The real joke with FFB selling: it was old when I learned it.  Exhibit A:

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm1IxHOXm00[/youtube]

So, why does it creep into most sales presentations and sales copy today?  Beats me.  But the why isn’t important.  The let’s-change-it is.

What’s wrong with feature, function, benefit selling?

Simple.  It was invented when companies actually had technological advantages.  Most of what I sold for IBM you couldn’t get anywhere else.  So you better believe we sold features (this unit comes with 50 separate memory channels), the function of those features (so, if you are a lawyer, for example, you could store 50 different standard parts of a will) and the benefits (which means to you less time spent producing the standardized parts of legal documents and more profit in your pocket).

Sort of brings back the magic that of newly designed brake pedal from the video, doesn’t it?!  Today, with few exceptions, technical advantage is measured in months.  Maybe.  Competing on features is an arms race nobody wins.

FFB selling is fundamentally manipulative.  It, by design, takes the sellee down a path toward the logical conclusion that they need to buy what you’re selling.

Plus, it tends to be one-sided, pitting the salesperson against the prospect.  Information wasn’t that available; at least you had to work much harder to do your homework than the few clicks required today.

All the reasons this type of selling worked are gone.

What’s replacing it?  Fundamentally, two ideas: it’s your story, stupid; and free.

Story

As I said in the video, if you don’t have features to talk about, what are you left with?  Your story!!  The thing you should have been talking about all along.  The thing that, IF understood, connects you with your customers.  The thing or things you can say nobody else can.  That which is truly unique about you.  I have an entire site devoted to story.

Free

It’s hard to find a piece of software that doesn’t have a free trial or free version.  The basic idea behind free is to reduce the barrier to use your product to almost zero.  This does two things.  First, it doesn’t require as much selling up front.  And two, it gets you using the product so the product can sell itself; AND so the company can focus its efforts on “qualified prospects” (the people who are in the free trial period or using the free version).

Not everything can be free.  But how about risk-free (send it or bring it back if you don’t like it)?

Okay, okay, so what does this mean if you don’t sell software or you already have a risk-free return policy?  It means increasing your footprint beyond your website.  So bloggers are writing about you, customers are talking about you and you are part of the conversation in the places where the people who buy what you sell are spending time.  Online and off.  It means striving for a new level of engagement with people in the social space.

It means asking yourself THE BIG QUESTION:

If my sales revenue was based on how well I educate (for free) people who want what I sell and how many of those people I educate, what would I do?

Breathe that in a while.  Because I believe that basically this is where we are today.

As a marketing consultant I have a similar message for clients:

Follow the smartest people in your field, and use social media to do it.

And that’s the beauty of social media, it makes it so easy to spend time with people much smarter than you.  Heck, you can (and should!) spend time with your competitors.

Then go to someone’s account and take a look at the people they follow and where they’ve left comments.  But you must first subscribe to their feed (a single click) in order to see who they follow and where they’ve commented.

Then click on “subscriptions,” the people they follow, and check out some of those people by hovering your mouse over a person’s icon to see a short blurb about them.  Go to their feeds and subscribe to them if they seem interesting.

Next click on “comments,” which shows you what they’ve commented on.  The thought here is people leave comments on the people’s feeds they are most interested in.  So, comments are a direct line to the people they think are smart.

Yep your mother was right, and social media makes it easier than ever to spend more time around smart people.

Always be building your list.

Don’t bother trying to buy an email list like you buy a list for direct mail.  While a few good ones exist, the chances of you buying a bogus list far, far outweigh the chances of you finding a good one.

Good email lists are built, literally, one address, or a handful of addresses, at a time.  Start with your customers.  Use an Excel spreadsheet with just a handful of columns: first name; last name; email address; company name; type of product bought.  The reason: you’ll want to personalize your messages, or perhaps send only to those people who bought a specific product.

Start another list for prospects from the free downloads on your site, blog commenters, inquiries, trade show passers-by, vendors.

Collect email addresses as you would dollar bills on the ground: every time you stumble upon one, regardless of where or when, pick it up.  Sitting down to add addresses once a week or month assures you’ll miss at least 20% of them.  And by the way, do you know what a good email address costs to buy (if you can find the good ones)?  About a buck.

