Okay, back to the Guy Kawasaki speech at the not-so-recent Inc. 500/5000 conference I attended at the beginning of October. Guy offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients. I am (and have been for 2 months) in the middle of summarizing those points and discussing how they are applicable for us at Outskirts Press so perhaps they can also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book). And, in the meantime, you should get Guy’s book, “Enchantment” for the total skinny.
Step 5 is to overcome resistance.
The easiest way to overcome a potential customer’s resistance to use your service or product is to provide social evidence that other people are using it and enjoying it– that it is helping other people and/or solving their problems. Facebook is a great way to provide social proof or “likeability.” In fact, Facebook has a “like” button for exactly this purpose. At the time of my writing this (January 8, 2013), Outskirts Press has nearly 8,000 “likes” on our Facebook page (7,943, to be precise, but who’s counting?). When authors visit our Facebook page, they are greeted by a friendly, helpful, upbeat community comprised of their peers, many of whom have successfully published with Outskirts Press and are excited with their high-quality book! That is social evidence in a nutshell.
But don’t just rely upon Facebook. Customer testimonials are tried and true, and offer compelling social evidence that other, real people, are using your product and service with great results. Weight loss products and services have been using this tactic for years, although they lose a lot of their credibility when they have that little disclaimer at the bottom stating “Results are not typical.” Why not share lots and lots of typical comments instead?
That’s what we do with our author testimonials. We have been publicly sharing two new author testimonials each week for as long as I can remember on the testimonials page of our website, and to be frank, our testimonials are “backing up,” which means two per week isn’t frequent enough. So starting in January, we are increasing that output to four new author testimonials every week. Sharing the successes of others with your new potential clients or customers is a great way to overcome their resistance, and a great way to enchant them.
President of Outskirts Press 