If Raymond Aaron comes to your town to give a presentation or class, I have a two letter word for you – GO.  Here’s a link to get more info from Raymond himself.

This recent Raymond Aaron workshop was an unusually small crowd of 25 students, which was fortunate for us since we could ask questions at any time, and because the majority of the participants were Hawaii realtors, the focus of the weekend was on the marketing strategies of realtors in business but ALL of us benefited immensely.

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Selling is a skill that must be learned and mastered.  Selling anything to anyone is easy if they want what you have to sell, and they want to pick you as their seller.

Marketing can be transactional (weak, more of the same, what everyone else is doing) or transformational (startingly, totally different).  Transformational marketing can change the whole picture and increase income tenfold.

An example of transactional marketing is to increase prices, work more hours, sell more items.

Transformational marketing using a chiropractor as an example went like this:

A chiropractor charges $40 per adjustment.  Everyone else also charges $40.  To increase his income he could charge $45/adjustment – but he may get less customers because he is priced too high.  Or, he could charge $35 but he may lose money because he is charging too little and/or have to increase the hours he puts into his business which cuts into family time.

Instead, Chiropractor writes a book “The Book on Sore Backs”.  He writes press releases and sends them off to all sorts of media outlets.  One or more pick up on the press releases, and the phone starts to ring with potential customers.  The receptionist asks “how did you find out about Dr. ___?” and if they say they heard about the doctor because of his book, they are asked if they would like to be treated by the book author for $99 or an associate for $40 (prior to he makes an arrangement with the other chiropractors if they would do adjustments for his patients at his office for $20, and he gets the other $20).

His income has been transformed from $40 to $99.  He also receives income without having to do any adjustments from his “associates”.  His business is transformed.

10 requirements of transformational marketing:  Be a Leader, Branding, Lifetime Value of Customer, Intentional Congruence, Image & Video, Copy (great wording), Social Media usage, Traffic, Buzz, and Relevant Charity.

The most important trait was being a Leader in your field so people will want to follow.

Next comes Branding, which we focused on for the rest of the day.

Branding is about you, not the company you belong to (in the case of realtors, it isn’t Caldwell Bankers, etc. that is your brand.  You are your brand.)  Your brand is not what you say.  It is what others say or think about you.

Raymond gave several examples of Brand trumping Product.  Pepsi, in a blind test challenge, was the cola of choice over Coca Cola several years ago.  However, because Coca Cola has a stronger brand name, Coca Cola sales are higher than Pepsi.  It doesn’t matter that Pepsi tastes better, Coca Cola is perceived to be a better brand so it has higher sales.

The levels of branding rise from 0 – 10 from brand absence (zer0) to brand awareness to brand preference to brand desire to brand insistence (ten).  Brand advocacy (when you tell all your friends how great some brand is) is over the top.  An example of brand advocacy is the Apple Computer Company.  Apple users love their Apples and tell everyone about the wonders and greatness of their Apple products, which gets their friends to try it and buy.  This is the best and highest level of salesmanship.

To advance to higher levels of branding, make WOWs (when people say “Wow!).  Every Wow moves you up – gradually.  Every unWow (things that need fixing) moves you down – fast.

6 ingredients of Wows = Big, Unexpected, Memorable, Positive, Extra, Relevant. (BUMPER)

Sources of Wows include your own creativity and uniquness, feedback from clients, turning unWows into Wows.

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Ways to brand yourself:

By Achievement (Lance Armstrong’s achievement of defeating cancer and winning the Tour de France several times earns him $100,000 for each speaking engagement)

By Association (pictures with famous or successful people)

By Authoring a Book

By Reciprocation (give, give, give and create relationships)

By 3rd party recognition (testimonials – especially written ones)

By charitable donation (example is McDonald and the Ronald McDonald House)

By Brand Mascots (Snap Crackle and Pop for Rice Crispies)

By Message Control (be careful of the words and stories you use – always be aware of the message/image you are wanting to convey).
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At the end of Day 1, we were instructed to create our own website with “OurOwnNameReview.com”.  Raymond has RaymondAaronReviews.com as one of his websites.  On it, using WordPress templates, he asks a simple question “What is the greatest thing that Raymond taught you that will increase your business?”

When people fill in their name, city, and occupation as well as their feedback (which is automatically a testimonial), it is posted.  This review site will be at the top of anyone’s Google name search of you which will help your branding as it serves as bonafide validation and positive reinforcement for you.

THAT is ultra cool.

