Category: Sales

I currently pay
someone to format
all of my book files.

Outsourcing that task
allows me to concentrate
on other things.

The issue is…
there’s been an error,
often a different error,
in every file he’s recently sent me.

He’s busy
and it take him weeks
to fix these files.

It is easier for me
to figure out what went wrong
and fix them myself.

Six book releases later,
I know almost all there is
to know
about formatting eBook files.

So why am I paying him
for this task?

If you constantly make errors,
you’re forcing your client
(internal or external)
to learn your job.

Eventually,
they will be better at your job
than you are
and they will
no longer need you.

I needed stickers/labels
for my Romance Novel Business.
Stickers are awesome schwag.
They are light and flat
and easy to mail
and most readers LOVE them.

My supplier had a 50% off sale.
One of the items spotlighted
was the stickers/labels.
I clicked on the link.
It was out of stock.

I received 3 more emails
during the promo period
spotlighting the stickers/labels.
I clicked on each one.
That product was still out of stock.

(I contacted customer service
and they confirmed this.)

THEN I received emails,
saying
“I see you’ve been looking at
the stickers/labels,
here’s 25% off that product.”

Yes, it was STILL out of stock.

This company
invested all of this effort
into promoting a product
and they sold NOTHING.
All they accomplished
was frustrating me,
their potential customer.

Before you promote a product,
ensure it is in stock.

If your promotions are automatically set up,
ensure your system deals with
out of stock scenarios.

Feed the strong.

If a book (product) is selling well
for me,
I usually increase marketing
around it
and sell even more copies.

It is connecting with readers (customers)
in that moment.
That’s rare.
I won’t squander the opportunity.

But I also have to feed the weak,
support the poorer sellers.
I don’t craft extra marketing around them
but I do promote them
what I would promote any new product.

I have a series right now
that isn’t selling well.
It is a re-release
and many readers have already bought it.

I’m releasing the next book in it
and the temptation is
to be lazy,
to not promote it as hard.

But if I do that,
it will sell even worse
and it will NEVER sell well.

So I’m promoting it.
I’m giving it the marketing
I would give any release.

Feed the strong
but feed the weak also
(if you have the resources).

Last night,
I was the only person
in the check out line
at a Walmart.

When I asked her
how she was doing,
the cashier told me
she was over the moon happy.
She had just paid off
her car
and now had a little extra
every month.

She jumped up and down
with joy.
I jumped up and down
with joy.
It was a magical moment.

And I was deeply honored.

I was honored
she shared her happy news
with me.
I was honored
she believed I could be trusted
with her happiness.
I was honored
I was chosen to be part
of her special moment.

As business builders,
we know what it is like
to be excited about something
and then have someone
immediately list a gazillion reasons
why we shouldn’t be happy.

When someone trusts you
with their happiness,
maintain that trust.
Let them have their moment.
Enjoy it with them.

We can talk about
the things that could go wrong
and other issues tomorrow.

Give them at least a day
of happiness.

I tried to donate to
a charity today.
The process
was long and tedious.
It required a password
for a one-time donation.

I made an error
on a form
and couldn’t figure out
how to correct it.
So I closed the window.
The website wouldn’t allow me
to try again.

I finally gave up.

If I gave up,
I suspect
many other people did too.

Ensure your donate
or buy button process
works.

You could be losing money
and, even worse,
losing customers
…forever.

I’m a back row sitter.
I’ve completed countless
unofficial surveys
of why people sit in the back.

It isn’t the reason
why
many presenters
or front row sitters
think
we sit in the back.

Most people think
we sit in the back
because we’re unengaged.
We don’t want to be there.
We don’t want to participate.
We will likely sneak out early.

There ARE the rare folks
who sit in the back row
for that reason.

But often,
as it is in my case,
the reason is
the exact opposite.

We want to see
EVERYTHING.

I like to view
the entire presentation,
which means watching the presenter
but also watching
the audience reaction.

I want to know
who else is talking
and I don’t want
to show the presenter
the back of my head
while I’m identifying these people.
That’s rude.

I joke that
this need to see everything
is my gunfighter response.
I want to identify
the dangers in the room
so I sit
with my back against the wall.

