Closing A Sale Using Take Away Tactics - part 1

Today I would like to talk about a classic sales technique called the Take Away Close and explore how it is being used online and how it is evolving into new forms and how you can learn to implement this powerful technique into your own marketing. It blends with the scarcity tactics that I explored in a recent post which are a variation of the take away close.

Its an Idea

The take away close gets its name because you are giving someone something and then taking it away from them. The fact that you never actually physically gave them anything is irrelevant, what you gave was the idea that they were going to receive something of value and then snatched it away from them. Or restricted or place conditions on it. You then offer a way for them to get back what you have taken away, i.e buy your product, subscibe to your list or take a specific action

Rooted in Childhood Psychology

Imagine you have a small child and you show them a bag of sweets and then you take away the bag of sweets and hide it in a cupboard in full view so the child knows exactly where they are. The child will do anything to get the sweets and will beg and cry for you to let them have them. Now most of you will be thinking how cruel and mean a person must be to torture and manipulate a kid in this way but its actually what happened to most of us at some time or other in our life and was a way our parents and teachers could get us to do exactly what they wanted us to do.

No pocket money until you tidy your room, No desert until you have eaten all your dinner. No going out to play with your friends until all your homework is finished

A Sense of Loss

When you have something you desire taken away from you, you feel a deep sense of loss and you want to get it back at whatever cost. No matter if it was never yours in the first place, and aslo if it is only an Idea or a threat

Subliminal?

I love the scene on the Simpson's where Homer is watching a commercial on TV and shouts "LIMITED??" and grabs the phone and starts frantically dialing to order his subliminal weight loss tapes.

Show what you are missing out on

Last week I was talking to a friend I had met online, Dan Black he is an internet marketer and gives free marketing training, in one of his emails he was explaining a way that his company use this technique very effectively. He has an online membership community consisting of free and paid members and each month all the members get to see how much they have made in commissions from advertising. Each member has the option to upgrade, to add tools like video and audio to their account and these tools increase the expose and also increase the commissions. So what my friend does each month when he sends out the monthly accounts he tells people how much they would have made if they had upgraded to the premium services. This is such a powerful technique that uses the take away in a more subtle way. He doesn't even have to hard sell the premium services, the members themselves request the upgrade, because they can't bear to see that they lost money that was never theirs in the first place

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

This is like the classic saying the grass is greener on the other side. where you have cows pushing their heads through the fence because they perceive that the grass is better because they are blocked free access to it.

Sneaky email take aways

Another great example of this was done by my good friends over at Stompernet when they were in the run up to reopening the doors to their fantastic paid membership program. They sent out an email to all the people on their free list, all the potential new members, people who had signed up to watch all their great free videos. In the email they talked about everything that Stompernet was going to be doing in the next year, all the programs they were running and the conferences and trainings that members had access to. 10 minutes after they sent this email, they sent another telling you to ignore the first email because that one was only for members and apologised for making a mistake. No mistake, this was carefully calculated to plant the seeds in peoples minds and show them what they would be missing out on if they didn't join.

Brian uses this technique on his members

Brian Campbell has been up to similar tricks, sending the same type of letters to all his bronze members and then saying that the letter was sent in mistake. No mistake, he just wanted to hit home how much Bronze members were missing out on by not being in the Silver or Gold memberships. The way he has structured his program is also very cunning, having members working side by side who are not in the same grade and the members from the lower grades can see the success that the premium members are achieving because they have access to the more detailed trainings that Brian releases each week.

Upgrading

I have seen people join on the Bronze or Silver membership and within a week have decided to upgrade their membership because they wanted access to the more advanced level training.

Manipulation

Many people may complain that this is manipulative and I will have to admit it is, but manipulation is not bad in itself it is rather the intent of the salesman that has to be judged. Is a parent bad because they manipulate their child to brush their teeth every evening, No, they want the child to have healthy teeth so they want them to get into good habits.

In the same way Brian and the members of the Social Media Marketing System want each other to succeed, they want everyone who joins to have access to the best training available. I want every serious Bronze member to aspire to upgrade to Silver or Gold, because I know that they will become much more effective, That is why the premium members need to set such a good example to make it so attractive that it becomes a no brainer.

