Discover The Power of Brevity & Clarity in Marketing from Mike Saunders, the Authority on Authority

0:00No matter what business you're in, you've got a competitor or a thousand. The authority guy, Mike Saunders, he is the authority authority. You need to have something that sets you head and shoulders above the rest. They need to be seeing and sensing you as that person in a position of authority. He's an adjunct professor at many universities. He is on the Forbes Council. Well, you need to know how to briefly and clearly articulate your solution to your target audiences. What is success to Mike Saunders? My definition is constantly making steps forward toward my attainable goals and always watching to give value back to people along the way.

0:39When people make the goals too big, they become unattainable. So if you made$45 ,000 last year and now you made your BHAG goal$4.5 million, and somewhere internally, there's a disconnect. You don't believe it. So I think that you need to set goals that you believe and maybe make them incremental. If you want to make the 4.5 million, go from 45 ,000 to 145 to 445, but make them believable so that you can feel like you're making those steps forward and you're not like, you know, throwing the pebble in the ocean and it doesn't make a difference. Yeah. Adding value back. Take me more into the depths on that one.

1:16So I think that we need to be watching for giving the results in advance. You know, like one of my favorite books, and I've interviewed Bob Berg several times, but The Go-Giver, you know, giving that value so that people almost feel compelled to say, wow, thank you. What can I do for you? Value sometimes does not have to be a dollar figure. Sometimes value can be giving, I like to call it in my personal goal setting, FHV, focused high value. because when I can focus in on talking to someone, when I'm talking to someone on a Zoom or a phone call or a podcast interview, when I am zoned in and zeroed in on them and asking them really detailed questions, they feel valued.

1:57How do you make sure you're successful? What's the step-by-step formula or the methodology that means you know how you're going to be successful? You know you're going to be successful because you do these things. It's probably a goal-setting methodology called chunking. So you have your big old goals and then you chunk them down to quarterly, chunk them down to monthly. And so I open up my goals and I look at them every day. And then I look at my weekly goals weekly. And then in my monthly, I do a further, deeper dive. So really it's keeping all of your goals in the forefront of your mind. And yes, it means daily and oops, maybe I miss it one day, but I'm going to get them, you know, five days out of seven.

2:36And then you're, you're looking at your broader, longer range goals on a weekly and a monthly basis. Tell me, how do we succeed at gaining authority? I think you need to first start with what it is. No matter what business you're in, you've got a competitor or a thousand, right? There's nobody that has the corner of the market of whatever you do. So what sets you apart from your competition? You need to have something that sets you head and shoulders above the rest. And many times because our target audience and our sphere of influence is very busy. They don't have time to kind of sift through all the layers and go, eh, Brad's pretty cool because, well, let me look at this thing.

3:14They need to go, boom. They need to see it and feel it in an instant. And I think that what has to happen is they need to be seeing and sensing you as that person in a position of authority. Many times in my workshops, I teach this concept. There's a person by the name of Stanley Milgram, and he did social psychology experiments, I think back in Yale in the fifties. And one of the experiences that he did was he had someone that put in a room, kind of like one of those police, you know, rooms where it's like the double-sided window and here's a volunteer in the other side. And someone's at this table with electrodes connected to them.

3:52And someone is in a white lab coat with a clipboard and they're going, okay, you need to ask them these questions on this piece of paper. When they get the answer right, green light, when they get the answer wrong, buzzer, and they're going to get electric shock. And each answer they get wrong, it's more and more and more shock. And the volunteers like, oh, that kind of is weird. But the person in the position of authority with the lab coat, the clipboard at a university is going, we must do this. This is an experiment for science. And so what happened was they discovered that these people that were being asked and coerced to ask these questions.

4:26Now, obviously no one was getting hurt, but because someone was in a position of authority. Well, how can we as entrepreneurs, business owners, thought leaders take that concept and position ourselves at that level so that our people kind of subconsciously go, yeah, I need to listen to them. Many times it's, you need to have a good, good, clear clarity message for your target audience, but you need to have it so that it rises above the noise so people pay attention. So let's go back to then the formula, brevity and clarity. Explain that one to me. Knowing how to clearly articulate, you know, Donald Miller in his great book, Building a Story Brand talks about when you confuse, you lose.

5:04Yeah. Well, you need to know how to briefly and clearly articulate your solution to your target audience's problem. So let's relate that to sales. How do we succeed in sales? It's the prospect making a buying decision based on what you've taught them. And that kind of gets back to telling versus educating. And to be a good salesperson or marketer, you need to have a teaching, educating kind of an approach to where you know all the questions that they're going to ask. When you can teach and educate on those, you become an authority because they trust that and it's unique and it's not pushy. And then sales happen more frequently because people are coming toward you.

5:46You're not being a pushy salesperson saying, buy this now. So how do you succeed at social proof then? Because that's another thing I love the way you teach. Social proof is what is being said about you behind your back, next to you, in front of you, online, digital. And a lot of people look at social proof like reviews. Well, hopefully you've got good reviews out there. But also how about word of mouth referrals? That's social proof. How do we succeed at marketing with authority? You need to research and understand your target audience. And how do you find that out? Well, interact, maybe listen at some forums or social media or talk to a client or a prospect.

6:21Hey, what were you really concerned about before you made the decision. You know, what was going through your mind? How do we succeed at positioning, given all the noise and all the things that are going on out there? Well, you need to know your messaging and your solution, all those things we mentioned, but work on getting them positioned on the right platforms. How did you go from setting, you know, just normal goals? How did you go to setting the big and the massive goals? How did you transition? I think that it's just kind of dipping the toe in the water and going, Ooh, I could do that one.

6:50And then now I could, And I think we get motivated when we see a little bit of success and then we get a little bit more success. I think that we can motivate ourselves and set self-monitoring gamification. Reward yourself for these little micro wins that get you then to that goal. Got to realize that, okay, well, I made it this far. Hey, when I look back, I can go see where I've come from. That must mean that I can probably get to the next step in the next step. And that's a big success podcast for today. Hopefully you took a lot of notes, learned a whole bunch. and if you need to go re-listen to it, we dropped a lot of information right there today.

7:23Big success is what it's all about. And by the way, if you haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button so you're here with us every single week on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars, that's BS. Big success is what we're shooting for. Check the show notes for all the links. Make sure you follow through. Keep learning, keep coming back. Oh, and by the way, share this with any of your friends who you know are up for success. I'll see you next week on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.