The Word for Trust is Confianza

Posted on 2017/01/27 by Jerry Fletcher

Plunging down the mountain side in a cab from the airport in Medellin, Colombia, Don Pepper and I were comparing notes on our careers in advertising.

He didn’t mention the fact that I had excused myself early from the luncheon attended by the sponsors and their key prospects.

Neither of us commented on the fact that the same translator that was working the lunch was also the translator for my after-lunch keynote.

I found out the hard way.

About half a minute into my opening comments a gentleman about 6 rows back started waving both arms in the air.

I asked him in my best high school Spanish, “Que pasa?”

He said in heavily accented English, “No translator!”

I said without thinking, “I will speak v e r y s l o w l y.”

The audience, some 600 strong, joined me in laughter. About a half minute later the translator was ready to go.

Tener Confianza

The key thought in that speech was Trust (Confianza) plus time = success. I talked about what it takes to be successful in business today, on and offline:

Trust in yourself
Trust in your staff
Trust in your company
Trust in your customer

That trip, I was to learn, was all about Confianza.

Because I was scheduled to speak at a convention in Reno, Nevada the following day, the meeting planner and I had tried every trick we knew to get me back there on time. It came down to having to leave for the Medellin airport as soon as I came off the stage.

The cab was ready, I wasn’t.

There had not been time to change to traveling clothes before heading for the airport. I figured I could change before boarding.

Nope. I was hustled onto the plane as the doors were closing by airline staff that had been alerted.

Tener Confianza

I had to change planes in Bogota so I figured I could slip into a bathroom, pull my jeans and sweatshirt out of my carry on and be comfortable for the remainder of my 16-hour commute.

The Bogota Airport was being remodeled.

The only bathroom available near my gate was a standard stall. The rest of it was under construction and open to the waiting room.

Contortionists have it much too easy. I’m not that supple. But I managed to change and make my flight.

Now I know why superman wears his costume under his suit.

Tener Confianza

When I changed planes in Houston I called the meeting planner at the conference in Reno and let her know I was back in the USA and my arrival information.

There was a limo driver holding up a sign with my name on it when I arrived.

The meeting planner wanted to make it easy for me. She knew how arduous it can be just getting there. That gift of not having to rush to find a cab, check in and don my suit to make it to the platform on time is one I will never forget.

Tener Confianza

En ti mismo
En su personal
En tu compañía
En su cliente

Websites:
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com
Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Brand: www.BrandBrainTrust.com
(Personal Brand Network beBee Featured this week)

Brand is an Action Plan

Posted on 2017/01/21 by Jerry Fletcher

During a guest appearance on a radio show for entrepreneurs this week a caller asked, “What can I do to brand myself?”

I asked him if he was talking about his Personal, Professional or Product Brand. He replied, “Professional, I’m a solopreneur.”

I suggested he visit www.BrandBrainTrust.com and then this is what I told him:

“You are going to have a Brand whether you want to or not. The reason is that brand is not a process you can control. It is the sum total of what all the folks who have knowledge of you think, feel and believe about you.

Brand is the outcome of Trust. Being trustworthy leads to having a good brand. If you can’t be trusted…well, you get the picture.’

But what can you do to become a trusted Brand?

Put lightning in a bottle.

Know what you are trying to make of yourself or your business and what you’ll stick with regardless of how things change. (Vision)
Know why your business exists (Mission)
Be able to explain how you are different. (Position)

Stay consistent but accepting

Always tell your story the same way (Value Proposition)
Love the customers for their differences as well as their similarities (the Magic of Contact Relationships)
Remember that your brand advocates want to belong to your group (Social media)

Be “in it” together

Get involved on a personal, bunch and group level (Tribe or Cult)
Hide your membership in plain sight visible only to other members (logo, tattoo, sticker)
Listen to what the common enemy is and stand against it in word and deed

If you want people to act, you have to do all that plus inspire them.

