The Brain Audit

by Sean D'Souza

  How to Isolate the Problem:

  In earlier versions, we talked about the importance of the ‘Problem.’ And while it’s important to recognise the power of the ‘Problem,’ it’s also important to recognise that if you bring up too many problems in your message, you not only scare off the customer, but you’re also unable to drive home the importance of the problem in all its detail.

  Process vs. Solution:

  In some instances, we tend to confuse our process with the ‘Solution.’ What’s the difference between the process we follow and the ‘Solution’? You’ll find the explanation here.

  Target Profile:

  This may seem like the ol’ Target Audience chapter, and it’s not. It’s different. And not just different for the sake of being different. This ‘Target Profile’ not only reduces your workload tremendously, but it also increases the emotion and power in your message. Read this chapter. Read it well. Read it often. Easily the most important chapter in the book.

  The Roller Coaster Effect:

  Often we bring up the ‘Problem’ and then promptly drop it. This isn’t a good idea. The ‘Roller Coaster Effect’ goes into a little detail about why you need to drive home the problem.

  The Wife/Husband/Accountant/Business-Partner Test:

  You'll run into the real reason why you need to create a list of objections. And how to create a comprehensive list of objections .

  The Six Questions For An Outstanding Testimonial:

  Remember how the earlier versions of The Brain Audit introduced you to these six questions? Well, there’s a slight variation in the questions so you can get more precise answers. There’s also the reasoning behind why each of the questions is being asked. And why it’s imperative to ask all six questions.

  The Link Between Testimonials and Objections:

  You may not have realised it before (and I sure didn’t), but there’s an umbilical cord between testimonials and objections. Find out how they’re related, and why the relationship is critical, especially as the customer is very close to making a decision at this point. This link reduces the resistance the customer feels, so understanding this relationship is pretty darned important if you ask me.

  The Hidden Risk:

  There’s always a hidden risk involved in any transaction. Obviously, this isn’t your standard 100% money-back guarantee. So what’s the hidden risk?

  Naming the Guarantee:

  Hmmm, most of us never name our guarantee/warranty. Find out why it’s important. And yes, there are examples too.

  Butter Chicken Recipe:

  No, you’re not seeing things. It’s a recipe for butter chicken. And if you want to impress the heck out of someone, follow the instructions.

  How To Create Uniqueness-The Steps:

  In a way the entire chapter has been approached from a different perspective, so reading the entire chapter with a fresh mind will help.

  Checklists:

  Yup, this is new. And there’s space in the book itself if you want to write in the book. I can’t bring myself to write in books, and if you’re like me you may want to go online to www.brainaudit.com/checklists to get a downloadable set of copies.

  Hmmm, that’s a fair chunk of new stuff. And now it’s all isolated, so you can go directly to the new stuff, or at least know how to find it quickly. Don’t blame me if you end up reading the book over and over again, anyway. :)

  No Entiendo

  Imagine I offered you the vacation of a lifetime.

  Imagine you were able to fly first-class to any place on the planet. For three weeks you and a friend could stay at the best hotels; devour the most exquisite cuisine; even get a credit card with no spending limit. And yes, the offer would have no catch. You wouldn’t have to buy any thing, or even be grateful to anyone in particular.

  Would you turn down the offer?

  Despite the irresistible nature of the offer, I’d say that most people would not take up the offer. Notice I didn’t say: ‘Turn down the offer’. I said: ‘They wouldn’t take up the offer’. And there’s a reason why the most irresistible offer gets little or no response at all.

  You see I made the offer in a foreign language.

  The offer was made in a language unknown to you. Naturally you would not understand a word I said. And so it is with your audience. You may make the most bewitching offer in the world, and all you’re likely to get is a confused look from your audience.

  And the reason for the confusion or lack of excitement on the audience’s part, is simply because you’re speaking in a foreign language. And the same concept of language applies to your customer’s brain.

  Your customer’s brain is attracted to one language.

  Yet you’re selling or marketing your product or service in quite a different language. Yeah, we all know how mesmerising your offer is—but hey, results are elusive until you speak in a language your customer understands well.

  Which means that you get an instant response the moment you switch to the customer’s language. Your customer nods. He smiles. He shakes your hand vigorously. And yes, he wants to sign-up right away. Amazing as it may seem, the offer hasn’t changed. But the language—ah, that’s changed for sure!

  The Brain Audit is a language the brain understands.

  It’s not a language of persuasion. Or coercion. It’s doesn’t psyche the customer into buying against his or her will. It’s simply a language the brain understands and responds to. And the reason why the brain is so prompt with the response will become crystal clear, as you learn how to present the information in a sequence.

  But surely brains don’t think sequentially, you think.

  Well they do. Your brain uses a sequence, and so does your customer’s brain. We just do the sequencing so darned quickly that we fail to see the steps. The Brain Audit freeze-frames the steps so you can see each step. And literally know what the customer is thinking of next. And next.

