One day in mid-October, after students and teachers had been waiting about 2 weeks for the rain to stop, the big day arrived. The monster dump-truck-crane-thingy came and poured the concrete foundation. We watched in awe as the grey sludge oozed out of the shoot and transformed a big dirty hole into a perfectly flat, perfectly smooth surface.

A few days later, when it was dry, we watched in horror as the workers pushed some giant motorized pizza cutters all over the concrete, cracking it in a dozen different places. "What are you doing?" we demanded. "It was perfect before!"

The answer is a powerful marketing lesson.

Click here to print this newsletter

Click here for a photo of the school building

Table of Contents

• Why No One Believes You

• Quotes

• Marketing Motivators on Cracking Your Foundation

• Featured Resources for Foundation Crackers

• The Motivated Marketing Letter Details

• Bonus Quotes

What Does This Have to Do with Marketing?

The workers were cracking the foundation because it was going to crack anyway, eventually. They wanted to control where and when it cracked.

The concrete might have stayed together for a few months or even years, but at some point the earth below was going to shift and the beautiful foundation was going to crack. When that happened, woe to the building sitting on top of it.

So they cracked the foundation on purpose, before they started building. They let it settle into place, imperfect, yes, but much more stable and predictable than a perfect slab that was going to let them down eventually.

And they cracked it exactly where they wanted to, rather than letting random effects and subtle laws of physics shear off the boys' bathroom one warm winter's day.

Nobody Believes Us

Ready for the journey to marketing metaphor-land?

Your marketing foundation is all the good stuff you want people to believe about you. You always return phone calls within 18 minutes. All your clients retired to Sonoma County within two years of hiring you to handle their investments. You've never shipped a defective part in your life. One visit to your office and your patients' back pain is cured forever.

We spend a lot of time building this foundation. We work hard to provide the best products and services. We learn about our customers' needs and adapt and grow to satisfy them. We maintain high standards and stand by our guarantees. And now, we understand, we get to reap the rewards of excellence - we get to tell the world how great we are.

Our prospects look at our marketing, our smooth foundation, and go, "Yeah, right!"

Why They Don't Believe Us

1. We're Biased and Full of It

Of course we want people to believe good things about us. That's how we get paid.

2. We're Biased and Deluded

We truly do think we're great. Take this little test:

A. True or False: I am an above average driver.

B. True or False: I have an above average sense of humor.

C. True or False: I am in better shape than most people my age.

In studies, between 75-90% of respondents choose True for each item. We all live in Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

3. Most Marketing is BS

Gasp!

Yes, you heard me right. A marketing man spills the darkest secret of his profession - most of what passes for marketing is meaningless fluff, outright lies, or unsupportable claims.  After all, most of the marketing we experience as consumers - billions and billions of dollars worth each year - is designed to convince us that identical commodity products - soda, diapers, dishwashing liquid - are significantly different from each other.

The Marketing Discount Rate

Every claim you make about your business,  your service, and the results your customers will achieve gets discounted about 90%.

You say: "This air purifier will trap particles as small as one micron in diameter."

Your prospect hears: "My cat could probably get through that thing."

You say: "This is a stunning 4.0 megapixel digital camera that's all about breathtaking performance and head-turning good looks" (straight from a well-known manufacturer's press release, I kid you not).

Your prospect hears: "This might take some good pictures until it breaks. I'd better pay an extra $120 for the 3 year extended warranty. Oh, and the included memory chip will hold about 8 pictures. I guess I need to buy a 512 MB card for another $135, and while I'm at it I should get the $40 rechargeable battery. Of course, the case isn't included either..."

Whatever you say goes through the filter of their past experience. Every marketing claim that was ever overblown, untrue, or irrelevant sticks to you and makes them doubt your accuracy and honesty.

And the minute you say something they truly disbelieve, like "Highest quality at the lowest price," the marketing discount rate just reached 100%. You're a goner.

