a marketing secret I learned from an Internet Marketer
here in Israel doing 5 figures per month in his business,
and growing.
It starts with a mundane question,
but stick with me for about 45 seconds.
Okay, here it goes: how much is this
cup of coffee worth?…
Let’s say the cup costs $0.02
when you buy a lot of them.
The coffee inside? Maybe about
the same. The lid? Maybe $0.005.
Okay, we have a $0.045 cup of coffee.
If I am selling coffee to you, and I say,
“check out this coffee- it’s got a cup
and there’s coffee inside and there’s a lid.”
How much can you sell it for? How about $0.10,
more than a 100% markup?
2nd quick question: how much would
Starbucks sell it to you for?
$3.00? 4.00? How does Starbucks pull
that one off? That’s 100x the cost
of the material goods!
The answer is that they are not selling
coffee.
They are selling any number of things that
come with the coffee or have to do with
how it is served to you:
A friendly barista, a nice seating area, a brand name,
convenience… luxury. Sometimes, coffee is just
an excuse for these other things.
$4.00 is nothing to spend time with friends
or entertain a client.
$4.00 is not so much when you need convenience.
And you can’t put a price on a friendly and genuine
smile from a great barista. Even if you’d never consciously pay for one.
Now let’s go one step further.
Imagine that you’re an investment banker. You work 15-20 hours a day.
Sometimes you work 36 hours straight.
When you prepare a presentation for your
firm’s prospects, you are expected to know their
companies, industry, and competition
better than their CEO’s.
You’ve been working 28 hours. Tomorrow is your
presentation to the CEO of XYZ corp., listed on the NASDAQ.
If you clinch it, your firm gets a $20,000,000 contract.
If you fail, well, your firm has $20,000,000 less than it could have.
That’s called pressure. But you’re exhausted.
There is a mound of paperwork in front of you.
You can hardly keep your eyes open.
And $20,000,000 is on the line tomorrow.
You must finish your preparation. There is no other choice.
Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door.
In comes a barista. Teal apron. Nicely pressed shirt.
Coffee.
He says, “You see this liquid potion?
This liquid has the immense
and proven power to help
you stay awake and focused.
Imagine: you’ll be able to stay awake
and convince the CEO of XYZ Corp. and
his board to sign with you.”
How much do you think that barista can
sell the coffee for?
$1000 would be a bargain.
$10,000 would be quite reasonable.
What happened to our $0.045 cup of coffee?
What Does This Have To Do With LinkedIn?
I see so many profiles on LinkedIn
that look like traditional resumes.
LinkedIn is, after all, a site where
people look for jobs. If you are looking
for a job on LinkedIn, then feel free to disregard
what I’m about to say (for now).
If you are not using LinkedIn to find a job,
what are you using it for?
Either you’re there because everyone else is there,
because you may want to actively scout for people to hire,
because you want to make sales,
or because you want to find professionals
or businesses to collaborate with.
I’m going to focus on the last two: sales and
business collaboration.
What I’m going to say is controversial. I welcome comments
and discussion below.
If you are using LinkedIn for one of these two purposes,
then you have to consider the strong possibility
that your profile should not be written like a resume.
You’re not on Linkedin to show off your resume!
Was your resume written to sell your services?
If you were to take out a magazine ad,
would you post your resume?
Probably not.
Granted, Linkedin is not like a magazine ad, either.
But let’s put it this way: if in your summary section
of your profile you told a short story about yourself or your
work history, and/or a list of skills that you have,
you might not be connecting to your audience in the
most effective way possible.
Remember: a cup, lid and coffee are about $0.045.
A Starbucks experience is $3-4 and up.
For an investment banker with a presentation
tomorrow, $1,000 absent competition.
Are you presenting yourself as a cup, lid and coffee?
Or a $20,000,000 solution for an investment banker?
What’s the connection? Let me explain…
How To Be The $20,000,000 Solution
Remember how we discussed the value of that
cup of coffee? It was a nice cup. It had nice coffee.
But it came out to $0.045. Why? Because all
we spoke about was what it’s made of.
We didn’t speak about the benefits to the consumer.
Let’s get this straight: people aren’t likely to
hire me because I can
give them high PR links and crowd-sourced SEO
and solid on-page optimization and so forth.
They are likely to hire me because they want
their websites at the top of Google search for
terms relevant to their business. The investment banker
in our story does not care about the taste of coffee or quality of cup
nearly as much as he cares about pulling off a great presentation tomorrow.
And while you may have a wonderful resume with great experience
and credentials, and while that resume might in fact
be very attractive to your prospects,
people are going to buy because you can solve their
problems or give them a benefit they don’t have.
It’s not about components. It’s about function.
It’s not about your awesome resume. It’s about what you can do for others.
Okay, so how do you become the $20,000,000 solution?
My approach is simple. Consider your target audience.
Ask, “what is it I can help them with?”
If you are looking for partnerships, networking,
and collaboration, then state simply what problems
you can solve by entering into such activities.
If you are promoting your product or service,
then state simply what problems you solve with them.
You can do this multiple times, and even separate entries with
lines like using the dash key, as long as you don’t bump into the word limit:
———————-
It is hard to emphasize this enough: talk about
your audience first. When somebody visits your profile,
they want to know, “is this person interesting to me?”
This is a basic social skill. When you meet somebody
and you want to engage them in a great conversation,
start asking them about themselves. They are interested
in themselves. But who says they are interested in you (yet)?
Okay, let’s say you’ve stated how you can help people.
Now say that you solve it! It’s that simple.
Here’s an example from my profile
(you can see the full profile here):
I have a separate entry above this just for real estate-
that way I am addressing both crowds that I help.
You’ll also notice that I have a call-to-action:
“request a free 15 minute evaluation now.”
This is very important- tell the world
how they can go about requesting your help.
Notice that I don’t say exactly how I solve these problems.
I just say that I do, because I want to generate curiosity.
Oops, maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you that…