Top Affiliates

I expect that I will become one of Brians top affiliate for this relaunch, When me and a few of the other top affiliates announce how much money we have made, I want everyone to understand that all we did was follow what Brian has taught. We all took action and implemented his teachings, success breeds more success, and I have no doubt that this will just be the beginning.

Sign up Now

Most people who are reading this have probably signed up already, but just in case you haven't here is the link again.

Social Media Marketing System

Read part 2

This is a two part article, if you would like to read part 2 click here

The Power of Testimonials

Today I would like to explore the Testimonial and why it is used as a sales technique, I will be explaining the different types of Testimonials and their relative effectiveness and using this to analyse just what Brian Campbell has been doing in the past 2 days and why he has plastered testimonials on every group page he can get his links onto.

Establishing Trust

Have you noticed that whenever you read a sales letter or visit a website that is selling you something, or see an advert in a magazine or newspaper they are often Jammed packed with Testimonials from satisfied customers who thought the product or service was amazing. How often do you think that some of them are fabricated, that the website owner or Business just sat down and made them all up. If you had this suspicion then the testimonial that you just read didn't do its job effectively. A Testimonial is designed to establish a feeling of trust.

A Total Stanger

If you meet a complete stranger in the street, you would relate to them very differently if they were on their own or if they were accompanied by one of your best friends. A total stranger is an unknown quantity, you know nothing about them, they might want to hurt you, cheat you, steal from you or take advantage of you in some way, you approach them with caution to see if it is safe to interact. You might exchange a few words but you wouldn't invite them back to you home straight away. Only after establishing some type of conversation would you decide if you wanted to develop the relationship further, but often this conversation would never even begin.

A Friend of a Friend

On the other hand, if this stranger was with your best friend, or a good acquaintance you would instantly have a different attitude, Because your friend is establishing the strangers credibility and trustworthiness by association you change the way you would interact, you are instantly more friendly and receptive because this person could be a potential new friend. I can give a great example from many years ago when I was living in Israel, I knew a lot of people by sight, having gone to the same social events but never really felt accepted by them, I always felt like an outsider because I was not Jewish and didn't speak Hebrew, I realised that as a nation Israelis have an inbuilt mistrust for non Jewish people following centuries of persecution and invasion in their own country. But it didn't make any sense to me that this was carried over into the social sphere. It wasn't until I became close friends with an Israeli woman who happened to be one of those people who everyone knows and likes that I got welcomed into what was before a closed community. Suddenly everyone accepted me and treated me in a totally different way than before. My association with a trusted friend had lowered peoples defences and gave me access to a much richer social life and deeper more lasting friendships. She had given me a non verbal Testimonial just by being my friend.

The Cold Sale

No one really likes to have a Salesperson trying to convince you to buy something, It can make you feel uncomfortable and manipulated , like someone has mentally assaulted you, or invaded your privacy. Unsolicited email, Telesales cold calling or doorstep sales men often use this old tactic, that has most normal people running a mile. The technique relies solely on statistics, that out of every 100 people someone might be interested. Conversion rates for this type of method are generally low. If you want to test it there are many companies that sell email lists of 1,000,000 names that you can spam with your sales message.

Soften up the Ground

For a smart marketer, engaged in a sales war, testimonials are like artillery barrages fired against a prospects defence mechanisms and B.S. detectors. They are a way to soften up the ground for when the real sales message is to be delivered. This is the way to establish trust and credibility through the opinion of your customers peers so they will actually listen to what you have to say.

Written Testimonials

There are several types of testimonial, the first I would like to discuss is the written testimonial, using words in print to convince and cajole into taking your sales message more seriously.