  In fact, the moment you’ve finished reading a few chapters, you’ll be laughing nervously. You’ll realise that The Brain Audit can instantly put a lot of ‘oomph’ into your communication. And yet, you’ll feel a little uncomfortable.

  Because even as the ‘aha-factor’ kicks in, you’ll begin to realise that you’re going to have to make some changes in your presentations; your business cards; your brochures; your website, etc.

  And you’ll gulp silently.

  But don’t let the gulp bother you. Because the good news is that even though you’ll have to re-do some of your marketing and sales communication, you’ll now step up to becoming an auditor.

  An auditor who has a set of benchmarks.

  Because if you were to ask someone to critique your business cards, they’ll simply give you an opinion. But the opinion will be inconsistent from person to person.

  But as a Brain Auditor, you’re going to have consistent benchmarks.

  The reason why you’ll get consistent results with The Brain Audit, is because you’re not going to base your communication on the ‘iffiness’ factor. You’re actually going to follow a simple structure.

  And the best way to use the structure of The Brain Audit is to use the concepts as an auditor would. So just as an auditor looks at something after it’s complete, you too should do the same. Create your web page, and then audit it. Create a presentation first, then go clean it up. Create an advertisement, and only then fix the glitches.

  Audit your communication a lot, and you’ll slowly pick up the grammar of The Brain Audit. You’ll steadily pick up the words. And before you know it, you’ll master the language.

  It’s a language that we use every single day at Psychotactics.com.

  We use the language of The Brain Audit to help us sell our products and services. And thousands of clients from countries all over the world have used it to get results both for themselves, as well as for their own clients.[2]

  Which brings us back to the vacation of a lifetime.

  Use the concepts of The Brain Audit; add a d
ose of hard work, and you’ll be able to write your own ticket to not just one, but many vacations. Now this book isn’t a magic potion. But it gives you a deep insight into what makes our brains respond, and what causes our brains to ignore a message. The ickiest feeling in sales and marketing is one when you’ve got a great product or service and the audience just won’t respond.

  This book is dedicated to erasing that icky feeling forever.

  Warm regards from the land of 44 million sheep (give or take a few million)

  Sean D’Souza

  Auckland, New Zealand

  P.S.: No hurry, but when you put down this book, you’ll also find some goodies at www.brainaudit.com. Go there, for updated information, audio and video.

  P.P.S.: I know you’re keen to start this book on page one. Well here’s a tip. Go right to the chapter on testimonials. And here’s what you’ll find. You’ll find six questions you can ask your customers. When you ask these six questions, you’ll get a testimonial that’s detailed and a mile long. You can literally jump right to that chapter; read the page; put down the book and call a customer.

  And see instant results before the hour is through.

  Try it. You’ll be very pleased with the results.

  Is the Brain a ‘Conveyor Belt’?

  Is the brain predictable? Or is it random? Is it male or female? This little introduction will give you a slightly different insight into how the brain processes information. It will show you why a customer decides to buy, or to forego the purchase.

  Best of all, when you are selling your product or service, you can actually identify at which point you forgot to take a ‘bag’ off the conveyor belt. And why this action causes the customer to back away, just as they’re about to sign on the dotted line.

  But what’s this conveyor belt all about?

  If you don’t take all the ‘bags’ off the customer’s brain, the ‘bags’ go round and round, causing the customer to put off the purchase.

  The brain works just like a conveyor belt.

  Imagine you just got off a long flight, and you’re waiting for your bags to come out on the conveyor belt.[3] When you got on the flight, you loaded seven red bags onto the plane.

  As you wait with the other passengers, you see one red bag, and then two. Then three, until you seem to have just six red bags.

  So when do you leave the airport?

  The question is academic and almost pointless. Without doubt, you leave when you have every one of your seven red bags. No matter how late you are or how tired you felt, you wouldn’t leave without every one of your seven red bags.

  Customers behave in exactly the same manner.

  Customers have this conveyor belt going around in their brains. And when you fail to take out even one of the bags, customers wait for you to give them all the reasons to buy. If you leave even one bag out of your pitch, your customers tend to avoid making a decision.

  In fact, it’s a good idea to watch customers.

  Do you notice how they get a little edgy? Have you seen how they mull over paperwork? How they say they’d ‘like to think about it’? Fidget, fidget, fidget, they go. Then it’s ‘mumble-something-under-their-breath’-time. And you never see those customers again.

  The truth is, it isn’t hard to get and keep the attention of a customer all the way to the sale—and beyond. But time after time, we let customers walk away and lose the sale. Losing a sale is bad enough. Not knowing which ‘red bag’ caused you to lose the sale, will drive you even more crazy. If you knew exactly which factor was missing, you could fix it. And never lose the customer again.

