Click on video to learn what the golden rule is and avoid falling into the fatal trap of breaking it!

Each and every one of you made 1 fatal error today in your marketing message.  Now that 1 thing might have slipped through or gone unnoticed because it wasn’t an obvious thing – like a spelling error, using a word incorrectly or not having a compelling call to action.  In fact that 1 thing – the fatal error that you made today – wasn’t anything you said at all.

That’s why no one brought it to your attention… until now.

But you know deep down (or at least you probably suspect) that something happened because a large percentage of your audience, who saw your message today, didn’t get it and they didn’t purchase your product or service.

Let’s take a look at the science of neuromarketing to find out why – so that you can take action now and turn your message into one that your leads and customers are dying to say “Yes” to.

You may not know this but your brain sees and interprets images first and makes decisions quickly based on what it sees.  And after all of this activity has occurred, much later it pays attention to and tries to process what it hears and the words and numbers you have read.

Somewhere between 80-90% of your brain activity (and what is going on in the minds of your prospects) is a result of trying to make sense of visual stimuli.  The optic nerve is physically connected to your old brain (which you already know is the decision making part of your brain) and it processes visual cues 40 times faster than auditory ones.

What happens is your retina captures images and sends that data on 2 distinct paths – one goes up to neo cortex (the thinking part of your brain) and the other goes straight to the reptilian brain.  Here’s the interesting part – this second pathway, to the decision making part of your brain is much faster.  In fact, it is about 500 times faster.  If it takes 1-2 milliseconds for the old brain to process a visual cue, it could take your neo cortex at least 500 milliseconds.  This makes that part of your brain that decides dangerously fast and hasty.

Since you and I cannot rely for our survival on the speed at which the new brain processes information, we are hard wired to make decisions at the old brain level – and as you can SEE, those decisions are primarily based on visual input.  And your new brain will only kick in much later to help you find data to support your gut reaction (the decision your old brain already made). Your eyes control your brain – and this is also true for your customers.  That’s how important visual cues are to your survival and to your sales and marketing messages.

Let’s take a look at a very good example of what not to do.  I saw this sign of the front window of a veterinary clinic in my neighbourhood this week.  In big orange letters, it took up almost 70% of the front window.

“Pet Laser Treatment.”

Now, if you were a potential customer driving by, would that sign mean anything to the part of your brain that decides? No, of course not.

The average person driving by would have no idea what pet laser means or WHY it would be a good reason to choose that clinic over the next one down the street.  To your reptilian brain, that sign means nothing.

If you are a pet owner – what do you care about?  What’s important to you in the context of finding a good vet?  If you are like most pet owners, you want to know that when you take your animal in for surgery the pain is minimized, the surgery is safe and the healing happens quickly.  If you owned a pet those things would be important to you, wouldn’t they?

Yes, now surprisingly pet laser does achieve all of those outcomes – less pain, less risk and quicker recovery – but that sign didn’t help you to know and decide, did it?  As you are driving by, that vet has 2-3 seconds to grab your attention and convey his message…and you now know that the best way to do that would be a picture, not a bunch of words, right?  What he needed to do was show you a photo of a dog or cat, fit and healthy – with a message like, “we guarantee less risk and a faster recovery for your pet, ask us how?” Or “want Fido’s next surgery to be virtually pain-free, ask us how?”

Now you may not be a veterinarian yourself but I am sure you can see exactly how this applies to your business.  How visual are your sales and marketing assets? Take a look at the very last email, brochure or presentation that you made.  Was it loaded up with words and stuff that only means something to you?  Did you even have any pictures and did they serve a purpose or were they just there to fill space?

Each and every day I see business owners just like you making this fatal mistake.  The part of your prospect’s brain that decides is a visual beast.  It’s relying on pictures to make a decision and you are trying to convey everything with words and numbers, aren’t you?  Your audience can’t tell you exactly why your message is not appealing to them…but I just did.

