CarusoBlog

It's Possible--Even Beneficial--to Market Apples and Oranges

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan-

Creative marketing is in my blood.  I practice it and I appreciate it.  That's why I'm so excited to report on what I experienced last month.

My Rotary friend, Dave Donnellon, invited me to go downtown to see the Detroit Tigers play the Chicago White Sox.  The evening began and ended with two terrific examples of cross-marketing. 

Often, marketing departments are so focused on advertising their core products and services that they forget to look for synergistic opportunities.  Detroit was not missing many of these opportunities the other night. 

Dave's invitation was a $40 dinner/game package.  I met Mr. Donnellon and a group of his friends for dinner at Mario's restaurant, a Detroit institution.  The buffet was outstanding, terrific Italian food and plenty of it. 

A non-package dinner there usually costs about $60, so I was already getting my money's worth.  Mario's also provided a shuttle to and from the game so we didn't have to worry about parking at Comerica Park. 

The Detroit Tiger organization has been shoooting off fireworks after night games since they were at the old stadium.  People love it and they'll even sit through a stinko game to take in a fireworks display.  

So, in one evening, the Tigers sold us great Italian food, a shuttle ride to and from the stadium, a fireworks display and even a ball game.

If You're Gonna Copy, Copy the Best

Composed in Grapevine, Texas-

You probably know who the best company is in your industry.  I hope you're always learning about the "top dog" so your company or department can copy its success.

In school, we were taught that it was bad to copy on tests.  Yet, copying is one of the best marketing techniques on the planet.  The idea is to copy and then make the idea your own by putting an original twist on it.

Here's an example of how to copy.  The Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville is one of the most unusual, best-run hotels in the country.  They decided to copy themselves and built the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine and two other properties in Orlando and Washington, DC.

I keynoted a conference at the Texas property earlier this month and had this photo taken in the cool indoor courtyard.  

Notice, I recommend that you copy, not steal.  If you replicate someone's intellectual property, you should do it with permission and always provide attribution.  Also, you should never copy to the extent that you neglect to differentiate your products and service.

Do you have a success story that involves copying someone or some company?

Keep Your Eyes On the Prize

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan--

My friend Marc Harty has started a new blog called Main Topic--Focused Thinking for an ADD-Driven World. 

It's an important topic and Marc is just the right person to address it.  He's a talented marketing expert who is passionate about providing valuable information to people 

I commented on one of Marc's first postings and have re-purposed my message here.

Some people find that a general lack of focus is caused by The Long Tail phenomenon of having a plethora of choices.  You may recall that Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail, explains how the digital age is expanding business opportunities. 

I met Marc at Fred Gleeck's and Rick Frishman's seminar on information marketing a few years ago, where they gave us enough Web sites and tools and things to do to keep us busy for a year.

Many of our fellow attendees went to a similar conference within six months and received another cool list of distractions.  Part of the secret to conquering the distraction monster is to develop the discipline to "just say no."

On a basic level, as I explain in my FastLearnerAudio series, time management is simply re-prioritizing distractions.  Another way to think of it:  make a "not-to-do" list. 

Politically speaking, the phrase, "stay the course," is not popular right now, but it's just the ticket for people who need to focus on the target.  As I remind people in my sales training classes:  Keep your eyes on the prize.

How do you handle distractions?  Comment here and share your best ideas with the rest of us?

Car Companies Surprise Themselves With Sales at Auto Show

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan--

Motown is abuzz with the opening of the 2008 North American International Auto Show. 

The really big news, however, is that the automobile manufacturers actually sold a few cars during the Auto Show's first luxury night.  Mark Phelan and Kimberly Lifton of the Detroit News report that industry executives were as surprised as anyone when 10 or 12 cars worth a total of $3 million or more were sold that evening. 

Isn't it ironic that car companies are starved for sales, but didn't expect to sell any automobiles at the premier industry event of the year? 

To put luxury car sales in perspective, Lamborghini sold 2,406 cars worldwide in 2007, while the Ford F-series truck sold 1,892 units per day.  I guess Lam is on its way to making quota this year.

Excited car company executives are said to be giddy with the prospect of "selling cars again like this next year!"

You think?

Attentions Sales People -- Low Prices Are Not A Good Selling Point

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan--

I read The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman a while back, but I can't stop thinking about this important book.  In fact, I just posted a review on Amazon.

Why am I still so interested in the Fishman book?  As a sales trainer,  I'm especially aware of how American commerce is strongly attracted to low price points. 