You inspire with a Vision and a Mission and show them how you’re different.

But inspiration is not enough. To help them break through fear and inertia you have to tell them what to do. Once you’ve told them the tactics that apply give them a symbol plus words of encouragement.

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder and Grand Poobah of www.BrandBrainTrust.com

His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for Brand development, Positioning and business development on and off-line. He is also a sought-after International Speaker.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Success Stories. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

Brand is Not a Get Rich Click

Posted on 2017/01/07 by Jerry Fletcher

Do you remember your first customer or client?

What did it take to get that business? If you’re like most, it wasn’t a matter of someone just walking up and saying “I’ll take one.” You had to introduce yourself to that customer if you were selling tube steaks or Toyotas. If you were running your own business it was even tougher. You didn’t have a big ad program sending people into the store.

You stuck with it. You introduced yourself to one person after another. You maintained your enthusiasm about the product or service. You connected with a few people. Then one of those prospects hit the Trust tipping point and made a buy.

You built a relationship off line.

You begin the dance anew seeking relationship 2, 3 and 4.

But then you succumb to the get rich click temptation.

You think it will be easier, faster and just as rewarding trying to sell online. You’re convinced by all the commentary and the continuous e-mails that offer guaranteed full-proof ways to make a six-figure income and live anywhere in the world working half days. Your expectations are never met.

Before you put all your efforts into web sites, online stores and content marketing find out who is really doing that well and model what it took to get there.

Don’t try to take on major corporations using their techniques.

Each day we are hammered with ads on Facebook, Google and the rest of the zoo parade of social media. Once they were easy to skip past and ignore but not anymore. There are all kinds of names for it but I guarantee that if you search for a product or service on line you will be bombarded with ads for that product or similar ones for weeks.

You can’t win against the mechanized marketing they use if you try to go head to head.

Build a relationship with another customer (or two or three) offline.

Offline you have the advantage. You can look into your customer’s eyes. You can hear the tenor and the tension of her voice. You can understand why he is hesitant and learn why she is looking for another option.

Build relationships with customers offline before you try it online.

Imagine how much more powerful your copy can be when you are writing to people just like the ones that have come to Trust you already. Think about the ways you can better define targets for your ads online. Consider how much easier it is come up with key words. Can you visualize the other products they want and need?

Go offline to build better relationships with on-line customers.

No, don’t do an e-mail survey. Pick up the phone and talk to some customers. I guarantee you will learn from them and you will establish stronger Trust and Brand. When you travel to where they live, take time to visit with them. It will pay off. (One online marketer reported a 13 to 32% increase in sales from abandoned carts when his company telephoned customers that had abandoned their cart in mid-transaction).

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder and Grand Poobah of www.BrandBrainTrust.com

His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for Brand Development, Positioning and business development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Success Stories. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

Brand is the Legendary Made Real

Posted on 2016/12/24 by Jerry Fletcher

Back when I lived in Minneapolis I had the pleasure of dealing with a media representative for the legendary magazine The New Yorker. I acquired a taste for it when I was just starting in the ad game in New York.

Once, over lunch, he told me the story of how a little company in Medford, Oregon began selling fruit by mail. It seems a New Yorker Salesman had decided to drive to Portland and Seattle from San Francisco and he was making stops along the way to pitch his magazine. In those days it was beginning to develop the peculiar circulation it has to this day. Most of the print run goes to New York but it is also read by a solid coterie of subscribers in major cities and high income demographic towns across the country.

That little company in Medford was Harry & David. They decided to test a small space ad in the publication. They sold out their apple crop. Then pears. And the cherries. That was the beginning for them. They became a legend by selling fruit via direct ads and mail across the USA.

A few years ago my then wife and I went to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (just north of Medford in southern Oregon). We stayed at a delightful B&B. The first evening over wine, cheese and pears that were to die for we learned our host was also the marketing director of Harry & David. We talked of how that first ad had changed the lives of the partners but more importantly hundreds of people in the Rogue valley. He stressed the fact that the values that were in place for that first ad remained and would continue into the future.

