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3 Steps to Take Yourself from Good to Great

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In a good economy, you can do reasonably well with “good enough.” Good enough design, good enough marketing, good enough skills. When demand is high and dollars are sloshing around, there’s a market for Decent. Capable. Adequate. Acceptable. Unfortunately, we’re not in a good economy. We’re in a wretched economy. Industries all over the world are falling like bowling pins, and “good enough” professionals in all fields are scrambling. There’s always room at the top, the guru says smugly. Don’t you want to smack that guy sometimes? How are you supposed to get to the top? And how are you supposed to pay your bills until you figure that out? But believe it or not, there’s a map to the top. And you don’t have to have superhuman skills, talent, or even perseverance to get there. Take these three (ok, four) simple steps. No, they’re not easy, but they are simple. You can do them. And you must do them. Good enough isn’t good enough anymore. Find out what you’re better at than anyone in the world Now before you start hyperventilating, hear me out. You’re probably not going to be the greatest copywriter or greatest web designer or the greatest dry cleaner on the face of the planet. You’re going to be the greatest in your world. The greatest copywriter for Dallas high-end commercial real estate, or Orange County chiropractors, or for B2B direct marketing in Bangalore. You’re going to find a world small enough, and then work your tail off to make yourself the greatest Doer-of-the-Thing-You-Do in that world. Sometimes you create a world of one. I’m the world’s greatest practitioner of Sonia-style marketing. Brian’s the world’s greatest Copyblogger. (I nip at his heels to keep him honest, but he’s still the greatest.) Seth is the world’s foremost Seth. Being “the world’s greatest you” isn’t an excuse to slack off, though. It means that every day you show up and try to do your thing a little better than you did yesterday. Find a viable business model If what you’re best at is playing Mozart sonatas on air guitar, even if you’re quite amazing at it, you may struggle to find paying customers. If it’s a business, you’ve got to get paid. Sometimes there are multiple strong business models for what you do, and it’s a matter of picking the one that suits you best. Sometimes one strategy will stand out. And sometimes, what you do is a very enjoyable passion, but it doesn’t form the kernel of a business. A viable business model isn’t a matter of will power or can-do attitude. The customers are either there or they aren’t. If they aren’t, keep framing and reframing your ideas and strengths until you find a market of buyers. Then offer them something they want (not need) to buy . Find something that gives you juice Remember when I mentioned working your tail off? Running a great business, even a business of one, isn’t easy. You’re going to have to be stubborn. You’re going to have to get past hurdles that make you uncomfortable. You’re going to have to give some things up, especially when you’re getting started. You’re going to have to care. A lot. And you’ll never do that if your business bores you to tears. Understand — you don’t have to necessarily love real estate to be the best agent in your well-defined world. You might love negotiation, or you might love the type of clients you focus on, or you might love playing matchmaker between houses and buyers. But you’ve got to adore something about it. It’s got to give you juice. It’s got to make you stronger . Otherwise you’ll run out of gas before you can make it happen. Of course this comes from the book Good to Great The three steps above are from Jim Collins’ groundbreaking book — he calls this trio the “ hedgehog concept .” (Hence the cute if slightly creepy small mammal at the top of this post.) These three factors aren’t just for copywriters and web designers — they’re for multinational conglomerates and billion-dollar empires. And they’re for soccer teams and nonprofits and musicians. I’d heard great things about Jim Collins’ book for years, but I never read it. I looked at it this way: Every idiot CEO and Dilbert-worthy executive in the country has read Good to Great . And from what I’ve seen, most of them couldn’t effectively manage a hamburger stand, much less run a great company. But then I read Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness , and darn it, Hsieh does run a great company, and he found Good to Great essential reading. If I can pick up a $14 book that made Tony Hsieh smarter about business, don’t you think I should? So I did. And it’s brilliant. But I can also see why it failed. The crucial fourth step Collins (or more accurately, his team of researchers) found another common element in great companies. It’s certainly the case with Hsieh. You’ve got to love the business more than you do your own ego. The leaders of Collins’ great companies were, without exception. personally humble and self-effacing, but they were fanatically passionate and driven to make their companies succeed. If you’re in it for the Breitling, the house in the Hamptons, the thrill of watching minions scurry to carry out your personal immense vision, then your endeavor (small or large) is in deep trouble. (If your CEO is in business for these things, start looking for a way out now. Luckily, mine isn’t). If you’re crazy in love with the market you serve, the product you create, and the good that you do in the world (even if that good is a bit frivolous … frivolity can be a beautiful thing), you’re on to something big. Don’t stop. That’s why Good to Great didn’t create a million great companies. Every executive in America read it and puffed up with pride. “Why, we’re in luck! Humble and self-effacing, that’s me to a tee!” Self-delusion is a powerful thing But you’re more honest than that. You have the potential to level with yourself, and to step up your game. Good to Great is probably a pipe dream for most big companies — the entrenched egos are too giant to shift. More important, they don’t really want to. But you can hone your hedgehog concept. You can refuse to let yourself off the hook. And you can get the hell over yourself and start getting obsessed about helping people. And when you do, you’re going to do some amazing things. How about you? What has your own “good to great” journey looked like? Let us know in the comments what you’ve found along your path. About the Author : Sonia Simone is CMO of Copyblogger Media and founder of Remarkable Communication . Share your brushes with greatness with her on twitter .

