Your Political Guru

It’s a big night Sunday.  It is time to be entertained by the non-stop blitz of commercial assaults!  Bring it on – the one night when we actually enjoy the commercials – not that we’ll remember what they are trying to sell us, this is advertising for entertainment sake.

Here’s the reality – EVERY DAY you get hit with 3225 advertising and marketing messages.  Less than 9% of the population remembered just one of the ads they saw on prime time television last night (down from 34% in 1965).

So what makes you think they are going to remember you Big Guy?  What makes your TV/radio spot/direct mail piece/so special that people are going to remember it?

The only way to get through the clutter and get peoples attention is repetition, or join the conversation they are already having in their own mind.

The problem with repetition is it is expensive.  So how do you make it affordable?  Target.

How do you echo what someone else is thinking?  Better know your market.

That’s what we are going to be taking about this month – advertising and other tactics in getting people’s attention.

Be sure to check your emails from www.yourpoliticalguru.com during the next few weeks because you will need this information if you are trying to get donations, help a candidate, or sell an idea or issue.

Or don’t pay attention and hope your opponent isn’t figuring this out.

This is a fairly long guest article, but he points out some very good tactical lessons from Rush Limbaugh’s success.  The author works in the sales and marketing of alternative medicine.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Peter F. Drucker

The Secret to Making a Billion Dollars Without Offering a Single Benefit
By Clayton Makepeace

Love him or hate him, you have to admit it. Rush Limbaugh is a phenomenon.

He doesn’t promise riches, better health, and social status, to ease your workload, or get you dates.

In fact, he never offers anyone one single benefit or presents a single “Reason Why” listening to him or reading him will improve your life in any way.

And yet, 20 million Americans religiously tune into his radio broadcasts. Hundreds of thousands subscribe to his newsletter. And masses rush to bookstores and snap up every book he writes.

In short, Limbaugh has broken every “rule” of effective marketing. And he’s become a billionaire (or darned close to it)!

How does he do it?

A year or so ago, he himself gave us the answer in his newsletter:

“The first year of my radio program callers would tell me how thrilled they were that there was finally somebody in the national media who expressed what they believed.

“For decades, conservatives had seen their values laughed at, impugned, run down. My radio program validated thinking that existed all over America….”

Put simply, Limbaugh makes millions because he offers his followers something they value more than money: Validation. And the emotional release it brings with it.

Until they discovered Mr. Limbaugh, his devotees were frustrated with politicians, the media, and the direction in which they felt our culture was headed.

But they had no voice. No power to change things. And, worst of all, no outlet for their frustration and anger.

The Astonishing Power of Powerlessness

Nearly all of us feel powerless at some time or another. That powerlessness causes frustration and even anger to well up. And unless we find an outlet for those negative emotions, they gnaw away at us.

Psychiatrists have long known that the feeling that we are not in control of things that directly impact our lives is a major cause of both aggressive behavior and depression.

And medical studies have even linked the frustration, anger, and rage that powerlessness causes with weakened immune response and frequent physical illness.

That’s where Limbaugh comes in. He understands that millions of conservative Americans disagree with and are worried about the direction our government and/or society are taking — and feel powerless to “make things right.”

And his magic is in providing a much-needed OUTLET for those pent-up negative feelings.

• By acknowledging his audience’s deepest and most intense emotions, he validates them.

• By expressing their feelings in ways that get heads nodding and listeners laughing, he gives his followers desperately needed emotional release.

• And his followers reward him handsomely by buying just about everything the man produces or plugs!

In short, like any good businessperson, Limbaugh provides a product that brings value to people’s lives and that they’re willing to pay for.

And although his product is both invisible and intangible, the emotional release he delivers is worth far more to his followers than the money they pay to get it!

Four Steps to Breakthrough Bliss

Creating a sales message that harnesses this powerful technique is as easy as 1-2-3-4.

1. Identify the enemy — and make it personal!

No matter what you sell, there’s somebody out there in the same, a similar, or a competing field who’s doing your prospect wrong.

In alternative health, it’s probably dimwitted mainstream doctors and drug company fat cats.