They have.

Now I find myself living as my friends say, “where the sidewalk runs out” south of Portland. I’ve been a Harry & David Customer for more years then I care to count. I know a conglomerate bought them out a while back but the buyers haven’t messed with what makes the company outstanding.

This year I had to change my order. Mom asked me to. She said she couldn’t handle all that they sent in the Fruit of the Month club since Dad died.

So I made the call. I found myself talking to Margaret who understood completely. She walked me through some options. Then we settled on regular fruit shipments but in smaller quantities. She quietly checked all the pertinent shipping data and then helped me with the rest of my list.

The service was legendary.

This is what it took to get me to say that:

People that want to help on the phone. NO pushy sales types. NO hard sells.
Catalogs in the mail because I’ve told them I prefer not to get an e-mail every day for a month after Thanksgiving.
Pertinent details of addresses and greetings kept on file so I don’t have to dig them out
Great Product.
No questions asked returns or changes if needed. Dad couldn’t eat grapefruit due to a medication conflict. Mom called them and a substitution was made even though it was requested well before needed.
People you come to know, like and trust.

It takes time, vision, values, consistency, honesty and real caring. That builds trust and the outcome is a legendary brand.

Legendary can help a product resonate. See the story of Time in a Bottle this week at www.BrandBrainTrust.com

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder and Grand Poobah of www.BrandBrainTrust.com His consulting practice, now in its 26^th year, is known for Brand Development, Positioning and business development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Briefs. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

How to Quantify Your Brand

Posted on 2016/12/17 by Jerry Fletcher

You can’t quantify brand!

Or can you?

We collect brand stories and outcomes at Brand Brain Trust that frequently defy the idea that you can’t hang an analytic on Brand.

The latest addition to the web site tells the story of TSA Pre-Check. You’ll learn how this service offered by a company you never heard of came to Anvil, Portland’s award-winning integrated marketing agency. Anvil rose to the challenge of generating a specific number of sign-ups for the year. They finished Q2 by obliterating the goal for the quarter and surpassing the entire goal for 2016.

What does it take to quantify a brand?

Clear measurable objectives.
Triggers that get actions you can count
Practical and emotional value

Measurable Objectives:

For TSA Pre Check it was a specific sales goal to be delivered within one year. You should definitely have a sales goal. But you might also consider:

Having a gateway. Try incorporating a hard to get to way to get in touch with you or enter your establishment that requires social research on the part of the prospect. Keeping count of those that pass through the gate is your key analytic but you could also look at sales per visit or the number of services utilized.
Identifying and targeting meetings with ideal clients. Consultants and coaches continually need to develop relationships with prospects. Setting a number to identify and make contact with makes sense. Both numeric goals can prove to be predictors of business growth when your closing ratio and Lifetime value become known.
Stop counting intangibles. Take a tip from Montessori schools and use concrete terms. If you count actual items sold or given away you’ll be better off than merely counting customers that entered your store or your website. But, when you combine the two you’ll find yourself figuring out how to add value to everyone that enters.

Triggers that get actions:

TSA Pre Check took advantage of long wait time headlines and the fact that prospects were searching for TSA Pre Check on Google. Beyond Key Word Research you might look at:

Borrow interest from the news. Mars research by NASA spiked requests for Mars Bars in supermarkets when a rover mission was reported. Year over Year data and anecdotal reports quantified he sales increase.
Become part of your prospects daily grind. Have you noticed how your local McDonalds is now the McCafe or how KitKat bars are tagging along with coffee?
If you offer services, adopt the good, better and best pricing and product presentation. Give ‘em the bare bones that solves their problem for x dollars and call it Basic. Build a Premium package that is priced at 2x, delivers everything in the basic and also provides a real value. Then put together a Platinum program. Price it at least 6x and make sure it includes way more than the prospect might want. (that way, you can let them add individual items from it to your Premium plan and make almost as much for the add-on as for the Premium plan alone.

