Lesson Thirty-Six: Believe Me!

I was in a meeting with a client and we were talking about some of the marketing strategies he might employ to build his business.

“I don’t know if I believe all this marketing stuff will work for me,” he said.

Whether you believe something or not has little bearing on whether it is true. Too often people mistake belief for fact.

But here’s the rub: It doesn’t matter.

Fact has little relationship to action, and furthermore, fact does a lousy job of motivating action. This is because there are two separate realities existing in tandem and we’re constantly flipping between one and the other like wild flocks of darting birds.

These two realities are subjective reality and objective reality.

Subjective reality is the domain of the imagination. It is the reason otherwise rational people buy ab-masters, and fad diets, and no-money-down real-estate courses. It is the reason we buy stuff we don’t need. It is so compelling it can drive us to make foolish decisions. Subjective reality is the domain of the heart—it wants what it wants.

Objective reality is the domain of the mind. It is well thought out,observant, precise, rational, considered. In objective reality we are sensible and buy what we need.

Fortunately for marketers, we buy first with our hearts.

Remember the movie Jaws? How many of us were scared stiff to go swimming after seeing that? Even in a 10 foot deep swimming pool I remember looking down feverishly to make sure that a shark wasn’t ready to sink his teeth into my soft, pale body. My rational mind knew there couldn’t be a shark, but my subjective, emotional mind had whipped my heart into a panicked frenzy.

Our hearts inspire imagination. It’s a great thing and important to know because this is how you get people to buy your stuff. Find the dramatic appeal of your product and you’ll get into the heart of your prospect. Get them to feel incomplete without owning it and you’ve got some jaw-dropping marketing.

And so when that prospective client said he didn’t believe in marketing I knew I couldn’t persuade him with the truth. So I put aside all the statistics and data and said, “Many people go out of business due to lousy marketing, whether they believe in it or not. Do you want to be one of those people?”

And you know what? He bought that.



Principles of Persuassion by Shane Spark