Remember that famous scene in Jerry MaGuire where Tom Cruise delivers a heart-felt plea to win back Renee Zellweger, only to have her reply: "Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello"?

There's a lesson here.

Many brands keep selling customers long after they need to simply shut up and ask for the sale. Here's what I've told clients more times than I can count:

Look at the amount of copy on your main web pages or your brochure. However much copy you have included, you are instructing a reader: "You cannot make an educated decision until you've read everything we've presented here."

If you wax on and on for paragraphs, you risk losing attention. Worse yet, you risk making something simple feel complicated and cumbersome.

So, here's what I recommend instead:

- Try a more presumptive approach. Cut your copy in half and cut to the chase. Present a killer headline, followed by your top few sales points, and then ask for the sale. Go ahead, just ask for it.

- If you're selling something very pricey or of a sensitive nature, create a baby step. Instead of a big commitment, offer a free trial, a product demo, a consultation, a 3-month membership, or some other opportunity for customers to inch closer to the big close.

And if you are marketing to moms (which I presume you are), this advice is even more relevant. Moms are subjected to incessant pleading all day long. One pack of Skittles can generate debate that lasts all the way home from soccer practice and into the house for another ten minutes of begging.

Enough already. State your case and ask once. Quickly, please.

Labels: advertising to women, Email marketing to moms, Marketing to Moms, Marketing Wisdom

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

A Maternal Instinct client just launched a new feature that can save customers a ton of pain and hassle. When I saw them offering the feature as an upgrade, I stopped and scratched my head. Instead, why not offer the full-featured service as the standard and give price-sensitive folks the option to remove it and buy a stripped-down model.

Our client agreed.

It doesn't matter what you are selling. Helpfulness is king. And the busier your customers, the more they value companies who solve complete problems for them. I could plot this phenomenon on a graph, with helpfulness on one axis and price-sensitivity on the other. As the first goes up, the second goes down. According to a recent American Express study, “Americans will spend 9% more with companies that provide excellent service.”

Think about it.

- The cab driver who, for $10 more, will meet you at the baggage carousel and carry your luggage.

- The contractor whose bid is higher than others, but who has experience getting plans through your city's notoriously difficult planning department.

- Camp that offers lunch service, too, for a few extra dollars each day.

We just incorporated using LegalZoom because they filed all our paperwork for us. I now send birthday cards from Tiny Prints because they will stamp and mail my cards for me. And I always accept the manicurist's offer to add a neck massage to my appointment (after all, how often does a working mom get to sit down?).

Which brands have earned your business by understanding this principle? And, more importantly, what is your business doing half-assed that you could do whole-heartedly?

Labels: customer service, pricing

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Ever have a moment where something you're living is mirrored by something you're reading? I just did.

While shopping for a new computer, I happened to be reading Paco Underhill's new book "What Women Want: The Global Marketplace Turns Female-Friendly."

One chapter examines Best Buy, a survivor in a space where competitors like Circuit City and Comp USA have gone bankrupt. Their secret? Creating a female-friendly shopping experience, complete with curvy home-staged displays, hustle-free employees not paid on commission, and over-sized photos of people -- not just products. As Mr. Underhill explains: "Men buy instruments of technology, whereas women buy instruments of relationship."

So true!

Guess where I ended up buying my MacBook? At Best Buy. The experience there differed so dramatically from my shopping experience at Fry's.

Words cannot describe how reluctantly I cross the threshold of Fry's. The creepy dated Western decor (complete with horse-hitching post out front), the lack of English-speaking help, the mystifying store layout, the snack food labyrinth leading to checkout, the depressing cafe (who eats there?), the world's slow deforestation via multi-page invoices issued even for purchases of a pack of gum, the guilt-implied inspection of your items upon exiting. Ick, ick, triple ick!

It's just so painfully obvious when a company has thoughtfully altered their stores to appeal to female shoppers...and when they haven't.

What stores strike you as female-friendly? Why?

Labels: Book Review, Retail, Sales Help

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.

Someone give Levi's a medal.

They've done the impossible: turned the age-old question of "Does my butt look big in these jeans?" into a declarative "Hey -- my butt looks right in these jeans!"

Levi's realized it's the shape of a woman's tookus that makes a pair of jeans fit...not the size on the label. And this wisdom wasn't concocted by a brand strategist with a pen -- it was hard-won by a team of patient folks with cameras. Levi's studied 60,000 3-D images of women's rear-ends to bring this central truth front and center.

What really stands out about this effort is that Levi's saw that it was worth the trouble. Sometimes it's a single fact that propels a brand to sit up and pay attention. For Levi's, it was this: 75% of women try on 10 pairs of jeans before finding one that fits. They wisely saw that this was not just time-consuming, but soul-crushing for women. Because pairs 1-9 have a berating mental accompaniment that goes something like this:

Pair 1: too tight.

"I am such a cow."

Pair 2: too low.

"Do I need new jeans that also require new underwear?"

Pair 3: too baggy in the waist.

"My butt's hogging up all the room -- no wonder these don't fit."

Etc. Etc.

Levi's realized that this routine was not only a failure on the part of the manufacturer, but a missed opportunity for women to feel understood. They wisely named their resulting Curve Types: Slight, Demi or Bold Curve and they claim their jeans fit 80% of women's body types in the world.

With a success rate like this, what woman wouldn't want to get her butt in gear and hit the Levi's dressing room?

Labels: advertising to women, Levi's

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below, even if -- no, especially if -- you don't agree with what I've written.