E-commerce has already changed media and advertising spending in the big corporate budgets.

Huge chunks of traditional advertising and marketing dollars are now being spent online. In 2004, Chrysler decided to spend 10 per cent of their US$2 billion pool of ad dollars online. In 2005 it was 18 per cent and in 2006 it will be more than 20 per cent. If you do the maths that’s over $400 million in 2006 that used to be spent on ads in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today or NBC TV that are now being spent on the WWW. In an interview with Fortune magazine in 2005 about e-commerce trends, Julie Roehm, Chrysler’s Director of Marketing Communications explained her decision, ‘I hate to sound like a marketing geek but we like to fish where the fish are’.

Thanks to e-commerce on the WWW, Google has been making big profits from selling online ads. These profits have driven its stock prices to make it the most highly prized media company in the world.

Because of my book called WOMBAT Selling I’m often asked, “Why Wombats?”

I like wombats because they are widely misunderstood and underestimated.

Go to Wikipedia to find out that wombats have an extraordinarily slow metabolism, taking around 14 days to complete digestion, and generally move slowly. They are the ‘greenest’ of creatures because of their amazing water and food conservation, three times more than kangaroos which is saying something! Yet they can go faster than any human and reach up to 40 km/h and maintain that speed for up to 90 seconds.
They are no pushovers, either. When attacked, they can summon immense reserves of strength — one defense of a wombat against a predator (such as a Dingo) underground is to crush it against the roof of the tunnel until it stops breathing. Its primary defence is its toughened rear hide with most of the posterior made of cartilage which, combined with its lack of a meaningful tail, presents a difficult-to-bite target to any enemy who follows the wombat into its tunnel. One naturalist commented, that a predator biting into a wombat’s rear would find it “comparable to the business end of a toilet brush”.

Probably, no-one knows more about wombats than ‘The Wombat Boy’. In the 1960s, Peter Nicholson was a boy at Timbertop, the country ‘retreat’ for Geelong Grammar boys. Prince Charles went there, too. If you have time, read this transcript of Australian Story.

At the end of last night’s masterclass in Melbourne four young businesspeople came up to introduce themselves. They told me one of them had been attracted by the wombat on the cover of WOMBAT SELLING and bought the book at Adelaide airport. She gave it to her partner who stayed up all night reading it. He told his friends and they googled the title of the book, found the website, read about the masterclass and flew over from Adelaide to attend. As an author, of course, I was delighted at the compliment. But, it is a nice example of the power of word of mouth in action. Go Adelaide!

The next masterclass will be on Tuesday, 21 November.  Email today to book reservations.

WHERE: Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Suite 1, Level 5
2 Clarendon Street, Southbank, Melbourne.

WHAT: How To Raise The Innovation Intelligence of Your Enterprise: A 120-Minute Innovation MasterClass with Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

WHO: SOT Members & friends; teachers of thinking; executives and entrepreneurs; others who are interested in raising their innovation intelligence.

FEES: There are no fees. Seating must be limited to ‘first come first served’. These pro bono events are sponsored by School of Thinking and Melbourne Exhibition Centre to promote Thinking in Melbourne.

HOW: Email to reserve a place for you and your associates in these unique events. Say which dates you wish to attend. Give the the full names and organisation of participants. You will receive confirmation by return email. All privacy is respected.

Nemo Nascitur Sapiens Artifex - No-one is ever born a skilled thinker.

In reality, this medieval dogma of ‘closing the sale’ is a nonsense that is taught to salespeople as novices and accepted by them as a sacred belief – and unfortunately, it seems very few challenge that belief ever again. Like an information virus that gets into their brains, ‘closing the sale’ influences young salespeople’s behaviour and dominates their sales activities. The costly failure of this ‘close-the-sale’ strategy is well documented and nothing has so damaged the image of the sales profession than this selling disease. It’s difficult to see how young salespeople could be misled more than to be given the impression that their job is to ‘close the sale’.

FACT: You cannot close the sale. The decision to buy is an electro-chemical event that takes place in the brain of the customer. The salesperson cannot control that event. What the salesperson  can do however, is to create an opportunity for that event to happen–starting and making a sales call.

FACT:  The salesperson opens the sale by making the call, the customer closes the sale by deciding to buy—YES–or not to buy–NO.

Before a customer can say YES or NO we first have to get his or her attention.

There’s always been the problem of attention in selling but now it’s getting worse. In any marketplace, every trader competes with every other trader for the attention of the customer. It is obvious that before a trader can make an offer they first have to get the attention of the potential buyer. Visit a flea market, a fish market, a supermarket or a stock market and see the enormous amount of selling effort which is directed to getting and holding the attention of the customer. This is mostly done through brain branding.

A brand is a corporate cognitive pattern. The pattern links a brain directly to a corporation. Brain branding, using repetition, is the programming of a corporate cognitive pattern – a brand – in the brain of a customer. This is done through the power of repetition. When a minimum of 10 repetitions of a brand takes place in a customer’s brain, the pattern becomes cognized and later can be recognised and used as part of the customer’s experience. Brain branding makes it easier to attract the future attention of the consumer. As you’ll see, the key is repetition. Looking back from the end of any transaction – when the customer buys – there is always a track winding back to attention. Attracting and holding attention has always been a problem in selling and as the information big bang gathers momentum it becomes harder and harder to secure ‘share of attention’.