Build in practical and emotional value:

The practical value of TSA Pre Check is that you don’t have to stand in those long lines at the airport. The emotional value is that you don’t feel like you’re on the Bataan Death March anymore. Other ways you can take advantage of human nature:

Make sure that if your product depends on a connection to a story that “everyone knows” that you provide a hang tag for the product that recaps the story. You’ll find the Time in a Bottle story on the Brand Brain Trust web site next week. Without the hang tag your product doesn’t sell as well.
YouTube videos that get the most views tend to have the words “How To” in their titles. Those that go viral also “How To” (Google: How to shuck corn) Other possibilities include questions like “Will it Blend?” or “Will it Crush?” from Arnold Shwarzenegger with over 4 Million views.
Show your emotions to get a reaction. Another YouTube example is the story of Dave Carroll’s run in with United Airlines. They smashed his $3500 guitar. He spent nine months negotiating with United over compensation and they lawyered up and refused him. He wrote United Breaks Guitars, posted it on You Tube. in 10days it was viewed over 3 million times. It was one of the top ten viral videos of 2009.

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder of www.BrandBrainTrust.com His consulting practice, now in its 26^th year, is known for Brand Development, Positioning and business development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Briefs. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

How Does a Name Impact Brand?

Posted on 2016/12/10 by Jerry Fletcher

You or your company, product or service all have names. You either selected it or were saddled with it depending on your viewpoint.

Look up your name on Google.

When I look up Jerry Fletcher these days I get numerous listings on page one. Used to be I was well behind the movie called Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson who played a character with my name. It took three years to turn that around as the result of multiple websites, blogs and dedicated posting on Linked In and other social networks. Even if there are better known folks with the same name you can set yourself apart.

While you’re there look at the images.

It can be scary. Left to right the ones presented to me had descriptors like:

Monsters Among us
Predators in the Pulpit
Mel in character in Conspiracy Theory

On my desktop I show up on the far right in the row presented. All of which comes down to making sure the images of you which you put on line should be consistently positive.

Look up your name on Linked In or Facebook or beBee.

On Linked in there are 392 listings for my name. Of these, 301 are in the USA. Only three are in Oregon (and one of them is me again). So you would have to know my location or company name or special capabilities to get the right guy. Try to be sure no one confuses you with one of those others. make sure your profile has searchable specifics.

On Facebook the list goes on forever. You need to know a little more about me than is shown in my profile in order to track me down. Since I only post when the constellations align there is not a great deal of information available. I’d like to keep it that way but I’m being sucked into the vortex because I put BrandBrainTrust on Facebook because I think it may prove helpful to a lot of folks.

Your name can be your best asset if you are a professional, coach or consultant. I didn’t understand how important it was when I hung out my own shingle. I named my company Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Nobody could understand why I named it that way. Nobody could spell it, Nobody could remember it. It definitely did not have the intended impact.

Use your name as the name of your company if you are a professional, coach or consultant. It will give you the advantage of not having to explain the company name or part of the company name when you should be telling people what you can do for them. It is easier for people to remember your name than any made-up company name (no matter how clever). Sure, people may shorten the multiple partner Law or CPA firm to the first one or two names, but they started out with all of them. And there is not any doubt about what they do.

But what if you have to name a company or a product? The decisions, in order are:

Is this a single product company? If so the company and product name can be the same.

When Digimarc was being named we struggled more with finding a way to describe the result of the technology than anything else. This invention allows the user to digitally mark any graphic holographically. The mark can be seen by the right software even if only a fragment of the marked document is available. (See the Brand Storyand outcome at www.BrandBrainTrust.com)

The name of the company changed three times before it was introduced to second stage investors.

Is this a multi-product company? If so you will need to delineate the products in such a way that clients or customers can easily identify them. That doesn’t mean you need to think of the decision as a set of handcuffs.