Many people have
this same need.

Don’t assume
the people in the back
aren’t engaged.
They are likely the people
paying the most attention
…to EVERYTHING.

A senior executive
at a technology company
recently publicly posted
a mini-rant
about job searchers,
especially at the executive level,
using words they don’t mean.

The example he used
was ‘fulsome.’
Fulsome can mean ‘of a large size or quantity’
or it can mean
‘flattering to an EXCESSIVE degree.’

In the latter case,
that isn’t a complimentary description.

Using fulsome is also
pretentious as hell.
I don’t know anyone
who uses that word
in casual conversation.

The executive made the point
that using words incorrectly
isn’t a positive trait.

I will state the issue more bluntly
– it makes you look
like a f*cking idiot.

And it isn’t at all necessary.

Speaking (and writing)
is communication.
Often the shortest, simplest,
most commonly used words
are the best for that.

Don’t use fancy words,
especially words
you don’t know the meaning of,
to try to impress people.

Skilled salespeople
practice their pitches
over and over.

What I’ve found,
however,
is these salespeople
are more interested in
getting their messages right
than
getting their words exactly right.

I helped one skilled salesperson
practice his pitch yesterday.
Each rendition of it
was slightly different.
The message, however,
was always the same.

Seth Godin
shares

“My suggestion:
Don’t memorize your talk.
Memorize your stories.
Ten stories make a talk.
Write yourself
a simple cue card
to remember each story’s name.
Then tell us ten stories.

Be you.

We didn’t come
to hear your words.
If that’s all we wanted,
we could have
read the memo
and saved a ton of time.

Bring your heart.”

Memorize your message,
not the exact words.

Every day,
we make hundreds,
maybe thousands of decisions.
That’s tiring.

So we establish routines.
These routines are a way
for us to limit
the number of new decisions
we have to make.

This is why we blindly re-order,
why we continue doing things
that no longer work for us.

J.A. Konrath
shares

“When Maria is reading
a mystery series,
she keeps reading it.

Forever.

She will audibly complain,
at midnight in bed
while finishing a novel
on her Kindle,
about how shitty
the book she just finished was…

…and then she immediately
gets the next book
by that author.”

Why?

Seth Godin
explains

“Over the years,
marketers have offered us
one wonder or another
in exchange for
just a little cognitive load.
And those promises
have often been empty.
Not worth the hassle.

So now,
we’ll press the re-order button
like a pigeon in a lab.
It’s easier.”

THIS is one of the reasons
sampling,
especially full sized sampling
works.

I give a reader
one of my books.
That makes the decision
about what to read next
for her.

She reads the book
and blindly orders
then next one.

Make your prospects’ decisions
easy for them.
Take on some of that
cognitive load.

Most Romance Novels
are purchased through a bookseller.
Booksellers are operated
(mostly) by humans.
Humans f*ck up
from time to time.

When booksellers f*ck up,
customers (readers) don’t usually
blame them.
They blame the writers
of the books
they’re trying to read.
They contact the writers,
hoping the writers
will ‘make it right.’

Of course, we could merely tell
these readers
we’re not responsible
and direct them to the bookseller.
That’s the truth.

But it doesn’t make
our readers feel happier
about our books, about us.

What I do is listen to them,
sympathize with them
(I’m a reader too
and have usually had
the same experience),
give them an action plan
(contacting the bookseller, etc),
and then I ask them
if there is any other book of mine
they’d like to read
while the bookseller is fixing the mistake.
I give them that book for free.

And I usually gain a reader
for life.

Seth Godin
shares

“Organizations that refuse
to see the pain
they’re causing
because they’re afraid
of being held responsible
have missed the point.
You’re already being held responsible.
The question is
what to do about it?

You can stonewall, bureaucratize
and delay,
and hope that the system will suffice…

The alternative is
to choose to contribute to connection
by actually apologizing.
Apologizing not to make the person go away,
but because they have feelings,
and you can do something for them.
Apologizing with time and direct contact,
and following it up
by actually changing
the defective systems
that caused the problem.”

If you’re hearing the complaint,
you’re partially responsible
for making the situation better.