In the investment field, it could be greedy brokers, idiotic self-appointed experts, and “talking heads” on TV shows.

In the personal finance field, it could be money-hungry bankers, heartless tax collectors, and everyone else who assumes that your money is really their money.

What enemy is making YOUR prospects feel powerless, insulted, frustrated, and angry?

Whoever it is, personalize the enemy. It’s not half as much fun lampooning hospitals, drug companies, banks, and the IRS as it is skinning the jerks who run them!

2. Identify the things “the enemy” does that frustrate or anger your prospect, insult his intelligence, or render him powerless.

Does the enemy hide important information from your prospect? Does he lie to him outright? Does he treat your prospect as if he’s a dunce?

Is he arrogant and self-important — an authority figure just begging to be brought down a couple of pegs? Is he a sneak thief who nickels and dimes your prospect half to death?

List as many offenses as you possibly can.

3. Pinpoint how YOU feel about these kinds of people — and how you would feel if someone did these things to you.

Then express those feelings more articulately and with greater emotional power than your prospect possibly could.

4. Position your figurehead and his product as being the solution to the negative things the enemy does AND the balm that soothes the negative emotions your prospect has about them!

Make your author righteously indignant. And explain why he is absolutely livid about the way the prospect is being treated.

Say everything your prospect would just LOVE to tell the enemy. If you feel it’s appropriate, call him names.

In a promotion based on the Vioxx scandal, I had a sidebar with the headline: Modern-Day Murder-for-Hire Ring BUSTED!

Beneath that headline, I had pictures of the CEOs of Merck and Pfizer. Then the story (taken from The Wall Street Journal) about how they knew all along that Vioxx, Bextra, and Celebrex would kill people, but promoted them anyway just to make a fast buck.

Now I am NOT suggesting that you accuse your competitor of murder — or say anything else that might get you sued for libel.

But to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, “Extremism in the pursuit of your prospect’s well-being is no vice.”

You probably don’t Jeffery Gitomer from Adam’s house cat unless you are in sales.  He is one of the best sales trainers in the country.  I’ve been a fan of his for many years – hey what is politics and fundraising except sales and marketing.   He has a great weekly ezine (free at www.buygitomer.com).

I was on my way to Kansas City on South West and I look up and here comes Jeffery walking down the aisle looking for a seat.  So I make space and invite him to grab the middle seat on the exit row.

I had been talking to the other guy in the row (Kelly) who is in the beverage industry.  Kelly was on his way to Kansas to see his son who was getting deployed in a few days to Afghanistan.  He didn’t know Gitomer.  So when I made the introductions I lavished the praise on Gitomer as one of the premier sales guys.  Immediately Kelly’s “sales defense shields” went up.  Sure enough he was in charge of training his sales force and he didn’t want to spend his hour of flight time being “sold” by Jeffery.

Personally I wanted to ask Jeffery a ton of questions and possibly get some free consulting, but I quickly realized that Kelly could use Jeffery’s services, and I suspect Jeffery knew it too.  So I took the opportunity to watch Jeffery “sell.”

One of Jeffery’s maxims is “People love to buy, but they hate being sold.”  I was looking forward to seeing Jeffery do his “pitch.”  You would expect a sales trainer would try to start giving a long list of features and benefits of his company – let the prospect (Kelly) know how long he’s been in business, sales volume etc.

You would be wrong.  Jeffery played it cool.  He didn’t even appear to care about getting Kelly as a customer.  Instead he quickly built rapport by using Kelly’s accent to figure out where he was from, broke the ice by showing pictures of his granddaughter, and talked about sports.  When Kelly started dropping his defenses and asked about Jeffery’s company, Jeffery showed him some of his books, made a quick recommendation as to which one Kelly should get first and why (after Kelly asked).

No killer close, Jeffery switched topics to the Phillies and football.

Kelley started telling Jeffery about all of his experience in sales and about his start up company and the challenges facing him and his sales crew.  I would have thought that Jeffery would pounce on this and point out his company’s advantages, but again Jeffery played it cool.