If you study the best copywriters, you can learn some of the subtle techniques they use, most of these were developed in the direct response mail arena, where they could track and test to see what is the most effective. One technique is to reprint the customers actual letter, showing their actual handwriting, a variation of this is to make the testimonial in a separate coloured box with different typeface to make it look like a typed letter. What happens now, due to the internet and the widespread use of email the testimonial is written to resemble an email, they even use the same calibri typeface and the same font sizes to make it seem more like a personal email from a friend. This is subtle but has been proven to be very effective. It goes under the radar and makes you more likely to believe and trust what is being written

Background and Photo

Showing where the person is from and their employment status is also important, and depending on what type of product or service you are offering, it can be an indicator of the type of person who you want to attract. And also including their picture so you can really see that they are a real person, further increasing the credibility of the Testimonial

An Audio Testimonial

Radio, Podcasts, Teleseminars and Audio Postcards are another way to deliver powerful testimonials, The power of the voice creates a much more personal connection, You know that it is a real person who is talking, and you can pick up subtle hints through the tonality, degree of excitement or enthusiasm whether they are telling the truth or hyping something up. Teleseminars can be used as a backdoor testimonial where the interviewer can express their own personal opinions about something that is being discussed. Done well, and you hardly even notice you are being sold to, done wrong and the Interviewer an quickly lose their credibility and the teleseminar can feel like one long commercial advertisement. If you want to listen to one of the masters, check out anything done by Alex Mandosian, he is a someone who really know how to use the power of Audio to sell.

A Video Testimonial

Since the invention of the Television video has become the most powerful means to advertise a product or service and now with the advance of Web2.0 and 3.0 technologies, anyone with a webcam , or video recorder can make their own adverts and ask all their customers to give them what is now becoming a standard, The Video Testimonial. One of the top Marketers, Joe Polish, from Piranah marketing even buys his customers a cheap camcorder as a freebie gift for making the testimonial. He knows how powerful it is and knows that for less than $50 he can get something that will attract even more customers to him

Cover all your Bases

Everyone is different, not all your customer like to watch Youtube videos some prefer to listen to radio and podcast, and others like to read in print. That is why the best strategy is to repeat all your sales messages in all three mediums, this way you cover all your bases. Making sure that you provide written audio and video testimonials will greatly increase your sales conversion and build a stronger rapport with your potential customer. Check out Travis Greenlees webpages for an example of a true master of using testimonials to generate sales

Help your prospect Identify themselves as a customer

What you are really trying to do with a testimonial is to get your customer to identify themselves as your customer, so they come to you instead of you to them. This is why the content that you choose is important. Testimonials work best when they identify a difficulty and show how it has been overcome or show an areas in your prospects life that can be greatly improved by using your product or service. If your target market are overweight people who want to learn about dieting then your ideal testimonial will be from an overweight person showing a before and after picture. Anyone who is overweight can instantly identify with the pictures and its easy to develop a propulsion desire towards the slimmer looking body, especially if someone else has already achieved this result.

Brian Campbell

So now back to the Brian Campbell story, I left it until the end so that those who are oversaturated can leave having enjoyed the main article and those who want to hear more can listen to my analysis of what Brian has been doing these past few days. If you have noticed there are a lot of video testimonials scattered around all the group pages.

Motivation

Earlier this week, Brian gave all his students an offer many of them couldn't refuse, he said that in exchange for an honest video testimonial of their experiences in the Social Media Marketing System he would upgrade their membership to the next level. This was great motivation and all the really serious students whipped out their Webcams eager to get access to more than they initially paid for. What it also did on the Inside of the Social Media Marketing System was to make a lot of the members come together to help each other.

Helping each other

Brian has been unavailable to answer questions so many of the newbies and non technological members were having trouble making their videos and uploading them to Utube. What followed is typical for how this community of paying it forward members acted, those with the most video experience started sharing their knowledge, giving helpful hints and tips of how to make an effective testimonial, One member even went so far as to offer a free training, her name is Dulcita Love, from dulcitalove.com, she made a whole free course just for members, showing them all the steps so even a total beginner could learn how to make, edit and upload a video to Utube and then post a link onto a website or facebook profile. If you know how to do this already, please remember back to your first time and understand the frustration and difficulties some members were having. To see a Dulcita in action here is the link to her testimonial - Dulcita Talks about the Social Media Marketing System,

She gets my prize for the best testimonial and you can see how she has embedded text into it. After I saw hers, I immediately went out and tried to improve the one that I had made.

