s just horseshit. I have the same problem with music critics who have never attempted to master an instrument. Or film reviewers who have zero acting experience. Or, on a more serious level, politicians who have no life experience dealing with people or bureaucracies or law.

I once read a smug, arrogant review of a Dire Straits concert by a woman who wrote — as if this were a fact everyone on the planet just of course agreed with her on — that Mark Knopfler was “never very good at playing the guitar”. Uh, okay. This would be same Mark Knopfler who was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame as a guitar player, and whose jaw-dropping masterpiece “Sultans of Swing” has been cited by other guitar greats as probably the best solo ever performed using a Fender Strat?

I read that review years ago, and it just stuck in my craw. Who hired that idiot writer? What small, ego-centric world did she live in that allowed her to hold such insane thoughts in her head without being challenged… and where the hell did she get off putting that nonsense into an article?

You can fill in your own examples for film review and politics, I’m sure. And I’m too tired tonight to get into the specifics of all the equally bone-headed stuff touted by false “experts” in marketing and advertising.

It’s one of the inherent problems of the Information Age — as more and more conduits for spreading info arrive, more writers are needed, and the ranks of good ones are alarmingly thin. The New York Times has to fill a thousand pages with words, even if their best thinkers and journalists are home sick with the flu.

The real trouble, as I see it, is that no one seems to give a shit anymore. Most people still get their news from television, which is pretty much like relying on your grandmother. There’s no punishment for writers who get the story wrong, no matter how much it riles people up. There’s no follow-through, no fact-checking, no editing at all. (In the publishing world, manuscripts now often go out the door as “finished” novels and books without so much as a grammar check.)

There are no adults in charge anymore.

Which, interestingly enough, actually makes for some very interesting situations.

Apparently — and I hope I don’t shock you here — most of the athletes at the Olympics are driven competitors who will accept nothing less than the gold medal. The silver or bronze is a humiliating insult… and not getting any medal at all is just inconceivable.

This, according to the reporters covering the events. One of the commentators said, in reference to the aging Russian ice skating star who choked during her event and had to “settle” for the bronze: “I cannot imagine what she will do with the rest of her life, now that her dream of Olympic gold has been shattered.”

Oh, please.

Now, I’m not a high-performing athlete… but I do know something about being driven. Y0u need basic drive to become an accomplished musician, to become a world-class writer, to get good at anything, really.

And I understand what high achievers mean when they say they will “settle for nothing less than total victory”… whether that victory is dominance in a market, marrying the prettiest girl in class, or winning the top prize.

That kind of hard-core self-motivation is necessary to squeeze out the best performance. Much to the chagrin of non-musicians, non-writers, and non-politicians, it takes a very disciplined dedication, for a very long time, to acheive great results. You don’t hit a home run the first time you pick up a bat, no matter how much you wish that was the way reality worked.

But most reporters, and most reviewers, and most critics in all fields never experience that kind of dedication. They believe they can “get the general idea” by dabbling around the edges of true expertise, and that’s plenty enough to give them the right to judge everyone else.

This, my friend, is misinformation. It just ain’t true.

You know what really happens when high achievers fail to reach their “dream” goal, whatever it might be?

I’ll tell you, because I happen to know.

They dust themselves off. They look for the next logical or possible step — whether it’s retirement from the ring, or diving back into practice.

And then… they keep on keeping on.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard came from Richard Nixon (of whom I am no fan). He said, early in his disaster-filled political career, that if you were going to fail… make sure you fail spectacularly. Don’t hold back.

In other words, go for the gusto… even if you come up short in the end.

Now, some athletes, ten years from now, will be bloated alchoholics boring the shit out of everyone about the good old days. I’ve been to several of my high school reunions — I’m a glutton for examining and rehashing the past — and while there are a dozen or so people I really enjoy seeing… I get the most kick out of checking up with the jocks and social elites for whom high school was the highlight of their life.

Those aren’t the high acheivers. Most of the truly successful types had it pretty miserable during high school (and most have no intention of ever going to even a single reunion). They nursed their wounds, learned their lessons, and moved on.

For people who feast on life, the goal isn’t to “win”, whatever the hell that means. No. The real goal is to live large, and attempt to pull off the grandest and most exciting adventures you can conceive of.

And, if you fail, you fail spectacularly.

My hat is off to the Russian chick. She went for it. I believe she’s going to be just fine through the years, despite not going home with the gold.

No matter what else happens in her life, they can never take the fact that she went for it away from her.

Stay frosty.

John Carlton
www.marketingrebel.com

P.S. I have — count ’em — two spots left at my upcoming Hot Seat Workshop here in Reno on March 11-12. To get the details, rush over to www.john-carlton.com/Hot_Seat_Seminar.pdf and read the letter I’ve posted. I will never hold another event like this again — it’s a LOT of work for me. But the payoff for the handful of attendees savvy enough to come is going to be earth-shaking.

If you’re at all interested, hurry.