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Why Getting Attention Won’t Make You Rich

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Be remarkable. Be the purple cow. Get yourself noticed. Just be your own beautiful and unique snowflake self, and your allotment of raving fans will come find you and buy everything you make. Ever heard that advice? It’s a social media truism that as long as you’re authentic , you can’t go wrong. Fame, fortune, and the latest Apple products will all be yours. Let’s face it — authenticity can be a great way to draw a crowd. Especially if you have an over-the-top personality. And because we live in the age of attention scarcity, many people think that getting attention is the hard part. If only I could get noticed. If only I could get someone to read my stuff. But attention isn’t actually the rarest commodity in the 21st century. Trust is. It’s true that the first letter in every sales formula is “A” All marketing has to start with attention. If you can’t attract attention in the first place, nothing else you do has a chance to work. This is why headlines matter more than anything else you do. And that’s been the case as long as selling has existed. If you’ve ever been to a Renaissance Faire, think about the way the food vendors let you know what they’ve got to offer. When the pretty girl in the tight bodice shouts Hot Turkey Legs! and Cold Beer Here! , those are headlines. They attract your attention and let you know the most important details of the offer. But you need to remember that the work of the headline is not only to attract attention. The true job of the headline is to get the first line of your copy (whether it’s a blog post, email message, sales letter, video, or podcast) read, watched, or listened to. In other words, if you gaze happily at the pretty girl but you never approach her for a beer, the headline (and the bodice) have failed. Copywriting formulas have more than one letter (If the whole idea of copywriting formulas is new to you, you can find 15 of them here .) Conversion is the copywriting term for all the stuff that happens between that initial “A” and the sale. You craft an offer that people will actually want to buy . You build trust. You answer questions and counter objections. You describe appealing benefits to spark interest and fan it into desire. You make it easy for the prospect to see herself as a customer. You increase desire with appealing bonuses. You deliver a clear, compelling call to action . You build in urgency elements to get the prospect to act today. You state your call to action again. Being a jerk is bad for business Lots of us will reward a jerk with attention. But not many will reward a jerk with business . Jerks can’t be depended on. They play head games. They don’t respect their audience. They amuse themselves at the expense of other people. Prospects are already fearful enough . If your prospects don’t trust you, they’re not likely to spend any money with you. You don’t have to be a wimp You’ll notice that some very successful businesspeople have strong, tough personas. They may well make themselves unlikeable to most of the population. That’s ok – they’re filtering out the customers who aren’t right for their business. The message they send to their right customers, though, is always that they can be trusted. That they’ll tell the truth, even when it’s not pretty. That they’re consistent, whether you like them or not. The dad from Sh*t My Dad Says would make a good marketer. Let’s face it, if you bought a car from that guy, you know that you’d have a completely accurate picture of what was good and bad about the car. He may be offensive at times, but he’s trustworthy. (At least, the real dad and not the one who will be played by William Shatner.) The dad from “Family Guy” would make a lousy marketer. He’s capricious, he goes for the cheap laugh every time, and he has no integrity. There are no customers gullible enough to buy a car from that guy. You may find him hilarious, but no sane person would find him trustworthy. It takes more than being remarkable Hey, I’m a big fan of remarkable. I built a blog and a lovely business around it. But “remarkable” doesn’t mean “remarkably annoying,” “remarkably mean,” or “ remarkably useless .” You have my permission to swear on your blog , to fearlessly embrace controversy , or just to make yourself a likeable jackass . But never, ever do it at the expense of the trust of your readers. There is no effective copywriting formula that leads directly from getting Attention to creating a Scandal to making a Sale. That’s just a formula for making an A-S-S of yourself. About the Author : Sonia Simone is CMO of Copyblogger Media and founder of Remarkable Communication . Follow her on twitter . Flickr Creative Commons image by Alaskan Dude

