“How did it go? I said. “Well only about a third of the folks
that signed up showed up.”

“Remember, this is Oregon,” Kate pointed out. “It was
sunny and warm that day and you can’t expect folks that have been given a hall
pass to actually show up at a workshop once they are outside and dry.”

Gail asked, “You did your usual full tilt presentation
though, right?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I did the full two hours including the
planned 15 minutes of Q and A”.

Most of the attendees were amazed by the numbers I presented and glad to hear
an expert’s opinion about the whole social media elephant in the room.”

“Numbers?” Chris asked.

“I pointed out that even though smart phone and tablet
sales are going through the roof that a good 20% more of the US Population own laptops
and netbooks and that even more importantly laptops and desktops in terms of
use beat
smartphones 5 to 1 and tablets 6 to 1.

Then I showed them the differences between men and women
in how they use the internet for inspiration and evaluation in shopping.
Surprisingly, men are heavier users for both purposes.

Rob drawled, “Scuse me ol’ son, could we go back to the
elephant?

“Okay,” I agreed. “What I asked them to do was a simple
exercise. You can do it on a napkin. Write down the top five social media sites
you are aware of. The group had a list of about seven or eight. The most common
were: Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Pinterest and Google Plus. Then I told them
to write down next to each the amount of time you feel you would have to spend
on it each day to get some results in your business. There was a lot of
complaining at that point but I asked them to guess. The average was 24 minutes
for each or just about 2 hours a day. Then I asked what else they might do in their
business with that two hours a day and what that could be worth to them. It got
very quiet in that room.

They all began to say that it was obvious that there was
no value to Social media.

The pendulum had swung too far. So I showed them some
more statistics…how you can get more attention and better SEO with the right
kinds of posts and how to decide whether you should use one or another and once
that selection was made how to optimize the use for your company. By simply cutting
the activities to one or two social media sites the savings in time are
immense. Becoming more knowledgeable in one option allows you to increase your
efficiency even more.

Suddenly, the elephant was less like a stampede and more
like a stuffed toy. Get the picture?”

That was just the first third of the presentation. I also
included:

• 15
  Web Site lead generation tips

• 3
  Rules to change Contacts into Contracts

• 7
  ways to generate Nonstop Referrals

• How to
  put it all together with Contact Relationship Magic

• 2 “AutoMagic”
  Marketing Campaigns— Consultants and Cupcakes

Rob said, “Sounds like it was grits and all. Was there
any dessert?”

‘I told them I would sit down for an hour at no charge to review their marketing plans with any one that asked. I’ll make the same
offer in Marketing Rain.”

Stick around. Jerry has been asked to do some webinars so
he is going to take a look at how to maximize outcomes in that approach with
advice from the Lunch bunch and an expert special guest.

www.JerryFletcher.com
is Jerry’s consulting web site. Take a look on a smart phone, a tablet, a
laptop or a desktop. It works on them all.

www.NetworkingNinja.com
is where you can find information on Jerry’s speaking programs plus video of
some of his best known signature stories.

“So, troops,
what did you learn last Saturday at Product Camp?” I asked.

“Empathy,”
said Gail. “Those folks have a really tough job in the high tech arena. They
are subjected to timing requirements and asked to deliver with, at best,
partial information and often are stressed out by management that doesn’t begin
to understand what they are asking.”

Kate said,
“True. But part of that is because sales types like me are getting too much of
a say in the development of the products.”

Rick paused
in shock and said, “Too much! Did she say too much? Did the super sales woman actually
say those words?”

“I sweah
thas what I heard,” said Rob. “She allowed as how sales were getting too much
say in product development.”

“I was in
that session, too and she is reporting accurately,” I said. “One of the
problems with some of the new processes is that the door was opened to sales
for their input but once they got their foot in management didn’t understand
how it was impacting the development teams.”

Kate drew
herself up to her full six feet, surveyed the table, sighed and then said, “If
you clowns would have let me finish I was going to say that in a later session,
it came out that the best development teams were the ones that had sales input
because the sales force is always closest to the customer. The trick for the
great product manager is to sort through all the sales input at hand, then go
to the field when it makes sense to listen and learn.”

