I was a huge 60 Minutes fan back before the content explosion. Every Sunday evening, the ticking stopwatch symbolized the melancholy end to my weekends.
Ever wonder?
I can still hear Andy Rooney, bringing my Sundays to a close with his patented phrase: “Did you ever wonder why?” Andy had his own spin on the phrase, whereby he would drag out the word “ever” and then pronounce “wonder” more like “wander” to effect the consistently perfect set up for his weekly topic on which he would … wander. (Okay, yes, the eyebrows always distracted me!)
Andy’s classic question is burned into my head and replays each time I sit with a business. At some point in the meeting, I hear Andy asking the question, “Did you ever wonder (wander) why you’re sitting with this client/prospect right now? They must need something from you or they simply would not take the time to be here.”
Consideration: Next time you’re sitting with a prospect or quite possibly a current client, ask yourself these questions:
- Why I am sitting with this individual?
- What does he/she really need?
- What does he/she expect of me?
It truly simplifies down to one question that your client/prospect senses that you have, in the past, or will soon answer for them: “What can you do for me that I cannot do for myself?”
Answering this question starts with understanding all that you can bring to bear for them.
- The mathematical comparison between Google’s Cost-Per-Click and Broadcast’s Cost-Per-Thousand
- Eight ways to avoid wasting your ad budget
- An advertiser’s cost per acquisition of their next customer is a function of their current medium’s cost-per-thousand
- Why branding and image advertising do not work
- Effectively applying media selection to the three key phases of a business … acquisition, retention and add-on sales
- Which media are truly used to shop.
- Discovering the “Critical Buying Window” of the consumer.
- SEO vs. SEM
- Using the 7 Disciplines of a Successful Advertising Plan for immediate results.
- Proper Campaign Tracking Metrics
- Three Ways That Google Adwords Fails the Local Business
- Ten Dirty Secrets of Paid Search
- Mathematical proof that cable’s “cost-per-spot hoodwink” is NOT and will NEVER be a media metric … and WILL increase the ASR (ad-to-sales ratio)
- Awareness or Preference?… choosing wrong is fatal for any business
Next time you find yourself sitting across from a client or prospect, know that you demonstrated, maybe unknowingly, that you can do something for them which they cannot do for themselves.
Consideration: Go back over the series of correspondence that lead you to this and/or every meeting. Somewhere buried in your efforts, you answered the most basic of all questions that exists in business:
“What can you do for me that I cannot do for myself?”
Wouldn’t it be interesting to channel Andy Rooney at some point during each discussion and ask, “Did you ever wonder why we’re sitting here together?”
It must be our ongoing focus that broadcast television, when applied properly, will drive down the client’s cost of acquiring new customers while increasing sales.
The net result, given an efficiently run operation, will be increased profitability … and that is what you can do for clients that they often times cannot do for themselves.
Roland Eckstein is the Managing Partner of ESA & Company, an advertising strategy firm that accelerates profit for local businesses.
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