to have gone dry for the moment, along with the cucumber water in your glass. Still, the young singer seems bent on keeping the conversation going.
“It sounds like you could just retire right now,” he says, “and you wouldn’t have to put up with these long flights and grueling schedules. Is it really worth it to be a keynote speaker? I mean, why do you keep doing it?”
“Why indeed…” you parrot, adjusting your glasses with a thick hand. “Dubai to LA seems like a long haul this morning, I can tell you that,” you chuckle. “And I’ve got more of the same waiting for me at LAX—same hoopla, same glad-handing and photo ops. You know, I haven’t thought about that question in a long time.”
But his question is a good one, and you feel its heft in your mind like a gold ingot in the center of your palm—rare and worthy.
Your thoughts trail back a couple of days, back to the night you arrived in Dubai and the limo picked you up at the airport. Your client, the CEO, was already in the back seat, eager to be seen with you, arriving together at an exclusive gala at a towering hotel behind a velvet rope. The cameras and the crowds offered a heady glow of success.
That night was capped with too few hours of sleep in your suite on the concierge level, fruit and flowers in every room, scenting the air with their heavy perfume. You found a gift from the meeting planner thoughtfully left on the entry table—a silver monogrammed business card holder and a note of thanks. It was a nice touch, if a little impersonal. Back home, there was a closet in your office that was full of things like this— chachkies and souvenirs, corporate gifts from exotic ports of call where hoards had been swayed by the words you spoke.
But that’s not the reason. Why then?
Your mind drifts back to your early career when you stood on the platform in a meeting hall at a local winery for 30 minutes; the audience mesmerized while you shared your best stuff. That talk was the springboard for the words you said in Dubai yesterday, and it launched a thousand opportunities for you. The warm feeling in your heart of touching the hundreds of people in that winery hall—influencing their lives—was as sweet as wine itself. You would have done it for free, but the back-of-room sales you made after the talk were a nice bonus. A whole new world had opened up for you that day.
Now you search your memory for an even deeper answer, and a vague form takes shape. You were meeting with a publisher over a cocktail, who was an old colleague who’d worked with you on that start-up years ago. The experience is like a private joke you share between the two of you, like veterans of war.
“Say, I’m writing a book,” you told him casually, pulse racing. “Do you think you could give me some tips on how to make it successful…?”
Now the memory starts to flood back. You remember that you had been sweating this meeting for days, thinking your friend’s professional advice would kill your enthusiasm, afraid he would laugh at your naiveté or tell you that your ideas were too controversial. You feared that the unique and precious thing inside you—the song that only you could write—would be silenced before anyone heard it. You were afraid that taking a chance, confiding in your friend, meant that your dream must live or die at that moment. You were afraid of terminal rejection, afraid that you would depart this earth with your music still inside you, afraid to let go of that burning fire in your heart.
You were afraid.
You couldn’t bear the thought that your passion for these concepts was yours alone. You had to get the word out. It was your mission. You simply must tell others, because you knew that they could be changed if only they knew about the key that you had discovered for yourself. You knew that their lives would be better, easier and more provident if you could just reach them—if you could share the gems that you had come by through years of trial and error, of love and blood and sweat. You could shorten their learning curve, and you could help others by making their lives easier. You could change a piece of their world if you could just reach them with the message in your book.
And then it happened, the thing you couldn’t have expected, though you’d dreamt of it often enough—your friend said yes.
“Sure,” he smiled, “I’ll help you publish it too, if you’d like. You might want to think about writing a talk to go along with that manuscript of yours. These things work best in tandem.”
Now the memory fades as the flight attendant brushes past you, gliding down the aisle. The young man in the seat next to you sweeps the shock of hair from his eyes and searches your face. The hum of the jet drones on, like a bass note in the dance of your life. “Why wouldn’t you want to put down roots, or retire early and get off this merry-go-round?” the young man says. “I mean, what makes you want to trek the planet and say the things you do?”
In the back of your mind, you hear a Ziglar quote which comes back to your mind like a distant memory, “You will get everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
And suddenly, in a flash, you connect with your reason why, that driving force that silently compels you to push forward… serving others.
It’s funny how you can be talking to someone, and they seem to understand what you’re saying. They smile and nod; even interject a comment here or there.
But are they really getting you? Once the conversation is over, it’s like it never happened.
Maybe a few days later the subject comes up again. You hash it out one more time, and this time it seems like you’re getting through.
But no. It’s not that they’re obstinate. It’s just that any new idea requires repeated exposure to become internalized. That is how the brain works.
Studies show that people need to hear an idea seven times before it sinks in.
Think about that the next time you ask your teenager to take out the garbage. You don’t have to hound them until you’re “blue in the face.” Just tighten up your repetitions, and you’ll compress the amount of time it takes to drive your point home. After a while, it becomes automatic, and you don’t have to mention it again. Well… maybe a couple more times.
This brings us to the all-important topic of exposures in marketing campaigns, and what I call the Rule of Seven. When you can leverage this rule, the seven exposures get your audience to “see the light” and make a purchase.
It sounds simple—and it is—but it’s not without technique. Let’s cover a few simple rules that you can apply to your book or new product launch to drive sales and create evangelists.
Sales Lessons from the Marketing World
Did you ever notice product displays when you go to a retail store or mall? The brand jumps out at you every time you walk by.
By your third pass, you stop and notice that the featured widget might actually be something you could use to solve a problem or engage a desire. In fact, the product could be tremendously effective. It might even change your life. But the first time you passed by, it didn’t even register.
During my Fortune 500 marketing career, I was responsible for rolling-out a retail kiosk for a brand-new kind of service. It was a revolutionary product, and our Marketing team had a pretty robust ad budget to support the US launch. Amazingly enough, our Sales team was successful in putting this display in 20,000 retail locations across North America.