[Aunty’s review website will be HonoluluAuntyReviews.com in the near future and my question would be about benefits from visiting Aunty at HonoluluAunty.com.]

Elance.com is a site like ebay – but just for services.  Post the job you want done (i.e. make a review site just like Raymond’s) and bids for your job will come in – after which you leave feedback.  This is a great resource for finding a webmaster or website developer if you need one  (they can help you make your review site – tell them to go see RaymondAaronReviews.com and make one for you just like that).

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DAY 2 iMarketing Genius

Raymond began by giving us 6 rung steps in the “Ladder of Profits”.  From a ground base of zero:

1.  Visibility – with so many channels of media on the internet, magazines, etc. build a presence and get your name out there.  Create and maintain a website.

2.  Credibility – you want to be known, liked, and trusted.  Becoming an author of books will give you instant visibility and credibility.

3.  Marketability – setting up a business to succeed where customers choose you

4.  Profitability – the achievement reached.

Starting at the base and moving downward is

– 1.  Invisibility – the majority of people as entrepreneurs, employees, investors are on this rung.

– 2.  Instability – mental, emotional, financial distress.  Insolvency.

In order to achieve profitability, you move up one rung at a time, in order.  The way to skip rungs from invisibility to profitability is to win a lottery – which has very low probability.

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Nido Qubein is one of Raymond Aaron’s coaches.  He is the President of High Point University in North Carolina, and on the Boards of BB&T Banks and Lazy Boy.  Raymond played a short video of highlights of a recent presentation.  What a WOWer of a speaker!  If you can, google for YouTube videos of Nido Qubein.

Points from his presentation:

To become great and successful, hang around with successful people.  Who you spend time with is who you become.  Figure out what obstacles are in the way in your life and avoid or get rid of them.

Over and beyond communicating is connecting.  Figure out how the other person must feel first before he/she will do what you want them to do.

Training is teaching people what to do.  Educating is showing people what to be.

Pay yourself first.  Most people pay themselves last after all the bills, etc have been made.  Pay yourself first.

Nido hates “to do” lists because they never ever end.  Instead, have a “stop doing” list.  (Raymond expanded on this concept – keep reading.)

Do only the 3 things you do best.  Delegate all the rest.  [Wow – what a wonderful possibility!]
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Regarding the “stop doing” list:

1. Write down every task, activity performed in a week, business related as well as non-business related.

2.  Identify what 3 things you are good at (A items).

3.  Identify your C things – things you hate doing, procrastinate about, and are lousy at doing.

4.  Everything else is a B item.

5.  Eliminate one C item.  [This is WILDLY transformational]

6.  Get rid of all other C’s.

7.  Get rid of B’s.
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Here are 21 steps for your Marketing Department

1.  Have a transformational Marketing Department.

2.  Strategically choose your niche – where/what do hot eager buyers want?

3.  Understand your niche – do market research – 3 actions/person involved for every sale – the decision maker, the payer, the beneficiary.  Cater to the decision maker.

4.  Organize duties – keep your core abilites (things you do best) and delegate the rest eventually

5.  Start with 5 lead sources for new prospects – referrals are most common, Facebook page, craigslist, posters, Linkedin profile, contests, billboards, speeches, newspaper ads, cards, networking groups, eZineArticles.com, blog, radio, video testimonials, etc.

6.  Add 1 new lead source every 2 months

7.  Story board your prospecting funnel – at the start of lead generation you may have 20 prospects because of response to an add, and at the end you have 1 or 2 sales.  Between the start and end, track the drop off rate and figure out why.

8.  Establish 3 levels of clients and cater to them differently.
level 1 – ones that don’t want to pay the going rate – sell them something smaller, i.e. audio CD set
level 2 – will pay standard
level 3 – will pay higher – will get more

9.  Create your BRAND – this is what people think of you.  Have a slogan, logo,         color scheme, font, URL site

10.  Create your 5 second pitch – be puzzling,enigmatic.  Give insufficient information, no selling, about them not yourself.  Purpose is that they ask for more information because you become interesting to them.

11.  Create visibility and credibility.  Write a book, self capture websites, do something to be recognized.

12.  Plan for social proof – testimonial capture system (example RaymondAaronReviews.com)

13.  Plan for referrals – on sign up sheet ask for 3 guest referrals (if you ask for 1, you get 0, asking for 2 or 3, you get 1, asking for 4 or more, you get 0)

14.  Align with a related cause – on your marketing tools “a certain portion of my sales goes to….”

15.  Management feedback data – how many clients you saw, results, numbers, numbers, numbers

16.  Soft Launch – do a pretend or test launch.  If you have a coach, ask first.

17.  Review numbers and redesign.

18.  Hard Launch

19.  Keep watching your numbers

20.  Keep delegating more and more so that you just have your core abilities tasks

21.  Check in with coach at every stage (keep getting feedback)

Without a Marketing Department, there is no leader, no transformational ideas, no focus, procrastination, time wasted on non-essential tasks, no positioning, only a few lead generation sources, no brand, no formal referral system, no strategic plan.  It is living inside invisibility.

