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.

ImagineeringNow
About The Author
Rhondalynn's life changed forever after the loss of her mother due to a senseless tragedy in 1992. She decided that despite her formal training and a promising career as a lawyer and chartered accountant, she wanted to do something more. So despite the fact she had already invested 10 years of her adult life in university and articling, she did the unthinkable. She left her high paid job as Commercial Manager for one of the largest corporations in the country, she re-trained herself in the sciences of the mind and she discovered a passion for writing and sharing her knowledge with business owners and executives. Rhondalynn has distilled the secrets to business success - that she learned from her life experience and working in GM level roles with Price Waterhouse Coopers, Max Factor, Village Cinemas, and Coles Group Ltd. - and produced a simple step-by-step process that you can apply to your business to boost your sales and bottom line. Rhondalynn can help you put strategies in place to grow your bottom line and ensure that your customers would never think of going elsewhere. She is the leading expert on harnessing the power of your brain and using it to improve your financial results in business. Rhondalynn is the author of On The Shoulders of Giants, Imagineering Your Destiny, Sobre Hombros deGigantes, Financial Foreplay®, and Sales Seduction. She has appeared on CNN, Bnet/CBS, Channel 7, Channel 9, Kochie's Business Builders and 3AW, and writes for Yahoo, MYOB, Fast Thinking, Sunday Life, Dynamic Business, Business Spectator and Australian Retailer.

31 Comments:


  • By andrea 04 Dec 2011

    Thank-you for this insight I am going to try and apply it to my business.
    Cheers
    Andrea

    • By Rhondalynn Korolak 04 Dec 2011

      Thanks for taking the time to send your feedback. I am so pleased you found it to be of benefit to your business. I send out coaching videos exactly like this one to my database every month. It’s free to join and we’d be delighted to have you as part of our community.

      Sign up is on the home page of our website. 🙂 https://www.imagineeringnow.com

  • By Anna Samkova 05 Dec 2011

    A great article Rhondalynn, thank you! It is also important to test and measure your offers in order to identify which one is more attractive to your audience. And I agree – their all need to be tangible!

  • By Katelyn Barber 08 Dec 2011

    So true – I will admit that I have made this mistake myself. Thanks for this. I appreciate your coaching and help.

  • By Nona Corell 09 Dec 2011

    Shared this with my own database of subscribers today. It got a really great response – hope you get more followers…

  • By Ted Warner 10 Dec 2011

    Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer! I will bookmark your blog and have my children check up here often. Thumbs up!

  • By Trent Compact 11 Dec 2011

    You really make it seem so easy with your presentation. I like your writing style and find it easy to take in.

  • By Chadwick Mcclanan 15 Dec 2011

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  • By A Taylor 19 Dec 2011

    Practical. I really enjoyed this video – I’m just checking out another one by you on your youtube channel. thanks.

  • By Guillaine 19 Dec 2011

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  • By D Hasenauer 19 Dec 2011

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  • By Lorraine McCarroll 20 Dec 2011

    I like Your Article about Want To Increase Your Sales By Spending Less Money on Marketing? Perfect just what I was looking for! .

  • By Anna DeVries 20 Dec 2011

    Perfect just what I was looking for!

  • By Indie R 20 Dec 2011

    Great stuff – I love your videos and style. Straight to the point, useful. I always feel like I can grasp what you are saying and put it into practice right away.

  • By Ava Kardell 22 Dec 2011

    I really enjoy your posts. Do you ever write on the topic of sales techniques? I’d be interested in links to any posts you have on that topic.

  • By Bruce Dixon 25 Dec 2011

    Great goods from you. I have read your stuff previous to and you’re just extremely wonderful. I really like what you’ve said and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still convey some powerful and useful information. I can not wait to read much more from you.

  • By Alaina Thamvongsa 02 Jan 2012

    What actually is a blog and how do i start one?

  • By Donald McGilvray 03 Jan 2012

    Great blog post.

  • By Faris Modul 15 Jun 2013

    Hey there – thank you for this post. I have definitely picked up a few great points that I can put into action today.

  • By Google Uses Neuromarketing Insights to Revolutionize SEO » Canada's SEO Blog 09 Oct 2013

    […] is reader-centric, unique, emotionally engaging, and backed by social-proof sounds a lot like the key brain stimuli for persuasion and influence espoused by neuroscientists and […]

  • By Tina Chan 09 Jun 2016

    I can definitely see where a lot of small business owners (in particular) go wrong and waste a lot of money on marketing…

  • By Blondell 25 Jun 2016

    Great insight.

  • By Demi Andreas 26 Jul 2016

    Definitely going to follow your blog and writings… really enjoying your insights.

  • By Sonny Abraham 04 Nov 2016

    Great article – amazing insights.

  • By Angus 14 Nov 2016

    Amen sista! You nailed it with this blog.

  • By Rafaela 24 Dec 2016

    This info is insightful and valuable – so needed today when it’s obvious to see so many businesses wasting money on marketing that just isn’t any good.

  • By Tiara 28 Dec 2016

    Great place to read really interesting articles on business… I like it alot!

  • By Cassandra 29 Jan 2018

    Thanks mate!

  • By Kara 10 Apr 2019

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on ImagineeringNow.

  • By Flora 18 Apr 2019

    Thanks , I’ve just been looking for info about this topic for a long time
    and yours is the best I have came upon so far.

  • By Danilo 01 May 2019

    Excellent website. Plenty of useful info here. I’m sending it to a few friends ans also sharing
    in delicious. And certainly, thank you on your sweat!

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