Just Give Me The Darn Fish!
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Just Give Me the Darn Fish!
Positioning for Strategic Business Acceleration
By Patrick Bell
This is what business acceleration is all about. However …
I have a confession to make and it’s that I’m a bit lazy. I’m always looking for the easiest way to do the things I have
to do … so that I can do the things I want to do. There’s an old saying that states: “Give a man a fish and you feed
him for the day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
I don’t mind learning how to fish, but if I’m anything like the people around me, then I want someone to give me a
darn fish, and cook it up and put a great sauce on it, and stick it on a plate and give me the fork…. Then toss in my
favorite drink. Is anyone else like me?
But I also like to learn, so I want to learn to fish at the same time, but I don’t want to go hungry when I’m learning the
lesson.
As you consider marketing or selling to the crowd, you have to realize that they are a lot like the rest of us—we want
someone to give us fish, and the person who can deliver on that will have our attention.
Think about this analogy. You go into a marketplace and there are two hawkers. One is saying: “Fish for sale” and
the other is saying “I’m giving away free fish.” Which one are you more interested in talking to?
So if it’s like that in the offline world, it’s even more like that in the on-line world where, with 1 trillion recognized URLs
known to Google, you face some serious competition.
What if … you could start giving away something of a high-perceived value at either a no-cost or low-cost amount in
your business – either on-line or off-line? What happens?
Mainly, you get attention. With over 1 trillion web pages today, is it important to get attention? And will it be even
more important to get attention tomorrow when there are an additional 1 million web pages to compete against?
In every industry there is something called a “free line”. That means there are certain things that most businesses in
that industry will give away in order to capture the attention of potential clients. For some hotels or airlines, they
offer a free upgrade for a limited time. For supermarkets they have loss leaders which are items they sell at a loss
just so they can get you through the doors so you’ll spend $50 on other items—and that’s where they make their
money.
Where is the free line in your industry? If you want to take your industry by storm, you have to find a way of “moving
the free line” so that all your competitors have to follow you or go out of business. You are basically re-setting the
buying criteria. If you are the only person on Facebook in your industry and region who is giving away knowledge or
information or anything else for free, who will the community turn to when it wants something?
Well, assuming that what you have given away is of high quality, then that community will have formed a trusting
relationship with you whereby they begin to look out for your offers, they begin to refer friends, they begin to talk
about you, and, when they have the need to buy, they will come to you first. And the end result is that you will have
created a brand of quality and giving which sticks in the mind of the consumer or client as the go-to guy or gal.
Let’s talk about expectations.
Everything in life involves expectations. Husbands, you know that your wife has certain expectations from you and if
you mess up, then you might as well go and live on the roof! Wives, you know that your husbands have certain
expectations from you … even if you’re thinking about something else! Right?
You may be a religious person. You know that God, or your religion, places expectations on you and if you fulfill
those expectations, then you get your reward, which might be life eternal in heaven, or whatever.
Your boss has expectations for you and if you don’t meet those expectations, then your boss might invite you to
work for his competitor (if he’s smart).
Finally, your customers, clients, buyers, vendors, associates, all have expectations from you. And today, with so
many people vying for each other’s attention, you have to gain the attention of your prospective customers by
showing them what they can expect from you, and it must align itself to two criteria:
1. It must be better or at least equivalent to what your competitors are offering.
2. It must be better than what the customer expected. The reason is, if you give people what they expect, they
will walk away disappointed. People have an inherent distrust that they are being cheated. That means, you have to
exceed their expectations and that is when they say, “Wow! You were great! I’m going to tell my friends about you.”
So what you give them must be real and useful and practical so they can take it and implement it immediately, or
make money from it, or whatever.
Do you ever go out on a date? Are you the type of person that asked your spouse to marry you on the very first day
that you met? Well, I actually did that … and she said no … and then she had to wait another couple months for me
to come back to it. And now we have just celebrated 19 years of happy marriage.
The normal process is that you go through a period of courtship. You get to know each other. You see what the
other has to offer you and then if you like what you see and the timing is right, you pop the question.
The same applies to marketing yourself on the socially driven Internet today.
Don’t start by selling. Don’t pop the question on the first date. Sure, you might get one or two people … out of 1
billion … to say yes, but you’re more likely to turn off all those people who want to say yes to you if you would only
take the time and build the relationship.
So exactly how do you build the relationship so that you become the People’s Liberator—the one that delivers them
from their particular set of problems?
The best way is to deliver quality, valuable content every single time you get online. You become obsessed with
serving the group.
