Daily Marketing Tips

Business Strategy Consulting – Think and Grow Broke

Here’s a quick story about how simple issues related to business strategy, often get overlooked:

Over the weekend I went to the County Fair. It wasn’t very crowded this year. Between the lingering impact of the recession and the fact that the temperature was lower than usual here on the Gulf in Florida, buyers were scarce. I particularly like going through the indoor part of the fair, because you get to see all the unusual knickknacks and odds and ends people are selling. It also always offers you a great lesson in salesmanship.

For instance, of the hundred or so displays people had set up, roughly 40% of them were selling home made arts and crafts and home-business types of ideas. There were signs you hang up on your living room or outside on your deck (I bought one that said “The Man Cave,” to hang on the wall in my office)… decorative license plates… things you put on display in your living room… candles you can buy and then re-sell… and things like dips and chips and all kinds of snacks you could order. Most of these booths weren’t very busy. They had a steady stream of one or two customers, but that’s about it.

Then you had larger items like wild-looking shower stalls… big flag poles to mount outside in front of your home… furniture and chairs that vibrate… and hand-painted bar stools. They even had loads of jewelry dealers there selling everything from costume stuff, to fancy belt-buckles, and gold and silver, too.

These booths were all virtually empty. But by FAR, the two most crowded booths were the two different booths selling teeth-whitening. The teeth-whitening sections had twelve to fifteen dental chairs all laid out in a circle, and for $35 bucks you could sit in one and get your teeth whitened, right there on the spot. None of these chairs were empty very long. In fact, people were pretty much rushing into these two stations as if they were wet, and getting inside gave them shelter from the rain or something.

I’m sure this is a lot cheaper than you can do this for at a dentist, but there again, I doubt one treatment would last very long. But the point is, and this is something most entrepreneurs don’t think about often enough… people spend money on the things they WANT to buy, and not necessarily the things they “need” to buy. Or the things you think they need to buy or the things you think they should buy.

And if you go back as far as 1937, to Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich,” Hill talked about the “seven major positive emotions.” The emotion of “desire” is listed in there. The desire to be wanted by others has always been a huge emotional trigger, and selling into this desire is almost a no-lose proposition.

So it’s not surprising that selling something that makes you more attractive, is going to be such a hit with the crowds. Which is exactly what happened with these dental whitening treatments.

Remember, just because you make something, or just because you think it’s cute… doesn’t mean someone’s going to buy it. And this is the problem so many businesses have — they just aren’t selling things that are in high demand.

And in this situation, no matter HOW good your marketing is, you are pretty much doomed. If you want to make a lot of money, the formula’s easy. You just need to sell things people want to buy. Makes sense if you think about it, right? But omit the “thinking” part and, well… you know where this ends up going, don’t you?

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

Lead generation marketing specialist, publisher, and copywriter Craig Garber is the author of “How To Make Maximum Money With Minimum Customers: 21 Proven Direct-Marketing Strategies ANYONE Can Use!” This book reveals the strategies Craig used to make over $578,463 with a small handful of customers, without spending even one thin dime on advertising — and almost all at 90% profit. For more information about Craig and his new book, download his 23-page Free Special Report, “What Every Entrepreneur MUST Know About Making Money: The 3 Most Critical And Costly Marketing Mistakes Business-Owners Make!”, right now.