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| Subject: People Should Know Why They Expect Things | |
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Author: Dennis S. Vogel |
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Date Posted: 22:04:18 11/29/12 Thu In reply to: Do what works 's message, "Re: Superstition ain't the way unless you want more problems" on 21:21:28 11/18/12 Sun Thanks for helping me clarify this issue. I agree with what you wrote. Thanks for sending it to me. I posted soon after to show I got it & in case anybody else could benefit from it or comment. I thought about this for a while & tried to make it clear, yet making it clear for myself & others isn't the same as making it clear for everybody. Clarity for me could obscure meaning for you. According to Murphy's Law (whoever Murphy was/is) 'Whatever can go wrong will go wrong'. We don't necessarily know who Murphy is, but we know Murphy is/was a deluded optimist because what goes wrong WILL go wrong at the WORST possible times. We won't always know what went right or wrong or why things happened or didn't. We should still do our best to determine what the major factors may be. It's hard to fix &/or avoid what's wrong when we have no idea what to fix or avoid. Though Jay Abraham has Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.), he has an intelligent, quick mind. Like many of us, he thinks of multiple things at a time & expresses his thoughts as they occur to him. He doesn't always complete what he started to say before starting on another thought, so some details aren't spoken. When he goes off on a tangent, sometimes he leaves some open loops. Sometimes we can get more details by listening to him explain the same or similar concepts to other groups on other occasions. He also said if he has a successful offer, he doesn't care if people bought it because of the main product/service or because of bonuses. In many cases, not knowing if people primarily bought because of the main product/service or because of bonuses, that knowledge gap negates some benefits of test results. The main purpose of marketing messages should be lead people to ask for a product/service. The main purpose of offering bonuses should be to reduce reluctance &/or shorten a sales cycle. Generally, offering those bonuses isn't what should achieve attention & interest. After the main offer is established, bonuses can be used to increase desire & compel action. As for Jay stating "It's a numbers game" & "the numbers will never fail you if you but work them", his statements are the truth but not the whole truth. It's like radio advertising sales reps saying 'The secret to successful advertising is what you say times how many times you say it.' (content X frequency) There's more to successful advertising than that. Reach & frequency are important factors to test. Yet, who will receive the message (what you say) & when will they be reached? How many people will hear the message at times they can pay attention & decide if they want/need what's offered, then follow through on their decisions? Some mass media advertising sales reps want prospective advertisers to only think whatever will lead to more advertising sales. They want prospective advertisers to ignore inconvenient truths (for mass media). Good reps want advertisers to consider each relevant factor to make the best decisions. (Note: I don't agree with Jay about everything. Example - Assumptive direct mail letters containing statements like "I know you're thinking of listing your home for sale..." I know people may disregard those messages, but statements like those can ruin a marketer's credibility. Plus, since those kind of letters are sent to people who haven't expressed an interest as stated in those letters, the assumptive statements are false.) While There Are Factors To Test, There's Still Some Hope Testing includes some hope & conjecture especially when we try something new in our situation (even if it may be what others already used in their situations). When we test variations (of what we've used already) we have a better chance to go beyond correlation & discover causation. In this case, I'm connoting superstition to mean noticing some effect(s) & not caring much about the cause(s). When people expect the same results even if they don't know what caused those results, they're superstitious. Attributing success or failure to wrong causes can waste any or all resources used to get a result without learning much. At some point after some variations worked better than others, we can do what Jay Abraham advises in improving results by decreasing the variances. It's hard to decrease variances if we do something totally different each time. In an imperfect world, we won't eliminate all potential variances, yet we should do what we can to limit troubles. We need some randomness to find something new or different. Yet too much randomness is like Ready, Fire, Aim; you may hit something without achieving or learning anything worthwhile. Reaching a frontier often requires doing what's unusual but not haphazard. Asking for input from various people can help us determine why some variances happen. If we know who received our offers we can do research to ask why some bought promptly, others waited & many didn't buy what we offered at all. Yet, this input wouldn't be accurate in every case. Though people may buy after reading/hearing the same or similar marketing message multiple times, they may not realize/remember or care how many times they got an offer. Did It Work Or Didn't It? If we achieve break-even or better, does it mean what we did worked? Did it work a little? Did it exceed our expectations? What did we expect? Did we have expectations? Should we have gotten a higher ROI for our investments of time, money & effort? Did we, at least, learn anything valuable from the results? When you consider using what you may learn from case studies & your business results, you should evaluate what you learn in various ways. As Jay Abraham advises, people should determine what they can apply directly & indirectly & how much they can use strategically & tactically. Your business results & case studies should be