I don’t know about you, but on the rare occasions I have a few spare moments to surf the net, I sometimes find myself drifting to YouTube.

Now, ok, there IS a lot of rubbish out there, but I recently came across a company who have used Social Marketing to successfully grow their business.

Let me tell you their story…

Not so long ago, Blendtec was a little-known company that manufactured blenders – their consumer grade blenders cost around $400, so not the cheapest on the market.

Things started to change for them when George Wright joined the company in 2006 as Director of Marketing. The catalyst happened one afternoon, not long after he had started working for there. On the day in question George came across Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson testing the new bearings for the blender – by blending a 2×4 inch piece of wood!

While this was going on, the rest of the company’s employees went on with their work unphased. Apparently the practice of “extreme blending” was a regular occurrence at the factory, as Tom was keen to make sure Blendtec blenders were the best.

Now George, being the smart marketer that he is, recognised the potential to turn this into a marketing story which would make Blendtec stand out from their competitors, both in market visibility and in proving the quality of the Blendtec Blenders.

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If you have ever been involved in sales for your business, then chances are you’ve heard stories about the pushy “foot-in-the-door” salesmen of days gone by.

The principle they used is fairly straight forward. A salesman would roam housing estates knocking on doors, and the moment someone answered, would jam his toe in the door so the householder couldn’t slam it in his face.

With foot successfully lodged, he would then deliver a well rehearsed sales message about the particular product or service it was he was selling – to the somewhat captive homeowner (whether they were interested or not) – when all THEY wanted to do was to get this irritating man to remove his foot so they could shut the door!

The process these salespeople used was simple…

1. Chase down leads (find a housing estate)
2. Find a prospect (someone who opens the door)
3. Get their attention (jam foot in the door)
4. Pitch to them (recite carefully rehearsed sales pitch)
5. Try and sell them (don’t give up if there seemed to be any chance of a sale)
6. Either sell to them and take the money, or
7. Give up and move on to the next house

It was a numbers game, pure and simple. The more doors that got knocked, the more doors got opened, the more people heard the pitch, the more people bought, the more sales were made.

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Most people make the mistake of selling what they offer to the wrong people, because they don’t truly understand WHO their customers are and WHY they buy.

But that’s just the beginning…

Did you know that your prospect makes their decision to buy, or not to buy from you within the first few minutes (at most) of meeting you… yet they won’t necessarily know it themselves?

This all happens at the subconscious level.

Of all the articles I’ve read on the subject, I think Michael Gerber explains it the best in the ‘E-Myth Revisited’ – if you want to read the full version, then you can find it on page 218, but this is the gist of it:

Picture your customer standing before you – neither happy nor sad, not frowning or smiling – he is completely neutral.

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