Action gets rewarded

So what Brian has done is mobilised his whole membership to action, given them a great incentive and also forced them to learn a new skill and to help each other in the process. Brian effectively ensures that only those who are motivated and who take action are shown sharing their experiences and they are the ones who will reap the real benefits.

Participation is essential

Anyone who expects a free ride had better not bother joining, you have to participate in order to benefit. There are plenty of other systems and programs that promise the world and will allow you to be a passive observer, The Social Media Marketing System is not one of these systems. Its true strength is not in Brian's leadership or fantastic marketing and sales skills but actually in the combined energy and experience of all the members. You don't have to be an expert, but you have to be prepared to learn to become one.

Real People

So while you are bombarded with all these testimonials, remember these are real people who are sharing their honest experiences, you can probably identify with at least one of them, I would expect that many of them are already your friends on facebook, and you will soon be learning alongside them when you sign up for the free training that Brian will be releasing soon,

Earn while you learn

As part of his affiliate scheme where he wants his students to earn while they learn he has made it so that if you want to register you need to get the link from one of the existing members. I am sure that you have heard from many of them already, and I trust you will choose the one who has given you the most value.

Social Media Monetisation

Here is the backdoor link to the Social Media Monetisation training go and sign up now to ensure your place. In the meanwhile I will be keeping a close watch on what Brian is up to and give you some insight into what he is doing and his underlying motivations.

Leave some feedback

If you enjoyed this article please leave any comments on the group wall - I want a piece of the pie

Brian Campbells Scarcity Tactics - fact or fiction?

What you are going to get in the next few weeks is a blow by blow analysis of the psychology behind everything Brian Campbell is doing with his upcoming launch on Facebook when he re-releases the Social Media Marketing System

You will see him pull in $100,000 or more using some simple and effective strategies that anyone can adopt in any niche once you understand the principles

Scarcity Tactics

So lets start of with a quick lesson in scarcity tactics and how powerful these can be. Marketing works best when you tap into the deepest primal human emotions, like the desire for sex, the lust for power or the hunger for food. Scarcity tactics play on the last one , Hunger. Make people hungry for what you have to offer, tease them with the anticipation of the future banquet, show them some of the food, let them smell it and taste a little and you will have your customers salivating and eager when you announce the start of the feast. Make the number of seats limited and exclusive and you make it even more attractive, make them queue up and wait to get in to build the anticipation even further. Everyone knows how nightclubs and top restaurants use this to great effect

Limited Places

I will be looking at how Brian is adopting these tactics and explaining why they are so powerful

If you look at the wall on the group page, you can see Brian made a post about there being limited places on this program. Believe it or not but this is actually true. Many other marketers manufacture this feeling of scarcity to get prospective customers to act faster and to create a higher perceived value and a feeling of exclusivity. It’s the same tactic an artist makes when they produce a limited series. It feels different If you know that you own one of 50 copies, instead of something that has been mass produced and less rare. Take the famous example of the stamp collector who bought the only other copy of the stamp that he owned and then burnt it, Instantly making his more valuable.

Uniqueness

Brian is in a doubly powerful position because he can still apply this same tactic and turn into a huge advantage for the members. He can leverage the scarcity and uniqueness of what he is offering and also the quality, No one else teaches what Brian teaches and no other group of people are working together in this synergistic way. We are right on the cutting edge of what is destined to be the next big thing on the Internet. And everyone who joins will truly reap the benefit in the future because they got in first. The viral nature of Social media rewards those who are first and those who are big. If you come late, you will find yourself competing against people who have huge friend lists, and a marketing system set up that leverages their own social power and the power of their close associates.

I will be expanding a lot on this concept in a later post. When I explain to you why you would be insane not to take part in this amazing opportunity

Competition

The Scarcity tactic has another major determining factor and that is how much competition there is. When Brian started and made his $10,000 claim, no one had heard of him, he had a much smaller network on Facebook than he does now, and only those who had been following him were interested in joining his program. If you have 250 places and only 1000 potential buyers it is very different to having 250 places and 100,000 potential buyers which is the situation he is in now. Just wait to see what happens when he launches to the whole internet.