Use a service to send, manage and report.

Google “email marketing” and you’ll find a million to choose from.  An email service sends the email for you, manages lists you upload, provides design templates for your emails, handles opt outs and bounces and, most importantly, gives you reports on response.  Most start at around $15-20 per month, which allows you to send to a few thousand people.  The cost goes up as the number of people you send to increases.  We use and recommend myemma.com.  Using a service simply makes it easier on you.  Also, as you build your list into the thousands, some email providers may label you as a spammer.  Email services are known to the spam police.

Write the Subject Line last, and give it its due.

Don’t assume that because they are your customers people will automatically read what you send.  You have to earn their attention, and the subject line is where you do that.  Think newspaper article headline: punchy, but descriptive.  It’s fine to be excited about things, but leave the “Our Biggest Sale Ever” to the spammers.  Don’t exaggerate or over-promise.  You’re an adult.  Your customers are adults.  Act accordingly.

Send as often as you can create something you’d appreciate receiving yourself.

I get asked a lot how often can you send email without wearing out your welcome.  The headline to this section is really the best answer.  It’s about quality.  When you have something important or interesting to say, say it.  I try to avoid Mondays and Fridays for obvious reasons.  I receive emails from Seth Godin every day.  They’re terrific.  I receive emails from copyblogger.com maybe once a week.  They’re terrific.  As long as you worry more about keeping them terrific, how often you send will take care of itself.

Build value in your emails, don’t sell. . .or, more to the point, sell by building value.

The more value you deliver, the stronger the selling results.  I tell people to imagine being a paid coach of the people receiving your emails.  How can you best educate this group in bite-size pieces?  That’s your email campaign.  What questions are you getting from your customers lately?  Answer those.  What’s going on in their world you can help them understand, give advice around or link to an article about?  If you still aren’t sure about content, subscribe to some email updates by competitors and from companies you admire, regardless of industry.  It would be a great use of time to spend a month receiving emails before you start yours.

If you are having a sale, promote it.  If you’ve lowered a price, announce it.  If you have a new product, let people know.  But keep those types of emails to about 20-30% of the total.

Present the entire story in the email.

I get asked this a lot too: How long should my email be?  My answer: it should have a beginning, middle and end.  Most people think shorter is better.  Short is good, but not necessarily better than long.  On a good day, 12% of the people who you send to will click through to your website.  On a great day you might double that.  If you want more than 20% of your recipients (at best!) to get the whole story, and you do, don’t make them click to get it.

Include images.

People like pictures.  Very simply, more people will read your email with pictures than without.  The one I use here is by Ward Schumaker.  I also use istock.com, a great site that sells low-cost stock photos and illustrations.

Personalize your emails.

Dear Hamilton is better than Dear Friend.  All the email services allow you to do this, so do it.  With one client we also mention the customer’s salesperson in their emails, which doubled their click-through rate.

That’s it.  Until I get to #9, or until you leave a comment describing something you’ve learned.  Go ahead. . .I’ve love to know what you know.

In today’s economy it might be said this way: convenience is the enemy of getting results from your marketing.  Okay, not nearly as catchy, but true.

The convenient marketing methods, the strategies we know, the things that have worked for us in the past, aren’t the solution.  Today people are in a fundamentally different place emotionally and, in some cases, financially as well.  This certainly changes why they buy and in some cases how the buy.  Have your marketing methods and message fundamentally changed too?  It’s not convenient.  It’s not comfortable.  But it just may well be necessary for you to move forward.

As a marketing consultant for small business I see companies  in this quandary: “We’ve tried what we know, so now what?!”  Actually, it’s rare when I’m invited in in any other circumstance.  I know, lucky me.

The first thing I do is talk to my clients customers.  I find out what’s going on in their world, how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking.  The first thing I have the client do is answer the following question: If you were starting your business today, fresh, what would that look like, what would you sell, who would you sell to and how would you sell?  Unencumbered by everything that you are literally and figuratively invested in, what type of company would you start?