For example:

S C Johnson makes all sorts of products. Each carries its own name and some have line extensions. You’re probably familiar with No More Tears Shampoo®, Glade®, Pledge® and Windex®.

Most technically oriented or engineering firms use numbers to designate their products as they evolve. Intel’s i5 an i7 chips come to mind. But some elect to use other means. Android uses sweet treats as names for their operating system upgrades—Jelly Bean is perhaps the best known. Another way is to use letters of the alphabet. Ford does this using an E to begin the names for the SUVs: Explorer, Escape, Edge, Expedition.

How do come up with names that stay in mind?

Make ‘em smile (Cherry Garcia one of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors)
Tell ‘em what it does (Gorilla Glue)
Have ‘em picture it (Good Grips OXO kitchen implements)
Show ‘em a theme (Mc Café, Mc Nuggets, Mc Ribs)
Give ‘em a feeling (Obsession, the perfume)

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder of www.BrandBrainTrust.com His consulting practice, now in its 26^th year, is known for Brand Development, Positioning and business development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Briefs. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

Brand is About Being More

Posted on 2016/11/26 by Jerry Fletcher

Thanksgiving dinner is not a good metaphor for a Brand-building customer experience.

Clients and customers want more. Every interaction gives you the chance to make your band more memorable to them. But there is good memorable and not-so-good memorable.

Thanksgiving dinners with their great expectations are like Brand development. Both are fraught with potential disaster if we don’t know the journey of the participants.

Are your customers coming “over the river and through the woods?” Are they flying in? How often do they come by? Can you remember their preferences? Do they mind waiting? What could you do to make their time with you memorable? How can you impress them? What would make this Thanksgiving more remarkable for aunt Hepzibah?

Every Brand is built with experiences. You must craft those experiences, just the way granny put together those wondrous Thanksgiving dinners. Yes, the meal is important and a great cook is essential to serving up the bird, stuffing and cranberry relish or the ham, collard greens and home-made biscuits.

But what goes on before the feast and the conversations around the table are what we remember far longer. Brand development is like that. Too often we’re worried about the logo and the corporate colors when we should be concerned about how easy we make it to buy. We hyperventilate about what we say on our web site when we should be concerning ourselves with real conversations with clients and prospects. (see the video for Shell Tain on www.BrandBrainTrust.com for straight talk that works)

This Thanksgiving when you’re expressing gratitude, make sure you include all the folks that personally interface with the folks your brand impacts— everyone from the janitor to your CEO. The truth is, they are your product or service in the eyes of your customers.

Thank you for being part of our tribe.

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Jerry Fletcher is the founder of www.BrandBrainTrust.com His consulting practice, now in its 26^th year, is known for Brand Development, Positioning and business development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com

Get all the Brand Briefs. Sign up at http://www.brandbraintrust.com/home.html

How Good Does A Video Have To Be?

Posted on 2016/06/25 by Jerry Fletcher

I introduced Jim to the group at the Friday Marketing lunch bunch meeting saying, “So we came across each other working on a Chamber committee together. Jim is a video consultant. He provides all the services you need to do personal, product and service videos for use on line or in trade shows or any other way you want to use them.”

I thought you would all like to meet him and might have referrals for him.

Let’s order and then you can start lobbing questions at him.”

Chris apologized for catching Jim with his mouth full and then waved off his words. He said, “I do the digital marketing for a training company. We already produce digital training videos and edit those produced by others for our market. Is there something different we should be doing for product marketing?”

Jim responded, “There is a difference. The rules you apply in a training video are different from those you put to work for you in a product selling video. For starters I’ll bet you want to sell product groupings rather than individual videos. That alone means you have to show or demonstrate how you cover the full range on a subject. More importantly you have to think carefully about who the buyer is. It isn’t the same person you are editing the series of videos for. It is the person that has to manage staff training.”