Your customer’s brain sees images first and words second. In order to get your audience to pay attention and remember your message, you need to quickly deliver a clear picture to the old brain. This is the golden rule of marketing and Sales Seduction – a picture is worth a thousand words.  And if you continue to break this golden rule, you will fail to close sales and help customers who really need your product or service.

Click on video above to see and hear Rhondalynn in action.

You may be surprised to hear that 95% of your prospects don’t really understand you message.  You have to understand that your potential customer is simply in pain (in some aspect of his life) and he is looking for the solution.  So he has come to you… and what do you do?

Let’s take a look at your last ad, press release, email or even the home page of your website.  If you are being honest, I would bet that more than 60% of the prime real estate here is focused on YOU – your brand, your product/service, what you are doing and why you are doing it.  And if you are using visuals they are probably of your products, your machinery, your location or even YOU.

And if you are like most business owners, the last 40% of your time and space is spent trying to cram as many words as you can into this bottom section to let your prospects know just how much you can do.  In my experience, most of you are spending way too much time trying to impress your audience with fancy words and descriptions.

Here’s the bad news – you’ve already lost your potential customer.  In fact, you put him to sleep about 2 minutes ago.

Your brain accounts for 2-3% of your body’s mass but uses 25% of your body’s energy. This is a very important fact to know if you are trying to influence or persuade others.  Your brain is the 2^nd most energy consumptive organ in your body – if you don’t give it what it needs, it will control your thinking.  For those of you who are hungry right now, you know exactly what I am talking about.

From a survival perspective, the brain doesn’t like to use more energy than it has to.  If you can make it easier for your customer’s brain to grasp your message, process it quickly and decide, you are more likely to get a YES.

Just for fun, I would like to introduce you to one of your customers… well, at least the decision making brain of one of your customers.

The part of your customer’s brain that decides is the same brain that you and I share with this crocodile.  This part of the brain is solely focused on what?  Survival, that’s right.  Does Mr. Crocodile care about your brand, your products, your photo or your features and benefits?  No.  Does it care about win/win? No.  It is solely focused on itself and physical survival. This part of your customer’s brain gets triggered within 30 seconds and is permanently tuned into the WIFM (what’s in it for me) radio station – constantly scanning to protect itself from pain or death.

So what does this mean for you?  To the extent you understand the pain of your customer and are here to help him solve it, he will listen to you or read what you have to say.

Let’s come back to your marketing message for a moment.  How can you use this insight for your next ad, press release, email or your website?

First, you are going to stop wasting your most valuable real estate talking about your products, your background, your brand, your philosophy or who you have been certified by.  Your clients do not care.  If this box represents 100% of the time and space that you have to get your message across right now, you need to spend 80% of it:

–          Showing your customer you understand his pain

–          Recreating his pain

–          And offering THE solution with proof you can deliver

This means that you should never waste it with a lame opening statement like “Introducing our new spring line”, “welcome to our newsletter” or “here are our latest clearance items”.  While important to you, they mean nothing to the part of your customer’s brain that decides.  They are like a bedtime story for your customer.

If you are using photos or video, and I highly suggest you do for reasons that we will cover in a session together very soon, you want to select visuals that support what?  That’s right – recreating or demonstrating you understand your customers pain.  This is not the time or place (if you are an electrician for example) to show a picture of you and your van.  That photo is about you and not your customer’s pain.  Remember your customer is tuned into WIFM radio station.

Also, if you are going to feature your brand or logo, it does not belong up here in this important 80% area.

That leaves only 20% for your call to action and contact details, which is plenty of space if you have captured your prospects attention up top in the 80% zone.

Do you remember when I made the bold claim that 95% of your prospects don’t really understand your message?   As you can see, the reason for that is really very simple – your customer has come to you in pain (in some aspect of his life) and his crocodile brain is solely fixated on finding THE solution.  This part of his brain, which is responsible for decision making does not have the time or patience to sit around reading or listening to information that is all about you.  If you don’t capture his attention in the first 30 seconds with something that is relevant to his pain, you’ve lost him.  He can’t possibly understand your message no matter how clever or funny it is because he’s not even paying attention – his reptilian brain has already moved on to look for the solution that will keep him alive or cure the pain .