Limited Quantity

He is in a position of strength and that is why he could safely make the $100,000 claim. Brian is a world class mathematician and knows statistics inside out, He wouldn't set a target he couldn't reach and I personally think $100,000 is a bit conservative. Brian's old business used to pull $100,000 per month so he is definitely no stranger to large numbers. Remember that his hero and role model is John Reese, the man who made $1,000,000 in one day, selling Traffic Secrets and made 5000 friends in 1 week on Facebook. John used the scarcity tactics to great effect by inviting all the top internet marketers to a seminar, got them to share their secrets and videoed the whole thing and then sold 1000 copies for $1000 each and selling out within 24 hours.

This time Brian is marketing not just to Facebook but to his own list of 30,000 people. He has already developed a relationship with this list and they will be eager to buy because they know that Brian always over delivers. He has also lined up several Joint Venture partners who will be marketing to their own huge lists, making the competition for the limited places much stronger.

Limited Time

The reason you want to activate the scarcity program in a customer is that you want to motivate people to take action. I can guarantee that Brian will be rewarding those who act quickly, by limiting the time available to make the decision ( another powerful scarcity tactic). He did something similar when he made his first $20,000, by making an offer that was too good to miss. I saw a great example of this yesterday when I listened to Stuart Tan host a teleseminar with Morgana Rey, and at the end Morgana offered half an hour of free coaching to anyone who bought her book and CD program for $100. Her normal coaching fee is $350 per hour and she used the scarcity tactic masterfully by telling everyone that her price will be increasing to $500 per hour very soon. And also this offer was limited to 24 hours so anyone who wanted to take advantage of it would have to act straight away. What a great way to sell yourself and also attract new clients and get more people interested in what you have to offer. She repeated the scarcity on time again by mailing her friends and telling them that the Audio recording o f the teleseminar would only be kept up for an unspecified limited period. If you want to hear the teleseminar here is the link.

Pre Selling

This tactic works best when the prospects are pre sold and already know about what is on offer. This is why Brian will be releasing 10 hours of free training so that you know before hand just what you will be getting and you will have the chance to test the strategies out for yourselves. He will back up his training with the testimonials of other members like me who are already on the inside. You wouldn't have joined this group if you weren't a bit curious about what Brian is up to, Ihope you have also noticed that I have been pre selling you right now in this article

Don't miss the next post

Look out for my next post, and remember I might be deleting these posts every couple of days, so you will have to keep checking back regularly to make sure you don't miss something important. I might not be able to message everyone when I make a new post due to facebooks limitations and restrictions. This analysis will be used as case study in our group launch training.

Leave a comment on the group page

As a final request I would like to ask you to go to the group wall and post your response to this article, tell me your honest opinion. - I want my share of the pie

Leveraging your time on Facebook

I have discovered that there is a simple way to leverage your effort spent networking on facebook just by choosing the right time of day to be online

Facebook's real power lies in the viral nature of the News feed, everything you do is recorded and sent to all your friends, so they can see when you have made a post or joined a group. And all their friends can see it too. Because Facebook is happening in real time, the news feed is constantly being updated. Old news gets pushed down the list, making it important to know when most people will see what you are doing.

To take maximum advantage of the viral effect You need to focus your activity when most of your friends are online. This will vary for everyone depending on what time zone you live in and also what time zone the majority of your friends live in.

Keep a track of the little box in the bottom right of your profile, this shows you how many of your friends are online at any given time. If you keep a record by writing down the numbers you will soon see that there are definite peaks at certain times of day.

So if you only have limited time make sure you do most of your social networking during the peaks as this will give you the maximum impact on your network and give you the most exposure to all your friends.

This strategy becomes even more important as your number of contacts grows,

Me and Tony Williams are working on an application that can automate this process for you, but until then you will just have to use a pen and paper.

Expanding Your Network Horizontally

Ok, So now you have 500 Friends, What Now?...

If you have been busy collecting friends on face book and not spent the time to segregate and analyse them then you have wasted a huge opportunity. Now you will have to go back and plough through a huge unmanageable list to find the diamonds and gold nuggets that you let slip through your fingers.