By this time Kelly was dang near frustrated that he wasn’t being “sold.”  So he starts trying to get Jeffery to give him more information.  Jeffery has a very unique business card it is a minted coin with Jeffery’s head on it.  I absolutely wowed Kelly.  I was watching Kelly’s wheels turning and he was sold.  Now keep in mind that this was a guy who was very focused on see his son before the kid heads off to war.

So what can you learn from this?

1)       The most important part of sales and persuasion is building rapport – not puking facts and figures on people.  People want to know you and know you care about them before they will start listening to you and your ideas.

This is tougher than it might sound.  We want to share our information, the books we have read, why we need to audit the fed or tell them about your candidate.  The reality is that hitting them with all that information makes them put up their “anti-sales shields.”

If you just “puke” everything you know on a stranger you are wasting everyone’s time.  Much better to have them get to the point where they want and ask for more information.

2)      If they do get interested, be prepared to wow them.  That’s when quality, memorable materials come into play.  The Bible says “don’t throw you pearls before swine.”  Just giving printed brochures or business cards to people is a waste of money.  Invest in fewer higher quality materials that will “wow” them, and make you memorable.

I’m glad I had the sense to shut up and watch Jeffery in action.  I learned far more than asking a bunch of questions, I got to see him put his “sales” approach in action.

The Secret of Goal Achievement

(Hint – don’t keep it a secret)

I am too damn fat.

I’ve been too fat for a while, but I’ve been putting off dealing with it for way too long. No major health scares or anything – it’s just that I am really ready to change.

I’ve been looking at the tactics of weight loss and it comes down to – eat less, move more.

But the bigger picture is looking at how to achieve your goals. This has some serious tactical implications. Following up on your committed course of action is critical to your success.

Here are some of the tactics I’m putting into effect now:

1) Clear daily focus on the goal – “if you don’t know where you are going you will surly get there.” When I moved to Oklahoma to pass a Right to Work law – I actually bought a pen that I pictured the Governor using to sign it into law. If I started to feel off track, I’d pull it out and refocus on what my goal was. It took nine years to get it done, so I needed the focus.

2) Today – not tomorrow. I made the commitment today to start losing weight and already joined a 24 hour gym. Tomorrow will never come.

3) Make a plan – set an end date and write it down. The process of planning helps you see the possible obstacles and prepare for them. I believe in the power of “positive pessimism.” Murphy’s Law is just as true as the Power of Positive Thinking. When I fly I am an outcome optimist. I believe the plane will get me their safely. However I am equally sure that the airlines will lie to me about when we take off and arrive, there will be delays caused by TSA etc. It doesn’t stop me from flying; I just want to be prepared.

4) I know I probably slip, but that’s not a reason to quit. Missiles are off track 99% of the time – it is the little course corrections they make that cause them to hit the target.

5) Make commitment public – don’t keep it to yourself. (That’s why I’m writing today’s article.)

6) Celebrate the wins. Figure out what victory looks like and reward yourself.

I’ll let you know how I’m coming on my goal during the next five months. It is 3 pounds a week for the next 5 months. 60 pounds before pool season. It’s doable and safe weight loss. It’s not easy, it’s a stretch.

(If you’ve won the battle of the bulge, I’d appreciate your tips and encouragement).

Well I’m off to the kitchen – I’ve got some junk food to get rid of.

One of my Yahoo Groups had an intense discussion on Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Work Week (a book I highly recommend).  A few people were dismissive of the work because of the author’s apparent lack of ethics.  The particular example sited was Ferriss winning a kickboxing tournament by exploiting a couple of obscure loopholes –

From “the Four Hour Work Week”, page 29, hardcover edition:

“I won by reading the rules and looking for loopholes, of which there were
two:”

“1. Weigh ins were the day prior to the competition. Using dehydration
techniques….I lost 28 pounds in 18 hours, weighed in at 165, and then
hyperhydrated back to 193 pounds. It’s hard to fight someone from three
weight classes above you. Poor little guys.”

“2. There was a technicality in the fine print: …I decided to use this
technicality as my single technique and just push people off.”

