Ah… Rich Schefren just made my day!

He just posted an interview he did with Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and his latest book “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be More Persuasive” on his blog.

Go check it out… it’s awesome!

Download the mp3

[tags]Robert Cialdini, Influence, Social Psychology, Rich Schefren[/tags]

It’s 11:25pm and I’m reading the new book by Robert Cialdini called “Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive” and I’m reading on how Proctor & Gamble increased their profits by 10% with one simple change.

A change that problably pissed off alot of people in the company.

Want to know what they did?

Go pick up his book. No I’m kidding, here’s what they did…

They went from 26 Head & Shoulder products to 15 and increased their sales by 10%.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself. “why did that happen?” Well, the answer is simple…

When there’s too many choices tend tend to do NOTHING! You know like when you goto your local street fair and the lady is selling the 60 different dipping sauces and you buy none because you can’t decide. Yea, that’s what I’m talking about.

I’ll give you an example in my first business. I sold wheels and tire packages on eBay and started posting listings for every single wheel my manufacturer produced. I though, “Heck, I can sell all of these wheels. If I sell 1 a day of each set, I’ll be RICH!” HAhaaaa… Actually, I spent $5,000 in listing fee’s that month and only made $4,200.

You know why? I was selling products that would NEVER sell!

So how can this apply to your business?

Simple. Offer HOTT (double t) products. Products that people are buying NOW and in herds. And don’t focus on the trivial many. Focus on the hard core few.

The 80/20 my friend. It’s for real.

peace.

Chris

[tags]Robert Cialdini, Influence, Social Proof, Scarcity, Steve Martin, make money with less[/tags]

I’m laughing right now.

Not because of the craziness that’s happening across America as people from all walks of life flood the local Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, and the glutinous Wal-Mart, to take advantage of the Black Friday deals. (Whatever they are… Apple doesn’t really care, they give you a whopping $51 off a Macbook. WOW! No discount on the Macbook Pro though. errrrrrrgghhhh.)

I’m laughing because at 11:32 last night my girlfriend and I decided to make a trip to our local Best Buy in Boynton Beach, FL to see this so-called Black Friday madness in action.

Here’s how it went down…

So we take a left on Old Boynton Beach BLVD to turn into the parking lot. To our amazement we saw at least 600 kids, momma’s, momma’s babies momma’s, daddy’s, either playing cards, playing basketball, drinking booze, and sleeping. Most of the kids were trying to find chicks.

At that moment, Alex and I said in unison, “What a hell of a product launch!” (She knows this stuff because I talk about it non-stop.) Thanks to Jeff Walker for introducing us to the Product Launch Formula.

The laws of persuasion appeared in front of us…

Social Proof

What’s this? “Well, if everyone else is doing it, then it must be good.” It’s just like when you go to a club and see no-one at the front door. You say, “It’s dead, let’s check out somewhere else.” You then find a club that has a huge line because, “it must be good.”

I used to work at the front door of a club here in West Palm. My job was to help “control the door.” Controlling the door meant that I had to keep the line slammed with people and have it wrap around the building.

Why?

Social Proof. How can you do this on the internet? Blogs. Forums. A place where people can leave comments and add a social aspect (dynamic) to your webpage.

You see it in every big product launch.

The next law we saw in action double B was…

Scarcity

There were only a limited quantity of their “door busters” items so you have to get there early. This is another social influencer to get people to take action. For example, “We have 15,000 people on our list and selling only 300 copies. You better get in fast before they are all gone.”

This works wonders when you do it right when launching your product on the internet. You can base your scarcity on quantity and time. I use both when launching a new product or service.

Those were some of the most apparent laws of Influence. If I ever do it… I’ll get there at 5am when they open and run through the door.

Here’s a vid of the madness…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZJVZ2p223o[/youtube]

Here’s to your Black Friday,

Chris