Time is your most Valuable Asset

Your time is your most valuable asset on facebook and learning how to leverage it effectively is going to be something everyone who is serious about social network marketing will have to learn.

As yet no one has developed an application to do this for us and unless you want to pay a lot of money for Act or other contact management software you are going to have to do the job by hand.

I discovered a great post on Brian Campbell's fan page wall by Kim Fleming (Austin, TX) she has her privacy settings on so I couldn't thank her for this. I hope she contacts me after I publish this

here is her short article, I have edited it and added a few of my own comments

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I wanted to show everyone my easy system for organizing their Friend List:

Organize Your Friend List

The Friend List is a private feature that only YOU can see. It is different from "Top Friends" or "Circle of Friends", which are optional applications.

The Friend List is an embedded feature in Facebook. Access it by following this path:

Go to FRIENDS on the top of your screen in your Facebook account

Click the drop-down arrow

Select "All Friends"

You will see a thumbnail (small picture) of each friend

The Friends List feature is on the right of the screen

It allows you to make a "new list", which is a way of organizing your friends.

Make Sub Lists

I made several "new lists" with these titles:

Categorise by Size

1-200

200-500

500-1000

1000-2000

2000-2500

2500+

Categorise by Type

Centres Of Influence

Family

Non-Internet Marketing

Not Active

Business/professional

Brian Campbell's Friends/fans

Analyse

What do those numbers mean?

Those numbers indicate the number of friends someone has; for instance, a friend with 397 friends would go in the Friend List titled 200-500.

After you have grouped your Friends List by level of activity, you are in a better position to leverage your time. And develop a strategy each time you go onto facebook and you have finished your basic administration of accepting friends, joining groups and answering messages.

Keep in mind some very important things:

Are they Newbies?

1. Look over your list of friends in the lowest category, those with 1 to 200 friends. Are they NEW TO FACEBOOK? You could be their first impression of Facebook. Show them how to add your blog feed to their page; get them into your funnel. Tell them the best groups to join and what friending strategies to use and how not to get themselves banned

Look for the Overlap

2. When adding friends, make note of how many mutual friends you have. If the friend has 500 friends, but you only 5 friends in common, there are 495 new people who will see your comments to that person's Wall. On the other hand, if someone has 500 friends, of whom 475 are the same as yours, then only 25 new people will see anything you post to that friend's profile page.

Build Relationships

3. Build relationships once you add friends. Get to know them, this doesn't mean just slapping your profile on their wall as many people seem to be doing. I look upon this as close to spam. It means spending a few minutes looking at their profile, checking out their blogg and then writing something that grabs their interest and might initiate a reply. I often write on the wall and then send a message saying I have written on the wall, with a brief introduction of myself.

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Be Attentive

That was a great piece of advice, its is so important to know where to spend your time. I make sure that as I add new friends I don't let any slip through the net, I need to know who everyone is, what their interests are, what business they are in, and how many friends they have.

More friends isn't necessarily better

What I discovered is having lots of friends isn't the most important factor. Don't get blasé when you reach 200 friends and think people with small friends lists aren't worth bothering with. Its quality not quantity that counts and often you will find someone who only has 30 or 40 friends but every single one of them is outstanding and has something in common with you.

High Value Profiles

After a while you can see what a high value profile looks like, its well organised, doesn't' t have lots of useless apps, every bit of real estate on the first 1-2 pages is highly optimised and geared to impress. Just having a professional photo on your profile says a lot about the person who is behind it. If you are targeting high income professionals to network with this is an easy way to move fast through someone else's huge list, just scroll down quickly and choose the people who jump out, It's what they intended by making their picture striking.

Be Yourself and Have Fun

I hope this has given you something to think about and set you to work exploring and getting to know your own list, the most important thing to remember is be yourself and have fun.

Don't get Banned

If you have a huge list or you manage several groups you stand the risk of getting banned if you send out too many messages in any one day. Facebook does not tolerate anyone marketing too agressively. Also cutting and pasting is a big No No. there is no quick way to get friends you have to do it the hard way unless you can make yourself famous and then people will flock to become your friend.

