Life’s Been Good

Great song. Fits my story too, but mine ain’t finished yet. Or wasn’t as of the time of this post.

Picture this: It’s August of 1977. A 14 year-old boy who’d been listening to Wolfman Jack on an AM radio gets bussed to another town to finish his high school education.

The boy gets thrown out of a class for fighting on the first day of school and the only class for that period, that has an opening, is Mass Communications.

The school is starting a radio station that has enough power to reach all the way to Highway 41, about 1/8 mile away. The radio station is run by the teacher of this Mass Communications class.

The teacher recruits the boy to his radio team because A) he likes fighters, B) the boy reads Rolling Stone, C) the boy’s dumb enough to say yes.

Simple.

The boy finds The Eagles and yes, I capitalized that on purpose.

They rule. Period.

The boy finds Hotel California. It still rules, too.

The boy hears Joe Walsh play guitar for the first time. He still rules and rocks, as well.

Fast forward to 2008: The boy, now a man, who sells for a living and coaches sales people for fun … and a small profit … gets a message from the Universe that Joe Walsh, Master Guitarist of the First Order, had hidden a sales and marketing lesson in one of his songs.

The man searches for days and days before he comes across it. He then has to decide whether or not to share it with the world. And whether or not to charge for it.

Well, the man figures, life’s been good to me so far, so I’ll just set it free and hope for reciprocity.

So here’s what Joe said that only a select few marketers have ever known:

“I’m just looking for clues at the scene of the crime …”

Now I guess you want me to decipher that for you, don’t you ?

Well, here’s what corporate marketers messed up a few decades ago. You have to design, test, tweak and deploy a marketing campaign from ground zero, not from the 30,000 feet view.

Before the days when corporate wonks started sitting in high rises, the sales and marketing types were out in the field, they were there talking to the customers and they got immediate feedback that hadn’t been watered down by salespeople fearful of losing their job or hurting the feelings of some marketing manager that knows nothing … but is married to the bosses niece.

Now days, everybody wants to view a situation from the 30,000 feet view and that’s not where the usable intel is. It’s down on the ground. Before it gets passed up thru several levels, before it gets watered down, before it gets altered, before it gets made politically correct and before it becomes almost worthless.

I’m a ex-military guy and we were taught to assess a situation from where the action is. After intel moves thru several hands, it’s not as good as it was when it was fresh.

If you want to stop making mistakes in your marketing, get down in the trenches and get usable info, instead of worthless words.

Ask people for their opinion, without telling them why you are asking them.

Talk to people and bring up your product or service casually.

I give my coaching clients places to go, people to see and things to do that make good intel available to them.

Here’s a hint: It ain’t a google group, it ain’t a forum and it ain’t always online.

The view from 30,000 feet is distorted, out of focus and not the best one, so don’t keep using it now that I’ve let the Genie of Truth out of the the bottle.

Columbo didn’t get his info from 30,000 feet, he went to the scene of the crime.

Rockford didn’t fill his files from 30,000 feet, he went to the scene of the crime.

Mike’s Big Message: Quit looking for ways to think outside of the box. Go to where the box gets used and look for clues there.

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Meat Loaf never just sang a song.

He held musical events. Each and every song seemed to be an over-the-top, way over-done extravaganza.

His fans loved it. Hint, hint..

He never short-changed his audience. Bigger hint …

The way he added what seemed to be a full fledged orchestra to his work differentiated him from the other rockers of his time. Even bigger hint …

That same genius will serve you well as a blogger, as a podcaster and more importantly, as a content creator.

I hate with a burning, purple passion the blog posts that ride like this:

” I’m thinking that this is good, bad or indifferent. What do you think ? “

Two or three sentences and a question ? Dude. If I’d wanted a survey, I’d answer my phone when tele-idiots call. I subscribed to your RSS feed to hear what you had to say, not for you to ask me what I think.

You probably think Twitter is a good idea, too, don’t you ?

If that’s all you have time to write, then don’t bother. It’s okay to skip a day or a week. Really.

Create an event. Go big or don’t go at all. If you can’t create with the big dogs, stay on the porch.

I’ve been contemplating adding a podcast to Simplenomics and I may as well put the pressure on myself and say I’m gonna do it. That way I have to get it done … soon.

Audio content is much, much easier for most of us to create.

