The Rules of Attraction

Fourteen Practical Rules to Help Get the Right Clients, Talent and Resources to Come to You!

Mark Deo

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781614484233
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Marketing digital

Traditional marketing pushes people away! Learn the art of attraction. Entrepreneurs, business owners and marketing managers across all industries are learning the hard way that the platitudes they've read or heard about attraction-based marketing just don't easily translate into their business. In the Rules of Attraction, the author has assembled 14 precepts which allow marketers to put into practice a new philosophy toward attracting clients, winning team cooperation and building a network business affiliates. The Rules of Attraction is a practical, hands-on manual that will assist readers in correctly devising, executing and monitoring attraction-based marketing strategies. It will both shake the foundations of the most experienced marketer as well as serve as a planning guide for the novice. After reading this book, they will be able to clearly define emerging market needs and systemize the creation and implementation of an attraction-based marketing campaign.

Rule #1:

Become a Bigger Fish in a Smaller Pond

Ann the Crab

In my home in California, my family keeps a red-river crab named Ann, who is quite special to us. You’re probably thinking, “Who has a pet crab?” Well, we do. Let me explain.

One evening while dining at our favorite Japanese sushi bar (everyone in L.A. has a favorite sushi bar), the chef brought out some small live crabs and set them on the counter. One crab sidled over to my wife and seemed to look up at her and say, “Please don’t eat me. Take me home. I’ll give you love!”

Perhaps it was compassion, or perhaps it was too much sake, that prompted my wife to agree to take Ann home—along with several other crabs that the chef insisted we adopt (and you always listen to the chef at your favorite sushi place!). We placed them all in a large aquarium, which we decorated with rocks and seaweed, and watched as they all proceeded to die, until only one was left: our beloved Ann.

Fearing she’d have a few morbid memories of the fish tank, we relocated Ann, placing her in a glass flower vase with a few rocks. Call me a pessimist, but I expected her to die as well. To our surprise, not only did Ann survive, she actually thrived! Over the next few weeks, she began to eat better (of course, she had all the food to herself). She grew more social–that’s right, a crab can be social. She has even molted; that is, she threw off her shell and grew a new one, something crabs do only when they feel at home in an established habitat. Though a red-river crab has a typical lifespan of four to six months, we just celebrated Ann’s first birthday. Our sushi chef is amazed.

Ann is outside the curve. We think it’s because we have helped create for her a unique environment that perfectly suits her needs. She was much happier as a bigger fish in a smaller pond—or should I say, a bigger crab in a smaller vase.

It’s not just true for crabs. Customers want to feel that what we’re offering is perfectly suited to them, that our solution matches their needs. They want to feel that they are the only game in town.

Beyond Niche Marketing

Because of my profession as a consultant, broadcaster, and teacher, I engage with many business leaders from many different industry positions. Nearly every person I meet, regardless of their industry or profession, tells me the same thing: “My business is different.” They feel that their industry has special needs and challenges, that technology has changed the landscape of their profession in a unique way. They feel that price is of greater importance than ever before. They believe that they now have more competitors than at any other time in history. And they all say this with genuine concern and the honest belief that these challenges are exclusive to their industry or profession.

The fact is that nearly every product and service category has been affected by technology, price erosion, and increased competition. Good news: you’re not alone.

There are more competitors emerging every day in every industry and profession. Because of this, we might find ourselves chasing any type of business that we can get. In a highly competitive environment, there is a tremendous temptation to take “whatever comes along” until you find some kind of niche. This strategy is no longer effective—if it ever was.

While you are taking whatever comes along, so are the rest of your competitors. This aimless process pushes down the market price of the products and services and ultimately results in price erosion—and worse, it creates technology or price wars wherein the weakest players are eliminated. With so many wandering like this, it’s not surprising that U.S. Department of Commerce states that ninety percent of all new businesses fail in their first year.

Avoid being part of that dire statistic. Rule #1: Become a Bigger Fish in a Smaller Pond. Far more important than identifying a market niche—i.e., the kind of business you want—is identifying the kind of business that you do not want. And that starts by fully understanding the marketplace in which we compete.

Standing in the Gap

A word from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese warrior: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt.”

While I am not suggesting that we look at our competitors as our enemies—in fact, later in this book we will look at the value of collaboration with our competitors—there’s no substitute for knowing the landscape, whether of battle or business. A thorough competitive analysis is a must for every entrepreneur. Only by fully mapping the competitive topography can you see how your company, product, or service integrates into it, and thereby identify the gap in the marketplace that will be the site of your conquest.

The gap is the area of product, service, quality, selection, application, delivery or price that is not currently being satisfied. When you understand the gap in the market you can find the specialized need or needs which you can exclusively satisfy. If you develop your product to satisfy the gap, you have the ability to define a very tightly focused audience profile. This audience then becomes your exclusive focus. This is a commitment to extreme specialization: you will only accept business that matches the profile of the type of customer you want to deal with. In order to ensure that your product or service matches the specific unmet needs of the target market—the gap—it is critical that we invest time in fully understanding our competition.

The best way—completely ethical and devastatingly effective—to understand your competition is to become their customer. Though few entrepreneurs or business professionals do this, becoming a customer of your competition is the single best way to understand them. Call them. Visit them. Send e-mails. Ask lots of questions. Do not tell them you are a competitor; your purpose is to learn what makes them tick.

The Competitive Landscape Profile

In our consulting firm, the “Competitive Landscape Profile,” or the CLP, is one tool we use to understand our client’s competitors. The CLP allows us to plot the proficiency of each of our competitors—and it gives us a very clear picture of who they are, what they do, where they fit, and how they are different. When completed, the CLP locates the gap as clearly as a compass points north.