I teach sale people to never talk about price until they've created value by talking about everything else, especially product benefits.  Even when a potential customer objects to a "high" price, a seller's goal is not to give up dollars, but to re-establish value. 

Promoting a low price is not in your customer's best interest because a lower price is almost always a representation of lower value.  Promoting a low price is not in your company's best interest because lower prices erode margins.  Selling on price is not in the seller's best interest because it causes laziness and apathy as the seller shifts from promoting value to scoring a commodity sale. 

Price is important, but it is not and never will be the most important factor of a business transaction.  Volkswagen will never put Cadillac out of business.

Even Technical People Buy on Emotion

Composed in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada--

Recently, I spoke at a Canadian Optimist District conference for a terrific gentleman named Mark Kerr. 

Early adopters of the new are annoyed with Apple for lowering the price of the iPphone by $200 within only ten weeks of the product's debut.  People who rush out to buy new Apple products are big Mac fans and huge cheerleaders for the company.  They were treated rudely, but perhaps their biggest problem is lack of good judgment.

These folks should be embarrassed for camping out at retail stores the night before, tripping over themselves to obtain a product that was guaranteed to be cheaper and better within a few months.

No matter.  This sort of behavior is proof that people often make purchase decisions based on emotion rather than reason.  The iPhone example proves the maxim is true even for technical people who purchase technical products.

Television commercials for the iPhone are slick and fun.  The versions I've seen don't give a single specification about a product that is essentially a computer. 

When I deliver sales training, I always remind audiences that people seldom make purchase decisions based solely on price.  This is even true for technical products.

Buy Bonds or Read Moneyball

Composed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada--

Now that Barry Bonds has done the deed, baseball afficionados can focus on something else for a while.  I'm not a big fan of the sport, but I played a lot shortstop and second base in my life, so I enjoy the game and certainly appreciate its finer points.

I thought I knew baseball pretty well until I read Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael M. Lewis.  Ultimately, this is a biography of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics.  Beane has almost single handedly changed how people think about baseball.

Beane taught the world to think about the process of winning rather than just the outcome.  Baseball brains used to care deeply about home runs.  Now they are enamored with on-base percentage (OBP).  Mathematically speaking, OBP is roughly three times more important than slugging percentage.  OBP is even more important than runs scored, if you can believe that.

Beane and company are big on research.  When the A's Assistant General Manager Paul DePodesta started bringing his laptop computer to meetings, coaches and scouts became extremely nervous.  Apparently, the computer  rarely lies and has become a dependable tool for making a variety of important decisions. 

For example, it almost never works out when a baseball player is signed right out of high school.  The kid has not matured physically, mentally, emotionally or psychologically so he can rarely deliver on the adults' expectations. 

My favorite quote from the book:  What begins as a failure of the imagination, ends as a marketing efficiency.  Also:  An explanation is where the mind comes to rest.

I deliver a lot of sales training and I see a corollary in the business world.  So many business owners and sales managers are more interested in the outcome of a sales campaign than the process.  Let's use a baseball analogy to drive home (drive home, get it?) my point.   

In business, we're interested in how many "runs are scored," but if we put our attention toward "moving men around the bases," we will "score runs."

The Post Office Told Me They Didn't Want My Business

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan--

The United States Post Office (USPS) is an fascinating business model.  It's not really a government agency.  More than anything it resembles a monopoly.   It's not publicly owned and yet, it's certainly not a private enterprise.

The USPS is doing a much better job marketing its services recently, but they still have a long way to go.   Gone are the long lines and the sour attitudes.  Most of the locations have been spruced up and decorated a bit.

But the recent price hike/procedure change has been the last straw for many customers.

Like most people, I would like to avoid putting two 39-cent stamps on a First Class letter that now requires 41 cents in postage.  The solution, of course, is to purchase the 2-cent differential stamp until I use up the 39-cent stamps.  I had to drop off some mail, so I parked my car and went in to buy 25 2-cent stamps, which cost me a lousy 50 cents. 

Guess what it cost me to park?  That's right, 50 cents!!  How crazy is that?!?

As e-mail (the competition) remains free and easier to use than ever, the USPS continues to raise the rate of mailing a simple letter.  The Post Office would like to have a bigger piece of the shipping business, but chose to enter into an agreement with Fedex to--get this--install a Fedex drop box outside every Post Office location. 

