Category: Trust & Credibility

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

In my last post, I have made it clear that holding to customers is always a superior strategy to getting new customers, as lead generation comes with a cost. In this post, I am taking the post important concept from the article – progression of trust and I’m developing it.

Can you tell me what trust is? It is hard to define. It is an intangible, like happiness. Trust in my words can be defined as the willingness to accept that what another person is true. We rarely think about it in an analytical manner and yet, trust, the concept of trust is one of the things that makes the world go round.

Let’s use a dating analogy. Virtually everything in sales can be related to dating. You are a guy. You meet a girl. At first, she doesn’t know a lot about you. She doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t say yes easily to you. You get to know her. She gets to know you. You spend time together. A first kiss. A first night together. She trusts you more and more. She opens up more and more. She becomes vulnerable.

This teaches us something about selling. In marketing or sales, the idea of trust is how vulnerable an individual is willing to be in front of a vendor, how much an individual is willing to risk to receive a desired benefit. In the first stages of a business relationship, trust is low so only low ticket products are sold. The prospect is vulnerable to losing only small amounts of money. Each time he buys something and is satisfied with the result, more trust is created. In this manner, just like a couple can move from holding hands to spending the night together, a customer can move from buying a $20/book to spending $10.000 for a seminar.

Amateurs think that the $10.000 ticket is sold because his needs grew to that level. The truth is that his needs were at that level at all times because it is impossible to create a need in the marketplace through marketing alone. Marketing can only take an existing need and amplify it towards making a sale. He could have benefited from the $10.000 product in the first day. The reason he did not buy it wasn’t that the benefits weren’t there but because there was no enough trust to make this particular purchase.

Everything you’re selling at this moment, ranging from one hour of coaching for $50 to a three weeks platinum retreat for $19.997 can and will benefit the prospect. Most product chains are not designed to fulfill growing needs but rather, to fulfill a need at a different level of effectiveness. In other words, you have excellent solutions, you have good solutions, you have decent solutions for the same particular problem.

Traditional thinking say that price is what determines if the prospect will buy a premium, standard or sub-par solution. Price has a lot to do with it and yes, price does influence buying decisions, up to a point. What really matters though is the perception of value (what he is feeling that he’s getting for the money) and the level of trust he has in you as a vendor. The perception of value dictates that in order for a solution to feel appealing, it must be worth to him multiples of what he is paying and this is true no matter if it is a $10 or a $10.000 product. The entire idea of “it is a good deal” refers to perceived emotional value and not actual price, otherwise, there would be no market for anything above $500 and people would find it kind of hard to say “The room at <Insert Luxury Hotel Name Here> that had just cost me $1249 is a really good deal. It is a good deal because he feels he’s getting an experience worth $5000 or $10.000, not because of the base price.

Getting back to the idea of trust, how much people trust you will determine how much they’ll buy. Each time they’ll get the desired benefit from your product, they’ll buy more. Each time you disappoint them, they’ll buy less. Of course, there is a limit because even if someone trusts you completely but they live on a $60.000 yearly salary, they can’t spend $10.000 on your seminar but all things being equal, the progress of trust is what makes or breaks the profitability of a customer relationship.

This is one of the reasons why brands command premium prices. A brand is nothing more than established trust in the mind of the consumer. It is a symbol that other people picked this product and were satisfied with the results obtained. Branding is a boost to the progression of trust scale, putting the prospect in a position higher than if he would try the product for himself, the first time. You buy a luxury sedan because you know the name behind it. Without that name, you’d have to be persuaded more to purchase.

When I’ve bought my first MacBook, I’ve bought it based on the name of the brand alone. I’ve never tried or tested Macs before and yet, I’ve paid an obscene sum of money to Apple simply because I was familiar with their brand and this acted as a replacement of the progression of trust process.

My point here is very simple. Trust exists in all areas of life, not just business. To get people to do what you want them to do, there must be trust. Trust is built through delivery of the desired benefits, through a strong brand and through other factors. The more time you spend with a customer and the more positive experiences this given customer has, the more likely he is to answer a positive when you’re promoting a higher ticket product.

Think of it as a scale from 1 to 100. Selling a $10 product requires a trust level of 5. Selling a $500 one requires a trust level of 100. You need to bridge the gap between 5 and 100 with products that gradually build trust and buying compliance.

How do you do this? Let’s have a talk just about this topic. As a marketing consultant and direct response copywriter it is my job to help you build the systems, the materials, the mediums required to attract more customers, sell products of higher value to them and keep them on board as long as humanly possible.

I would like to invite you to a complimentary 30 minute call on Skype where we can discuss about your business. I’m going to do a diagnostic of your current circumstances and then determine what would be the best approach or course of action in order to accomplish your given goals.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

I have realized that the 80 – 20 distribution and the TOC (Theory of Constraints) are largely related. This means that in any I/O system, the 20% that generates 80% of the results comes in the form of eliminating the most important system-wide bottleneck.

Life is made out of I/O systems. It is what you put in (input), you get out (output). Everything in human existence can be abstracted to some form of I/O. It is true if you go to the gym – how much you exercise and how much benefit you get from that given exercise. It is true when watching TV, when reading a book, when dating, when running, when eating. Everything in human existence can be summarized to a simple formula “you put effort in and you expect some benefit out of it”.

The 20 – 80 distribution simply states that 20% of what you do creates 80% of the outcome. This is not always true and it can be 30 – 70 or 10 – 90 or even 5 – 95. The key principle is that there is an uneven distribution between cause and effect and a small part of what will do will be highly efficient in obtaining your desired outcome while a large part will be system waste.