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After lunch, Les E.???  did a presentation on marketing to sell more.

The seller must be non threatening.

Words such as experience, integrity, service, honesty, quality, reliability, the best are not important and so standard that the customer is not impressed.

Customer Espionage:

* Who is your target market

* Who are your primary competitors and what are they doing

* What would cause someone to want or buy what you want in the first place

* What problems, frustrations or annoyances do people experience when buying what you sell

* If this was your best friend, what “insider knowledge” would you want them to know

* What’s your evidence – need supporting proof

If you want massive sales success you must do all of your customers’ thinking for them.  Phrase your sales pitch with “so that you”, i.e. We service your air conditioning our way so that you will always be comfortable.

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The last part of the day was spent with Raymond showing us Intentional Congruence.  It brought tears to his eyes – because he gets it.  Truth to tell, I didn’t get it yet – but I will try out the concept.

Start with a circle in the middle of a blank sheet.  This will represent whatever your #1 source of income (write it in the circle).  Then, in a planet like arrangement around but away from the central circle, draw other circles.  Write down in each circle whatever you do that has activity or expenditure of time, other income sources, or important person (i.e. wife, family).

There are 3 kinds of arrows for this – absent, thin, and fat.

Starting with your #1 source of income circle, draw an arrow to one of the named “planets” and ask yourself how does A (#1 income source) support B (the activity or thing.)  After you have done a bunch of these, draw arrows back from B to A and figure out how B supports A.

After that, draw arrows from a planet to another planet – all or none of them if you can think of a connection in which they support each other.

At first, there will be a lot of absent arrows (no support or connection), some thin, and a few fat arrows.

The purpose of this exercise is to have a blueprint image for conscious decision making in order to have congruence in life.  Congruence so that doing something in one “planet” will benefit/support more than just itself, but other “planets” will also benefit because you intend/plan it that way.

An example Raymond used was this:

His central planet is Coaching (his #1 source of income).  One of his planets is his youngest daughter.  He has an iPad with better games than hers because he pays for his apps and she is only allowed free apps on her iPad.  On the day of the week when he is in charge of her, he has a phone coaching session with one of his clients.  Rather than have her be bored and free during that period of time, he allows her to play with his iPad, but the rule is that it must be on the couch of his workroom – while he is on his phone coaching session with his client.

The intentional congruence occurs when his coaching sessions support his time to be with his daughter, and ALSO when she is in the same room and hearing (even if subconsciously) his lessons and advice to one of his coaching students.  She is learning without realizing it (arrow from his coaching planet to daughter planet), and he has her in his vision which inspires him and is in her ear (arrow from his daughter’s planet to his coaching planet) to give really inspiring and great words of wisdom to his student that he has to spend time with – both at the same time.  He was wanting to spend time with his daughter anyway, and he had to be on the coaching session anyway.

Raymond also showed us what his coach Nido Qubein’s intentional congruence looks like.  It was mind blowing and way way out of our league.  Like seeing what a Grand Master can do with hundreds of instruments here and hundreds of instruments there, with much larger dollars and connections.

The more intentional (important word – intentional) congruences you make in your life, then every intentional action you make will bring more benefits/advances/fulfillments to more of the “planets” in your life – with less time involved.  Since you are going to do something anyway, let them be multipliably fruitful.

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Raymond’s introduced us to his 10-10-10 package (for a price) consisting of a 4 or 6 webinar program that will teach and guide anyone to produce and publish a book.  10 chapters – 10 hours of your time – 10 weeks printed.

Well, that was a WOW.  Uncle is thinking about it.  It could dramatically increase the esteem of being an expert in his field (no, it’s not fishing…yet).  And the benefits of being able to say, “I wrote the book on that” is multi-fold.

In any case, the two days spent with Raymond were days well spent and fantastically valuable.  The real kicker was that it was free – no cost at all, even though Raymond brought in his key program man, paid for travel expenses, hotel meeting room and amenities, and even gave us all the Steve Jobs biography book.  WOW, WOW, WOW!