Decision Psychology – Orren Prunckun

Marketing Ideas – Episode 17: How to determine what your marketing message is

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 16 May 2019 01:18:13 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

When to deliver a message;
What the two main types of messages are;
How long each message should be;
Why these work the way they do; and
How to determine where a prospect is in the buying cycle.

So, listen here as I discuss these!

Transcript:

Hello hello it’s Orren rPrunckun and I want to talk about the struggle that people have in determining their marketing message now it’s a very common concern that people haven’t it’s a issue that they just don’t really know how to solve they’ve got some idea and they dabble I’m here and they’re trying to work out what their right marketing messages but sometimes it just doesn’t matter I’m gonna go through all the reasons why I know that it doesn’t land now depending on who you are selling to you and particularly their buying temperature is going to change the type of marketing message you’re going to give them so for example tougher marketing message you give someone a prospect that is cold it’s going to be very very different than the type of marketing message you’re going to give a prospect who is either warm or fight if not boiling the same guys with no prospect that doesn’t know you it doesn’t know they have a problem and they’re frozen all of these different marketing messages that you’re going to be giving them are all going to be different and they usually differ on two main factors there’s quite a few other factors that changes and depends on what you’re giving them but the two main factors are number one if it’s a branded or sorry a branding style message or a direct more direct sales message and then the other one is the length either you know very short to you know something that’s very long in the hours if not days now when you’re moving the cross back through all of these buying temperatures from frozen to boiling you’re going to be giving them a marketing message that’s going to be really sure and concentrating more on a branded or branding style marketing message and as you move through those temperatures all the way up into a boiling them the marketing message you’re giving them is going to get longer and longer and it’s going to get more direct in terms of asking for the sale now why is this the case there’s a couple reasons one is someone that doesn’t know you doesn’t like you or doesn’t trust you someone that’s cold and I don’t even know that they have a problem sorry I beg your pardon that’s frozen and they don’t even know that they have a problem for them to consume something a marketing message that you give them that is you know 5 10 15 even up to an hour long is not going to happen that’s like going up to someone in a supermarket and saying hey will you listen to me on this topic I’m really passionate about for now there’s going to look at you until you get lost you know something is really short even under a minute it’s going to be the type of length marketing message to be giving them now once they know you and they like you and they trust you and you’ve built a lot of rapport in a relationship with them they’re more likely to listen to something for an hour or longer so the marketing message of giving them is going to be longer in those aspects also if you are something of higher priced product you’re saying a sale a sales message is going to be far longer than say a really low ticket item it’s going to be far shorter because the risk in terms of what the prospect is risking is far lower as you move down that buying to purchase someone that is you know or boiling prospect you can be going for more of a direct sale you’re gonna ask for it you’ve given a lot of value in that branding up front as there were a frozen or prospect and you can ask for a direct sell one and they’re gonna get they’re not going to be as they’re going to be far more open to it then something that you have done before so the type of marketing message that you are giving is really predicated on the temperature the buying temperature that this prospect is at when you are delivering that message you’ve got to really gauge and get a barometer of where that person is at that prospect is that the time that you want to communicate with them and that is going to determine the marketing message that you are going to deliver them it’s not ad hoc it’s not random there’s a sequence that you need to go through and it’s all dependent on where that person is that not where you want them to be or where you are what you want to sell them at the time of sale so the two things they’re going to summarize are whether it’s on a branding message or a direct sales message and then also if it is long or short and with that it kind of depends on the price point that you are selling as well so hope this is really useful for those that are trying to work out what their marketing messages I’d like you to go out and try it let me know what happens and see how you go thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 15: How to follow-up with prospects without being annoying

Orren Prunckun — Tue, 14 May 2019 03:46:12 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

How most brands get follow-up wrong;
How to leverage what works with publicity and product launches;
What you should be doing when you follow-up with prospects; and
What to do after your follow-up fails.

So, listen here as I discuss these!