The Island of the Liars and Truth-tellers

Remember that logic puzzle about the island that's inhabited by two tribes - the liars and the truth-tellers? It's impossible to tell them apart by looks. You're on this island, at a fork in the road, lost and confused, and you want to know which road takes you to the village. You meet a native of the island, and get to ask one question. What question can you ask to find your way to the village?

If you think that puzzle is confusing, think how your prospects feel. They want to know what to do, whom to believe, and whether you are a truth-teller or a liar. The stakes are high - they're betting money, and in some cases much more, on their ability to get the answer.

How can you help them?

Let's try this approach. Pretend you're the truth-teller in the puzzle. The prospect doesn't know whether to believe you or not. So you say, "I'm a truth-teller, I swear I am."

Does that do it?

Of course not. Because the liar says the exact same thing. (For the answer to the riddle, send a blank email to liar_puzzle@aweber.com.)

Crack Your Own Foundation

The answer to the real-life marketing problem is to crack your own foundation. Make a damaging admission about your business up front. Say something that your prospect doesn't expect a self-interested, lying, deluded marketing shark to say.

Tell the truth about something that puts you in a less than flattering light.

For example:

• "This air purifier filters down to 1 micron. It will keep your air incredibly pure.  The problem is, because the filter is so tight, the fan has to work extra hard. It's a little noisier than some of the cheaper units out there."
   

• "This digital camera will take better pictures than just about any other camera.  You see, we spent a lot of time developing software that interprets what the lens captures. Most other manufacturers just slap their regular lenses on digital cameras and don't focus as much on the software. The trade-off is that professional photographers may not like the fact that our camera does all the work. We've created it to be point and shoot - the photographer doesn't get to control as many settings as other cameras."
   

• "I help my clients build considerable wealth, but my system requires consistent disciplined investment over time. I don't do well with clients who want to give me all the responsibility over their money. Realistically, there's only so much I can do if they're not going to budget and save on a regular basis."

This marketing tactic has two very powerful effects. 

1. Cracking Your Own Foundation pre-empts doubt

Remember the marketing discount rate? That 90% is an average. If you make an outrageous claim, you kick it to 100%. But if you say something negative, problematic, or unflattering about your business, you can lower the marketing discount rate to almost zero.

If you'd tell the truth about this, your prospect reasons, you're probably telling the truth about the good stuff too.

Just like the construction workers at Princeton Friends School, you crack it early before forces outside of your control crack it for you. You don't want to build a long sales cycle on a foundation that hasn't cracked yet.

2. Cracking Your Own Foundation focuses your prospect on the negative you choose to highlight

Notice that the negatives I gave as examples weren't entirely negative. In fact, some prospects may actually be attracted by them.

"The fan is noisier because the air purifier is more effective. That means quieter models must not be as effective."

"I'm not a professional photographer. I'm tired of taking pictures of people with red eyes and no feet. I don't need to be able to twiddle the settings."

"I don't want to just give my money to someone and be done with it. Of course I want to keep saving and investing over time."

When you make a damaging admission, make sure it's not truly damaging in the eyes of your best customers.  I'd avoid the following:

• "My product is cheaper because it is made by 9-year-old slaves in mainland China."
   

• "Because I never actually went to law school, opposing counsel finds my tactics unpredictable."
   

• "Statistically, most cars never get involved in fatal collisions. So we skipped the crash tests and installed reconditioned seat belts, and passed the savings on to you."

Think of the damaging admission as a tool that helps your prospects qualify themselves. You're saying, "Because of this problem, my product or service isn't for everyone. You have to be willing to accept this tradeoff in order to be happy with it."

Everything's a Tradeoff

The essence of the damaging admission is the concept of "tradeoff." The problem with so much marketing is that it contradicts what we know to be true about the world - everything is a compromise.

Faster means lower quality. More personalized attention means higher cost. Better sound systems take up more room. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

What you're really doing in your marketing is explaining the tradeoffs so as to attract the people who get the most value from your big benefit while suffering the least from the tradeoff. 

And your marketing tradeoff is - give up a little Benefit to gain a lot of Believability.

