I Could Never Sell

Week of March 4

In Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch shows why

a big part of the ideal client profile lies in understanding what your clients value, fear, want, need, and dream about.

For a deeper level of understanding of your clients:

I think you can tell a lot about how a person approaches life by looking into some favorite places. Favorite books, favorite songs…

…understand lifestyle patterns of your Ideal Prospects. Sometimes being on the lookout for hobbies, interests, books and magazines they read, musical preferences, and travel tastes can produce a deeper glimpse into what your Ideal Prospect really cares about.

Harder than it sounds. Failing is fatal.

A tough thing for some small business owners to swallow is that it doesn’t really matter what you like or dislike, what matters is what your target market likes or dislikes.

I almost named this blog Adventures in Aversion in much that same spirit. To explore what my market liked that I disliked, or vice versa. To see into my blind spots.

…just pay attention. Look around their office, listen to their stories. Ask the occasional question when a personal subject is introduced into a routine conversation.

Which means, of course, that you have left your office for theirs, and your schedule for theirs. That’s easy to forget on the Internet Highway.

Who are his heroes? Heroes he doesn’t know personally, but knows of. (Bertrand Russell’s knowledge by description, not knowledge by acquaintance). In case he looks at your proposal and asks himself: OK, what would Grover Cleveland do?

Better yet, who are his unheroes? Who does he despise? In case he stops dead in a conversation, staring right through you, thinking: Shit, now I sound like Dances With Wolves.

Love Thine Enemies. Your client does. Most people do. In the dark of a sleepless night, a man thinks “Maybe I missed out because my enemies know something I don’t know.”

Wouldn’t you understand George Bush Jr better, for example, if you recalled the big enemies of the country in his school years and just after? The Saudis and the Soviets? The Saudis, with puritanical rules for the masses, and godlike liberty and luxury for the royal family? The Soviets who pretend democracy but behind the scenes stop at nothing? Nothing.

All week I have been reading remembrances and tributes for William F Buckley. He was a hero to many. I too revisited my youth with a choke and a sob this week. I still have a few small stapled reprints of Firing Line somewhere on the shelves behind me.

Count on Buckley admirers to spell In Memoriam right while most of the world spells it wrong. We cherish that distinction. Uncomfortable then to become a mass movement, and a nationwide majority.

We are hearing that Buckley led a movement that came to dominate all three branches of government at once for the first time in decades. His movement climbed from the landslide defeat of Barry Goldwater to the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan in just two decades.

Making Buckley, among other things, a master salesman and marketer worthy of our study.

If not a candidate for sainthood.

Hmmm, sainthood….

For some reason a movie came to mind from years ago. Not by chance, it turns out.

I saw it when I was ten or twelve. I had my mother drive me to the library and the bookstore afterwards, trying to find the book.

Garden of Allah, I told them. At the end, a carriage pulls up to an iron gate. A long tree-lined walk leads to a Taj Mahal, a prison or a tomb or something. A man in a tuxedo steps from the carriage, waves to a beautiful woman in a long silk gown, steps through the bars, and turns from her. That walk seems to take forever. The sun goes down. The world goes cold and dark.

No one had heard of my movie or book. I gave up. Until the Internet era. Until this week.

Charles Boyer is Boris, on the lam from a Trappist monastery. Why the long face? He has broken his vows and lost his faith. Marlene Dietrich is Domini, on the lam from a convent after the death of her dear father. They meet by chance or fate on the sands of Araby and fall in love, but his guilty secret hangs like doom over their heads. I tracked them down.

A Southern Baptist in Southern California, Catholics were as exotic to me as the caravans of Araby. A Trappist monastery? What sort of trap was that? What did they do to you there? What did you do all day?

How had I not known Buckley was Catholic? A sharp eye would have seen it here:

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit.

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.

That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the nation free.

– William F Buckley, Up From Liberalism.

Fierce defiance of tyranny, yes. Liberty worth fighting and dying for. Very American. Kirk Douglas as Spartacus escapes slavery and builds an army of freed slaves. Russell Crowe as Gladiator rises from mortal slavery to slay the tyrant.

You’ll find a theme in your client’s gallery of heroes and favorite stories. In yours too. A theme like Liberty. Escape from slavery.The overthrow of the tyrant.

Or, here, Obedience.

For Buckley the battlecry is Obedience:

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.

Let us translate plainly, in the spirit of Buckley: Catholicism is no democracy. The Bishop does not poll the parishioners for their views. Where the choice is Catholicism or democracy, to hell with democracy. Maybe even Hell with a capital H.

Crazy? My professor of Chaucer at Princeton believed that democracy was an irresponsible departure from the traditions of the centuries, an indulgence for upstarts, a recent aberration that would one day heal over again like the rash from a fever. The People follow Nobility follow Monarch follow Bishop follow God. Along an unwavering line to the end of time. I was there in the Alito era. In Alito’s mind, you and I are The People, he himself is Nobility, and a president, given the proper party and proper attitude, is Monarch.

At the high water mark of Buckley’s movement, Catholics hold a majority on the Supreme Court. President Bush put two justices on the court, both Catholic, bringing the count to five. Seven of the nine justices are Republican. At last we have learned how to count votes on the Court. Not by States Rights or Judicial Restraint or Original Intent or other such red herrings. Count Republicans. Count Catholics. You’ll give your guesses much better odds.

Original Intent? Shall we try to figure what the founders and authors meant in their day, and follow that?

OK, let’s do. According to my Historical Atlas of Religion in America, in 1780 America had 2731 churches, of which 56 were Catholic. Two percent.

Whatever the founders were fighting and dying for, it was not Obedience, and not the chance to kneel and kiss a ring finger.

So let us hold that sainthood for Buckley until we sort a few things out; in the spirit of Buckley himself, stand athwart the march to sainthood and yell Stop.