I know I can speak much better than I can type. There are reasons for that, the least two of which are: I can’t type and I sometimes seem to see numbers and words a bit differently than they actually appear. It’s a bit like a very, very mild case of dyslexia, but I’m not sure it actually is, since I’ve never had it tested. I have no idea why, but it seems to flare up more under pressure, even if it’s self induced. I have a half-brother who’s fully dyslexic and he’s much worse off than I am by far. My only “problem” is that I sometimes have to read something 3, 4 or 5 times to get it all and see exactly what the writer wrote. That’s more good than bad, or it’s seemed that way to me so far in my 45 years.

Numbered keypads, fax machines, calculators and such give me fits sometimes, but I can usually work thru it without throwing them … very far.

More importantly, the addition of the Thesis theme here on this site will allow me to do a better job of creating text based posts, even though my aim is to do more audio than text.

I feel like I’m shortchanging the readers and myself by not producing posts that are “events“, to steal Meat Loaf’s methodology, so I’m going to try to go the “event” route and see how that works for you and me both.

I’ve got a ton of audio content stored up and I seem to have no problem is getting interviews with sales and marketing thought leaders, so it should be a fun ride.

Stick with me, tell everyone you know and hang on, it’s gonna be a fun ride.

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Me: Acting ?

Him: Acting.

The question asked before this astonished answer was:

What other profession does selling most closely resemble ?

Me: But a salesperson isn’t an actor.

Him: A good one is.

Me: How so ?

Him: They both control their emotions don’t they ?

This is getting tougher, so I’ll let the sales manager I was talking to tell you what he told me.

An actor or a salesman must control:

• His emotions
• His facial expressions
• His body movements
• His voice

Without control of all of these an actor can’t portray drama and if he doesn’t control all of these a salesman may create drama.

About now, the principle was starting to sink into my often closed, never quiet mind, so I asked:

In what other ways does a salesperson resemble an actor ?

A salesman or actor must be able exude confidence.

Not necessarily playing dumb, I asked – How ?

By the tone of his voice, the expression on his face, the words and facts he uses and how he weaves them into the conversation.

Basically, he said, by being sincere.

Suppose, I said, the salesperson isn’t all that sincere.

An honest salesperson never tries to sell anything that the prospect doesn’t really need, no more than an honest actor will take an phony part.

Hey Will Farrell, you listening ?!

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Have you ever lost a bet and had to buy lunch for a coworker ?

Me too. Lotsa times.

I sometimes use it as a means of creating a bond between those who are in a support position for me.

They don’t get as many perks as I do, so I lose bets to them every now and then and buy them a lunch or some donuts or whatever.

They love to get into my wallet and I love making ‘em feel like they got something over on me.

They like me more than any of the other sales people in our organization and that works in my favor.

It’s kinda like an organized bribe on my part and they never seem to notice that I lose almost every bet.

I lost another one last week to a young man whose butt I ride all the time, trying to get him to catch on to more things and trying to get him to be a bit better. When it starts to get to him, I lose a bet and he feels better.

I went to pick up our lunches and the hostess was, how shall we put this …. stupid ? An idiot ? Worthless ?

Yeah, those will do … for a start.

I asked her if I could pick up a couple of sandwiches to go and she said she would try to find someone to take my order, but ” … they all are real good at hiding out in their places and I have trouble finding them, but when I hide, they find me. “

At this point, I wasn’t real sure who “they” were, but I was hoping it wasn’t the people from I Am Legend or the things in The Mist.

About 15 minutes into my ordeal, which I won’t document here ( I’m saving it for a podcast ), a mother and son came in. The boy looked to be 14 to 16.

The hostess with the leastess says to the young man, ” Why ain’t you in school ? “

Not Hi, not welcome to XXX ( name withheld to protect my bank account ), not anything that you’d expect from a hostess.

The young man said, ” I’m homeschooled. ”

So The Brain says, ” Oh, that means you get to play hooky and eat lunch. “

I myself went to a public school and ate lunch every day, so I don’t know where she went or if she actually went.

So here’s the questions I have:

Will that mother and son ever eat there again ?

Will the management ever find out that she’s a complete and finely tuned utter fool ?

Can she and will she affect the repeat business ?

Would you let it bother you and would you go back if you were that mother and son ?

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A while back I was able to get Steve Marx, author of Close Like The Pros, on the phone for a few minutes.

We talked about the fact that neither of us truly believe in sales contests, as they’re used in today’s sales climate.

I had also previously reprinted an article by Dan Kennedy that basically agreed with us.

So take the time to listen thru the player below or download the mp3 and listen on your iPod or other mp3 player.

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