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A while ago I confessed that for my first six years in this business almost all the copy I wrote was rubbish, but I sold it very well.

The best person I know when it comes to face-to-face selling is Andy Bounds.

He has written a book you will often find on airport bookstalls called The Jelly Effect. Don’t be put off because he mentions me at the start. It is a good book, and he tells me he is writing another.

Here’s some advice he sent me this morning. It is good.

A powerful technique to help people think differently is to use what I call “serve and volley” – two questions that work as follows:

1. The serve – a simple question that everyone knows the answer to; and
2. The volley – a second, related question that provokes people into realising they need to change their mindset

For instance, I recently addressed a conference audience I knew hated networking. So, I used “serve and volley” with them, asking these two questions:

1. Do you feel uncomfortable when you are networking? (90% of the room put their hand up)
2. Do you think your discomfort is worse than other people’s? (Again, 90% put their hand up)

I then made the point: “Well, you can’t all be right. After all, you can’t all find it worse than everybody else.” Once people realised their feelings were similar to others, it was easier to improve their confidence, safe in the knowledge that they weren’t the “only one”.

Another example:

1. Is your product good or bad? (Everyone says “Good”)
2. Given how good your product is, do you win as many sales as you should? (The only answer people give to this is “No”)

Conclusion: It’s not what you sell that’s the problem; it’s how you sell it. So, let’s look at how you can win the sales you should be winning.

And another:

1. Do you hate reading presenters’ wordy slides? (Everyone says “Yes”)
2. Do you use wordy slides when you’re presenting? (If you do, you are doing to others what you hate people doing to you)

Conclusion: you really ought to take some words off your slides!

See how it works? If so…

1. Might “Serve and volley” help you change people’s perceptions?
2. Do you think it’s easy to master, or not?

Action point

If your answers to these two questions were “Yes”, then “No”…

… Think of someone’s mindset you want to shift. Then work hard to identify two related questions you can ask to get them to see things differently.

Do you find it takes a depressing amount of time to get anything done?

And that even when you’ve done it, you’re disappointed?

Me too.

It is now several months since I got fed up with the “improvements” made by Blogger to the way you put things up here. They were a perfect example of how big organisations change things – but make them worse.

Anyhow, I’ve finally managed it, and you will now find my ramblings here, on a revamped Draytonbird.com. You will also find all my past blogs.

My publisher suggested the other day that we might put together a collection of the best ones – but that sounds like a pretty daunting task.

To be honest I am not yet entirely happy with that site – there’s a lot of type floating around vaguely at the top. But it is in WordPress which makes life easier, so I hope to have it sorted out in the next few days.

There are a great many features that Im going to incorporate, one of which has been on my mind for over a year. It is a listing of all the books, videos, e-books and courses I have created.

There are so many that I gave up going through them a couple of weeks ago. Serves me right for being a motor-mouth.

***

Last week a young man I know in Montclair N.J. wrote asking for my advice.

He has a good idea, and approached it in the best way: he has done his research and found a business with several advantages.

I am not going to tell you what the business is, but it is nothing unusual. You can see this kind of business in every town, everywhere.

Most people who talk to me about going into business do so just because they like the idea. Hardly any do their homework. He has.

He has looked at the total U.S. market and how it is growing based on the statistics in Forbes magazine. He has looked at his local area and found there is unusually high demand for what he proposes to sell because of a particular ethnic group. And he has found cheap premises.

He is also very realistic, with a goal.

“It is also relatively cheap compared to other business and I don’t plan for this to become a multi-million dollar business. Just something to make a smaller income over time but more so the experience needed to run a much larger business.”

This is what I wrote to him:

This is not a bad idea at all and you have started off by doing an analysis, which is the right thing.

You must now do more of the same.

Take a note of and study all the successful retailers you can, both on and off-line.

Try to determine what they are doing that makes them succeed, both in terms of their general approach and in specific things they do.

Read any books you can that seem helpful. Also anything on the Internet to do with start-ups.

I do not mean the kind of “I’ll make you rich in 20 minutes” garbage. I mean stuff by people who have been there and done it with serious business – Tony Hsieh of Zappos is an interesting case.

Try to define what it is about your business that will make it better (it does not have to be different – just better).

Write a plan that defines how you will be different and better.

Work out the numbers. Never underestimate how much gross profit you need.

Define your customers. Why will they buy? When will they buy? What emotions will make them buy? How can you make them buy again? Remember, the first sale is not the one that makes you money. How are you going to communicate with them?

Be a customer. Look at what other people are doing and finish the following sentence:

Why don’t they …..? Then finish it with something you think people could and should do, but don’t.

When you get going, learn to live with failure and keep trying. But equally, don’t persist in something that doesn’t work.

One of the smartest entrepreneurs I know is an ex army officer who came and worked for me for virtually nothing before setting up his business, which he sold for millions.

So there you are.

Before you read another word, I am not going to sell you a damn thing. I’m just curious, that’s all. No: bemused is the right word.

I was talking the other day to a friend who sells a way of finding business prospects on the Internet. I know it works because we tested it.

I have written about it before, so I won’t bore you. However he reckons that for every prospect you now get you could get nine more. All you have to do is spend a little time – I mean minutes – copying and pasting to get it working for you.

So that’s a potential 900% more prospects if you can spare a few minutes. And if you don’t have enough prospects to chase you’ll go broke. But you know what? Most of the people who’ve asked for a free trial can’t be arsed to do it.

People go broke because they’re just too damned idle. We had a client not long ago – a well-known firm in financial trouble. We proved that we could transform their business. They just had to give us two pieces of simple information.

It took them two months to supply the first – and so long to supply the second that we gave up and had to sue them to get money they owed.

So now you know why firms go broke. Sheer unmitigated sloth. As the slogan says, “Just do it”.

***

I was talking to friend earlier about “teams”. Many firms sign messages from “the team”. I’m all in favour of team spirit if you’re playing soccer. Good teams have it; bad ones don’t.

But I don’t want to talk to a team if I have a problem. I want to talk to a person. And as my friend said, in business having a team all too often means this: if it’s the team’s problem it’s not mine. They abdicate responsibility.

***

Among other things I am busy writing a brief memoir of my experiences with David Ogilvy. The more I write, the more I realise what an extraordinary person he was. Such was the power of his personality that I think I can recall just about every conversation I ever had with him.

***

Tomorrow on Friday 13th I shall be making a special offer. Just for that day. God knows we all need a little luck.