Storytelling

Let me ask you a question. Where do you find inspiration from? Movies, music, books, magazines, seminars, friends, family, co-workers? – Maybe from all of those places.

Let’s face it inspiration comes from stories that we hear from other people tell. How they beat the odds, achieved growth, or found a better way, it’s all in the story.

You know storytelling has been around for hundreds of years. From the beginning of time, storytelling has been the means by which cultures and societies have preserved and celebrated their memories, passed on their values and belief systems, entertained, instructed and reported. Long before there were written records, storytellers taught through the oral tradition. It was true in the bush, it’s true in the boardroom and it’s true everywhere in between.

In fact I think true leadership is the effective communication of the story. Our American culture seems to underestimate the power of storytelling. But think about how powerful a story can be when you’re in front of a client. Tom Peters says, stories are the red meat that meets our reasoning process. Stories give us permission to act, they are photographs of who we aspire to be, and they cause the most emotional responses. Stories are how we connect with people.

Rule #5- Strategic Rejection Makes Us More Attractive

This is the fifth of 15 short video lessons I’m making available that cover the topics discussed in my upcoming book, The Rules of Attraction. I hope you find it valuable.

Just Say No!

Rule #5: Strategic Rejection Creates Attraction

There is one word that business leaders are always frightened to say to a potential customer:
NO!

The word no can become the most strategic word in your lexicon. The more people you reject, the more attractive you become to the discrete market you have identified.

As right as it feels sometimes, when you continue on the mission to add more business at any cost, regardless of how these new prospects match your target profile, you risk devaluing your market position and reducing your competitive worth.

I have seen many occasions where management, in pursuit of meeting ever-increasing costs, will do whatever it takes to land a new customer, any new customer. Fast forward into the future; if this behavior continues, that company will end up with a large number of new customers and a support nightmare. Too many different versions of a product mean support, development, and customer services are impossible to maintain. As precious resources are sucked away, the next release of a product or service is constantly delayed. Furthermore, the company may develop a number of features that the market does not want, and the company ceases to be exclusively important to anyone. A “jack-of-all-trades” is important to no one.

Finally, the profitability for each customer goes down significantly as new features are added only to close deals. In the end, businesses die from one of two reasons: (1) having too few customers or (2) having too many of the wrong kind. The more experienced and disciplined strategy is to identify the gap in the marketplace and then develop a solution that fits this need so perfectly that a customer would feel ridiculous to consider any other inferior solution.

Check out the video below for more details.

To pre-order the book at Amazon.com, click on the image below.

Rule #3- Create an Exclusive Community of Superusers

The Fender Stratocaster is the most popular electric guitar ever made. From Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton to Buddy Holly, guitarists have used it to change the world of music. The “Strat” as it is known, is an icon for an exclusive community of musicians who have become superusers. I know, I’m one of them.

Fender has kept this tradition alive with their many Stratocaster user groups. The entrepreneurial lesson learned is that we can create our own community of superusers by building “specialty” into our products and services. We can make them so valuable to a SMALLER market that they are initially shunned by the masses. Our superusers will evangelize our products and services for us just by using them!

Apple has done it with the Mac and iPhone. Mel Gibson did it with the Passion of the Christ. Even new Harry Potter editions need to be delivered in armored cars because they are so magnetic to their target audience that the rest of the world now clamors for them as well. We can do the same. Check out the video below for more details, or click here to watch it in high defintion.

To pre-order the book at Amazon.com, click on the image below.

Rule 2: The Problem is More Important than the Solution

This is the second of 15 short video lessons I’m making available that cover the topics discussed in my upcoming book, The Rules of Attraction. I hope you find it valuable.

To pre-order the book at Amazon.com, click on the image below.

Rule 1: Become a Bigger Fish in a Smaller Pond

This is the first of 15 short video lessons I’m making available that cover the topics discussed in my upcoming book, The Rules of Attraction. I hope you find it valuable.

To pre-order the book at Amazon.com, click on the image below.

The Rules of Attraction

The force of “Attraction” is not only one of the most over-simplified principles in business today, but it is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the context of client development and the building of business relationships. Entrepreneurs and marketing managers across all industries are learning the hard way that platitudes they’ve read or heard about attraction-based marketing just don’t easily translate into their business. Coupled with the waning effectiveness of traditional marketing, entrepeneurs often want to use attraction based marketing techniques, but lack the knowledge and experience necessary to make this a reality.

For over twenty years I’ve taught entrepreneurs how to apply the rules of attraction to their businesses in a practical, step-by-step manner. Knowing how powerful these techniques are, I’ve always wanted to spread this message to as many small businesses as possible. That’s why I’m excited to announce that my book, The Rules of Attraction is set to be published this coming spring.

The Rules of Attraction takes the reader on a step-by-step journey which not only educates them on the principles of attraction, but inspires them to put them into action by showing precisely HOW to apply each rule to their own marketing initiatives.

I am pleased to be working with Morgan James Publishing, the company behind Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing series of books. Click on the small image to see a larger version of the cover artwork.

The Rules of Attraction will be available in bookstores and on all the major book retailing websites in May, but I will have a limited number of pre-release copies in March that I can distribute to members of my network. If you want to be notified as soon as the book is available, please send an e-mail to booklist@markdeo.com and I’ll personally notify you when it is hot off the presses.

I will soon be adding an entire section to this website dedicated to the book with video lessons, bonus content, and a way to get feedback from me on your Attraction Marketing efforts.

Thank you for all the kind notes I’ve receved encouraging me to get this book published.