The other day it was a beautiful day. The wife and I decided that we needed to go out and enjoy the nice weather since it has been raining so much lately. Now my wife being the athlete she is decided she wanted to go to the batting . . . → Read More: One of the fastest ways to improve your business (and life)…a true story.]]> Let me tell you a story.

The other day it was a beautiful day. The wife and I decided that we needed to go out and enjoy the nice weather since it has been raining so much lately. Now my wife being the athlete she is decided she wanted to go to the batting cages. Now in case you don’t know what a “batting cage” is it is a place where you pay a few quarters and a baseball or softball pitching machine throws a ball and you are able to hit it with a bat. The ball stays in a netted area so you don’t have to retrieve baseballs or softballs.

(If you have never done it I suggest you go and do it. It really is pretty fun, but be careful because you can easily pull muscles in your back or side if you swing too hard.)

Well this day there was a father, a mother, and their two daughters. One of the daughters was trying to hit balls and had a very poor batting stance. Now let me just stop right here and say that I know very little about the mechanics of hitting a softball or a baseball. And here is the point. I didn’t or don’t really have to know.

The father was saying “swing” and the daughter would swing away, rarely making contact. She was off balance and it does not take an expert to tell that she was not very athletic and didn’t know what she was doing.

The father had a nasty tone to him and kept on telling her that she was doing it wrong. Then, I couldn’t believe what they did next. They moved to the faster batting section. Yes, that is right. He changed the environment completely. Not only that, but he put her in an even more difficult environment than the one she had been striking out in.

So at this point you may be thinking what in the world does this have to do with your business?

Here it is plain and simple.

All this girl and her father had to do was open their eyes. Right there, not even 15 feet away, were people hitting the balls on a regular basis. All he had to do was have her stop, go outside the cage, and watch the people who were successfully hitting the balls. And then all she had to do was model their movements. She needed to bend her knees a bit more, and shift her weight a bit differently. She needed to swing at the ball outside the cage and pretend she was hitting it, with the new stance.

It was right there in front of their eyes. Now I don’t blame the girl for this. However, I would hold the father responsible, because he wasn’t approaching this situation with a plan or a system. As he left he said, “Let’s get the hell out of here” in a disgusted tone. My guess is sports came naturally to him and he just couldn’t understand why his daughter couldn’t “just do it.” And the thing is, she could if she just practiced the fundamentals a bit.

So, if you haven’t picked it up yet, here it is for you. Watch and study people who are successful in business. Model them. Now before you instantly start buying billboards or $10,000 a month yellow page ads, stop and do some research. Find out how longthey have been using this media to market.

Because they might be striking out more than making contact. So before you model someone else, make sure you understand what they are truly doing, instead of just imitating them exactly. The person might have gotten lucky and if things change in his business he might be out quickly.

So… STOP, Look, Listen, and model the successful people. As you learn a new model, practice it for a while. Don’t try changing things constantly or going to a different model if you don’t have the fundamentals down. That won’t solve a thing.

Oh, and once you get your swing down….swing for the fences! But don’t forget that base hits, doubles, and triples are very valuable too!

Have a good one. I’m off to put a heating pad on my soar back!

-Matt

Let me tell you a story. When I was growing up I was pretty good at school. Except there was one subject I struggled with. Do you know what subject that was? It was biology. It wasn’t because it was necessarily hard, it was because . . . → Read More: Using stories in your marketing and sales…]]> Do you use stories in your marketing or sales?

Let me tell you a story. When I was growing up I was pretty good at school. Except there was one subject I struggled with. Do you know what subject that was? It was biology. It wasn’t because it was necessarily hard, it was because I thought it was irrelevant and boring. At least the class I took was boring.

Here’s why. Every day we had old Mrs. Walker ramble on about tape worms and plankton and sponges and carbon and plants and…you get the idea. And the REAL problem was there was a girl that sat across from me at a different lab table and she was cute. And she caught my “attention.” Her name was Julie and Julie had a cute little pony tail that waived at me all the time. And this pony tail caught my attention and distracted me from all the plankton and tape worms and sponges and…you get the idea. And I NEVER had the guts to go up and talk to her. I was a wimp.

Oh yeah, and another problem was that my grade wasn’t coming along too well in that class. So, between me being a chicken and my grade sagging lets just say that biology was not my favorite class…yeah, I liked GOING, but every day when I would walk past without talking to her I would kick myself….until James showed up.

James was a new kid from out of town. He came from Ohio and as luck would have it, the teacher reassigned him in MY space, and moved me right next to Julie. Whoo boy… Now, I have no idea why this happened but I wasn’t about to question any higher power–I was just going to thank that higher power.

But the problem was I still chicken. So what happened next? Well, Julie and I had to become lab partners. She was very smart and I didn’t come across as Mr. Beaker so she kind of took the lead in biology class. After about a week of this happening I started gaining confidence and then actually started to feel comfortable around her.

Well, one day I asked Julie how she was so good at biology and I’ll never forget what she told me. She explained that the way she was able to keep everything straight and what everything did was to form it into a …… a story. She had little characters in her mind in the role of the story, who did what, and how the tapeworms and plankton, and sponges and all that were essential to life. She explained it to me and related it to me and how it all worked together. She explained aspects of human biology and how the cells and mitochondria worked together…it really was amazing. And my grades started to get a lot better because I could visualize the story when I was taking the tests.

Now you want to know the most amazing part? Here it is. About a week after I started to feel comfortable Julie smiled at me really big and said she had noticed a “change in me.” Well, I was a bit flustered at first but I regained my composure and asked her what she thought. And she said (I kid you not)… , “Well Matt, to be honest…I was kind of intimidated by you at first. You were so quiet…I didn’t think you liked me. But I guess you are kind of shy like I am sometimes. It has been good to get to know you.”

This is what the body/brain/mind/psycho-somatic nervous system can take in at a time.  Or so says This Article .  Whether or not this is specifically true, here is an exercise to prove my point.  You cannot possibly process all the information you are exposed to.   Just right now there . . . → Read More: Psychological Marketing: The story of 7 + or – 2 … and your pants.]]> Seven (7) bits of information.

This is what the body/brain/mind/psycho-somatic nervous system can take in at a time.  Or so says This Article .  Whether or not this is specifically true, here is an exercise to prove my point.  You cannot possibly process all the information you are exposed to.   Just right now there is probably a computer fan, or music, or traffic, or a slight hum in the background.   And here is my point.   Until I called that to your attention, you didn’t “notice it.”   You may have heard it, but you were not consciously processing it.

Unconvinced?   Well, feel the pants on your body right now.  Feel the smoothness, or roughness, or the texture.  Until I pointed that out you probably were not processing that information.   So, the brain can only handle so much information, otherwise we would go insane.  So what is the key?

With psychological marketing you must capture someone’s attention and hold their attention.   Often times when you think people are listening, they are NOT listening.   They are thinking about what they are going to have for dinner, or a problem at work, or the weather.

Oh what’s that you say?   You believe they are actively listening to you, interested, and engaged?  Well, all I can respond to you with is this:  “Are you still actively feeling your pants, and hearing the hum or fan or traffic in the background?

And this illustrates 7 + or – 2…

Matt