Forget manipulation. Forget the hype. Forget the sell, sell, sell. Forget exploiting people. Forget promising big
things but delivering no value. You have to earn the attention of your marketplace and you do this by serve, serve,
serve. Give great value. Show yourself to be the authority. Build your brand this way on purpose.
If you do this, what is the result?
There are actually three things that happen
1. You become the People’s Liberator. You become the authority figure or the expert for your niche. Milgram’s
Law of business states that “People will blindly believe the words of an expert.” You don’t use this to exploit people
but to serve them, because in the world of Social Networking, if you get caught cheating people, you will just magnify
to the world that you’re a cheat, and then you might as well pack up your business and move into … ah … politics.
(You know where the word politics comes from, don’t you. Poly is Latin for “many” and tics means “blood sucking
little varmints”.)
2. As the recognized Liberator in your niche, you can spend less money acquiring clients because they
will naturally gravitate toward you.
3. Because you are spending less money to acquire clients, and you are getting more clients naturally,
then your profits increase.
So how do you build that trusting relationship with your market?
You give them what they want and you educate them to what they need and if you are the only one in your industry
doing this, or you do it better than anyone else, you become the one they trust.
Here’s a secret that might upset the proverbial apple cart around town: If you can give away your best ideas, they
will trust you more and faster!
What? You might ask, “If I give away my best, what would I sell people?” Actually, here is what happens.
Everyone is trying to hold really close to their chest their best ideas. They are like Gollum from Lord of the Rings
and they think, “No one’s going to see these. They’re mine! My precious!”
But what happens when you give away top quality information? Three things:
1. People think, “If he’s giving away that, what kind of quality could he be selling?”
2. You separate yourself from the pack of people who are just trying to sell, sell, sell.
There’s a funny thing about trust, and when I mentored under Rich Schefren for a year he taught me all this: the
more you are willing to trust your market, the more your market will trust you. Trust is built on reputation and
reputation is not built on advertising. Trust is built on what others say about you.
The lesson for you today: when you go into the various Social Media sites, you must build your trust factor and you
do that over time by offering quality advice, help or material. Don’t try and sell in the beginning. Take your time.
Build the relationship.
To your success,
Patrick Bell
Get your custom marketing analysis software report that offers you over 12 trillion combinations of advice specific
for your business acceleration at www.alphaic.com or at www.Marketing-Analysis-Software.com.
Positioning for Strategic Business Acceleration
By Patrick Bell
This is what business acceleration is all about. However …
I have a confession to make and it’s that I’m a bit lazy. I’m always looking for the easiest way to do the things I have
to do … so that I can do the things I want to do. There’s an old saying that states: “Give a man a fish and you feed
him for the day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
I don’t mind learning how to fish, but if I’m anything like the people around me, then I want someone to give me a
darn fish, and cook it up and put a great sauce on it, and stick it on a plate and give me the fork…. Then toss in my
favorite drink. Is anyone else like me?
But I also like to learn, so I want to learn to fish at the same time, but I don’t want to go hungry when I’m learning the
lesson.
As you consider marketing or selling to the crowd, you have to realize that they are a lot like the rest of us—we want
someone to give us fish, and the person who can deliver on that will have our attention.
Think about this analogy. You go into a marketplace and there are two hawkers. One is saying: “Fish for sale” and
the other is saying “I’m giving away free fish.” Which one are you more interested in talking to?
So if it’s like that in the offline world, it’s even more like that in the on-line world where, with 1 trillion recognized URLs
known to Google, you face some serious competition.
What if … you could start giving away something of a high-perceived value at either a no-cost or low-cost amount in
your business – either on-line or off-line? What happens?
Mainly, you get attention. With over 1 trillion web pages today, is it important to get attention? And will it be even
more important to get attention tomorrow when there are an additional 1 million web pages to compete against?
In every industry there is something called a “free line”. That means there are certain things that most businesses in
that industry will give away in order to capture the attention of potential clients. For some hotels or airlines, they
offer a free upgrade for a limited time. For supermarkets they have loss leaders which are items they sell at a loss
just so they can get you through the doors so you’ll spend $50 on other items—and that’s where they make their
money.
Where is the free line in your industry? If you want to take your industry by storm, you have to find a way of “moving
the free line” so that all your competitors have to follow you or go out of business. You are basically re-setting the
buying criteria. If you are the only person on Facebook in your industry and region who is giving away knowledge or
information or anything else for free, who will the community turn to when it wants something?
