It turns out my first sales manager was half right. When I first got in sales, I was told “When in doubt, go and see the people.” It was an over-simplification, of course. On the other hand, it’s always seemed to work for me. When I was waiting for the phone to ring or waiting for the sales to come in, I hear that voice. “Go and see the people.”
In Jonah Berger’s book “Invisible Influence” I am starting to learn why this works. In multiple studies, Berger explains that familiarity and having the “people see you” works. In one study, pictures of female students were judged on their level of attractiveness. (Cringe all you want, it was the study). It turns out that if the female students were seen in the class, they were judged to be more attractive. Other studies showed that “being seen” more often could make your more likable and trustworthy.
From my perspective this brings powerful insights into the world of sales, brand building and more! So here are a few takeaways…
See the People
Though the script has flipped a bit, the adage still holds water. When you are feeling reactive in your business, get out of your office and go “let the people see you.” And if you can add value in some way (or just to say thanks like this post suggests), even better.
Social Media
This is one of the reason great social media works. We are giving people a chance to “see us” on a regular basis. Some people would say this can be overdone. Maybe. But the science from this book suggests otherwise.
Consistency is Key
This is also a bit of science to back up my belief in consistency. Whether we are talking about social media, content marketing or sales, you need to be consistent in your efforts. We all have that voice in our heads that tells us we need to stop...it’s too much. But we need to push through that and continue to “show up” with your prospects and clients. Let them “see you” over and over again. Make sure never miss the opportunity to “see us!”
Each of them are leading voices in their respective spaces and professions. Here is a super quick background on each.
Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family’s wine business from $3 Million to $60 Million before leaving to start Vaynermedia, a leading digital agency in the world. He is a best selling author and sought after speaker. Gary began his journey by creating a wine show on YouTube and created over 1000 episodes of Wine Library TV. Now he has a team of people that follow him around and create the “Daily Vee.”
Casey Neistat is a filmmaker and world-class vlogger. Casey has pioneered how many view vlogging and has over 9 million YouTube subscribers. (That’s about the same as Jimmy Fallon if you were counting). Casey grew this amazing following by creating a daily, high quality vlog series that highlighted his adventures and his life.
Seth Godinis one of the pioneers of modern marketing. He is a best selling author many times over and is one of the minds that introduced us to “permission marketing.” Seth grew an amazing audience by writing a blog each and every day…for years. Each and every day, Seth “shows up” to share his thoughts on marketing, business and more.
These three are people I admire in business today.
They are the top of their game. And each of them, in their own way, push me to work harder and do more. Each of them is totally unreasonable…and that is why they have succeeded. Every time I start to create a goal to raise the exposure of my personal brand or my business, I start with a big idea. I think of a goal that gets me excited or fired up. I think “why not?” That could be me! And I even start to think of the possibility of what might happen if I head down the path. And then I think, “ Maybe I should be more reasonable.” I start to create the internal debate that goes like this… “You have a lot going on. You have a family and you want to have some time off! You know you need to think about your quality of life. You need to be more reasonable.”
And that, my friends, is where exceptional goes to die. It’s the reason I am excited about creating content every day. It’s exciting. It’s scary. It’s even kind of fun. But it’s not reasonable! If you want to be exceptional, you need to be unreasonable.
The Delivering Marketing Joy Podcast is back! Our goal here is to attack 2018 with a vengeance! The Delivering Marketing Joy Podcast will provide some inspiration, motivation and education to make it happen! Consider this your 10 minute “kick in the pants” to get your week started off right!This week on the podcast I dig into the topic of “being a Media company.” I talked about this a bit on this recent blog post. But in this podcast I tell you why it’s important…and how to “live it.” If you want to make sure you never miss an update, please sign up for our VIP newsletter here. We share content and special offers once a week. Or if you just want to shop for great promotional campaigns now, you can do that here.
One of the things I am adamant about, is that in today’s society, everyone is a media company. (Yes, Gary Vaynerchuk says this too).
If you are a car dealer, you are a media company that also sells cars. If you sell insurance, you are a media company, that also sells insurance. You get the idea. I believe you need to think like a media company. You need to create content that people want to consume. That act of acting like a media company will create an audience, and then you will be able to sell them something (or convince them of something). You will have gained their trust. I believe that.
But despite that belief, Hasseman Marketing has not consistently been acting like it. Don’t get me wrong. We create content. My hope is we even create content that our customers and peers like. But we have lacked the type of plan and consistency that I would like. So starting June 1st, my goal is to fix that. It’s time to up my game. And in this short blog post I wanted to outline my plan for what will be coming up the next 30 to 60 days. I would love feedback, thoughts and suggestions if you have them!
1. The DMJ Podcast is coming back: I started doing the DMJ Podcast at the beginning of this year on Mondays. My goal was to test it out and see if people enjoyed it. After the first 12 weeks of the year, I took a break. The feedback was good…so I am bringing this back on Mondays. It will be here on this blog and wherever you get your podcasts.
2. Delivering Marketing Joy: The staple of our content creation is our interview show Delivering Marketing Joy! That will keep coming and will be hosted at PromoCorner.com as it has been. If you have suggestions on guests, email us here!
3. Brand-ecdotes: Again, we played with this series and we want to bring it back. Here is a link to one of these. We welcome Promo Pros to weigh in on what they love about Promo. Let us know if you want to take part!
4. unScripted Podcast: This award winning podcast with Bill Petrie will keep coming at ya every Friday. It’s hard to believe we have done 100 of these! Don’t worry…more to come here.
5. New Blog Posts: This is the new curveball into the mix. Get ready for me to create a new blog post every business day! Some will be short. Some will be a bit longer. But the goal is to provide value to our customers, prospects and peers all of the time. And we think this will be a way for us to do that! So please check back. Read them. Comment. Give feedback. And by all means, help keep me accountable! Why would we do all of this? Because we believe we are a media company. Get ready for us to start acting like it.
Please allow me a “proud dad” post here. But I think you might get some value out of it as well.
My oldest daughter Skylar Hasseman is an aspiring dancer. She just finished her Freshman year at Kent State University (and did very well) but it struggling with the idea of whether to return. Like many young people (and not so young people) she is trying to decide which is the best path for her to reach her dreams and goals. So in working to build her own personal brand, she has decided to create dance videos that showcase her dancing and her choreography skills. (You can subscribe to the channel here).
Her first video went up last night and (again proud dad here) I think it looks great. You can check it out here.
But what does this all mean to you? Great question. I think she is battling with what many of us work on. How do we work toward our goals? How do we stand out in a loud world? What if no one likes what we are doing? You understand. If you are like me, you have heard those voices in your head.
So here are 3 Lessons you can learn from my daughter and her video.
1. She Chose Herself: Dance is something where you can wait your whole life waiting for someone to “choose” you. You go to auditions. You are judged at competitions. You wait to get chosen. She decided to take a different (or maybe just an additional) path. She created an opportunity to showcase her skills on her own.
2. She Took Action: How many times have you said, “I have an idea…” only to let it go because it might be too hard? It’s those ideas that you need to take action on if you want to stand out.
3. She “Shipped:” The project is never done until it’s out there. She could have waited to get one more shot. She could have continued to work and edit and wait until it was perfect. Instead, she pushed it out into the world. I am proud of that. This first project can be deemed a success. That’s great stuff. Now, if she wants to really take this path, she needs to create more and more consistent content to build her brand. Whether or not she does that is up to her. But what’s cool, is that she knows that now.
