Joe Polish: Selling Past Barriers

Several years ago, I’d sent out a letter to 100 people that I thought would give me really good feedback, that had attended one of my conferences that I had several hundred people at, and I actually pitched Platinum. This was before Platinum 2.0, which now applies to pretty much everyone. But this is for people that were just in the cleaning and restoration industry.

I sent a letter, FedEx, with a $100 bill attached, saying, “I don’t want you to just tell me what you think I want to hear. This is not just a normal survey. I’m literally bribing you with $100. Tell me your most honest, real reasons as to why you would not join a program that I feel would change your life and would change your business. Why wouldn’t you do it?”

So, we compiled all these responses, and I came up with all of the real and all of the psychological barriers that people had for joining Platinum, and I created an audio with like 35 reasons. I think people would find it really useful to listen to it.

It’s not a flat-out pitch. What it is, is it’s people’s reasons why they wouldn’t joint this group, and my responses to it. And a lot of my responses were influenced or came directly from a lot of conversations with Dan or out of his Going Against Gravity thing. But I put my own take on many of them.

Then, of course, many of them are just original ones that came from the feedback I got by bribing people for $100.

But I was listening to that recording again. I’d not listened to it in a few years. And I was like, “Wow, this is just as relevant today as it was back then, if not more.”

Anyway, that’s one thing, and I just wanted to throw that out there. I think everyone will find that kind of interesting.

The point is, yeah, it’s theater.

I’m still a big fan of real snail-mail. So many things get missed via email. People glance at emails.

We sent an app, as far as I can remember. What I do remember, though, is that I didn’t want this to be overly pitchy, because I really legitimately wanted to hear the reasons, because my thing was not send a $100 bill with a sales letter. My thing was to send a $100 bill so I could get real, honest feedback. I was wanting to fully understand the mindset of people that didn’t buy.

One of our methods, which we’ve talked about on past I Love Marketing episodes – because, frankly, all of the episodes we’re always talking about psychology, we’re always talking about what causes people to be attracted, how do you attract them.

We’re creating master fishing techniques in the world of business acquisition.

Joe: One of the things that we’ve talked about on past episodes, it’s one thing to find out why people buy from you; get testimonials, why do they love you; why do they think you’re so great; what are all the benefits that they derive from doing business with you. You can learn just as much, if not more, from asking people who haven’t bought from you, why did they not take you up on the offer. Why is it not resonating with them? What is it that’s causing them to not say yes?

One of the things I talk about on the Barriers To Success recording is there’s real barriers and then there’s psychological barriers. Real barrier, the example I use is you’re 70 years old, you have chronic arthritis, and you want to play professional basketball. That is a real physical barrier, not a psychological one. The only way you’re probably going to play professional basketball is if you own the team, if you’re in that particular state. So, that’s not a smart career path to go down.

A psychological barrier, on the other hand, would be “I don’t know how to make any more money,” or “I don’t have enough time,” or “I can’t take free days.” These are all psychological things that have more to do with skills and habits and stuff than they have to do with reality.

The thing is, for all of our listeners right now, you have people out there who don’t do business with you for legitimate reasons and for psychological reasons; that if you knew what they were or how to address them, you would have more buy-in.

That’s the point behind kind of understanding why people buy and why they don’t.

A lot of the reasons why people don’t buy, until you really get into it, doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. But everything makes sense, if you spend the time. And sometimes, it’s not worth spending the time. I want to make it clear that there are certain forms of paralysis by analysis, where you can get so caught up into trying to figure out everything, that it actually keeps you from taking any sort of action whatsoever.

My point, though, is if you really get into the mindset of the person that you’re trying to sell, you have the best advantage ever.

See part two of this series next week.