Well, assuming that what you have given away is of high quality, then that community will have formed a trusting
relationship with you whereby they begin to look out for your offers, they begin to refer friends, they begin to talk
about you, and, when they have the need to buy, they will come to you first. And the end result is that you will have
created a brand of quality and giving which sticks in the mind of the consumer or client as the go-to guy or gal.
Let’s talk about expectations.
Everything in life involves expectations. Husbands, you know that your wife has certain expectations from you and if
you mess up, then you might as well go and live on the roof! Wives, you know that your husbands have certain
expectations from you … even if you’re thinking about something else! Right?
You may be a religious person. You know that God, or your religion, places expectations on you and if you fulfill
those expectations, then you get your reward, which might be life eternal in heaven, or whatever.
Your boss has expectations for you and if you don’t meet those expectations, then your boss might invite you to
work for his competitor (if he’s smart).
Finally, your customers, clients, buyers, vendors, associates, all have expectations from you. And today, with so
many people vying for each other’s attention, you have to gain the attention of your prospective customers by
showing them what they can expect from you, and it must align itself to two criteria:
1. It must be better or at least equivalent to what your competitors are offering.
2. It must be better than what the customer expected. The reason is, if you give people what they expect, they
will walk away disappointed. People have an inherent distrust that they are being cheated. That means, you have to
exceed their expectations and that is when they say, “Wow! You were great! I’m going to tell my friends about you.”
So what you give them must be real and useful and practical so they can take it and implement it immediately, or
make money from it, or whatever.
Do you ever go out on a date? Are you the type of person that asked your spouse to marry you on the very first day
that you met? Well, I actually did that … and she said no … and then she had to wait another couple months for me
to come back to it. And now we have just celebrated 19 years of happy marriage.
The normal process is that you go through a period of courtship. You get to know each other. You see what the
other has to offer you and then if you like what you see and the timing is right, you pop the question.
The same applies to marketing yourself on the socially driven Internet today.
Don’t start by selling. Don’t pop the question on the first date. Sure, you might get one or two people … out of 1
billion … to say yes, but you’re more likely to turn off all those people who want to say yes to you if you would only
take the time and build the relationship.
So exactly how do you build the relationship so that you become the People’s Liberator—the one that delivers them
from their particular set of problems?
The best way is to deliver quality, valuable content every single time you get online. You become obsessed with
serving the group.
Forget manipulation. Forget the hype. Forget the sell, sell, sell. Forget exploiting people. Forget promising big
things but delivering no value. You have to earn the attention of your marketplace and you do this by serve, serve,
serve. Give great value. Show yourself to be the authority. Build your brand this way on purpose.
If you do this, what is the result?
There are actually three things that happen
1. You become the People’s Liberator. You become the authority figure or the expert for your niche. Milgram’s
Law of business states that “People will blindly believe the words of an expert.” You don’t use this to exploit people
but to serve them, because in the world of Social Networking, if you get caught cheating people, you will just magnify
to the world that you’re a cheat, and then you might as well pack up your business and move into … ah … politics.
(You know where the word politics comes from, don’t you. Poly is Latin for “many” and tics means “blood sucking
little varmints”.)
2. As the recognized Liberator in your niche, you can spend less money acquiring clients because they
will naturally gravitate toward you.
3. Because you are spending less money to acquire clients, and you are getting more clients naturally,
then your profits increase.
So how do you build that trusting relationship with your market?
You give them what they want and you educate them to what they need and if you are the only one in your industry
doing this, or you do it better than anyone else, you become the one they trust.
Here’s a secret that might upset the proverbial apple cart around town: If you can give away your best ideas, they
will trust you more and faster!
What? You might ask, “If I give away my best, what would I sell people?” Actually, here is what happens.
Everyone is trying to hold really close to their chest their best ideas. They are like Gollum from Lord of the Rings
and they think, “No one’s going to see these. They’re mine! My precious!”
But what happens when you give away top quality information? Three things:
1. People think, “If he’s giving away that, what kind of quality could he be selling?”
2. You separate yourself from the pack of people who are just trying to sell, sell, sell.
There’s a funny thing about trust, and when I mentored under Rich Schefren for a year he taught me all this: the
more you are willing to trust your market, the more your market will trust you. Trust is built on reputation and
reputation is not built on advertising. Trust is built on what others say about you.
The lesson for you today: when you go into the various Social Media sites, you must build your trust factor and you
do that over time by offering quality advice, help or material. Don’t try and sell in the beginning. Take your time.
Build the relationship.
To your success,
Patrick Bell
Get your custom marketing analysis software report that offers you over 12 trillion combinations of advice specific
for your business acceleration at www.alphaic.com or at www.Marketing-Analysis-Software.com.
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