Several pieces of information have intersected and fell in place with an audible “click” for me this past fortnight as I launched the Secret Women’s Business Network blog.

One hint came from the tiny tome The Contrarian Effect (Why It Pays Big to Take Typical Sales Advice and Do The Opposite) by Michael Port and Elizabeth Marshall. Michael made the point that sales tactics and processes of yesteryear, while they may “appear” to work, they are short sighted, burn potential and repeat customers, and were designed with the seller in mind not the buyer.

How many of the large internet marketing launches did you feel was really to help you the customer compared to “I know this is all just trying to get as much money as quickly as possible”? The big boys in the business sniff at anyone saying that the current method of launching does not speak to them on a personal level. The big guys are missing the point entirely and should be careful they don’t lag behind.

If you are hearing feedback that your most savvy customers are not enjoying something on a personal level, you better listen. You are doing something wrong. You may gain short term customers, but you will lose those customers that are going to be most valuable to you, the long term, socially connected ones that will sell FOR you. With all the buzz currently about Seth Godin’s Tribes, I hope this message gets through, build your tribe, on a PERSONAL level. Be yourself and lead people like yourself.

The next piece of information came from a quick scan of this report (well it is 43 pages and I am out of printer paper!) that looked at 1000 socially connected consumers ( a massive group and getting larger every day). An absolute MUST read I believe.

The first tip in the social networking part of the report is to “Share the Spotlight”. Alas many of today’s marketers only share that spotlight with their product, or within their own network. It is not hard to see who masterminds with who (or who paid to be in a mastermind group with who) because that is ALL these people promote. They do not favourite the little people that “may” be a customer one day, they do not respond to random reachouts by social network users who are keen to speak to them. they have a closed loop happening and it is obvious to those outside of it.

The third part came from a Frank Kern give-away video that talked about the “Core Influence”. The same stuff I learned a few years ago while going through my NLP training, but when Frank delievers it to his audience it is a new concept to them because they are all still thinking of their customers as walking wallets. Frank takes them through the exercise of visualising their customers as a human being with a real life so they can connect better with that “person”.

Why is that such a radical idea? Why has connected with your customer on a “personal” level been the very last thing a sales person has wanted to do. Is it because they do not really believe in the tactics they are using and product they are selling? I certainly think so!

The new world demands authenticity. If there is even a hint of some form of duplicity your customers are going to find someone else to buy from, and there are a LOT of other sellers they are now aware of. Gone are the days of the single sales area of the Fuller Brush man; the internet means your customers can buy anywhere, any time, and they want that to be a friendly, fun purchase. They also want to buy from someone they LIKE, because the new consumer is VERY AWARE of where cash goes and what it does. Everyone prefers to help friends over strangers.

The oldest sales tactic of all, also has to go. I believe the “sales letter’, that wall of text that the seller convinces themselves works, is in it’s twilight. Why? Very soon the written word will not be “personal” enough on the internet unless it can be seen to have come spontaneously through social networking. This new measure of how we weight personal communication is already in place in the spoken word. A discussion amongst friends at the pub holds more weight with you than something you read in a magazine, even if it was written by an “expert”. The human algorithm says give more weight to the word of a friend over the word of a stranger (unless your friend is an idiot). It’s automatic!

I am watching with interest and curiously at the changes that are happening as the so-called sales gurus of the internet are evolving (and remember the whole internet marketing thing as an entity to itself is only about a decade old). As it dawns that there are better ways to do things, that the friendly shop keeper on the corner had it right, and the relationship between him and his customers was mutually respectful and long term, rather than the soul-less mall wham-bam of cash grabbing.