I want you to assume for a moment that you are dying of thirst. Would you be willing to sit for an hour while I substantiate my credentials, talk to you about why I started my company and educate you on the value and qualities of my pure spring water?   Or would you simply get up, walk across the street and find the water that you need to survive?

What if you were dirty and itchy?  Would you be any more willing to listen to me focus on my brand or my product for an hour?  How long would it take before you just got up and found something to wash yourself with?

And what if your house were on fire?  Would you kick back and read 3 pages of stuff on my website about how great my water is or would you rather find someone right now who can help you put out the flames?

The bottom line is this – the quickest way to connect with your customer and get the attention of the decision making part of his brain is to let him know immediately that you understand his pain and can cure it.  If you do this well upfront, he will listen to whatever it is that you have to say.

This insight will help you go from boring your prospects to convincing them and that’s good for your business.

Today, I’ve got a major challenge for you. I want you to take a look at what you are currently spending on marketing – whether it’s on brochures, your website, pay per clicks, PR, newspaper, direct mail, social media etc. – and I want you to slash the total budget by 20%.  No matter what you are selling and where you are selling it, I guarantee that you won’t miss that 20%.  And there is a very good reason for that.  96% of the people who see your message right now, don’t get it anyway.  You are spending thousands of dollars each year on sales and marketing materials to increase your sales and the vast majority of your prospects don’t understand your message – so they can’t possibly recall it and buy from you.

So with the money you just saved in your pocket, we are going to take a few minutes right now to re-engineer your message and give you a much better chance of getting through and being understood.  The good news is this – it is not going to cost you much to take the time right now to create a message that helps more of your prospects to say “yes”. And if more leads say “yes”, the money you do spend on sales and marketing is going to increase your sales.

To prove my point, I’d like to make you an interesting offer – I can either give you $50 cash right now or a piece of paper where I will write the net present value of a five year annuity at a compound annual interest rate of 10%, adjusted for CPI.  Which of these sounds more appealing to you? Which would you rather take right now?  Which of these can you take now, put in your wallet or spend it at the shopping centre?

Unless you are one of those very rare individuals who can calculate in your head the value of my second offer, I’m willing to bet you’d rather just take the $50.  And that makes a whole lot of sense, because everyone knows what $50 is and what it is worth. There’s nothing confusing about it, is there?

The part of your brain that makes decisions is not interested in working hard to figure out what my message means and what it’s worth. That part of your brain is looking for something that is tangible.  And if you’re unsure about whether a message is tangible or not – ask yourself “would a 6 year old understand it?”

Think about it – if I offer you a $50 note or an orange, you don’t have to think very hard about it to figure out what I am offering you, do you?  Both of them are equally easy to understand.  As soon as you see it, you know what it is and you know exactly what you can do with it. $50 will buy you enough food to cook a meal and the orange is good for you – it’s tasty and you can eat it.  There are no directions and no heavy thinking required to make sense of what I am offering you.  Your new brain doesn’t have to do any thinking (and wasting time) to get my message.

So what does this mean for you, your message and your customers?  If you are making it hard for your customers to understand what you do and whether they are getting a good deal, you need to spend some time right now making your offer more tangible.  Ask yourself “does my message include a bunch of big words, fluff and jargon?”  Could it be boiled down to something that a 6 year old could understand?  What do you need to do to communicate it more clearly to increase your sales – t0 help your prospects to be able to say “yes”? Can you simplify the words that you use or introduce photos or props to get your message across faster?

Now, I think you can guess that coming up with a simple, succinct message is a lot harder than being lazy and throwing together an ad full of useless, complicated information.  A good rule of thumb here is to remember that you should be working harder to craft and simplify your message than your prospect has to in order to decipher it.  Someone has to do the hard work – either you are committed to doing it before hand or your customer will need to think about it.