Those things inform how the message ought to fundamentally change, how the  marketing methods ought to fundamentally change and if a client’s value proposition ought to fundamentally change.

My experience:

Most of the time the message needs to change.  After all, the reasons why people buy today have changed, so should your message.

Some of the time the marketing methods need to change.  Usually, methods need to be added.  It’s rare when I find a company maximizing its website traffic or conversion, and even rarer when they have a presence in the social media space.

Occasionally a client’s basic value proposition needs to change.  This is potentially the most painful since it requires you change, to some degree, who you are.

You can do this (talking to customers, answering the “what if you were starting your business today” question) or you can have someone like me lead you through it.  But you need to do it.  Convenient?  No.  Critical to your moving forward?  Yes.

At its best, relationship marketing delivers enough value to your audience that they keep paying attention to your message often enough that when the time comes to buy what you sell, you get a shot at the business.

At its worst, relationship marketing simply fails.  People don’t understand what you do, they don’t see value in your message, they stop seeing your message; basically, you don’t exist.

My advice?  You HAVE to practice relationship marketing today.  It’s something you should have been doing the past five years.  It’s the only way you can create enough “permission” in your target audience, assuming your target audience are prospects, not current customers, to generate enough frequency to create results.

Phew.  That’s a mouthful.

Here’s what I mean.  The more often you reach out to prospects the more likely you are to land on their desk or in their inbox at a time when they need what you sell.  The more interesting and valuable your contacts, the less “salesy” they are, the more often you can make contact.  And that is true for any form of marketing: online; offline; in the social media space; you name it.

Where this breaks down is, as Dunford reminds us, when you forget the marketing part of relationship marketing.  But, as I point out, people can also stop listening if you get too salesy.

Where is the happy medium?  In the social media space, you might engage in “the conversation” 10 or 15 times to add value for every time you mention a new product or offer.  Much better in this space: attract them to a blog post or page of useful content on your site; use a sidebar or insert on the page to make a related offer.  Example: the page gives business writing tips; the sidebar advertises your business writing seminar.  And don’t for get to make them an offer!

How about email or direct mail?  Use a four or five to one ratio of value-added content to selling content for email.  With direct mail, you can always include an “About Us” panel or section of the piece that tells what you do and makes an offer for your product or service.

I’m rooting for the new Palm Pre.  I get nervous when I see more hype or buzz than anything else about a product as it launches.  Present a great product as a revolutionary life-changing product and you may kill it.  That’s why I try to practice balancing realistic expectations and buzz.

Palm is hyping the crap out of the Pre.  Countdowns, sexy spinning images of the product and over-produced video demos.  Careful fellas (ladies too)!  By all measures the Pre is a great phone.  I owned one of the first Palm Treos and liked it very much.  I own an HTC Touch Pro and am very happy with it.  Both great phones.  But if you had hyped either product as “touched by God,” I would have been disappointed.

My advice to Palm: get information out about the Pre, lots of it.  Set expectations.  Educate people in addition to getting them excited.

We’re in the middel of launching a great new Plantronics wireless headset for a Plantronics distributor Headsets Direct.  The Savi WO100.  Terrific product: let’s you take land line and VoIP calls on the same headset; longer wireless range; simple to install; solid sound quality.  My inclination is to hype the daylights out of it because it really is a great product (it’s replacing two of my headsets).  I hope I stop well short of the “touched by God” expectation.  If I do, we’ll probably sell more of them.

Remember the old political quip from Bill Clinton’s first campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid”?  It was written throughout his HQ to remind everyone the economy was the central issue of the campaign.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for linking to Thomas Baekdal’s post Where Is Everybody? in which Baekdal creates a graph (reproduced here) that shows how much how we communicate with each other has changed.  It also makes my marketing quip, “It’s the Message, Stupid!”, even more obvious.

My point: don’t forget your marketing message!!

Everybody’s all hyperventilated about whether they should focus on Twitter, continue to blog, give more time to LinkedIn, Facebook, FriendFeed, DIGG and on and on and on.  The same way I imagine they hyperventilated about newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, as the electronic word began to overtake the printed word.

