How to Get Everything You Want in Life
Dear Marketing Maven,
In Maxim #3, I mentioned how any copywriter or marketer can greatly leverage their success and financial rewards by applying the strategies of top salespeople to their advertising.
Today I bring you what I consider the most important of all such strategies.
Maxim #4:
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, put the same thought this way: “The only way to influence someone is to find out what they want, and show them how to get it.”
Carnegie explained that while he loves to eat strawberry shortcake, when he goes fishing, he baits his hook with worms. He would detest eating worms. However, he doesn’t try to catch fish with what he prefers to eat, but what the fish are hungry for.
In short, the key to persuasion is to focus on what others want.
Ignoring this simple insight is the most common cause of marketing failure. I’ve often seen otherwise sharp marketers launch a product because they wanted to sell it, not because anyone wanted to buy it.
It can be hard to avoid this mistake because our brains habitually think about our own preferences and wants. It takes a deliberate act of will to step out of our own minds and see the world through the eyes of others.
Remember this always: you will more easily avoid failures and amass riches only when you look at markets from the right vantage point—focused on what others want to buy, not what you want to sell.
Always ask yourself, “What is the strong evidence that people would love to buy this product?”
If you’re creating something in a whole new product category, ask yourself, “Who is this product or service for and how will it solve their problems or fulfill their desires?”
Remind yourself too that marketing decisions based on demographics, psychographics, “relationship marketing” and other fancy phrases can be a trap.
I’ll bet you’ve never bought aspirin because you’re a member of a demographic group or because you wanted a better relationship with your pharmacist. You bought aspirin because you had a headache or a sprained back!
Headaches, problems, pain points, desires—strong and widespread wants—these are your markets!
How Gary Halbert Taught This Principle
The great copywriter Gary Halbert had a marvelous way of bringing this lesson home. At his seminars, he’d challenge his audience to a hamburger-selling contest.
He’d ask his audience to imagine that, as a group, they were about to compete against him as owners of a rival hamburger stand. He said he would give the audience every advantage they wanted for their hamburger stand. No matter what they asked for, he guaranteed to outsell everyone in the room by having just one single advantage he’d insist upon for himself.
Then he’d invite the audience to start naming the advantages they wished for their hamburger stand.
Superior meat? “No problem,” Gary would reply.
Tasty buns? “You got ’em.”
A nationally known brand name? “Why not?”
A great location? “Sure.”
Lower prices? “Yes, I’ll give you that, too.”
Gary gave his audience all these advantages and more…and still guaranteed to outsell them if he could have just one thing.
Burning with curiosity, they’d demand to know, “OK, Gary, how can you possibly outsell us? What’s the one advantage you’ve reserved for yourself that will fill your cash register with lots more money than ours?”
Then Gary would reveal the one advantage he’d seek above all others for his hamburger stand.
A starving crowd.
And he was right. Strong pre-existing demand is your surest path to marketing success.
But how do you find out what people want—their strongest reasons for wanting your product, enabling you to target your marketing at the bullseye of what a large crowd already hungers to buy?
That will be the subject of your next Maxim. In the meantime, always remember…
Maxim #4:
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Sincere wishes for a good life and (always!) higher response,
Gary Bencivenga
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Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Gary Halbert, TheGaryHalbertLetter.com