In the Sample CLP chart below, I have identified the types of competitors that provide marketing services, and I have listed some of the variables that differentiate these types of competitors. Then I have rated their performance in each area. As the arrows at the bottom of the page show, the competitors that should be targeted are the independent consultants and the in-house providers, because they have a lower position in the market, offer little differentiation, and are not strongly branded. These deficiencies make them competitors whom I term more palatable.

Competitive Information Needed

• Advertising: Archive competitors ads and track where and when they advertise as well as what they say in their advertising
• Price list
• Brochure and promotional material: e.g., Point of Purchase material, mailers, packaging, etc.
• Commit their names to memory
• Research the names of their best clients
• Research who the people are that run the company
• Recognize areas where you can cooperate

Competitive Landscape Profile
(for a marketing firm)

Target Practice

Aiming specifically for the gap means behaving in sometimes counterintuitive ways. By rejecting clients that do not precisely meet your criteria, you’ll become more attractive to those that do! It works for every type of industry, business, or profession. An example: Sam Walton. Wal-Mart became the largest retailer in America by locating stores where no sane retailer would dare venture. Wal-Mart’s even headquartered in the surprising location of Bentonville, Arkansas. Their entire strategy: to target small towns and become not simply another retailer, but in many cases, the only retailer in town!

Thankfully, this strategy doesn’t only work for multinational giants: it’s equally as effective for small businesses, too. I know a financial consultant who works only with teachers. That might sound ridiculous, but teachers have very specialized financial needs: they exclusively qualify for special tax treatment, a larger share of their assets can be sheltered, and they often have two sources of income—teaching and summer jobs or a side business. This requires specialized knowledge and advice. My friend has become an expert (big fish) in the area of financial consulting for teachers (small pond).

Even the IRS has entered into the world of specialization, having recently announced their “Market Segment Specialization Program” which develops highly-trained examiners for each particular market segment. A market segment may be an industry such as construction or entertainment, a profession like attorneys or real estate agents, or an issue like passive activity losses. An integral part of the approach is the development and publication of Audit Techniques Guides. These guides contain examination techniques, common and unique industry issues, business practices, industry terminology, and other information to assist examiners in performing examinations. Contain your joy. Just what we need: tax cops with vertical industry knowledge!

Professionals such as doctors and lawyers have been specialists for years. Today you would be hard-pressed to find a doctor that claims to know how to treat all types of illnesses. In fact, it’s difficult to get an answer on health issues from only one doctor. These days, even specialists refer patients to specialists.

Regardless of your profession or industry, you can (and should) perform research to help develop a more targeted audience. The more we understand all of the players in the marketplace and where the gaps in quality, service, and delivery lie, the easier it is to identify a vertical market. There are some tremendous resources for this today:

• Vertical industry publications or trade magazines
• The Lifestyles Market Analyst
• FIND/SVP - Nexus/Lexus
• Google
• Hoover’s

Oh, and an added bonus to this strategy: in your research, you will undoubtedly come across many prospects that fit your profile.

How I Found the Gap and Narrowed My Own Market:

In the early ‘90s, my consulting firm made the decision to specialize in specific industry areas. One of the first areas we selected: the cosmetic surgery field. We had an interest in the industry, and living in L.A., more than a solid hunch that this would be a profitable area. So we launched an exhaustive research effort to learn everything we could about cosmetic surgery. We purchased several research studies for a few hundred dollars. I remember the agency we purchased them from told me that I was one of only 12 people that had purchased the 2600 page study. This gave us an inordinate amount of information about the history of the industry, where it was heading, the most popular forms of surgery, technological advancements, changes in the demographics and psychographics of patients electing surgery, practice management issues, insurance and managed care issues, and the potential reduction in the associated costs that were predicted.

Additionally, we interviewed 30 different physicians and learned about their perceptions. We even talked to the president of the American Medical Association and invited him on our Small Business Hour radio show. (Although they would have been great customers, we did not pitch any of these doctors.) With all the information we gained, we were able to write several articles relying on a variety of statistics about the future of various forms of cosmetic surgery. We were able to speak intelligently on every area of this field. We became more knowledgeable in marketing and managing a cosmetic surgery practice than plastic surgeons themselves. Because of months of research and a few hundred dollars, we were soon viewed as the experts in cosmetic surgery practice management and marketing. Asked to attend a medical conference in Sacramento, I gave a speech on the future of cosmetic surgery. The response was immediate and remarkable. Sixty days before, I would most likely have misspelled “liposuction,” and now I was treated as an expert. After seminars on practice management and marketing, editorial contributions to the industries trade publication, and a radio show with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Rule #1: Become a Bigger Fish in a Smaller Pond
• Rule #2: Make the Problem More Important Than the Solution
• Rule #3: Create an Exclusive Community of Super-users
• Rule #4: Become the Only Solution
• Rule #5: Reject Strategically
• Rule #6: Give Information Away
• Rule #7: Reverse Risk
• Rule #8: Let Design and Color Speak
• Rule #9: Win Heartshare
• Rule #10: Collaborate Rather Than Compete
• Rule #11: Who We Are is More Important than What We Do
• Rule #12: Create Standards and Systems that Nurture Growth
• Rule #13: Learn the Discipline of Testing
• Rule #14: Destroy Your Business
• Impacting Others: The Rules of Attraction at Work
• About the Author
• Business Attraction Resources
• Free Bonus Material