It’s the message, stupid!  Yes, be mindful of how you communicate.  No, that isn’t enough to be successful.  If you have nothing to say or a me-too product, you simply won’t get much traction or notice or attention, regardless of which social medium you employ.

Does the medium change the message?

Sure.  But only the scale, you still need a message that resonates with your target audience.  Imagine yourself a marketer in 1967 tasked with selling Admiral refrigerators.  You just finish this nifty full-page ad in Life magazine and they want you to do a TV commercial.  How do you cram all that information into a short TV spot?!  Good question.  And actually, the answer is you don’t.  You need to take the core of your message and work with that.

Fast forward. . .you can’t even fit that nifty headline into a 140-character tweet!!  How about a 95-character Adwords ad!

Be where your customers and prospects are going for their information.  Clearly, that includes social media.  But make sure you also focus on the message.  Being at the right place isn’t enough.

So, what’s happening?  The horse-car analogy is more obvious.  As social media grows we’re transitioning from transaction-based marketing to more relationship-based marketing.  A hundred internet years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto got it right: marketing is a conversation.  And the conversation went from one-sided and event-oriented to fluid and always-on. CRM software is great for one-sided, event-oriented marketing.  With fluid and always-on marketing, not so much. 

One-sided and event-oriented marketing:  

You buy a list or input a group of people you met at a trade show and start banging away, generally by mail, with your CRM software keeping score and reminding your salespeople to make those phone calls next month.  Each “touch” was planned (letter, mailer, email, phone call, mailer, letter, etc.).  As generally practiced, most of the time the content reflected the traditional “Hey, here’s why we’re different or better, buy from us.”   At its best, the touches became more value-added (less pitches, more knowledge and advice offered).   

Fluid and always-on marketing:

You become part of a larger conversation about your slice of the world.  This extends far beyond even the most dynamic websites.  Your internet footprint is a large one.  You’re commenting on posts, creating video content, and sharing interesting articles, news and websites via a variety of vehicles, including FriendFeed, DIGG, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the rest.  It necessarily gets woven into the fabric of every day.  CRM software doesn’t have a chance!

What I find interesting is less about CRM and more about the nature of marketing.  Like all changes, it happens slower and faster than you expect.  Slower, in that traditional event-oriented marketing isn’t going away.  But it will erode.  Faster, in that those of us who are jumping into social media now will have a head start.  If you aren’t playing with social media now, you may feel it passed you by six months from now.  Mainly because it will have passed you by.

So, bottom line, jump in.  If you don’t have a Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn or DIGG account, set them up and start watching.  Then start doing.  If you already have accounts, use them.

In fact, a great way to start?  DIGG this post by clicking on the second icon below this sentence.  It’ll take you about 3 minutes to set up the account.  Think how much cooler you’ll be in three minutes from now?!  Go ahead, DIGG it!

Actually, on one hand I define marketing as the process of transferring meaning to a target audience for the purpose of causing the action you desire.  On the other hand, and probably more important to truly understanding how to improve your marketing, I define marketing as being most like a garden.

The important things to remember about my first definition are “transferring meaning” and “causing action.”  If what you mean by your message isn’t shared by your target audience, you haven’t communicated.  This is critical because most of your competitors are saying fundamentally the same thing you’re saying, aren’t they?!  If you define your uniqueness as quality or superior support, how similar are your definition and your customers’ definition of your quality or superior support?  Again, if they aren’t the same, you haven’t communicated.

Similarly, if you haven’t caused action, your marketing has failed.  I love it when I hear advertising people talk about creating awareness. . .as opposed to talking about creating action — results.  “Think about all the people who know about your company — how much awareness the campaign generated!”  Translation: “Nobody responded, please don’t fire us!”

All that is important, but more important to helping you improve your marketing is getting you to think about your marketing as a garden.

You can’t expect much from a garden if you:

• Pay attention to it only every once in a while 
• Water it only after things are looking really dry
• Weed it only after the weeds have taken over

You get the idea.  Your marketing is the same.  Don’t ignore it until things start to “look dry” before you start paying attention again.

You’ll get healthier plants faster if you tend your garden regularly.  You’ll get better results faster from your marketing if you do the same.