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Discover Your Strengths and Supercharge Your Business

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Have you ever been kept awake until 2 in the morning having an imaginary conversation with one of your blog readers who thinks you’re great and left a long comment telling you so? Or spent hours obsessively trying to figure out how to do better work, spurred by a fan letter from a customer about the terrific job you did? Or is it maybe more likely that your late-night solo conversations and obsessive problem-solving go to the trolls , the complainers, and the folks who just plain can’t stand you? Don’t worry. If you give an undue amount of attention to negative comments and feedback, to the extent of almost ignoring the good stuff altogether, it doesn’t mean you’re neurotic. It means you’re exactly like the rest of us. Chip Heath and Dan Heath in their marvelous book Switch make this observation: Imagine a world in which you experienced a rush of gratitude every single time you flipped a light switch and the room lit up. Imagine a world in which after a husband forgot his wife’s birthday, she gave him a big kiss and said, “For thirteen of the last fourteen years you remembered my birthday! That’s wonderful!” This is not our world. But in times of change, it needs to be. Play to your strengths I’ve long been fascinated by the advice to those who tell us to focus on our strengths, not our weaknesses, in order to create breakthrough success. It’s so appealing. You mean I don’t have to learn to cold call, balance my checkbook, or know how my RSS feed works? Sign me up. But it seems like it might be contradicted by another idea that’s gained a lot of attention recently: there’s not really any such thing as talent. Researchers like Carol Dweck and brilliant nonfiction writers like Malcolm Gladwell tell us that what we call “talent” is really the result of a heck of a lot of hard work. What are strengths, anyway? Until recently, I never realized this was a trick question. I thought that your strengths were things you were good at, and your weaknesses were things you sucked at. But Marcus Buckingham, who’s made a career out of writing about strengths, put it this way: A strength is “an activity that makes you feel strong.” It is an activity where the doing of it invigorates you. Before you do it, you find yourself instinctively looking forward to it. While you are doing it you don’t struggle to concentrate, but instead you become so immersed that time speeds up and you lose yourself in the present moment. And after you are finished doing it, you feel authentic, connected to the best parts of who you really are. Your strengths are the activities that give you the juice to put your 10,000 hours in. They’re the work you love enough to become the best in the world at. I’ll give you an example I recently heard Yo-Yo Ma giving an interview about how he got started as a cellist. As it happens, Yo-Yo’s parents are both musicians, and had high musical expectations for their little son. So when Yo-Yo was three, they gave the boy a violin. And Yo-Yo hated it. Wouldn’t practice. Wouldn’t focus. Didn’t have any zest for it. His frustrated parents finally gave up in disgust. And then little Yo-Yo saw and heard something amazing, something that surprised and delighted him. Something that he knew was exactly what he wanted to play. It was a double bass — the violin’s really, really big brother. Now that was more like it. He and his parents split the size difference, and Ma began to study first the viola and then settled (at four years old) on the cello. By seven he was a recognized prodigy, performing for Eisenhower and JFK, and by eight he played on national television, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. To have become so skilled between the ages of four and seven, he must have put in untold hours of practice. But they were hours spent on something he adored. One thing that interests me about Ma is that he isn’t just a brilliant cellist. He isn’t just world-famous and in-demand and a name brand. He also seems to be a remarkably happy and kind human being. He loves working with children. He’s been married a long time to the same person. He radiates kindness and a certain goofy charm. He’s got a great sense of humor, referring to himself at times as an “itinerant musician.” And he’s known for boundless energy. If I’m going to be a nationally-famous virtuoso, that’s the kind I want to be. Build your business like Yo-Yo When you see someone busting her tail to build a business, writing tons of great content, reaching out to potential customers, speaking and podcasting and doing everything we’re supposed to do to build a terrific content-based marketing program , it’s easy to ask: How does anyone find the time to do all that? The truth is, it’s not a time management problem — it’s an energy management one. When you focus on your strengths, you do the work that gives you energy. You do the work that drives you, that makes you giggle, that keeps you up late because you’re just having too much fun to stop. When you’re starting out, you do everything. You build the blog site and write all the content and do the bookkeeping and answer the support emails. Some of those things build you up and some wear you down. Pay attention to which is which. As soon as you can (it could be today), find partners who are energized by the tasks that exhaust and deplete you. If you can’t find the right partner, outsource the aspects of your business that make you want to crawl back into bed. And put your time and attention on what the Heath brothers call the “bright spots” – on what’s really working today. Put your time on the work that gives you juice. Do more of what’s working well. Do more of what energizes and strengthens you. Do more of what your readers and customers adore. Do more of what you can do better than anyone on earth. I know it sounds too simple to be real. But it’s how every genuinely great business — of any size — is built. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger, CMO of Copyblogger Media, and founder of Remarkable Communication . Share your bright spots with her on twitter .

