“The secret of sales: make your customers laugh”

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🌟 Jim Blyth writes in 100 Great Marketing Ideas: Making people laugh has always been an excellent way to attract them. For this reason, companies can also use this principle to market more effectively.

🌟 Although humor is used in marketing and advertising for certain products—such as toys, food, and similar items—it is used far less for promoting many other types of products.

🌟 Without a doubt, jokes and humorous lines aimed at educated and high‑end audiences can generate strong word‑of‑mouth marketing for us, provided we use them with the right level of subtlety.

🌟 For example, BMW, which produces high‑priced cars for wealthy customers, releases a humorous advertisement every year on April 1st alongside its serious and luxurious campaigns—usually about the company’s innovations in car design.

🌟 In one such ad, the company announced that, due to new EU regulations banning right‑hand‑drive cars, it had invested in producing cars without steering wheels that would be controlled by the driver’s head movements.

🌟 In another year, the German company claimed it had designed a windshield wiper that scares away flies. In yet another ad, BMW said it had created a car that allows the driver to call their home microwave so their meal would be ready before they arrive.

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“Strategies for working smart instead of working more”

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✍🏻 John Maxwell

1⃣ The Leverage Strategy Leverage is the art of using tools to increase the quality of work or productivity. These tools may be technologies—such as computer software—or organizational strategies like improved systems. What tools do you usually use to maximize your results? For example, a salesperson who sells through seminars or televised conferences will clearly achieve more sales than someone who sells one‑to‑one. What can you do to make your time, knowledge, or skills your leverage?

2⃣ The Delegation Strategy A specific form of leverage is delegation—engaging others to handle parts of your work so your time is freed for more profitable activities. Let’s revisit the salesperson example: if a salesperson excels at closing deals, they might delegate administrative tasks so they can spend more time selling. If the profit from increased sales exceeds the cost of delegation, then you have an effective system. I’m always surprised to hear business owners complain that their salespeople dislike planning ahead and feel bad about it.

3⃣ The Time‑Management Strategy I often hear business owners say that private‑sector employees are too many because they waste hours getting work done. I disagree. If you can’t complete your work in a normal business day, you likely lack skills in focus, leverage, and delegation—or you’re a manager who uses time poorly. Time management is the art of organizing yourself so you can complete all your tasks within a standard workday.

🌟 Organizing your day begins at the end of the previous day. If you plan during your downtime, your brain will help you work more efficiently. It’s estimated that 50% of rest time is spent organizing the brain and structuring the knowledge and experiences gained throughout the day.

4⃣ The Strategy of Distinguishing Between Activities I’m sure you know the 80/20 rule: 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. The reason this applies to so many people is that they don’t know which efforts produce the best results. If you track your good outcomes, you can adjust the 80/20 rule to work more effectively for you.

🌟 If you knew which 20% of your activities produced the best results, you could organize yourself to spend more time on those tasks—thus increasing your profit per hour. If you knew the characteristics of the 20% of your customers who generate 80% of your business, you could target that group more effectively.

“Go to where your customers gather”

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🌟 Jim Blyth writes in 100 Great Marketing Ideas: Customers do not come to us magically or on their own. They think about buying our product because they need it. Therefore, identifying the right time, place, or situation in which a customer needs our product is one of the marketer’s most important responsibilities.

🌟 For example, the Ikarus C42 is an ultralight aircraft, but compared to other ultralight planes, it has several technical advantages. It has a cabin heater, more space, and a more attractive appearance.

🌟 The main problem is its price—the fully equipped version sells for £500,000. Because of this, the aircraft is not appealing to most people who are interested in ultralight flying.

🌟 For this reason, Aerosport, the company that owns and sells Ikarus aircraft, decided to offer it at a discount to flight schools so that their students could learn to fly using this model.

🌟 The logic was simple: once students received their pilot licenses, flying the Ikarus C42 would feel easy and familiar, making them more likely to buy one—either individually or jointly with other pilots.

🌟 After implementing this strategy, some flight schools even purchased additional aircraft to rent them out by the hour to students with lower budgets.

🌟 This example emphasizes that we must be present where many potential customers are gathered—and where they are most likely to need our product.

“Is it better to be loved or feared?”

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🌟 Psychological findings show that two factors—warmth and power—explain more than 90% of the variation in our positive or negative impressions of people around us. Which one is better?

🌟 Most leaders today emphasize their power, competence, and authority in the workplace; however, this approach is mistaken. Leaders who display power before building trust risk triggering fear—and consequently, dysfunctional behavior.

🌟 In a study of 51,836 leaders, only 27 of them ranked in the bottom quartile for likability and the top quartile for overall effectiveness. In other words, the likelihood that a highly disliked manager is also considered a highly effective one is one in two thousand. So: connection first, leadership second.

“Introduce your product properly!”

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🌟 Tim Connor writes in 91 Common Mistakes Salespeople Make: One of the mistakes weak salespeople make is talking too much when introducing their product. They assume that if they present “an ocean of features” to the customer, they will surely succeed.

🌟 But professional salespeople know that a proper product introduction is a kind of conversation in which both sides must participate—not a monologue where we speak and the customer listens.

🌟 For this reason, professional salespeople manage the product‑presentation meeting based on one key principle: listening and discovering the customer’s needs, wants, and concerns, and then linking them to the product’s core features.

🌟 That’s why, when you accompany professional salespeople—say, attending four product‑presentation meetings in one day—you notice that they introduce their product differently in each meeting, rather than repeating the same memorized lines like a cassette tape.

🌟 Based on this, to introduce the product we sell professionally, we must follow these principles:

1️⃣ Introduce the product briefly and clearly, focusing on a few key features.

2️⃣ Present the product from the customer’s point of view, not your own.

3️⃣ Create a two‑way, interactive conversation with the customer.

4️⃣ Focus on both the emotional and technical features of the product.

5️⃣ Engage the customer with the product so they feel a sense of ownership.

6️⃣ Periodically ask for the customer’s opinion about what you’ve said, so you can clarify any questions or concerns.

7️⃣ Select your talking points based on the customer’s specific situation.