Charm Offensive Coaching

Dear ​On Fire-er,

There’s a research paper going around saying that humans have all the attention of a goldfish, which is to say about 8 seconds. I’m not a math guy and I don’t know if that number is too high or too low, but I do know one thing for sure – getting the attention of busy people is one of the hardest jobs in business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a billion-dollar giant or a sole proprietor working out of your home. If you can’t get the attention of the people you want to attract, you might as well be invisible.

Consider this sales funnel:

The first part of the sales funnel involves you getting the attention of your customers.

Attention represents Opening the Sale, and Action is Closing the Sale. Here the “Sale” could be opting in to an email list, making a phone call, redeeming a coupon, making a donation to charity, or buying something. What we call the “sales cycle,” or how long it takes to go from Opening to Closing, could be an instant or even a year. It takes very little thought to purchase a bag of potato chips at 50% off, but signing a contract for a multi-million enterprise software application involving thousands of users is a considerably more complex decision.

If you’re a well-known celebrity like Tiger Woods or Julia Roberts, you don’t have to work very hard to get attention. Imagine that Tiger sends out a Tweet that he is giving private golf lessons or Julia tells the press that she is conducting acting classes. You can bet that a huge number of those who hear about these offers are going to pay Attention. When people with such visibility and credibility speak, people listen.

But people like you and me may be known in our immediate circles but virtually unknown to the larger audiences we want to attract. We can’t build a predictable and scalable business on Word of Mouth Marketing alone.

Our job may be harder than Tiger’s or Julia’s, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be successful. Everyone starts out as a nobody, and we’ve all heard of people who have come out of nowhere and become household names. Justin Bieber and Susan Boyle were unknowns who got their big break on talent shows.

The problem is that we’re all bombarded with noise everywhere we go, and it’s only getting worse.

According to the website Time Well Spent, “We live in an arms race for attention. Because we only have so much attention in our lives, everything has to fight harder to get it. YouTube autoplays more videos, so we forget to leave. Instagram shows new likes one at a time, so we keep checking in. Facebook shows whatever keeps us on screen, whether it's true or not. News media turns everything into instant, breaking news.”

A lot of people think that shouting louder than the next person is the key to success. That might work for a hungry baby who has only one way of communicating - screaming at the top of his or her lungs. But an adult who shouts is considered a loudmouth, a braggart, a pest. You can be successful this way. Love em or hate em, people like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh take pride in being offensive, but they also alienate entire segments of the population. I doubt that you want to do that.

There Is a Better Way

I’ve found a better way, a system based on immutable human nature, not hacks and tricks that will be obsolete as soon as the next Facebook algorithm comes along. A system that isn’t obnoxious, loud, and boorish. A system that takes advantage of involuntary human responses and allows you to turn predictable behavior into predictable cash.

I’m talking about a way of getting attention based on Laughter. Humour. Making People Smile.