Chris piped
up, “I was in that session, too. The product manager if he or she is really
good uses that field experience to get a deeper understanding of what the
customer really wants and needs, an understanding that goes beyond the product
currently in use or being developed.”

Rick picked
up the thread, “All day long it kept coming back to one skill that was more
important than any other. The best product managers all had it. So did the
sales people they worked with, marketing and management as well. That skill was
communication. They described it in a lot of ways…empathy, listening,
diplomacy, understanding, contextual understanding, ability to persuade
executives and on and on. But it all comes down to communications skills.”

“I’ll go
along with that,” Gail said. “I spoke with a number of the attendees during the
breaks and over lunch. None of them were the tongue-tied types of engineers you
so often run into. The conversations I had ranged over topics from analytics to
math to decision-making processes to using assessments for hiring.”

“My experience
was the same,” I said.

“So, why did
you take us all to that event, Fletch?” asked Kate.

“Because one
of the people that put it together wanted to include the views of a bunch of
people who are in the marketing and management arena. Your comments were heard
in the course of the day, in part due to the open structure of the event but
also because you guys are not bashful. You speak out in your areas of expertise
and you have working knowledge across a spectrum of businesses and processes
sufficient to know when to advise and when to refer the matter. My friend was
right. You fit right in and were welcome guests.”

Join us for
lunch again next week. The topic will be Marketing for the Little Guy. Fletch
has agreed to report on his upcoming speaking engagement and what the people
that attended were most interested in.

Jerry
Fletcher www.JerryFletcher.com is a Marketing Consultant that works
with start-ups, professionals, and small businesses to take their businesses up
a notch.

Jerry speaks
professionally on three continents. Learn more at www.NetworkingNinja.com

“You started this argument and now you have to prove your
point,” said Kate.

“What argument?” asked Rick.

“What point?” Said Chris.

“It’s that old long copy versus short copy song,” Gail
explained.  

Rick grimaced and said, “I know more verses to that song
then you can imagine. Every time I take a long copy approach to a client I feel
like I was forced to walk the plank and wound up in the deep.”

Bubba smiled, snaked a roll and began slathering it with
butter. “Y’all know,” he said, that it don’t make no never mind how long the
copy is. If you’re gonna sell suthin you got to paint the picture of what those
with the cash be dreamin’ about.”

“That is what I was trying to prove to our former basketball playing
sometimes dread head here. The internet hasn’t changed things. In fact,
an outfit called Express Writers did a study that shows that search engines
prefer long content, I said.”

Chris jumped in saying, “I saw that study. One of the top
internet writers and researchers, Neil Patel, tested a long copy home page
against one with short copy. The long copy converted at a rate 7.6 % better and
the leads were of better quality and on top of that he got better search results.”

Kate looked over her glasses, harrumphed and said, “But
how do you dive into the deep end of the pool and stay interesting?”

Gail said, “The same way you deal with a difficult sale.
People buy from those they know like and trust. So the first thing you have to
do is get on their radar and then you have to have a reasonably pleasant
personality and you have to be consistent. Once you get over those hurdles you have
to stop selling and start listening.

Listen to:

Everybody that knows about this specific kind of
customer. All your cohort and even the marketing people.

The people you are trying to sell particularly when they
talk about what is keeping them from buying… what you and Rick call objections.

Competitors… not just the ones that have a product or service
like yours but all the ways the prospect could solve the problem.

Then you have a decent writer put your arguments for your product or service  together.
Not everyone can write copy that keeps people engaged. You need someone with
empathy, some one that can dream along with them…in full living color.”

“Hear! Hear!” I said. Whether it is short or long copy you
have to have empathy to reach the masses. And you do that by understanding
their dreams and concerns and then responding to them individually and all
together in bright shining words and phrases that fit their interests and moods
and desires.”

How do you make sure your long copy moves your prospects?

Jerry Fletcher and his merry marketing band will assemble at their favorite
restaurant for lunch next Friday. Jerry will report the key conversation topic
as usual.

Jerry just reworked his web site so that it can be easily
seen on smart phones, tablets and desktops. A lot of the information there is
new particularly some of the videos. Take a look at www.JerryFletcher.com

Jerry’s speaking site www.NetworkingNinja.com has all the
information you need to bring this international keynote speaker to your
organization.