Why? Because there are:

-more TV channels than ever before
-more magazines than ever before
-more ads than ever before
-more offers than ever before
-less ‘attention share’than ever before.

Your selling has to become cleverer and cleverer at getting and holding attention. In a true darwinian sense, only the fittest offers can survive and the edge of an offer is attention.

When it comes to intellectual capital, the message is the medium.

The message is THE most fundamental unit of intellectual capital.

I believe that the message is about to take a quantum leap and that we are on the threshold of a whole new appreciation of its importance in the business context. Technology has now elevated the message, as a unit of measurement, to the level of other basic business measurements like dollars and personnel.

I believe that, before too long, measuring messaging in a business will become a daily protocol.

I believe that the introduction of this daily measurement – counting the messages – will directly lead to immediate and significant increases in productivity and profitability.

I believe that the message is becoming the most important unit of measurement on the Internet.

Here’s a link for you to download, with my compliments,
a copy of my ebook–Software For Your Brain–
which contains all the School of Thinking lessons.
You may also forward this link to your colleagues/friends if you wish:
http://www.schoolofthinking.org/thankyou

WHEN: The next one is on Tuesday 26 September. There will be one more
in 2006 on 21 November. Commencing at 6pm sharp to 8pm close.
Reservations by email only.

WHERE: Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Suite 1, Level 5
2 Clarendon Street, Southbank, Melbourne.

WHAT: “How To Raise The Innovation Intelligence of Your Enterprise”:
A 120-Minute Innovation MasterClass with Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

WHO: SOT Members & friends; teachers of thinking; executives and entrepreneurs;
others who are interested in raising their innovation intelligence.

FEES: There are no fees. Seating must be limited to ‘first come first served’.
These pro bono events are sponsored by School of Thinking and
Melbourne Exhibition Centre to promote Thinking in Melbourne.

HOW: Email to reserve a place and say which dates you wish to attend.
Give the the full names and organisation of participants.
You will receive confirmation by return email. All privacy is respected.

A WOMBAT (Word Of Mouth Buy And Tell) is: a satisfied customer who replicates another satisfied customer.

Yes, we are all WOMBATs and so naturally we know quite a lot about how WOMBATs think, how we behave and what we like and what we dislike.
For example … … …

WOMBATs like to be first. We like to share. Show off. Help out and be helped.
We like to flirt with other WOMBATs. We like to influence them and, in turn, we like to win the approval of other WOMBATs.

Sometimes, we like to be Ambassadors. Other times, we like to be waited on and served.
WOMBATs do like rewards but we are also wary and suspicious when they are offered too easily.
Some WOMBATs are free and independent. They replicate for their own reasons, not for yours.
WOMBATs do love recognition. We appreciate feedback. Especially when it is sincere, fair and objective.

WOMBATs distrust salesmanship. Sometimes we are entertained by it but we don’t necessarily buy it.
WOMBATs trust WOMBATs. WOMBATs hate being boxed-in, corralled or pressured. We detest being manipulated and we warn other WOMBATs.
WOMBATs can be fooled but we are not suckers. WOMBATs are reliable friends but we can be devoted enemies.

We are often unpredictable because we have our own secret networks and connections. Our contacts cross generations, neighbourhoods, and hemispheres.
WOMBATs have friends in unexpected places. WOMBATs have a limited attention span. We get bored. We tire of things.

We like to participate. We don’t like being lectured. WOMBATs do love stories. We like to tell them and hear stories from other WOMBATs.
We love gossip. It’s how we relate to one another. We love stories about sex, scandals, lies and ‘closed doors’.

WOMBATs like secrets and stories about the bizarre and unusual. Why? Because we love to be the one to pass these stories on to other WOMBATS.

We love to get a good laugh from another WOMBAT so we pass-on stories that are hilarious, outrageous and naughty. WOMBATs tell bathroom tales.

Who are the WOMBATS?
Everyone is a WOMBAT. If you look at selling from the customer’s viewpoint, not the sales manager’s, you recognize that the customer closes the sale, not the salesperson. In fact, as customers, we are all closing sales, all the time.

What do WOMBATS do?
Wombats buy things and then they can’t wait to tell other WOMBATs about their experience. Good or bad.
• We are all buying ideas and opportunities, goods and services all day long.
• We are always telling others about our new ideas, our favourite products and the latest services.
Yes, we are all WOMBATs and so naturally we know quite a lot about how WOMBATs think, how we behave and what we like and what we dislike.

Some WOMBATS are also COIs
A COI is a centre of influence–an individual who influences ten other people. In any population sub-group like a target audience or a market niche or a passion group, the 10% lead the 90%. There is usually a small group of heavy-hitters who call the shots and are called a COI (centre of influence). COIs may be a handful of trade journalists, a few market-leaders, some early-innovators, an industry spokesperson, a recognised guru or a high profile customer. When these people talk the rest of the target audience listens! Every WOMBAT marketing plan or personal sales plan should give deliberate thought to who should be on the COI list.

The Book
• If you’d like to download an instant ebook version of WOMBAT SELLING: How to sell by Word of Mouth just go to The Book link on the RH side of the screen–click and download.