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Expert No. 5:
Communications/Marketing Professional
Who:
Richard Abraham, author of Mr. Schmooze: The Art and
Science of Selling Through Relationships
Where:
Oak Brook, Illinois
What:
A marketing professional
Why:
For tips on building your business through making good client relationships.
How to Contact:
rabraham@richardabraham.com
QWhat
are the biggest marketing mistakes small business owners
make, and how can they avoid these?
A One
of the most common mistakes is that people rush the
communications process—they muscle it. Perhaps they feel
they only have a certain amount of time with someone,
and they feel they have to close the deal or they won’t
get another chance. When it comes to massage therapy,
there is a sequencing that has to take place. You don’t
want to get too intimate too fast—asking personal
questions too aggressively, for example. You must ease
into it. Let it happen. Understand how to ask disarming
questions first. Marketing people are taught to ask
open-ended questions, as opposed to a yes or no
question. For example, what do you like best about your
work? Or the “best of all worlds” questions: In the best
of all worlds, where would you be living five years from
now? It gets people’s imaginations working and brings on
an emotional give and take.
The second mistake is to ignore the emotional undertones
of communication. The marketing process is two
communication games at the same time:You’re trying to
sell a service, and the parallel game is to reach out
and touch a deeper emotional chord, to appeal to the
needs that people have.
QWhat
is the most concise piece of advice that you can give
for the best marketing results?
A Market
benefits instead of features. For example, I’m going to
buy shoes, and
I’m self-conscious about my big feet. The shoe salesman
waxes poetic about the color of the shoe or its
resilience. These are all features that do not provide a
benefit for me at that point in the conversation.
If you say, “That shoe looks great on you, it makes your
feet look smaller”—that would work as a benefit and is a
stronger selling point. If you say, “We’re great massage
therapists, with 10 years of experience,” that is a
feature.
But if you say, “We specialize in golfers with bad backs
and have a tremendous track record in lowering golfers’
handicaps,” then that is a benefit. Benefits are what
the game is all about!
QWhat
marketing steps can a massage therapist take to ensure a
secure financial future?
A The
first step is to understand a key element in
marketing—there are opportunities to build a
relationship that aren’t necessarily related to the
business at hand, but instead involve making a
connection to the broader subject of the other person’s
life. What I mean by that is that you may be in the
massage business, but the other person may be wrestling
with whether to put her mother in a nursing home or
enroll her child in private school. So alert
relationship builders will be continuously paying
attention to what is important to their clients at any
given moment, and then will use their networking skills
or referral skills
to help a particular client. The key is to network and
have as many good connections as one can.
If you become sensitized to this way of thinking, you
might be surprised at how much you know and how much you
can help a person along a broad spectrum of issues.
QWhat
are the three touchstones to effective marketing?
A The
first is benefit selling—or the communication of real
benefits. The second is the ability to connect
emotionally with another person, to actually be
proactive when an emotional or life issue comes up. That
process is so much more satisfying to clients than what
most service providers do.
The third is making your message holistic. From the
massage therapy point of view, I like the dual concept
of mind and body. For example, there may be a stereotype
that a person only gets a massage when he or she pulls a
muscle. Let your clients know that’s just the tip of the
iceberg:
“Come on in and we will make you feel better physically,
and you will also have an opportunity to meditate and
clear your mind.” There’s a lot coming together in
massage beside the obvious, which I don’t see being
promoted.
QWhat
is the purpose of a communications adviser? How much do
their services cost?
A The
purpose is to convert information that the business
owner wants to convey to the market into an emotionally
charged message that moves people to act.
This service can range from $100 to $1,000 an hour,
which may be too expensive for many small business
owners. However, the Internet is awash with great
information. There are lots of good books, including my
own
Mr. Schmooze ,
Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell and
Mind Read Your Customers
by David P. Snyder.
Selling
is a part of life, because selling is really the art and
science of a much higher subject. The subject is life.
Everyone communicates, listens, attempts to persuade,
all day, every day of his or her life.
• Start
with yourself. Start each day with this mantra: “The
happier I can make myself, the happier I can make other
people. The happier I make other people, the more I get
paid.”
• Be
passionate about what you do. We can create passion
anywhere, and it is the emotion, not the setting, that
is key.
• Make an
emotional connection. When you call on a new prospect or
a precious, existing customer, no matter what, just make
sure one thing happens:
When she
thinks of you, she thinks of something good—something
warm.
Add to
her day somehow by giving her something— information, a
small gift, a compliment.
• Sell
benefits. Be able to clearly and quickly explain how
your product and services
will
personally benefit the buyer, in memorably graphic and
provable terms.
*Adapted
from
Mr. Shmooze: The Art and Science of Selling Through
Relationships,
by Richard Abraham, 2002.
Expert No. 6:
Financial Planner
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American Massage Therapy Association®