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How to Find Thousands More Prospects for Your Business

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Ever wonder why conversion rates are so low? A “good” sales page will usually convert between 1 and 5 percent of its readers. Those numbers vary wildly depending on about a zillion factors, but that’s the middle of the bell curve. So that means between 95 and 99 percent of people reject what you’ve got to offer. Seems a little depressing when you look at it that way, right? So are those 95–99 percent just a write-off, a necessary cost of doing business? Do you have to do the work and/or spend the money to get nearly prospects to make 1 sale? Not necessarily. Note: No actual statistics were harmed, or even used, in the writing of this post. In other words, these numbers are theoretical. Use them to illustrate the principle, and for back-of-the-envelope planning. The real numbers always come from your own business and your own individual situation. The desperate buyers strategy According to sales strategist Chet Holmes, at any given time, about 3 percent of your market is in active buying mode. So if you sell furniture, about 3 percent of adults in your town are looking for some piece of furniture right now. If you sell fancy cages for naked mole rats, about 3 percent of naked mole rat owners are in the market for a new cage. Traditional internet marketing is all about finding this 3 percent. The smartest Adwords, SEO, and affiliate marketers are all trying to selectively find that 3 percent and weed out the other 97. You can call this the Desperate Buyers Only strategy, which is the title of a very solid program by Alexis Dawes on writing and selling ebooks. The trouble is that the desperate 3 percent are expensive, because everyone wants them. What are called the “converting keywords” (the keywords that are proven to attract the 3 percent who are ready to buy today) are expensive to buy with pay-per-click. Those same keywords are usually highly competitive for SEO , and getting more so every day. You’re competing with thousands of hungry internet marketers for that 3%. It can be done, but you have to be at the top of your game. But there are more buyers out there, if you know how to treat them. The conquer-the-universe strategy Holmes’s research goes on to say that about 7 percent of any given market is receptive to the idea of buying, even if they aren’t actively looking. Given the right offer, they could be talked into it. We could call these our Not-So-Desperate buyers . If you can pull them in, you’ve more than tripled the size of your potential buying pool, going from 3 percent to 10 percent. Another 30-ish percent will buy one of these days, but it’s not on their radar right now. Call them the Not Yets . About 30 percent are mildly turned off on the idea of buying your product. Holmes calls them the Soft No . And about 30 percent are highly turned off. They hate something about your company, or they never pay for information, or their spouse has threatened them with grievous bodily harm if they spend any more money on what you sell. They’re the Absolutely Nevers . What happens if you start creating marketing communication that entices the Not-So-Desperate, the Not Yets, the Soft Nos, and even a few Absolutely Nevers? You can scoop up all of those potential buyers and keep them close until they’re ready for you. You can develop enough trust and rapport to warm up the Not-So-Desperates, and even light a bit of a fire to get them moving today. You can make yourself the natural choice when the Not Yets are ready. You can answer objections and reverse the risk for the Soft Nos, which often turns them into Yeses. And you can even get a handful of Absolutely Nevers to act as your unpaid salespeople. While Absolutely Nevers might never buy themselves, if you’ve set up your marketing correctly, a surprising number of them will pass the word along to someone else who will buy. The product may not be right for them, but they know someone who can use the content . The key is the content net What kind of marketing attracts all the potential buyers, rather than the ones who are hot to buy right now? It has to be marketing that doesn’t look like marketing. Advertising that’s too valuable to throw away. Communication that delivers a real and compelling benefit, with the sales message presented only after you’ve earned the right to sell. Or what we like to call cookie content . And what kind of marketing keeps them around and engaged until they’re ready to buy from you? It has to be marketing that’s delivered over time. Advertising that arrives on a predictable, regular schedule. Communication that’s repeated enough times to develop trust and rapport. And the two best tools for that at the moment are probably a blog combined with an email autoresponder . A content net weaves a nice, friendly web of communication around all the categories of buyers, and keeps them interested. It’s a terrific tool for your Desperate 3%, because it educates them about why you’re the unquestionably perfect choice. But it also takes the other 97% and nurtures them, training them to become your ideal customer. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication .

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How to Make More Sales With the Help of ELO

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Launches have been on my mind a lot lately. Not just because of Jeff Walker and his PLF3 release, but because I have been on a crazy launch kick myself with several back to back. I have learned a fair bit about what to do and what doesn’t work so well, especially in the area of email promotions. My main discovery, though, I gleaned from my Shy Networking launch. This launch was a pared-down affair, because of all the other launches taking place all over the world at the same time. I didn’t want to have a showdown with the entire Third Tribe! Funny thing was, out of the blue I discovered the concept of ELO — and that we all need a little more of it in our email marketing. Just add ELO You’ll probably have guessed I do not mean the sweet, sweet musical stylings of the popular 1970’s pop and rock combo Electric Light Orchestra. So what kind of ELO am I talking about? E: Emotion & Empathy If you want your subscribers to connect with you and your offers then you are going to have to demonstrate empathy. Use emotional triggers to evoke feeling, as well as appealing to logic and reason. Between the lines of your communication, through story and metaphor, you need to convey that you are a person just like them, almost like secret messages talking directly to your reader’s subconscious. You don’t need to fabricate a history to fit into some loss and redemption story or a Wild West hero-type template. Draw on your own anecdotes and messages to show your audience that you understand what they’re going through, because you’ve been in their same situation. L: List Leverage You’ve probably heard that your prospects might need to hear about your offer many times before taking action. This seemingly conflicts with the equally oft-touted advice to avoid bombarding your audience with stuff they do not care for . How do you keep communicating when so many people want to reduce email load? The answer is to segment your audience into lists. Ask people to raise their hands if they are interested in a particular kind of product or service, and put them onto a list where they can find out more about that thing and nothing else . You can easily launch two products at the same time without overwhelming either list, because each list will only be receiving the emails that promote the product in which they’ve expressed interest. Another way you can leverage lists is to get your offerings in front of lists belonging to partners and contacts that exactly match your most ideal prospects. Offer valuable content to their subscribers that is tuned to their interests. You’ll get a great response rate and you won’t burn out your own subscriber base. O: Objections The best launches are a conversation rather than a broadcast. Check your assumptions, and listen out for problems as you go through the launch. Ask for feedback constantly so your list will feel encouraged to tell you about problems or resistance. Make sure you communicate clearly to address those objections and fix any points of resistance. You might find out that there are problems you don’t really want to fix. You like using clever wording in your email marketing because you think it makes you one sweet talkin’ woman with a distinctive voice . But you might just be causing confusion and convincing your list that your product really isn’t right for them. Listen carefully to objections and fix them before they derail your launch. Works like strange magic ELO might not put you on your way to setting a new world record. But by implementing these elements, you will gain many more sales and a deeper connection to your subscribers. Give it a try and watch the magic happen. And the next time you’re planning a launch, ask yourself if you need to add more ELO. About the Author: Chris Garrett is a professional blogger and the founder of Shy Networking , a program designed to help introverts connect to anyone with ease and confidence. He blogs at chrisg.com .

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How to Make More Sales With the Help of ELO