Weapon#3 Eliminating assumption
Many novice marketers make the mistake of assuming the public already know they have a genuine and pressing need for the products or services being offered. And because of that, novice marketers usually assume people will be instantly and automatically interested.
Be contrast, good marketers take nothing for granted. They walk customers through all the steps needed to make a sale every time they come into contact with them. Good marketers also take the time to test and optimize every individual element of their marketing message systematically. They never assume the entire package is performing at its optimum level until they robustly test their assumptions in the marketplace.
Weapon#4 Asking for the order
Marketing lives or dies solely on the basis of the results generated. Smart marketers know this---therefore, they take every opportunity available to ask for the order. Or to put that another way, savvy marketers have the guts to ask for action in every presentation.
Why is this important? Simply because marketers who are afraid of asking for the order whatever reason(like being afraid of offending the prospective client) never generate comparable results to those marketers who present the facts and ask for the action. In marketing, presenting the message well is useful and a great preliminary step, but it’s only in the asking for the order that the real payoff is found.
Weapon#5 Tailoring the message
Successful marketing is always developed with the target market in mind. In other words, the message is tailored and messaged to match the preferences of the consumers to whom it will be delivered. Which means that marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum but in relation to the marketplace.
Those business that carefully tailor and then systematically deliver the right message to the right target market will succeed. Different business can and do choose different target markets but the real source of success lies not in the selection of the target market but more in the ability to customize and deliver the right marketing message.
Weapon#6 Anticipating skepticism
Most customers will doubt anything a marketer says to them. They have been conditioned through experience to be skeptical of everything they hear. The best marketers understand that and don’t try to change the customer’s initial mind state. Instead, they arm themselves with enough evidence to win people over, and then present that factual information carefully and deliberately.
Ultimately, by overwhelmingly the customer with demonstrations of results, credibility can be established. The more variety in those elements of proof that are presented the better, but the simple principle involved is that ultimately, the marketer has to produce so much solid evidence of results that the customer is forced to set aside his or her natural skepticism and accept the results. Precisely how much evidence will be required to achieve this will vary according to a large number of factors, but be prepared.