The TOC is something not known by most people in the self-improvement field as it is an industrial management concept. It states that a system is always limited by a major bottleneck and that the output with which a system functions is always limited to that given bottleneck. TOC states that bottlenecks needs to be either removed or the systems reconstructed around them in order to achieve a high efficiency without waste.

So how does this combine together? Any system, be it a business, dating, self-improvement, spiritual growth, improving your body is bottlenecked by something. This means that at some point, the effort you put in is reduced to the amount of that bottleneck. Imagine that you have a freeway with cars on all three lanes. At some point, it all converges into a single lane. That’s a bottleneck. The number of cars that can go on that one lane is equal to 1 / 3 of the number of cars that could go before. The entire system is reduced to the bottleneck, therefore reducing efficiency by a factor of 2X or 66.7%.

At that moment, most people take the most lackluster approach, put more input. This means putting more cars. But putting more cars won’t reduce the bottleneck, because a bottleneck is never about input but rather, about how input is dramatically lost to output. Eliminating cars is not a good idea either because yes, if you eliminate 66.7% of the cars, the bottleneck is gone as input equals output but the efficiency is exactly the same as before. This is one of the facets of the TOC, rebuilding the entire system to fit the bottleneck in the case that the bottleneck can not be fixed, as eliminating input costs is just as good as increasing output profits.

The only solution towards improving results is eliminating the bottleneck. This means making that bottleneck a three lane road so I/O once again.

How does this apply to real life? Let’s take the example of a salesman. He calls 100 people a day but he makes only $500 in sales. His conversion rate is only 10% which means 10 out of 100 people buy what he’s selling. Now, an unsuccessful and not so smart sales manager would say “work harder, you don’t want it hard enough, hoooraaaaaahh” as most inspirational and rhetorical blah blah goes. A smart one would simply say “you’re putting enough effort but you’re bottlenecked by your ability to sell. Take a few days off, improving your pitch dramatically, come back and you will get better results”.

This is why I despise most self-improvement posts on Instagram nowadays. They lack any common sense. In a system, your output is not represented by what you put in, but simply by anything under your biggest bottleneck. You’re limited not by your effort, but by your global efficiency and putting 20 hours instead of 10 hours into an inefficient system will give you the same ROI as putting 10 hours. Yes, it will give you more results, because I’m using ROI (return on investment) as a metric and not revenue but the focus for a smart person must always be ROI, what you get in for what you put out.

Bottlenecks are the reason why you’re failing in your life right now. You’re failing because your entire system is limited, is struggling in one key point. Now, you have two solutions. If you can rebuild the system without that key point, then your bottleneck is gone. In some cases, you don’t need to fix the bottleneck, you simply need to eliminate it as a critical step from cause and effect. This means rebuilding the “production line” so the bottleneck is not a required part anymore.

In most cases though, the bottleneck is important and the 20% that will generate 80% of your return is always looking at and fixing that bottleneck. It is not doing more of what you’ve done by taking a hard, critical look at what is keeping you in place and then actually solving it.

So when it comes to setting life priorities, on a day to day level, ask yourself this simple question:

“What is my major bottleneck right now in me achieving goal X?”

“What can I do to either increase this bottleneck (increase I/O ratio through the bottleneck) or eliminate it altogether from the system while obtaining the same results?”

Keep asking yourself these questions day in and day out and you’ll achieve system wide optimization where 1 unit of energy = 1 unit ot desired output in no time.

Are you interested in discovering in finding your bottlenecks when it comes to marketing and conversion? Then let’s have a talk together. I’m offering you a complimentary 30 minute session in which I’ll ask you some key questions about you and your business. After this session is done, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty how I can help you and what you’ll get out of it. Please use the link below to get started.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter
www.razvanrogoz.com

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

What’s your story?

I’m asking this almost every person I meet. In most cases, I get blank stares as it is not quite the type of question to start a conversation with. In some rare cases, I do get an answer. This answer comes in the form of a journey that the other person experienced. It is with ups and downs, with moments of courage and cowardice, with joy and pain. In that moment, I know that I’m connecting with that person no matter what, because there are few things more intimately than sharing your story.

And … this is exactly what you need to do with your market. You see, if you’re trading time for money or even if you’re selling information products, your market is not only buying the asset (service or product) you’re delivering. They’re also buying a part of you, your personality, your time, your identity. Selling an eBook or a seminar is a far more personal experience than selling a laptop. They are buying for who you are just as much for what you’re offering. The product may contain the functional benefit, but you’re the charm behind it.

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From the desk of Razvan Rogoz
Dear friend,

Look, being a self-improvement coach or trainer is very popular nowadays. It doesn’t require a lot of accreditations (or any) and anyone can do it. This means that the market is very competitive and to be honest, everyone and his grandma is now a self-improvement coach. Most are broke and have nothing to actually show, in terms of results, but that’s another story.

My point is that you need to find a way to stand out. This is a field where you really must know what you’re doing when it comes to marketing. Most are oblivious to this fact. They think that if their heart is pure and just want to help people, millions will flock to their website and place orders. These are the first to give up this field and start searching for another job.

From 100 people, 90 bring nothing but good intentions. There is no positioning, there is no strategy, there is no USP (unique selling proposition). Most entered this field because someone told them “you’re really good at motivating people, you should build a business out of this”. This is true. If you like people and you’re good at inspiring them, then this is a good field for you. But getting thanks and appreciation is very, very different from getting paid. It is easy to say “you’re great”, it is a lot harder to get $100 instead.

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