The Secret Key

[The ten selling tasks] are the hidden set of dimensions within all successful sales and marketing materials. Examine any good marketing piece, looking for these ten tasks, and you’ll find them — probably not all, but as many as that piece needs to do its job. Examine any piece that’s not so good, and you’ll find that one or more are missing, or flawed in their execution, which that piece needs in order to succeed. Yet no one else has laid out these dimensions in this way. This book lets you see the hidden structure of successful marketing.

These are the key to hitting the mark — and the market — with your marketing efforts, be they large or small. If your marketing materials are not accomplishing the right things, how can they succeed? And if they are, how can they fail? The Ten Selling Tasks of Sales & Marketing Materials is your key to marketing success.

From the Preface. The rest of the book follows through on this exciting promise.

 
How to Get the Most from this Book

2. Read the book for the concepts. As you do, refer to your own sales and marketing materials, to see how the various principles apply to them and how they measure up. This will give you a deeper experience of the book as well as insights into your own materials. (Don’t skip the tables at the back — there are a lot of concepts there.)
3. Determine which of the opposing factors (see What You’re Up Against) are of greatest concern in your sales and marketing efforts.
4. Use Table 37 to determine which selling tasks are most pertinent to those opposing factors. And use Tables 20-36 to give you a starting point on exactly how the various task can “gang up” on each factor.

Walker isn't satisfied with just explaining things so you can understand. He fills his book with charts that enable you to look up exactly what to do in your own particular situation.

 
Your Biggest Obstacle

The ultimate target of your marketing campaign is sales, of course. The more sales, the better. But how do you take aim at a sale? Many marketers do not really aim. When they come upon a flock of prospects, they just start wildly throwing rocks in the hope that some will hit a prospect before the flock flies out of range.

But you don’t just want to hit a prospect. You want to hit a sale. And the first step in doing so — in fact, the greatest secret in marketing success — is to realize that your objective is itself the biggest obstacle to your achieving it.

Walker's engaging, personal, often humorous style makes it easy to stay with him through explorations of difficult conceptual territory. But what does he mean by the last sentence in this quote? It's important!

 
Your Real Competition

The idea that you need to know what your prospects are most likely to do instead, if they don’t purchase your product, may be new to you. But that’s your real competition. It’s simply not enough to know what you’re selling, and who you’re selling it to. You’ve also got to know what you’re selling against — or how will you know how you can you beat it? It’s like being in a boxing ring blindfolded. So if you have no idea what you’re selling against — find out!

It's not just about competitors. For many marketers, a lack of understanding of this concept makes it a stumbling block to failure. Walker shows you in detail how to turn it into a stepping stone to success.

 
Need is Relative

So people don’t simply have a need or not. A given need can be at different levels, along a gradient which forms a spectrum of need. Table 2 shows eight different levels of need. It’s oversimplified, of course, and expresses the need just in terms of a “problem”, but it should be enough to convey the concept.
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We said earlier that the objective in addressing the need spectrum of any particular prospect is to move them to a higher level of need, and that to do that, you have to address their level of awareness, and try to raise it up a notch or two. Now we can see more precisely just what that means, as shown in Table 3.

What level of need are your prospects on? How can you move them higher?

 
Do You Have What It Takes To Sell Against?

Table 4 is a guide to the kinds of features and benefits you’ll need, based on the state(s) you expect to be selling against (in the narrow sense). For even more on selling against with benefits, see Table 12 in A Deeper Look at Selling Against.

What is Walker talking about here? If you don't know, you may be needlessly selling against yourself!

 
Experiential Presentations

For most purchases, the ultimate benefits are in terms of experiences and feelings. These benefits may be real or imagined, delivered or dropped. To sell your product, they need not have any real connection with it at all, as long as you can fabricate a connection and make it stick. There are certain yearnings most people have which are never fulfilled. Always, there lurks the question, “Will this product give me what I really want? Will it finally be the thing to deliver the feelings or experiences which I crave?”

If you can tie your product to these emotional ephemerals — ultimate intangibles — you’re home free. But for maximum effect, these feelings and this connection must be communicated, evoked. And evocation ... [is] the special strength of experiential presentations.

