Mel,
Here's one for your "must remember this before I jump into empty swimming pool" file:
If your customers don't have a big gaping insecurity – or if you don't know what that insecurity is – you're gonna have a hard time selling to them.
I call this the "chip on the shoulder," and it's one of my top requirements for personality-driven marketers.
I first realized the importance of this a few years ago while comparing notes with John Paul Mendocha.
We'd noticed that some B2B markets seem white-hot responsive to business idea pitches—dentists, chiropractors, carpet cleaners—while others you couldn't crack with a bunker-busting nuke.
The chip on the shoulder is key.
A person who has "a chip on his shoulder" is ANGRY.
Take carpet cleaners for example.
A guy who shampoos rugs all day is angry because...
...because he flunked out of high school and is secretly ashamed of it. Gonna get even with all those over-educated folks who made fun of him and left him in the dust!
...because his high school sweetheart dumped him for a sharp-looking pre-med college freshman...
...because when he bought that Stanley Steemer carpet cleaning truck, his father-in-law said, "You're going to do what? You got fired from your UPS driver job, you couldn't sell Kirby vacuum cleaners, Helen and I had to loan you guys money after you wrecked your motorcycle, and... you're gonna clean carpets now???"
Same deal with dentists and chiros.
Why are THEY angry?
Because they're not "real" doctors. And they hate that.
So your typical dentist at age 45 looks like this:
1. The divorce is nearly finalized
2. Recent health club membership
3. Leased a brand new Mazda Miata last spring
4. Young woman on his arm, admires him, makes him feel good. (She's 28, she's his dental assistant, and fortunately he's got several of them working in his practice. She's divorced
too so she feels his pain, relates to his chip on the shoulder.)
5. Owns an apartment building or two that haven't made all that much money
6. Took 10 years to pay off his school loans and makes fairly substantial payments on the equipment in his office
7. Was in a couple different MLM deals over the years. Oxyfresh didn't work out all that well and he's pretty burned out on that sort of thing nowadays
8. HATES sticking his hands in peoples' mouths all day long
9. Is quietly and desperately searching for a way to replace his income
10. Lost $166,000 in the recent stock market crash, is not sure how he's going to recover from it. Growing anxiety about retirement.
11. Is acutely aware of the fact that he has a somewhat high-paying squirrel cage JOB that doesn't really pay enough once he covers the alimony payments every month; roiling with frustration that a lot of people respect him and think he's more successful and more respectable than he actually feels
12. Is on all kinds of mailing lists of various business opportunities and schemes
Get the picture?
So how do you find the all-important chip on YOUR market's shoulder?
I have a tool I use for this, a 7-question checklist.
These questions bore through the "outer crust" of minor irritations your customers complain about...
Straight into their roiling, molten core of insecurities won't even admit to themselves.
I shared this checklist with Mastermind Club members a few months back.
You can download the PDF here (current members only).
Still haven't joined? Just click here for access.
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
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