Now if you are serious about saving money and you want to increase your sales, you won’t spend another cent until you stop, take a good hard look at your materials and do whatever it takes to make your message tangible.  You don’t have to spend more money to chase find customers.  What you really need to do is take the complication and confusion out of your message so that more of your prospects can say “yes” now.

When did you last ask your customers what they want?

Is your business growth starting to plateau or stagnate?

It’s easy to sit back, take the foot off the accelerator and watch the sales  roll in, especially if you’ve been satisfied with your recent performance. But  keep in mind that if you slack off too much, your competitors will soon catch up  and eventually put you out of business.

Take a look around – businesses (and your competitors) are closing their  doors due to the drop in consumer spending – which means MORE potential  customers for businesses like YOU, that do survive. Today is the best time to  take steps to revamp your marketing efforts and respond to the needs and the  pain of your target market.

In these tough times, it’s going to take more than “thinking outside the box”  and goodwill with existing customers to secure the survival of your  business.

I want you to STOP right now and make a list of everything that you (and your  competitors) do NOT do to make it easy for your prospects to buy from you. If  you want to succeed over the long term, you will take a good hard look at both  of these lists and find a way to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes,  to win your customers and keep them.

Granted, this is not an easy task. Most businesses will continue to do what  they have always done – guess or assume what they think their customers need.  However, no matter how challenging it is to ask the hard questions and  re-engineer your strategy, I guarantee it will be a whole lot less painful and  stressful than going under.

I had a married couple come to me once for advice and coaching – both the  business they were in and their relationship were at the breaking point. The  husband turned and said to me “I don’t understand it. I do everything humanly  possible for my wife and she doesn’t appreciate me and I don’t think I can  possibly do anything more to satisfy my customers – they are never happy and  always want more. What can I possibly do?”

My answer to this age old dilemma applies to him, his marriage, and to you in  your business right now. “Sounds like you are doing a lot. Too bad it’s  everything BUT the very thing that your partner and customers need most.”

While this may sound harsh, I think you will agree that it is absolutely  true. It does you no good to work harder doing everything…instead of focusing  on the 1 thing that you customers actually need. Wouldn’t it be easier for you  to work smarter, not harder, if you knew with absolute certainty what that 1  thing is?

How can you take the lesson from my client and apply it to your own business  right now?

How could you go about figuring out what that 1 thing is?

I want you to do something really radical today and start asking both your  prospects and existing customers what they need. You need to find out:

• What is the biggest challenge your prospects are facing in their business?
• When your customer thinks of the product or service you provide, what is  THE most painful or difficult issue associated with acquiring it?
• What is  the most important criteria to your purchaser when evaluating a company like  you?
• What are some things that he/she thinks about or considers from a  financial perspective when selecting that product/service or a vendor?
• What  is the key strategic driver for you customer’s decision?

It doesn’t really matter what you have done up to this point or how hard you  are working. There is no prize for volume or quantity. What counts is quality  and relevance.

Are you giving your customers what they want and are you willing to do  whatever it takes to help them cure the pain that they are in?

More of the “same old same old” is not going to differentiate you from the  pack, build trust, win customers and grow your business. Take some time today to  really think about what you offer and how it could be improved to meet the  primary need of your customers. If all of your customers were to leave today,  what would you need to change in order to win them back and survive?

At the end of the day, price is never the determining factor. Once you  uncover the true cost of the problem they are facing, price becomes irrelevant.  Your customers will always be willing to pay a fair price for a product/service  that cures their pain – not to mention the peace of mind that comes with  excellent service. Take stock of what the competition is NOT willing to do and what your customers wnat most from you.

Do something unique – listen and be willing to do whatever it takes to  deliver what they want (and need). Anything less, is simply a waste of your time and money  on everything that doesn’t really matter.

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