Transcript:

Hello hello this is Orren Prunckun and today I want to talk about following up so back last week I got a question from someone about how do you actually go about following up with a prospect that you’ve been in contact with and this is particularly around someone that you have already delivered a proposal to you and the person that had been speaking to you said you know we’ve delivered a proposal to a prospect and then we’ve heard nothing so what we do is go about following up with them by saying like hey hey did you get my proposal they’re not hearing anything and replying and saying hey is there anything else you need and then this process goes on and it’s like a one-way follow-up conversation where they’re not hearing anything back from the prospect so that’s really interesting and there’s quite a few ways you can go about doing this and I’m only really catching this this response in terms of a proposal rather than you know more of a commodity we priced based product that doesn’t have any quoting or anything like that but it still applies to that as well so instead of just going out and saying hey hey hey have you a time had time to consider what I’ve said through what you can do is and I learnt this from all my days in publicity and now look I have gone out over the years and I calculated that it’s probably come to over a million dollars’ worth of free advertising from getting placements within the news media and one of the most effective things that I learned through all that time was after sending a press release and now the caveat to that is I don’t always think a press release is the best idea but just pretend it is and after you’ve sent a press release and you’ve heard nothing what you do is you strategically leave out some information from that such as a quote or a photo opportunity or a different angle so you’ve really got three different things that you can now follow up with a new Slayer outlet with saying that I’ve got a new photo angle I saw a new angle I’ve got a new photo opportunity and a new person that you can add as a quote add to this original story IQs three opportunities to follow up with them so the same strategy applies following up with someone that has created sorry that you have quoted on for a proposal it strategically leave out some of the offer to them from the original proposal and that gives you the opportunity to then go out and then strategically every week or so whenever you want to follow up to say hey look I’ve got this extra thing that we can add to the service and otherwise our bonus and speaking of bonus is the same thing the same principle applies for all the launches that I have done you launch a product but then when you want to follow up in the launch sequence you have some other reasons just by like by my thing and because they’re ready know what you are offering people aren’t that dumb they already know what you’re offering and whatever you’re offering is not that compelling same with publicity same with proposals that you’ve created you just need to add something else to push the mocha liner usually is a bonus you have to stack that value in the original offer because the original offer that you gave them just isn’t that compelling you have to make this new offer way more compelling so that’s the way you do it is you strategically offer more and more value as the follow-up hey we’ve got this new thing that will help what our original offer was providing you they don’t reply to that’s keep stacking the offer as you’d go and go so that’s one of the really easy ways to fart and even if n if they aren’t responding to your offer it means the offers not great and they’re not interested what do you do then you go back to them and you say look it sounds like you don’t have a need or you don’t have the authority to buy all the timing is not right you just don’t have the budget it’s a classic BANT style sales and then re-qualified and say hey this is probably not for you we do have a different product or service stream that may solve the need that we missed and then re-qualify them and back at the sales process on a different need stream all together so hopefully this is useful you’re probably going to be coming up against buying concerns throughout whatever you do with your marketing and sales so I want you to go try this out next time you’re trying to follow up and see what happens let me know because I’d love to hear from you thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 14: Make sure you understand the different buying concerns prospects have

Orren Prunckun — Sun, 12 May 2019 07:14:38 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

Why people don’t buy from you;
What the most common busying concerns are; and
How to address one of the most important buying concerns.

So, listen here as I discuss these!

Transcript:

Hello hello it’s Orren Prunckun and today I want to talk about objections and concerns when you’re selling so this book I really want to buy and it comes up to about 50 bucks so it’s not an impulse buy and it’s not too expensive so I kind of sits in that middle ground and it look I know I need the book ah I have the budget for it you know the timings right I can actually pay for it it’s just not in that sweet spot of being an impulse buyer where I will just drop money without thinking on it thinking of it so there’s some other buying objections that come up and the first one is look I know this book does what it says it says it does I know it’s going to give me what I want not only that I know that because it’s got tons of testimonials I just believe the author is going to deliver on their promise I know when I get it I know you know I can go through and read it and it will do the things that I want and there’s no external factors that I like stopping me from going out and reading the book and consuming it or anything like that the one buying concern that I do have and the one that is stopping me from making this purchase is I don’t know if the the book then what’s contained in the book is right for me now I did say before that I know the book works in general the author delivers on their promise and I’m convinced of that and I think for most businesses and most products and services that’s the bare minimum whatever you’re promising then your private service does it should actually deliver on that so that’s kind of a bare minimum in a given but this author’s going out of the way to give like tons and tons of evidence to show that it does so I’m willing to convince him of that the thing that I fall down on and think that I think a lot of a lot of our founders and entrepreneurs and small business owners fall down on is the convincing someone that work for them and that’s the dilemma I’m facing right now what I mean by will it work for them is they haven’t demonstrated that someone like me so for example like me in this situation where I’m at in life for example that’s someone similar to them someone to me in my circumstance we’ll get the requisite value out of it can you see the difference between that and they’re actually working so the product you know what works it delivers on its promise but you know for example I may be too advanced or – I’m too early on in my in the stage for it to actually apply to me so what this author should be doing is saying you know Oren someone that’s like you and then listening off all of those all of those demographic all of those geographic psychographic behavioural different characteristics of someone exactly like me they listed all those as someone in that same position as you will get the same value out of it I would not hesitate and I would start buying it that’s the only concern I have so the takeaway from this is I really want you to think about how you can demonstrate to someone that’s got you know a potential buying concern and how you can show them that’s someone within their situation their exact situation not just in general learners in general that the product works but someone in their exact situation by literally listing it out and this is where case studies come in that it will apply to them that is what’s going to get you over that next buying concern is if you can demonstrate that and I really think a case study that outlines specifically who that person is and how it could apply to them specifically not just in general you’ll blow through most buying concerns so I hope that’s useful to you love you go try it out see what happens and then let me know I’m how you going thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 9: The power of follow-up

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 05:14:40 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

Why you should follow-up with prospects; and
Why prospects that have the budget, authority, need and timing want to hear from you.

So, listen here to hear as I discuss this!

Transcript:

Hello hello it’s Orren Prunckun and I want to talk about follow ups today so I’m in the market for an ongoing subscription product there’s a bit of a value in it for any vendor that ends up selling to me so because there’s a bit of value in it and it’s kind of a big purchase I’ve gone around to quite a few different vendors and got quotes and the interesting thing is a lot of these vendors just simply have not followed up with me which blows my mind it’s a super baffling so the one the vendor that I have gone with is one that has actually followed up with me and they were my business by just doing something really really simple by having an initial conversation and then after that initial conversation where I said that I think I know the to think a little bit more to make a buying decision they ended up following up with me and they won my business and you know it’s so hard thing they’ve got my contact details they know I’m in the market for this product they know I have the need the know the timings right another have I have the ability to pay they just do the extra step and pick up the phone or pick up an email hit the send button or the equivalent on the phone to fall out with me and say hey look we’ve spoken before used our offer do you want it as the only one that has got my business is the one that followed up with me so it’s really important I think for all your to go out and if you already know that the prospect has a need as the ability to pay it has the willingness to pay and the timing is right this BANT selling though you should be following up with them it’s not hard sell it’s just getting back at the right time and getting back in their mind to be in front of mind to make the sale so we’ve got a prospect listen you’re not following up with it I would highly recommend you jumping on the phone jumping on the email jumping on whatever communication method it is and following up with them it doesn’t need to be a hard sell if they are qualified for having any ability to pay having the budget and also having the correct timing to do it so try it out see what happens and let me know you love to hear from you thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 5: Revealing secrets to win trust

Orren Prunckun — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 09:23:52 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

Why giving information is useful in creating epiphanies for customers;
Why epiphanies for customers are valuable; and
Why both of these make your brand trustworthy and different.

So, listen here to hear as I discuss these!

Transcript:

Hello so I’m currently in the market for some building suppliers and look I don’t know too much about what I need so I did what most consumers do and they go to their favorite search engine and this time I went to Google and I typed in exactly what I was looking for and obviously came up with some search results and I think this one that I contacted was about third or fourth in the Google search results but it definitely wasn’t the first and I had called a few others before that but when I got to this supplier I spoke to them and I told them what I wanted to do and I’m not super knowledgeable about what I’m trying to do I’ve got I know the bare minimum foundational knowledge but I’m a bit over my head so I told him what I wanted to do and he basically talked me out of buying his product but in doing so he gave me a lot of useful information about what the goal I had and the way I was trying to do it was probably the wrong way and that realization was really useful to me it was something I hadn’t considered before and in retrospect after speaking to this supplier I realized that they had a lot of great and valid points to what they were trying to say now when they came to quoting me their quote was competitive but it definitely wasn’t the cheapest and they operate in they supply commodity product and they’re in a commodity market and pretty much all their competition and all the other suppliers virtually when you break it down offer the same product and service now even though they’re not the cheapest that fact that the fact that they went about almost talking me out of using the product that I originally wanted and providing me with a ton of information and not doing a hard sell and in fact not even selling me at all makes me as a consumer want to go with them with the alternative product that they suggested now I could go to any other supplier but the fact that they’ve tried not to sell but they have tried not to sell to me but also in combination with that gave me a lot of useful information they’ve won me over as a consumer now this is a once-off product I’m never going to purchase this product ever again so they’re operating in a once-off transaction and they know that really well so in order to you know convert our prospects into customers just like me they have to be really smart and about the way they go about selling because once I’ve turned into a customer I will never be a customer again just by the nature of what they’re selling so we get this guess the lesson out of this is if you’re selling a commodity product you’re selling a commodity product that’s one sort of transaction and quite a high price point as well really need to think about how you are differentiating yourself from the rest of the your competitors when they’re offering the same product and the same arm service for the market now I don’t know if this supplier was conscious or had a strategic thought about doing what they did but in providing that information they have well and truly won me over I wasn’t able to get a recommendation and that would have been my first option because someone has already pre vetted them and done their due diligence about the supplier so I didn’t have any of that trust that it was this new trust that I could leverage from someone else so it was a really hard decision for me to make but just that back they gave me some education about what I was trying to do and brought me up to their level and made me aware of things I didn’t know that I didn’t know well and truly sold on this supplier for the commodity products so hopefully that is useful to you go try it out let me know how you go and I’ll check you soon thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 4: Mother Teresa and the myth of being selfless

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 08:59:59 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

Why Mother Teresa was selfish and that is okay; and
Why you should focus on what value your product provides your customers.

So, listen here to hear as I discuss these!

Transcript:

hello hello so we all know Mother Teresa she helped humanity and at face value she was a very selfless human being but she was still doing it because there was something in it for her regardless of her being selfless so she was kind of being both selfless and selfish and that thing and I Kavya see can’t speak on her behalf was that she got a good feeling out of helping humanity and the population there was still something in it for her and the same thing goes for all humans including people that want to buy your stuff now I get approached every day almost every day and people are when they ask me things they usually want my help for free and in these requests they are always focused on what they can get from me now I’m happy in some circumstances to help these people out because you know I get a good feeling out of it just like Mother Teresa does but a lot of the time the path is not clear of what is in it for me and how I can advantage from this so a lot of people that are requesting these things for me they focus the entire conversation on what they can get and what’s in it for them and what they can get from me rather than even mentioning what I can get out of the interaction or better still focusing the whole conversation of what’s in it for me and what I get out of it and then based on that one day’s you get in exchange now this goes for anything that you are selling to prom as a supplier you should always be focusing on what value you can provide to your customer and obviously there’s going to be in exchange for some again usually it’s going to be an exchange for cash money but if you I’m not focusing on what you can give your customer you are going about it the completely wrong way now if you look at charities write charities and ask for money and the thing they ask in return is a good feeling how you please donate to us because you’re going to get a good feeling out of that and yes like Mother Teresa and like when I like to help people because it’s being selfless a lot of people don’t actually want to go out of the way just to do it based on that pure feeling alone so charities they should be giving something in addition to the feeling that they are helped out that that person who is donating is helping out same goes with what you’re offering you need to be offering some values of people that is far beyond what you are asking in exchange for that transaction so why would are you not there are no one in the world is completely selfish selfless or altruistic even though their actions on the outside may seem so, so next time you go out and you ask something from someone whether as a favor from someone that is an acquaintance or money from a customer always provide more valued or value at least has a bare minimum to them in exchange for what you’re asking back so I really want you to go out try that out see how it works for you and then let me know thanks for listening.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 3: Selling commodity products in a competitive market

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 08:56:43 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

Why once-off sales make marketing difficult;
Why competing on price is bad for your brand; and
How to find ways to differentiate yourself in a competitive market.

So, listen here to hear as I discuss these!

