Why repulsion marketing > attraction marketing

Alec Baldwin has blood on his hands.

(Well… I meant it metaphorically – but now I’ve realised he literally has it in reality too lol.)

His stupid „AlWaYs Be cLoSiNg!1!1“ phrase from the Glengarry Glen Ross movie?

Well…

IT HAS DONE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO TENS OF THOUSANDS OF BUSINESSES AROUND THE WORLD….

I want you to imagine something:

Imagine you live in a peaceful little town…

(Let’s say it has some 10-20k residents.)

It’s great – the people are good… your neighbours are kind… and it’s just a nice environment overall to be in…

But…

It inevitably has some „bad apples“.

Even though the majority is great…

… there’s probably a couple of thieves, burglars, vandals, murderers, killers and so on.

It’s simply the law of statistics – you can’t avoid it.

So naturally…

You want to gravitate towards the „good apples“ and ignore the „bad apples“ right?

(Hell, not even ignore – straight up AVOID them. I don’t want to be in the same room with a hitman…)

And therein lies EXACTLY the problem with the:

„Always be closing!“

„Sales is just a numbers game!“

„Get as many customers as possible!“

Why the hell would you want EVERYONE?

These stupid goo-roos and washed-up car salesmen don’t understand that when you’re trying to get everyone…

… you’re also going to get the „bad apples“.

(When you pray for rain you’ve got to deal with the mud too.)

Why would you want to deal with a customer who does chargebacks for no reason?

Why would you want to deal with a customer who complains and moans about his order not arriving 0.7 seconds after he places it?

Why would you want to deal with a customer who needlessly keeps nagging your customer support?

You DO NOT need EVERYONE to run a growing, successful and profitable business.

Stop chasing 1000 low-value customers – start chasing 100 better premium ones.

But that means starting to Qualify & Curate in your marketing.

(Email, and in general…)

It means doing some Repulsion Marketing…

… alongside – the classical – Attraction Marketing.

(Almost everyone does the latter but ignores the former…)

It means to ABQ (‘Always be Qualifying’) – instead of ABC („aLwAyS bE cLoSinG!1!1)

The pros do it all the time:

You’ll see high-end hedge funds keep saying (in their advertising):

„Don’t reach out unless you have $500.000 or more in your brokerage account.“

And the not-so pros violate this principle and suffer the consequences – Kathleen Kennedy almost ruined the entire Star Wars franchise with her appeal to girls:

„…there were a lot of companies that were in place who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls. And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls. What’s wrong with that?“

What’s wrong with that Kathleen…

Is that girls don’t buy Star Wars.

(And those that do probably make for lousy customers.)

You can’t have your cake and eat it too – you can’t have everyone.

So don’t try to appeal and market to everyone.

But this takes gonads to do. Because it means saying „no“.

Now I don’t have a problem saying no – frankly, I’ve never had a problem with that throughout most of my life…

But some people are… well…

Natural people pleasers.

I have close friends who are like that. So I understand it.

So if you don’t feel comfortable saying „no“ and repulsing some of your potential – and current – customers…