interpreted by using business models, while remembering some models are based on things that don't apply to your business. Business models can be applied partially, directly or indirectly to your business history & your plans. Examples are - Fred Wiersema's books "The New Market Leaders: Who's Winning and How in the Battle for Customers" & "The Discipline of Market Leaders" (with Michael Treacy) Books by Michael E. Porter, Clayton M. Christensen, Chet Holmes, Stephen R. Covey, Philip Kotler, Jack Trout & Al Ries You can combine these into hybrids tailored to your situation. Case studies & your business results should be interpreted based on pertinent things that happened before & during a time period. What are those pertinent things? That would require a long list without considering a specific situation. In general, those pertinent things include what distracted or attracted consumers' minds. What did they feel compelled to pay attention to & what did they want to forget about (not be reminded)? Political scandals, disasters, tragedies, ominous predictions & military actions can distract attention away from what your business offers, even if those distractions aren't logically related to what you offer. Based on what you know about your market niche, what else will they want/need when they receive your offers? What did they need when they got your previous offers? What makes your products/services more valuable & useful? Do your prospects already have those things or would they have to have enough money to make multiple purchases to get full benefits from what you offer? Example- Buying & using a vehicle require buying petroleum & things for maintenance. What are consumers' real priorities & goals apt to be? What do they claim their priorities & goals are? Do they need/want what you offer more than (buying) something else or saving (not spending) their money? Of all the things they can purchase at a particular time, what are they more apt to choose? What do they consider a bargain to be? Depending what you offer, your prospects may have a few or a lot more factors to consider. This means you have more factors to test. What Happened & Why Did it Happen To ___? Stuff happens/happened, even to well known achievers. Benjamin Franklin - "I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." I don't know if that quote has anything to do with his kite flying during a thunderstorm project. Thomas A. Edison Quotes - "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." "Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work." "Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing." Dennis S. Vogel - "Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." I figured I get in a quote with the other 2. Like Thomas Edison & Benjamin Franklin, we can learn what doesn't work as long as we test variations & study the differences. Learning what doesn't work as expected in some circumstances can be like sculptors chiseling away anything that doesn't fit their intended master piece. The purpose of determining reasons for results isn't to prosecute or persecute anybody. Analysis should help indicate positives & negatives (but don't count on definitive answers). Determine which positive results you can build on & possibly repeat. Determine which negative results you can learn from & avoid repeating. We can make provisions for what we expect by using forethought (prevision). We can start with a hypothesis (we should realize a hypothesis is subjective). We may have a general idea (not a firm prediction) about what may or may not happen. Based on what we know & reasonably expect, we can plan what to test & have systematic records of what happened & didn't happen. We can add our insights & interpretations. In our notes, we should carefully differentiate objective facts & subjective insights & interpretations. Expectations are subjective because in our opinions, we figured what should happen. Thinking something "didn't work" isn't completely objective because it implies we expected a certain result, plus noting something didn't work isn't enough. Recording what we did in preparations & during tests can help us focus on what we did to alter results. Even if our expectations of results are "realistic" based on what we expect the total situation to be, there are apt to be factors we don't realize. Those unknown factors can make our expected results unrealistic. By combining insights, interpretations & facts, we may get valid reasons for a result that happened. Facts alone aren't apt to reveal reasons for results when multiple factors (beyond our control) are at play. We may think certain factors (like some I included in the Factors To Test section), influenced or caused the result/effect we got. Yet, we may never know how much a cause affected our results. It's hard to quantify how many people were hesitant to buy because of negative economic predictions. Purchase decisions (even decisions to not purchase) are complicated by numerous factors. Each factor can have more influence than others. If a popular product is offered at the same time you promote what you offer, you may get fewer sales than you might've gotten otherwise. But even if many consumers have enough money to also buy from you, they may each have different reasons for ignoring your offer. If you make a limited time offer that has no relevance to weather just before a storm hits, people's priorities will be different than you might anticipate. People may buy what's offered without admitting to themselves what their real reasons are. Since people tend to do things for at least 2 reasons - 1 reason is the real motivation; the 2nd "reason" tends to be a rationalization (which doesn't mean it totally rational). They may believe their rationalizations are rational. Rationalization - the cognitive process of making something seem consistent with or based on reason. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rationalization) Dennis S. Vogel Your success depends on learning what what to expect in your specific situation. Please use this link to get free information. http://www.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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