Transcript:

hello hello if so I’m in the market for purchasing waste removal now I’m not gonna go into the details of it but it is quite a large transaction that I’m looking at and I’ve done what most people do is they shop around for a for quotes now I’ve got three quotes from three different suppliers now this product that I am looking sorry this per service I’m looking to purchase this waste removal is a once-off transaction never do it again and it’s also a commodity service there are dozens of providers who provide this service now normally in this situation I’d go and try to find a recommendation from someone that to use one of these supplies before because they’ve already done the reading and the due diligence to know if this per this supplier is trustworthy but I just don’t have that luxury in this situation so what I’ve had to do is call up my favorite search engine Google find will the suppliers gone through them all and contacted them to get us a quote now the interesting thing is and the reason why I say it’s a commodity product is because although quotes coming in literally within a $50 to $100 are about our price window difference from all of the other competitors now I’m looking at this and I’ve got a sheet of paper in front of me that have all these suppliers and there’s about six of them that I’ve called and they’ve all got the same price they’re all going to do the same job and they all tell me that they are the best at it now I know I have no doubt that they’re going to do the bare minimum that’s just the basics and the foundation’s in businesses to do the bare minimum now I am here as a consumer stuck trying to work out which one of these I’m gonna go with and I don’t want to go they are based purely on price because if one of them says look we’re going to beat the other five competitors purely on price my immediate reaction is that they are going to skip corners and do a less of a quality job so I don’t want to purchase based purely on price and price alone so what I would be doing if I was selling a commodity service is I would be telling that these people sorry these consumers like myself that I could add something extra that is not part of the deal for them that will push them over the line so instead of discount and create some sort of bonus to push me over the line to purchase from them now it is in the waste removal a market so as a supplier if I was them hypothetically I’d be looking at what other types of waste removal that I may need in the future and it’s not necessarily this one because it’s going to be a once-off for me but looking at what I potentially may need later on down the track and then offering a bonus that would get rid of that wasteful move and the time came and if someone offered that to me right now I would absolutely take them and that would be the deciding factor and help me make a purchasing decision as a consumer so if you are in a commodity product or service think about how you can create an extra value add to differentiate yourself from all of your competitors but don’t do that based on price because price alone implies that you are going to be offering a lower quality service than the rest of your competitors so I hope that was valuable go try it out so what happens let me know and I’d love to hear from you.

Marketing Ideas – Episode 2: Irresistable offers

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:52:58 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear my thoughts on:

How to make sales easy for you;
How to overcome sales objections; and
How to make it easy for customer to buy.

So, listen in to hear me discuss these!

Transcript:

hello hello I just wanted to record a quick video around selling so a lot of people have big issues with selling and they find it hard to do or they find it sleazy or unethical or they just have really bad experiences with selling but also being sold to and I think a lot of it comes down to the way and what they’re selling for example I really think that if you said to someone and I’m only using currency here as an example I said look if you give me one dollar I will give you $100 back now I’m only using that example with currency just to represent value and kind of currency is just a representation of value so if someone was to give you one unit of value or one dollar and you were to give them a hundred or whatever ten units back that is such a great deal people would be insane not to take it now I do know there’s a caveat to that so one of the reasons why people would not take that deal is because these don’t trust you like for example if I went and said that to some random person at a bus stop hey if you give me a dollar I’ll give you ten dollars back they would think it’s a scam because it sounds too good to be true and obviously I would be an anonymous person they don’t know me they don’t like me and they don’t trust me so in that situation would be a really hard choice to make but let’s just say people knew me their life to me and they trusted me and I wasn’t some crackhead that was at bus stop offering them something that sounded too good to be true most people would take that deal and the reason is it’s a no-brainer is and is irresistible deal and I think a lot of people that have issues with selling is that they don’t have something that is equivalent to the example I just gave you there either asking for a dollar in giving a dollar back well they’re asking for a dollar and they’re giving less than the dollar back but if you were able to give that amount of value to someone that’s 10 X 1.1 X something is more than what they’re giving you sales becomes really really easy and you can apply that to anything you’re selling not just a monetary transaction because let’s face it if you’re selling it’s not just products services or solutions if you are interacting with another human and you’re trying to get them to do something call persuade them to do something called influence them to do some ik you are in sales mode no matter what you are doing if you’re interacting with another human and you want them to do something you’re in selling mode so if you can offer something that is way more just incrementally more than what they are giving you in exchange for that whether it’s time whether it’s money whether it’s effort and so on selling becomes so easy and the choice to buy from you is also really easy and people will not feel like they’re being hard salt nor will they feel like they’re being pressured or you are doing it in a sleazy and unethical way so I think the point of this video is that I really wanted to think about in any exchange you’re having with someone else what can you give them that is so much more valuable than what you’re asking in return and literally selves become so easy and all of their objections seem to melt away good luck

How Not To Ask For Help

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 14:23:12 +0000

I got a communication from an acquaintance.