Back to Table of Contents

Quotes

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.
- Janis Joplin

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
- Bertrand Russell

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
- Andre Gide

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.
- James Russell Lowell

If one cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
- Nikita Khrushchev

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
- Alfred Korzybski

Back to Table of Contents

Marketing Motivators on Cracking the Foundation

Back to Table of Contents

Featured Resources for Foundation Crackers

1. Speedselling, by John Paul Mendocha. Cracking the Foundation is as much about sales as marketing. John Paul is a sales master, a person who has helped me countless times cut through the clutter of my complicated messages, to tell my prospects exactly what they need to hear to make an informed decision. His audio course on sales is "real world," not nice theory.  I attended a live seminar, and discovered a lot of truths about human psychology that I probably would have been happier not knowing. 

John Paul's methods and philosophy aren't pretty, but they explain what really goes on in the world of sales, and how to protect yourself against unscrupulous competitors (and against unscrupulous salespeople).

I recommend the Foundation Boot Camp Audio Kit. Go to "Order Stuff" and click on "Audio Kits" under "Live Events."

2. Leads into Gold

Leads into Gold is a complete lead generation system that takes you step-by-step, paint-by-numbers through the process of connecting your message to your market. The "damaging admission" is just one element of this strategy. To learn how to use dozens of others, check out Leads into Gold. One-year money back guarantee - the risk is all mine.

Order by clicking here.

3. Lead Generation Teleseminar on CD

Interested in Leads into Gold, but not quite ready to commit? Why not dip your toe in the water instead of diving in? Get the CD of a live teleseminar that I conducted a couple of months ago.  I pull out all the stops in this introduction to lead generation.  End cold calling forever - learn how in just 1 hour of listening. Your investment is a whopping $15, and if you order before the next ice age, you get free shipping anywhere in the US. Click here to order.

4. Put talking testimonials on your website: Talking Website

If you've visited http://www.leadsintogold.com since July, you've seen a very cool audio component.  It's a service that makes it simple, quick, and cheap to get people to give you glowing testimonials at the moment you've deserved them.  Picture this: you've just helped a customer or client, and they're really grateful.  You hand them your cell phone and say, "Would you mind repeating what you just said so I can use it on my website? It's so much more powerful when you say something nice about me than when I say it about myself."  They wait for the beep, record the message, and eight seconds later it's ready for you or your webmaster to insert on your site.

You can ask your clients to talk about the tradeoffs too. They can help you crack your foundation. After all, they bought from you and are happy, in spite of the tradeoffs. Their words and emotions can convince others just like them that the tradeoff makes sense.  Check out this truly revolutionary technology and let your customers talk to each other without you getting in the way.

Back to Table of Contents

The Motivated Marketing Letter Details

The Motivated Marketing Letter is published whenever I feel like it (these days it seems to be coming out once a month), and is a copyrighted feature of howieconnect. For down-to-earth, ethical, and easy-to-follow marketing guidance, visit www.howieconnect.com.  I work with businesses and solo practitioners who are great at what they do, and not so great at telling the world about it.

What would you like to read about in future issues of the Motivated Marketing Letter?  Email me topics and questions, and save me the trouble of guessing.

To unsubscribe with no hard feelings, click on the link at the bottom of this email. If you would like to subscribe to the Motivated Marketing Letter, fill out the form on my home page, www.howieconnect.com.  You'll get my seven-part lead generation course, and then about one letter a month.

Bonus Quotes

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
- Lily Tomlin

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
- Henny Youngman

The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it.
- Joan Rivers

I hate housework. You make the beds, you wash the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.
- Joan Rivers

Why ruin a good story with the truth?
- Woody Allen

Back to Table of Contents

The Leads into Gold™ System. A marketing course, toolkit, swipe file and audio crash course & "personal trainer" to help you attract more business than you can handle with no cold calling. Learn how to generate qualified leads who want what you sell. Get them to call you.

Listen to a happy customer who almost didn't buy for a very good reason!

Click here to buy Leads into Gold.