Build on a Solid Foundation

Provide valuable content, help as many people as you can and your reputation will slowly build itself on a solid foundation of relationships, friends and loyalties. A list of meaningless unknown faces that don't even know who you are is not a list you can leverage effectively.

SACRICICE PART 2

Sacrifice and Giving away part 2

A Social Movement

Facebook and social networking are going to be a new platform that will bring change to the world, Mark Zukerberg is a visionary and understands that what he has created is a huge social movement. If the six degrees of separation experiment had been performed by someone who understood the need to control the distribution network then they would have an email list of 4 million people. It would be a valuable list for any marketer and also a valuable tool for any spiritual revolutionaries like myself . , If you have read my blogg post, knowing where to tap then you will understand that you, my small social network are my small hammer that If I tap in the right place will have huge effects to the whole global consciousness engine. The affluent and powerful decision makers of the world are now accessible for the first time to anyone who understands how to use the system.

Customer relationships

Now getting back to what I began this discussion about which is how to adopt the sacrifice and service mindset in our lives and in our businesses. If you look at some of then recent trends in retailing it is clear that companies that focus on the needs of their customers and develop relationships with them will always be more successful than those that just see their customers as something to extract as much money as they can from.

People are your Business

I would like to keep our focus on our immediate social network level before we get into direct business strategies. Let’s take some of the everyday interactions on facebook and see how they can be enhanced with this new knowledge. Remember your extended social network probably contains your customer base, your future business partners and potential employees. What can you do to start building those relationships in a strategic way right now that might not give you huge rewards immediately but will pay off in the long run?

Practical Exercise

For those of you who want a practical exercise here is a small project to complete. Set yourself a deadline so you can define a clear timeframe by which you will have carried out all the steps. I then want you to leave some feedback and comments on what you have discovered about yourself and any exciting or interesting things that happened. Either leave them on the blogg or add them under this post on the group page

Step 1

I want you to take a look at your friends list and pick 3 people at random who you would like to develop a deeper relationship with. Preferably people who you don't know very well. Now for each person, I want you to make a list of all the things that you think you might be able to get out of that friendship, what qualities and talents do they have that you need for your business or personal development. Go into as much detail as possible, and imagine how happy you would be getting that person to give you what you want.

Step 2

Now I want you to hold that list up, and rip it into pieces and forget completely the Idea that you are going to benefit in any way, throw the bits away or burn them.

Step 3

The next step is to go and message each person and find ask them what you can give to them, Develop a conversation and offer to help them. Make sure you are fully adopting an attitude of wanting nothing in return. You are going to offer your help, advice or services completely for free. Just out of the goodness of your heart.

Step 4

Leave feedback, this is probably the most important part of this exercise because you are then giving away something of lasting value to this community, you are sharing your insights and experiences so that others might benefit. Do not omit this step!

Potential Problems

Now some of you might hit against some snags in that the other people don't trust you, they suspect you have some ulterior motive or want to sell them something. I want you to observe how that makes you feel, and also try and work out a way to change your behaviour so that you are seen as being genuine. Be totally honest, and if all else fails tell them about the exercise you are doing and why.

Deliberately Breaking The Rules

What you may discover is that most people who network always have a desire for some beneficial outcome for themselves. This attitude limits the possibilities of the relationship, everyone knows the rules and the social interactions become more like a business deal each person making sure they get an equal exchange for what they are giving. What you are doing is deliberatly breaking the rules.

SACRIFICE PART 1

Learning to Sacrifice and give away Part 1

One thing that all students of synergetics must understand is the concept of sacrificing your immediate personal gain in preference of actions and behaviours that strengthen the group or network.

In Nature

It is a principle that we can see around us in nature all the time like when an ant will sacrifice its life to act as a bridge for the other ants in its colony to walk across. Sacrifice also occurs when a female animal will give up her own life protecting her offspring from predators .