This person had promised to do volunteer work at an event I ran, however they decided during the event to drop off so they could get event attendance.

Sometime later they contacted me with the following.

(Wording summarized so not to identify the person.)

Them: What do you do?

Me: I do many things. Here is my LinkedIn profile: LINK. What would you like to know more about?

Basically, I don’t want to pitch you on something that’s not relevant to you.

Them: XYZ. Can you tell me for free how do to do XYZ step-by-step?

Me: Here is a link to 100,000 words I have written on the subject: LINK.

Them: Thanks, I also work in XYZ. What should I charge people?

(And they also claim to manage $1,000,000+ of advertising on their LinkedIn profile.)

Me: That’s commercial in confidence.

Them: Because you’re not answering my question, you sound like you have no experience and have no idea what you are talking about. You’re an Arsehole.

Me: You have to be joking, right?

Them: I’d never work with you in the future.

Me: …

The TL:DR version:

They are competing with me but didn’t want to reveal that initially.
They wanted free advice on how to do the same job I do.
Then when I wouldn’t give it to them, they scold me.

Another contact of mine contacted me without prompt from me asking my experience with this person.

This other contact sent me a screenshot of the conversation with the person in question:

And I quote:

“Do you want a job or not stop wasting time.”

“We have high-level projects underway.”

“Look, dude stop fucking around – do you want a high paying job.”

The person in question has no idea how to sell people on joining his company (thus no idea how to sell), yet claims to be a sales company with $1,000,0000+ of advertising under management.

Someone is lying.

And it’s not me or my other contact.

How To Enjoy Marketing And Sales Rejection

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 14:19:22 +0000

People hate rejection.

Surveys about human fears reveal that public speaking is the most fear activity, even more than death.

Why is this?

Public speaking means getting up in from of people and presenting something.

That something, or worse still, you is being evaluated by the audience.

If they like it, then that something or you are accepted.

If they don’t like it, then that something or you are is rejected.

It’s safe to say that the fear of public speaking is the fear of rejection.

I’ll say it again…

PEOPLE HATE REJECTION.

But the thing is, in marketing and sales, not just the strict sense that is marketing and selling any product, service or solution, but in the broad sense of marketing and selling sponsorship, partnerships, romantic relationships, jobs, customers, ambassadors, yourself and so on.

People are then passive aggressive as they don’t know how to be assertive.

This comes from a fear of rejection.

Most people fear to be upfront about what they want and need, because of potential rejection.

Yet ironically, rejection is a positive thing, it reveals incompatibility really fast.

Here it is: rejection saves all parties involved time.

It acts as a way to segment suspects into alignment.

In other words, qualified.

Are they unaligned with what you are marketing and selling?

Are they aligned with what you are marketing and selling?

If it is former, they were never going to buy as they have no need.

If it is latter, they are open to buying as they have a need.

Basically, you are looking for a big enough servable market.

Let’s have a quick look at an example, in this case, a health product…

You ask someone “Do you want to be healthier?”

And they respond “No.”

For all intents and purposes, they have rejected you or what you were hopefully trying to sell.

No matter, how much begging, pleasing, over-selling or sales tricks you try on them, they will keep saying no and start to resent you.

Whether you know it or like it or not, here you are proactively trying to segment suspects into alignment.

A more subtle version is simply putting brand communication out into the market, say via marketing and sales content.

This time, you are not directly asking someone “Do you want to be healthier?”

But you are still, trying to segment suspects into alignment.

People that are not interested will not respond.

Again, for all intents and purposes, they have rejected you or what you were hopefully trying to sell, in an indirect way.

If George Clooney asked a woman out, she’d drop and cancel everything to go on it.

If they are not responding, they simply are not interested.

I have mentioned that rejection is based on lack of need.