We have so many choices now.  Companies that make it harder to do business with them might as well hang a sign out front that reads, "WE DON'T REALLY WANT YOUR BUSINESS."

The Anti-Salesperson

Posted from Denver, Colorado--

Salespeople deserve their snarky reputation.

As a sales trainer, I've met a ton of salespeople.  The well-deserved stereotype is a talkative, overly optimistic person who breezes into a prospect's life expecting the prospect to drop everything to listen to an average presentation. 

Well, it's a new day, baby.  Allow me to introduce the anti-salesperson.   This refreshing reincarnation does things the opposite of most sellers.  The anti-salesperson doesn't say or do things that other sales people do.  For example, salespeople always ask, "How are you today?" even if they don't care about the answer. 

There are many differences between the traditional seller and the new, improved seller:

-- The new seller doesn't make a presentation because he is there to listen.  The new seller encourages the prospect to give a presentation explaining his challenges and problems. 

-- The new seller doesn't try to close the sale too quickly.

-- The new seller understands that the price is not as important as the solution and that prospects don't mind paying for value.  Wal-mart will never put Nordstrom out of business.

The new sales approach is that different.  I write more about this in my new FastLearnerAudio3 (FLA3) series on selling.   FLA3 comes with four one-hour CDs and four 30-page e-books.  The topics are:

• Selling More, More Often For More Money
• Networking Like a Pro
• 22 Sales Closes That Work
• Negotiation

Is Controversy No Longer A Hot Ticket?

Posted from Royal Oak, Michigan--

     Could it be that controversy is no longer a dependable brand? 

     Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures have parted ways.  Although Cruise's people say he quit, Paramount is saying he was released.  They are allegedly fed up with the star's eccentric behavior and feel that his new controversial image may be hurting his box office appeal.

     Perhaps movie executives took note of what happened to Russell Crowe's appeal when he threw a telephone at a hotel clerk a couple of years ago.  That single instance seemed to lop millions off the gross ticket receipts of "Cinderella Man," which was playing in theatres at the time.

     Even filmakers Oliver Stone and Spike Lee have recently delivered movies of nuance and texture instead of their trademark, heavy-handed editorials.  Stone, director of "JFK" and "Born on the Fourth of July," has released, "World Trade Center," a topic with a political bull's eye, if there ever was one.  Yet, he treats the subject with uncharacteristic objectivity and finesse.

     Spike Lee ("Malcolm X," "Jungle Fever") is well known for producing and directing motion pictures that rail against racism.  His most recent work is a TV movie about the government's response to  Hurricane Katrina.  "When the Levees Broke:  A Requiem in Four Acts," has been reviewed as a fair and measured account of what happened in New Orleans one year ago.

     Controversy is risky, but the media has a long history of reporting it and news junkies have an equally long history of consuming it.  So what's changed?  News is reported much faster now, thanks to 500 television stations, satellite radio, blogs, websites and e-mail.      

     This high-speed delivery doesn't suit controversy, which has always worked best from the shadows.  Edgy eccentricities taste better when they can simmer for a while.  The speed of electronic communication, however, prevents weirdness from cooking too long.  Instead, odd behavior is flash fried and processed for mass consumption.

     Talk show host Mike Douglas passed away a few weeks ago.  If a couple million viewers saw a movie star jump on Douglas' couch in the 70's, they would have excused the actor as silly and love-struck.  When an actor jumps on Oprah's couch in 2006, the news report takes an ugly tone.  Over 100 million people saw the clip the next day and every broadcaster with a microphone labelled the behavior as "bizarre."

     Dan Rather has personally experienced the trauma of being flash fried for immediate consumption.  John Kerry thought he knew about speed boats until the speed of blogs reshaped his Presidential campaign message. 

     There's no time for intrigue or reflection anymore.  The New World Order is a fast food order that must be consumed quickly.  Speedy reporting has us us rushing to judgement.  Unique, eccentric and flaky celebrities are not attractive anymore.  They're just weird.

     Finally, a new guitar God materialized on YouTube about eight months ago.  A waifish figure, his face obscured by the brim of a ball cap and back lighting, wowed musicians and non-musicians alike with his extraordinary prowess on the electric guitar.  Over 7.35 million people watched his video before the mysterious musician was outed as 23-year-old Jeong-Hyun Lim.

     Lim is self-taught and has only been playing guitar for six years, but that's not the amazing part of his story.  The shocker is that this humble Korean kid has become one of the most famous guitarists in the world by hiding his face and not being controversial. 

     Now, that's just odd.