Sounds good. But how do you do this for your product? Or should you even try?

The answer lies within. Within the book, that is!

 
Your Presentation — Rational or Experiential?

We’ve talked about two kinds of benefit presentations — what they are, how they work, and the basic principles of how to use them. Two powerful tools. And they can be used together, or blended in countless ways. But basically, which tool should you use for which job? When should you use a rational presentation of benefits, and when should you use experiential? Table 7 gives a guideline.

Isn't it rational to give yourself the experience of Walker's insightful presentation?

 
Integrity (#1)

I clearly remember the first time I encountered integrity in a presentation. But I don’t mean that the way you think! It was only the word, not the real thing.

It was the first time I had need of a lawyer, to help with the paperwork for some transaction when I was in college. I found him in the phone book and visited his office. He talked for perhaps 10 minutes — it seemed like 30 — about how important it was to find a lawyer with integrity, the fact that many lawyers lacked integrity, how much integrity he himself had, how much I could trust him because of his great integrity, and why I had made the right choice in coming to him instead of some other lawyer because of his superior integrity.

Yet somehow, each time he said the word “integrity”, I trusted him less. Strange, huh? When he finally paused for breath, I was only too eager to thank him and leave. Even then, his integrity stuck to me for days, like residues of cotton candy. It was so icky that instead of visiting another lawyer, I figured out how to do that paperwork myself!

Get the message? Integrity is not something you claim. It’s something you are.

Walker frequently illustrates his points with memorable anecdotes like this one, that stay with you long after more prosaic explanations would have faded from the mind.

 
Integrity (#2)

Integrity is the basis for trust. And trust is like an egg — nourishing, full of power and possibilities, as easily shattered, and nearly as difficult to repair. That’s why, when you are tempted to cut corners, it’s wise to remember that you cannot do so without destroying your integrity, and sooner or later it is likely to come back to haunt you.

The book is full of vivid images like this one — making marketing concepts as easy to grasp as an egg!

 
Verisimilitude

Certainly, the truth can sound true, and a lie can sound like a lie. And of course a lie can sound true, or people wouldn’t lie. But the truth can also sound like a lie, or at least untrue. That was Cassandra’s problem in the Trojan War. She was both blessed and cursed — blessed that she could know the future, and cursed that no one would believe her. As honest as you are in your marketing, you’ll still fail if you suffer Cassandra’s curse.

Ever experience the frustration of knowing you had the best solution, but being unable to convince the prospect? You were keeping company with Cassandra. She lost her war — find out how to win yours!

 
Affordability

Years ago, I exchanged sales stories with an encyclopedia salesman. Britannica, the big expensive one. He said that one family — three cars and a fancy boat in the driveway — told him there was no way they could afford it. The $33 a month payments would put their credit card over the top. It was just impossible. He talked a bit more about the benefits to their children, then they pulled out their checkbook and wrote out a check for $1800, the full price. Well, they did avoid having to face those “unaffordable” monthly payments!

What was going on here? How could someone not be able to afford $33 a month one minute, and pay $1800 out of pocket the next? Were they lying, or was it something else? And are your prospects and customers doing the same thing to you?

 
Bargain Hunters

There is also a huge difference between a price-buyer...and a bargain hunter. A price buyer wants the benefits of your product category, but will sacrifice quality for price. A bargain hunter wants a bargain as such, and receiving the category benefits of your product is at most a secondary concern.

Most marketers — and marketing authors — don't distinguish between price buyers and bargain hunters. But the psychology is different, and psychology is the key to selling. It's clear thinking and fine distinctions like this that let Walker guide you through the brambles instead of into them.

 
Deep Branding

At the deepest level, a brand is your philosophy, what you stand for, the principles by which you operate, your reason for existence, the meaning of what you do. It’s what makes you different, unique, special. It’s the vision that sustains you, shapes your strategy and drives you on. It’s the dream you’re bringing to life. It’s what you’re giving back for what you’re getting. It’s why you couldn’t be doing anything else. It’s what makes you and your people proud to be who you are, doing what you do.

While showing you the nuts and bolts, Walker encourages you to reach for a higher level. Think that's impractical? Nothing could be more wrong!

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