But something people are just nasty in how they reject you.

Maybe they are rude to you; maybe they call you nasty names, maybe they ignore you, maybe they threaten you or your family (trust me I have had a cold-called for charity, and I have heard everything!)

People take rejection personally and usually make it mean that there is something wrong with themselves at a core level.

This is utter nonsense.

Except if you did something truly heinous, the rejection is not about you personally and has no reflection on your identity or who you are.

Seriously.

They don’t know you.

At this stage, they don’t know you on a deep level, so they are only rejecting the context or the image of you by association in their mind.

For example, you’re wearing a red jumper, and their high school bully also wore the same red jumper.

They only have a small amount of data to make a choice on, and they certainly haven’t had time to get to know you as a person.

Based on this small amount of data, they are not rejecting you, but their perception concept or story of you.

However, if one person says you have a tail, they are probably insane, because obviously, humans do not have tails.

However, if 100 people say you have a tail, they are probably right, and you better turn around and see if it’s true, as they may be on to something!

What does this all mean?

It means based on the small amount of data you have given them, they have run it pass all of the rules and situations and experience they have had in the past that are similar and made a snap judgment about this current situation in relation to their past.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book Blink.

They are relating you to their past experience.

You have never communicated with them, so the rejection cannot be about you as a person.

If you don’t have positive signs from people, then they are unlikely to be emotionally willing to talk to you – you have no idea why, so don’t read it as a rejection.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, humans desire to be self-actualized by being connected to things that are important to them.

Further, after physiological and safety needs, humans naturally want to be connected and deepen relationships with others.

So if you are being “rejected” or your communication isn’t working, it could be because of their emotional state.

Most people’s emotional willingness drops due to basic physiological factors such as:

They are tired;
They are hungry;
They are cold;
Etc.

They are not normally emotionally unwilling, but for those factors.

Beyond those, emotional unwillingness could be due to unusual circumstances such as:

Their cat died;
They lost their job;
They broke up with their partner;
Etc.

Or it could be that they are responding to their context of you, not actually you.

Their context of you is how you appear to them based on their past experience.

Most people’s context of a stove top is that it is hot and will burn them, even if the stove is off and physically cannot burn them.

At this stage, they don’t know you on a deep level, so they are only rejecting the context or the image of you by association in their mind.

For example, you’re wearing a red jumper, and their high school bully also wore the same red jumper.

A rejection, in other words, mean you cannot progress further in trust building, means that the person who is rejecting you is uncomfortable in deepening the relationship based on:

Them not having enough information; or
You communicating at a level of rapport that hasn’t been established yet (as per the previous “let’s get married” example.)

But if you are still being rejected or your communication isn’t working, it could be because of their emotional state…

On top of that past experience, you have no idea what situation they are currently going through.

Did they get a cancer diagnosis?

Did their cat die?

Did they lose their job?

There are so many other, legitimate and plausible factors to why they are rejecting you.

And unless you ask them directly (you may not get a straight answer then, because people lie to protect people feels or they are simply unaware or not confident to say so), you will never know the true meaning behind the rejection.

And even if you did, who cares, it doesn’t change the fact that they are still not aligned or qualified.

So there is no point, spending precious emotions energy and time dwelling on the reason.

This is not narrow either!

It applies ANYTIME you directly or indirect, proactively or passively ask something of someone.

My modus operandi is as follows: “Reject me quickly, so we do not waste both our time!”

I want to spend my time, money and effort on people that are aligned and qualified with what I am marketing and selling, as I know that is the best use of those resources.

Imagine if you follow this simple rule how much time, money and effort you would save.

This means that marketing and sales are a numbers game.

This means you can’t align and qualify them all.

This is because you are interacting with other humans.

And humans are complicated and complex, and this means you do not have 100% control over the outcome.

Attrition rates as you move down the marketing and sales funnel.

It’s also very hard for you to know where they are at.

Yes, you can ask, but unless you have a lot of rapport and trust, then it’s unlikely you will get the truth.

“Maybe,” “No,” “No, not right now,” “I don’t know” etc. are all better than ignoring communication.

But again, ignoring communication reveals incompatibility really quickly (if that’s a core value.)

No may only mean no for now, not no forever.

It means “no, until I have a need.”