In Human Societies

We can see it occur again and again throughout history and is represented as the archetype of the Martyr. Jesus is I guess the most easy to recognize, The Archetypal symbolism and message of sacrificing his own life has been carried through history for over 2000 years. The Buddhists have their own sacrificial archetype in The Bodhisattva, a being who sacrifices their own liberation and enlightenment to help the rest of humanity achieve the same. In Native American cultures giving away is seen as a very great thing to do and they have developed ceremonies just for that purpose. In India, Hindus have a very strong tradition of giving away, they call it "Dana" and every one does it, it’s built into the society and cultural values. Most people give to the poor, give to sadhu's and spiritual mendicants and give to their gurus and teachers. No one ever has to ask, it just happens

Today

In our modern competitive western world these concepts and ways of behaviour have been totally lost, in the capitalist , attention seeking, celebrity, me culture, getting to the top for personal or financial success are often what is deemed the most important. Philanthropy is only practiced by the extremely wealthy and then often only for tax purposes. The practice of tithing has thankfully seen a recent revival but is sadly only a drop in the ocean compared to the selfishness that prevails in the world today.

Service Mindset

I would like to get everyone to understand that synergetic relationships cannot be developed until you have truly dropped this type of selfish mental pattern and adopted a service mindset. In the past all true spiritual traditions would have selfless service to others as their major pillar. Look at your life now and all the actions that you performed in the past week. How many times have you acted knowing that you were looking after your own best interests? I want you to stop right now and write down any examples that come to mind. If you have to go back into the past month or the past year that is OK but make sure you have a good personal example to work with.

Expand your Perspective

Now taking your example I want you to expand your view of the situation you were in, expand it out to include not just yourself but all the components in the system. All the people and all the issues that were surrounding the situation. I will give you a personal example to illustrate, One day I made myself a sandwich and when I went to get the bread there was only 2 slices left, Now I was particularly hungry so I ate them both. Ignoring the fact that my girlfriend was also hungry and would want to have some toast for her breakfast . When I expand outwards I have to identify the components of the system; from a personal perspective there was only me, the bread and my hunger. So the obvious solution was to eat both slices because I was hungry. When I start to expand my perspective outwards I see that there are other components in the system, namely my girlfriend, her hunger, my fear that there was not enough food for both of us, The potential conflict that might arise when she finds out I ate all the bread etc.

Zoom in and Out

You see when you zoom out your decision making strategy has to change because it is not just you in a single feedback loop there are other components that have to be accounted for. Had I adopted a more expansive vision in this example I would have identified my girlfriends hunger into the equation and looked for possible solutions that would have made both of us happy, The social benefits of thinking about the needs of others has to be calculated. My girlfriend would feel loved and cared for by the fact that I was concerned about her going hungry which would be a positive feedback into how we were interacting with each other. Taking the selfish approach It might be just another minor annoying behaviour that triggers a huge argument and fight between us, damaging the quality of our relationship.

Ghengis Khan

A good example comes to mind along similar lines from the life of Genghis Khan. When he was a teenager his father was murdered and he and his family were banished from their tribe to starve in the wilderness. It was winter and Genghis, his older brother, three younger brothers, baby sister and mother had only a few simple tools and had to struggle to get enough food so they could survive. What Genghis discovered was that his older brother was going out hunting and was not sharing what he had caught, eating his prey on his own in secret and then coming back to the family group to claim his share of what the other brothers had brought back. Genghis took strict action by seeing that if he allowed his older brother to continue such behaviour they all would die so he conspired with his younger brother, and abashed and killed the one who was acting in such selfish ways.

Global Perspective

Let’s apply this to the world on a global scale and it becomes obvious that a lot of the dilemmas, economic, social and environmental problems we face as a species stem from this type of thinking pattern and organisation principle. It is repeated on all levels of human society.

What you can do

I hope that by now you will have understood the problem, so now the question becomes what we can do as individuals to change this. We can only really change the world by changing ourselves first. My personal intention is that if I can help you to understand and change your perspective and it is proven to make your life more successful and also your business then you will go out and teach others these same principles and it will spread to infect the whole globe. This is where social networking comes in. Right now if we had a perfect viral network with one email I could get this message distributed globally. Feel free to copy and paste this into an email and send it off, but only if you feel this article has any merits.

Please check out part 2 of this article where I suggest some practical exercises