One of the comments was: “By the rules? Yes. Ethical? Not in my book.  He didn’t present it as using analysis to figure out the best way to win. He presented it in a completely different light.”

First I think dismissing “The Four Hour Workweek” on the basis of the kickboxing story is very short sighted.  The story works because it points out that – ‘just because the rest of the world says you have to do things one way, doesn’t mean you have to.’  You really do have the right to define your life in your terms.  But overcoming social convention is not easy and you can’t allow yourself to be defined by society’s rules.

My family really was into the first season of Survivor.  Initially I was a little put off by Hatch’s tactics of using alliances to win the survival game and not actually having survival skills.  But when he explained how he came to his stratagem I really came to respect him.  As soon as he found out he was going to be a contestant he started a study of game theory and decided that he needed to use the “life raft scenario” to win.  From there he figured the odds and ended up winning a million.

There are some excellent tricks in Ferriss’ book to help create the life you want.  (Don’t read the title and take it literally).  Ultimately it is a very good book about giving yourself permission to think about what’s important to you and how you really do have the power to alter your state of affairs to conform to what you want.

I find that many people get really hung up other people’s desire to create the life they want.  As someone who pays too much attention to other people’s needs, I have to analyze their criticisms in my own head to get rid of my own GSA (gnawing sense of anxiety) that I’m doing something wrong.  Most of the time I find that there isn’t any basis for their criticism, it’s just their preference – which they are welcome to have, but it need not concern me.

So if you don’t like people using the rules in unconventional ways to achieve their own ends, get over it.  You will live longer and you’ll make other people happier.  Heck you can even learn from it and have a little fun in your own life.

But what ever your take on the ethics of using loopholes, remember, not everyone shares your ethics.  Beware of the Mike Ferriss’ of the world.

Have a Merry Christmas.

The world only makes sense one time a year.  It is as if people decide to start living Biblical values for two weeks a year.  People are selfless, giving, make family a priority and go to church. This much I love.

So what is there to hate?

You can’t get people to focus on what I want them to.  If you are trying to sell business services forget it this time of year – it isn’t going to happen.  People are so focused on the things that are really important that they forget about their temporal needs that I want to sell them.

What has this got to do with tactics?  It’s all about timing baby.

If you know that no one is paying attention to work stuff from Thanksgiving to New Year – then don’t give yourself an ulcer by trying to sell them.  Save your time and money and work on other things.

When do most people pay attention to politics?  3-4 weeks before the election.  Spending money on mass advertising on your campaign during Christmas would be a complete waste of money.

My wife reminds me constantly “just because its important to you, don’t expect it to be important to everyone else.”

So if you are one of those nuts who actually want to accomplish something during the last six weeks of the year, what do you do?

‘Tis the season of planning.  Take advantage of the natural lull in activities and figure out what you want to do for the coming year.

‘Tis the season to purge the files. January 1 is my day to clear out my filing cabinet.  I get some big trash bags and get rid of all paper that has accumulated that I just stored during the busy times.

‘Tis the season to connect. Don’t call people to sell them; this is the time to catch up with people lives.

‘Tis the season to reflect. What went right this year?  What went wrong?  Can you do anything about it?  What’s really important in your life?

And oh yeah, Merry Christmas.  Want to buy some consulting services?

Right now the Mayor of Oklahoma City is seeking to pass a $750,000,000 civic improvement package called MAP’s 3.  It is to be financed by continuation of a one cent sales tax.  Oklahoma law says that before taxes increase, the people have to approve it.

As a citizen in Oklahoma City I’m opposed to the whole thing – even though Oklahoma City is not being hit as hard by the recession as other parts of the country, we are still being hit.  It seems unfair for the average Oklahoma family to pay nearly $1000 for some projects that benefit a few.  But the let’s put the relative merits of this program aside.

The media is creating the appearance that the only opponents to the MAP’s 3 referendum are the union bosses.  You see, the biggest opponents to MAP’s 3 are the police and firefighters unions.  (Which is strange – unions rarely oppose tax increases). It looks like a squabble between unions and management.  And that creates a problem for non-union opponents of the tax.

