HWW #23 Are your customers Armadillos?

Hey folks,

Welcome back to the Hardworking words newsletter. Massive changes have landed at HWW headquarters. In fact, if you pop over to haddadink.com, you’ll see that things are a bit, err, different than they were a week ago.

In today’s big final issue of 2006 you’ll learn:

-The difference between werwolves and armadillos.
-Why customers “armoring up” is actually good for your sales.

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Is your customer an Armadillo?
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Last weekend I got attacked by an armadillo.

He was a vicious, six-year-old, blonde haired armadillo who–earlier in the night–had claimed to be a werewolf. He had howled and screeched and pounced and gnashed his werewolf teeth and then howled and howled some more.

But now he was an armadillo. And a tough one at that. He balled himself up tight, pulled his limbs in and tucked his head into an invulnerable armadillo ball. He was pillow-proof, this armadillo, laughing off puffy strikes from other kids and adult guests alike as his tough nine-banded armadillo hide kept him safe and sound and . . .err. . . portable.

Because, you see, this kid was so committed to his armadillo-ness–so committed to keeping himself safe and tough–that he stayed in his little ball even as I tucked him football-like under my arm and ran an end run over to his smirking and bemused mom.

To one degree or another, your customers are like armadillos. (And sometimes they’re like six-year-old kids who pretend to be armadillos too.)

You see every customer has a soft underbelly. An emotional core that marketing folks, salesmen, mother-in-laws and schoolyard bullies are all too eager to take advantage of.

And so customers all learn to armor up, toughen their hearts and get just a wee bit cynical.

It’s like a strange little tremor sense. As soon as most folks see a plaid salesman’s coat, a string of 17 exclamation points or a smiling moon-faced girl on a corner with a clipboard, they go into armadillo mode.

They curl up. They scritch and scratch their claws. And they get ready to say “NO NO NO” to whatever outlandish offer or outrageous smarmy deal is about to come their way.

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But Chris, as ethical marketers with honest-to-goodness good products and services to sell, how do we get customers . . . err. . . unball?
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Good question. Here’s the deal. Every day, every single one of your customers is bombarded by a million zillion sales messages.
Billboards, Spam, TV ads, Magazine spreads, Myspace smarm, Banners, Beggars, Sheisters and more all desperately trying to separate them from their hard-earned cash.

So how do you cut through the haze and get your customers to let you get in close?

Easy.

Be Honest.

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Huzzuhwazzuhuh?
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Yea, yea, I know. Honesty in marketing is like fiscal responsibility in the military.

But being honest with your customers–telling them that you want to sell them something, showing them all the pros and *even some of the cons* of what you’ve got to offer and talking like an honest to god human being–is the surest and quickest path to getting your customers to lower their shields, start and actual conversation and make an honest to god sale.

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Wait a sec. You want us to talk about the CONS of what we’ve got? Are you nuts?
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Maybe a little. But I swear to you it works.

Nobody trusts perfection. Nobody trusts an offer that looks to good to be true. And everyone is always looking for the catch.

Now, I’m not saying you should celebrate the fact that your new zippity doo dad tends to light small children on fire. If you’ve got that kind of flaw, you should pull it off the market and maybe rethink your whole business strategy.

But if you’ve got warts, go ahead and admit it. Put them on display.

I promise if you do, you’ll have more customers rolling your way

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See you next month, folks. In the meantime pop on by the Hardworking words Blog (it’s going through some transitions, but will hopefully be working fine when you get this) at http://www.haddadink.com/blog.

Give the gift of marketing know-how this Holiday season. Tell your friends to subscribe to the Hardworking Words newsletter at http://www.haddadink.com/newsletter.php

I’m currently filling up my schedule for February of 2007. Got a copywriting and marketing project that needs some Haddonic attitude? Visit http://www.haddadink.com and tell me all about it.

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