“Tha’s making sure you’re talkin’ to the right persona,” said Rob, brand guru that hails from the deep south. “And y’all got to understand that when you get the right approach to the Persona they really like your peaches and they want to shake your tree.”

Noting Jim’s confused look Kate, our sales specialist, pushed her dreds back over one ear and said, “Allow me to translate. Bubba mystifies a lot of folks but once you get used to his down home way of pointing out the obvious you can learn from his experience. What he’s trying to say in his grits and syrup style is that if you have a good idea of the person you are talking to you can capture their interest and get them to respond.”

“And that,” said Rick, “is what it is all about. At least that is what I tell my clients as I advise them on their direct marketing needs. I have to admit that video is not something that has been in our wheelhouse until lately. It seems like everyone wants a video approach and I’m beginning to think it is a big part of the answer. It is particularly important in the on line retail arena. But you know me, I’m always looking for statistics. This is what I discovered the other day getting ready for a presentation:

Retailers who provide online product videos to report that the products with video sell a lot more than products with no video—90% of ’em!
75% of business execs in a Forbes survey said they watch a business video on line once a week.
80% of folks that viewed a video in an ad remembered it but more importantly over half took action–26% looked for more information — 22% visited the website named in the ad–15% visited the company represented in the video ad–and best of all–12% purchased the product!”

Gail cleared her throat and all of us focused on our writer/editor friend. She said, “What I want to know is how good does an on line video have to be? Do I have to have network quality or will the camera on my Apple computer or phone do? Do I have to have flashy animations and overlays and that kind of stuff? Is there a web site that gives me answers? I could go on but let’s start with those questions.”

Jim looked around the table, took sip of coffee and began, “For starters, stop looking in the rear view mirror. Get a video done! There is no single answer that fits every situation. If you are selling product, you want the best quality you can get for the price.

A little bit of imagination goes a long way like the manual turntable one of my clients came up with to do a walk around of boots and other gear from their outdoor shop. We even did reach in’s to show the soles of the shoes and how a camp stove opened.

Individuals do videos that go viral all the time with their computers. Sure it is mostly talking heads but you can use screen capture programs like Camtasia to make simple Power point animations and then incorporate them with live recording using free editing software. There are a lot of consultants that use that approach, some of whom have been professional editors. There are some folks that say using the video capability of a 35 mm camera gives you the look of broadcast at a much lower cost.

There are two things you need to really think about:

Sound—you need to get sound that is close up and personal if you use any handheld video recording device.
Lighting–You need to have good light. A couple lights with umbrella reflectors for shooting inside and at least a reflector panel for outdoors.

If you’ll give me your cards with other questions noted I promise to answer them all… and include them in my Blog.”

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry, sometimes called The Consultant’s Communication Consultant, is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

The Pitch Ain’t the Title

Posted on 2016/06/11 by Jerry Fletcher

“A friend told me about trying to come up with a title for a screen play over lunch,” said Gail. “She’s trying to get ready for a meeting with an agent from Hollywood. Apparently you only get a very few minutes and what you say in the first few seconds is critical.”

Kate snorted and said, “Sounds like every other sales call to me! That is pretty much my day, every day. The thing is you have to know what the hot buttons are for every person you’re calling on and if you don’t you have to find a way to get their attention and their input. Every story can be shortened to the point where it is one sentence long. The trick is to make that sentence intriguing enough that it pulls people into the conversation with you. Fletch’s 30-Second Marketing is the way to do it in networking situations and can be applied in most sales situations as well.”

“You’re right,” I said. this goes by a bunch of names but what it comes down to when you have to write it is:

Tell the story in a paragraph or two concentrating on the emotions evoked
Shorten it to a sentence about the overall shift in the story
Work on the language in the sentence to make people experience it and yet want to know more.
Relate it to something familiar to them
Given all that, give it a title that leaves them wanting more.