  This is where we get off the menacing randomness of the conveyor belt and get into the realm of structure. The structure of identifying each of the seven bags, and then systematically removing each bag off the conveyor belt, so that the customer can understand just what you’re selling and why they should buy it right away.

  Before we go ahead, let’s take a good look at what the red bags are; how they play a role in getting a customer’s attention; keeping that attention; and then how all these steps end up getting you the sale.

  Voila! The whole set of red bags:[4]

  Bag No. 1: The Problem

  Bag No. 2: The Solution

  Bag No. 3: The Target Profile

  The Trigger

  Bag No. 4: The Objections

  Bag No. 5: The Testimonials

  Bag No. 6: The Risk Reversal

  Bag No. 7: The Uniqueness

  Bag 1: The Problem

  Imagine you’re driving down the highway. You don’t seem to have a care in the world. You’re listening to the music, you’re watching other cars as you pass them by. And you’re mildly aware of the quickly changing scenery as you whizz down the road.

  And then, from the corner of your eye, you notice something. You notice some red and blue flashing lights. What do you do? Almost instantly your foot goes on to the brakes. No matter what your speed, you seem overly eager to slow down.

  So what caused you to quickly change your speed, and get instantly alert? You know the answer as well as I do. It was the red and blue flashing lights of the police car ahead, that caused your brain to do some pretty smart calculations. And that in turn caused you to slow down.

  Your brain is trying to keep you alive for obvious reasons.

  So why did the brain act in this manner?

  The brain recognises a problem long before it recognises the solution to the problem. In a millisecond, the brain was able to work out the ramifications of what would happen should the policeman decide to focus on you. In those fractional seconds, the brain worked out how your trip would inevitably be delayed, and how you could cop a fine—among other nasty problems.

  Your brain is indeed obsessed with problems. And for good reason too. The brain’s job is to keep you alive, and yes, to help you reproduce and advance your species (In this book, we’ll be concentrating on how your ‘brain keeps you alive’.)

  And to keep you alive, your brain starts to catalogue all the things, events, situations and experiences it needs. And very quickly it works out what’s an irritant, what’s kinda dangerous, and what’s really scary. Which means that if I were to throw a tiny piece of cloth your way, you’d probably raise an eyebrow. But if I threw a block of wood instead, you’d be ducking, swerving and defending yourself in the best way possible.

  That’s your brain at work. And that smart little brain does one heck of a lot in a matter of milliseconds.

  Brain sees change

  Brain recognises severity of problem

  Brain saves your butt

  In any given situation your brain goes through these quick steps:

  Step 1: Your brain sees change

  Step 2: It recognises if you’re going to be in trouble—or not

  Step 3: It takes measures to get out of the way.

  Which is why you tend not to step in dog poo.

  Logically, dog poo should be the last thing on your mind as you walk down the street. Because as you look around you on the street, there are wonderful things to see. Stores full of goodies; restaurants filled with customers and enticing menus; interesting looking men, women and children passing you as you saunter by.

  And then your brain sees it.

  Right in front of you, in the midst of your wonderful surroundings, is dog poo on the pavement. And all the great goodies, restaurants, people and things go out of focus, as the brain takes every possible step to make sure you don’t step in the poo.

  Poo is icky. Poo is sticky. Poo has caused you enough trouble in the past. So while it’s nowhere as life-threatening as the block of wood, your brain knows that it needs to focus on poo. As you can clearly see, the problem has got your attention to the exclusion of everything else.

  ‘Poo’ isn’t a big problem, but it’s a problem all the same. A problem you’d take pains to go around.

  Just like the problem gets Lisa’s attention.

  Let’s take the example of Lisa. Lisa’s l
aptop isn’t quite working as efficiently as it should. But it’s not a big worry for Lisa–not yet. Then as she’s walking down the street, Lisa sees a sign that says: ‘Is your laptop acting weird? It could be the first signs of an imminent hard disk crash’.

  Suddenly, the sign has elevated Lisa’s minor irritation into a bit of a crisis. Lisa can picture her laptop die right in the middle of an important presentation. She can see the computer crash after she’s put in a full day’s work.

  That computer problem which was just an irritant, is now recklessly racing to the top of her to-do list.

  As you can see, problems seem to activate our brains.

  And when you bring up the problem in your marketing materials, sales pitches and presentations, you are in turn activating the brains of your customers.

  Dead cats get more attention than gleaming red Ferraris. How come? Well, that’s just how our brains work.

  But how can we be so sure?

  How can we be positive that the problem generates more brain activity than a solution? Let’s look at the research. Let’s look at the tests done by John Cacioppo, Ph.D., at Ohio State University.[5]

  John Cacioppo showed a bunch of people three sets of pictures. The first set normally arouses positive feelings (say, a Ferrari or a pizza). The second set of pictures stir up a problem in your brain (a mutilated face or dead cat). And the third set of pictures produce neutral feelings (a plate, a hair dryer).