In any squabble between union bosses and elected officials – I want the union to lose.  I don’t want to send the message to other elected officials that in order to win they better get the union bosses on their side.

If you do a rain dance, and it rains – you might start believing that your dance caused rain.  If the union is opposed to an issue, and it fails, politicians will probably believe the unions had something to do with it.  Which means when unions start pushing for more tax money for their projects then elected officials will be concerned about their reelection prospects.

Human beings (and politicians) like to link cause and effect.  We take a pill, we get better.  Ergo, the medicine made us better.  Well that may not be the case.  The placebo effect is very powerful.  We believe that drugs will cure our ills, so if someone in a white lab coat says take this you will get better, sometimes people do eventhough all they got was a sugar pill.

The perception of cause and effect is a powerful tactic.

In the case of the Oklahoma City tax referendum, I am working to create public opposition to the tax increase from Ron Paul supporters.  If the tax increase dies then there is some debate as to why it failed.  Was it the Ron Paul people or the unions?  Who knows? Maybe people were smart enough to see through the Mayor’s snake oil and realized the MAP’s program was a bad idea.

The point is, in this case, working behind the scenes would be disastrous for conservatives.  We needed to get public credit for opposing this.  This means we must waste time doing media activities.  Not because it works, but because it determines who is going to be perceived as the cause of the defeat.

Points to Consider:

There is a political placebo effect.  A great deal of the time the people taking credit for some action actually did very little to make it happen.

Something’s just happen.  I predict that there will be a hurricane someday.  And I also predict that Al Gore will blame man-made global warming as its cause.  If you disagree with Mr. Gore, you had better be ready to pre-empt him.

Be ready to use the law of cause and effect to your advantage.  When one of your political enemies loses in the election, be sure that your issue gets the credit for his/her defeat.

This is just a reminder that listening to the nightly news can be hazardous to your mind.

If you watch the news you would assume that every gay person is  a victim of violent assault.  However when you look at the statistics you realize that we are putting emphasis on the wrong area.  What percentage of all aggravated assaults are hate crimes against gays?  0.02827578411446785%.  Homosexuals make up about 2-3% of America’s population, so you would expect that an epidemic of hate crimes against homosexuals to be anything over 2% of the assaults.

The problem with political correctness is that it keeps you from looking at reality.

The current  media template is Americans are profiling young Muslim men (not) and they are victims of hate crimes.   Is that the big hate crimes problem?  Nope, “hate crimes” against Catholics are statistically about the same as Muslims.   People of Jewish faith are ten times more likely to be victims of violence than Islamic.  (hmmm,  who is leading the attacks against Jews in America?)

I don’t want to sound like I am advocating more assaults against any group, but we are putting limited government resources in areas that are statistically not the problem.  Just because it is on the news, doesn’t mean it is really a problem.

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/12657/exclusive-analysis-sorry-islamophobia-pimps-67-of-us-hate-crimes-against-jews/

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/12721/naples-fla-kick-a-jew-day-jibes-w-fbi-hate-crimes-figs/

The fun I have when phone salesmen call me. (”I don’t believe in cable television. It is the creation of the devil. Are you the devil’s emissary?” Silence. “Answer me!” Click.)

If you love irony, you will love this.  In the name of promoting diversity, Germany forces conformity in education.

The ‘schuhlpflicht’—the laws that require school attendance—are on the books in the German states, and have been traced back to the ‘Reichsculpflicht Gesetz’ [federal compulsory attendance laws] which was passed in 1938. Except for the removal of references to the Nazi party, these laws are identical or substantially the same as the laws passed by Hitler’s government, criminalizing parents who keep their children home for school.

However when this fact was introduced in court the state said:

“All those Nazi laws have been suspended, and this one is democratic, and you’ve got to accept it, and that’s it.”

Or in other words – that was Nazi fascism.  This is good democratic fascism.

The irony of German court decisions is their position that the state must teach ‘tolerance for diversity’ by forcing children into public schools and stamping out a diverse form of education recognized in all other Western democracies as a legitimate educational approach. Pluralism is supposed to stand for distinctive groups living peacefully together.

http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/200911200.asp