For instance:
Would you like to view a film that centers on the transformation of a son, Michael, from reluctant family outsider to ruthless Mafia boss while also chronicling the family under the patriarch. A lot of people did. It was called The GodFather. As memorable as it is it was not one of the highest box office movies.

The current top in domestic, international and worldwide sales is a science fiction flick. In it, a paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a spy mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the new world he comes to feel is his home. Right. It was called Avatar and to date has made $2,783,918,982 worldwide.

The number two box office leader is one for history buffs and romantics. The fact that a supposedly unsinkable ship went down in the North Atlantic was given an emotional twist by the tale of a starving artist that becomes the love of a high class lady. It was called Titanic and the star-crossed lovers were, I believe, a pure fiction. It was called Titanic.”

Rob, our Buddha of Branding quietly said, “And that, brethren is what we call trimmin’ the fat. There be movies popular down home you don’t have to hear nuthin’ but the title to know what it’s about. Wonderful stories like Driving Miss Daisy, Steel Magnolias and, of course, Gone With the Wind. Notice how the title can be the story all by itself, or give you insight into the characters or summarize a way of life that vanished? The difference of seeing what y’all are trying to sell through the prospect’s imagination makes all the difference. Thing is, they will tell you how they see it. Just listen.”

The Takeaways:

All sales is about finding common ground, understanding the problem and then finding the emotion that connects the prospect to the solution.
You must orient your view, your language and your emphasis to the prospect’s vision.
Get help. Talk to others. Listen to what they have to say. Respond by making your pitch and your title stronger.

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry, The Consultant’s Communication Consultant, is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

Trust is the Strongest Link for Consultants

Posted on 2016/06/04 by Jerry Fletcher

“At least once a year I look at how I’m marketing my own practice,” I said

“This year I looked at all the ways to link suspects, contacts, prospects and such to my digital assets.”

Gail, our resident writer who is always looking for the facts, sounding like a TV cop asked, “So what social media did you put on the list?”

“Well,” Rick offered, “I’ll bet he picked on the usual suspects—Linked In, Facebook and Twitter and maybe a little bit of old-fashioned direct mail since he ran operations in my direct marketing agency for a while.”

“That’s good as far as it goes,” I replied. “I looked at Instagram, too.”

Bubba snorted. The branding Buddha dripped southern disdain as he said “Instagram– isn’t that the chile of Facebook from the wrong side of the sheets?”

Gail snickered and said, “Kind of, but it’s closer to the photo album the Momma wanted to share.”

“In any case,” I said, “you have to have a business page on Facebook in order to put ads on it and you use Facebook tools to build the ads.”

Chris, our young Digital Director for a training outfit said, “What you decided to do with each of them is what is important. Is it possible you’re about to take the plunge into ubiquity?”

Bubba drawled, “You getting’ uppity boy? I know there’s some new blown theory about being ‘present everywhere’ in the digital world. Tha’s why some brands are so well known. And it has more to do with all kinds of media than just the on-line stuff.”

“You’re right again my cracker friend,” I said. “I ran some tests on-line. You remember that old data that linked awareness to preference? Well the tests showed the rule of thumb is true. The difference is you can get the results a lot quicker.”

Chris asked, “Did the numbers work out the same?”

“It’s too early to tell on the longer term items but from Awareness to Preference to Trial is pretty much the same,” I replied. “This is really more about human nature than media. Just because we have more ways of reaching people doesn’t change the way people operate. The better they know you the more they trust you. If they trust you they respond.

What it does do is force you to look at broadening your approach slightly and to be present enough in any media you use to generate the critical awareness that leads to success down line. It means you have to be very cognizant of your brand across all the media and make sure that all the things you do are linked.”

The Takeaway:

Digital advertising response goes through the same phases as non-digital…just a little faster.

Human response based on trust is what to monitor if you want to make money…not the media.

Your brand is the linchpin of all your promotions. Link everything to it.

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry, The Consultant’s Communication Consultant, is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

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