What is the Value of Capturing Magic Moments?

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I can answer that question as it pertains to selling luxury items because I’ve seen the value in action. The answer in performance mathematics is double. Twice as many sales than the marketing and sales persons who don’t capture and post or publish them? Double the sales? Really? I have proof: my sales and general manager Claudio “Clyde” Ochoa. He doubled the closing ratio of the average sales professional. We were serving up leads to over 200 to sales people when he outperformed them all. Because of the positive, immutable, emotional force of the images of happy customers that he shared with the local buying population of prospects, he became the best piano cyber-lead converter in the nation. To be specific, the national average sits at 7.5% sell through of leads provided vs. units sold. He was at 15%. Why do you think it took me an entire ten minute interview to hire him? He had found the right reservoir of fuel to use and poured it on his stack of sales leads to light it up! 

Let’s examine some reasons it was successful for him and can be for you. The first I’ll call the umbrella reason: they tell a story. Magic moments tell a positive story, one every human secretly desires to be a part of. That magic “dream come true” moment when you know you have just acquired something that is life-changing. When you see the authentic joy in another human as they realize their dream has come true; it is irreplaceable. AI will never be able to compete with the outward expression of an authentic joyful soul. It is the “anti-artificial” moment that puts a smile on the face of the one who experiences it and the one who hopes to as well. Even the best photo shoots and Hollywood movies lack the authenticity of a moment captured “for real.” My proof of theory? Reality TV. All the tech and polish in the world can’t provide those real moments that happen unrehearsed.  

The story is powerful because it is the catalyst for a region of the brain untapped by data and linear input. It is the conduit that allows access to the heart. Here is a reality I’ve learned that I hope you will retain: “There is a beating heart tied to every dollar bill!” In the luxury marketing space, it is not all about the Benjamins but the road to them which travels straight through the heart… assuming there is one, LOL. Dollar bills never go away but “when someone falls in love, well, priorities really shift.” All you romantics try and disagree with me if you’d like, but you know I am speaking the gospel.

Now is Clyde a natural sales talent? Yes. Is he so good because he was born with all this innate knowledge? No. Yes, he was born with people skills, but his love for selling, the mentoring he received during his early days, and his dedication to sales education, allowed him to reach above the norm. He combined what he had learned with social media branding and massaged them into a winning formula. One without the other will get you halfway there like the other typical sales pros, but if you meld sales education with branding yourself as the most fun and dependable specialist of your kind you have a recipe for success at the next level!   

That’s the good news. The bad news? Well there isn’t any unless you have a proclivity for laziness. If you are lazy this will never work for you. It takes a bit of a learning curve to use all the platforms well, some gear such as good cameras and microphones, some creativity and experimentation, but most importantly discipline! All the phone calls, texts and emails you send can get lost in the seas of daily sales outreach communications. You can be informative, you can be friendly, you can make all your calls and texts and emails and end up making a good living by staying after it, BUT to make an exceptionally productive career in today’s world? You better become a magician! You better get social.

Your commitment to capture and share magic moments has everything to do with how well you brand yourself and build a catalog of social activity that can be used to position yourself as the absolute area expert in your field. Allow me to continue using Clyde as an example and an inspiration. 

He dedicates time to building content (and remember Bill Gates coined the phrase “Content is King”) that positions him as an expert and a person who has helped consumers experience their “Magic Moments.” When delivering products in the home, when buyers have that “aha” moment and fall in love on the showroom floor, you have to be prepared and ready to capture it. You have to be in the habit of some important menial things: get comfortable asking for happy people to let you catch them in that moment, be ready to catch them, and then be disciplined enough to share it with the world. Now allow me to clarify that it's not about “likes” and “shares,” although there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s about having links and stories that tell your prospects about “people just like them” be they a surgeon, a teacher, a firefighter or a business person. People from their community who trusted you and had their dream come true. Whether it is a custom piece of jewelry, a guitar, a yacht or a piece of real estate, those magic moments separate you from the competition not disciplined enough to capture and have them to offer up as credibility. And why is that important? Because credibility is the first module of the sales process. It also proves that you are likeable and trustworthy which helps you “make a friend easier”, which is the second module of the sales process. Before you can provide any kind of product solutions, you must establish credibility and trust or the probability is that all of your product knowledge will fall on deaf ears. Conversely, if a prospect has seen your YouTube, LinkedIn or Facebook posts while you “court them”, it makes it easier for them to warm up and open up to you. Why? Because they have seen with their own eyes as a result of links you have shared, that people’s dreams can come true through knowing you! If a picture is worth a thousand words, I have no idea how many more words an authentic magic moment captured by video is worth. Ten thousand words?   

It is a culture change and your boss or friends may view all the time that you take to write or find and share articles to be the local specialist as a waste of time. It will take months to capture and post these positive life altering events and build a catalog, but be disciplined! Content is King! Before long, you will have an unfair branding advantage over your competition, and your average leads-to-sell-through ratio will double as well as your income and value. And you know what? After you start writing more, taking more pictures and videos, and posting more positive things, all the good that you do will become more real and the value you place on what you do will grow  deeper… so will your confidence. Let’s use an old time quote from Mark Twain to drive the common sense behind making the decision to start down this path real: “The Secret of Getting Ahead, is Getting Started!”   

As you begin to capture and share these magic moments realize two critical things: one - you will automatically be doing more than your average competitor and two - the more you do it the better you’ll get. Shoot for quality as best you can but remember the lesson of reality TV - authenticity rules. Make pictures and videos as well as you can but even before you get great at it, MAKE THEM ANYWAY! 

I’ll end with a story and a plug:

I had used social media sparingly as an independent artist to promote shows I would perform as a songwriter to raise money for Matty’s Vision, a non-profit my wife and I started to raise money for blind students. After a couple of years, I had built a nice little email catalog and Facebook following, and many folks would reserve tables previous to my shows in support of my art and the foundation. I say that to be able to affirm that I know if you are consistent at something you can build a following. That part of my personal life was fulfilling because I was working for free and giving all my proceeds to a good cause. 

Flash forward some years, and Clyde and I start working together. He had the idea that having two guys from different generations, that had studied sales psychology for years, would make a good podcast series. I had been adding LinkedIn contacts for years and keeping in touch with folks “one on one” with messaging, but never used it to promote anything. 

We only did a couple “Papa Jack” and “Clyde the Guy” podcasts before we had to stop and build out a new platform, but I’m happy to say that we will be starting them back up soon! (That was the plug.) I had no feel for the reach my catalog of LinkedIn contacts gave me until I posted our first podcast! Wow! The numbers were great. Not all of them were prospects and clients; in fact, I had family members amused to have a peek at what I do in my sales coaching career, but as Neil Diamond wrote “Now I’m a Believer!” The number of comments and people connecting was evidence that if you do create good content, even if it's not Hollywood quality, it can be helpful and entertaining to those who care about the subject matter.       

So there you have it: a formula for doubling your sales success, if you aren’t already combining strong follow up with regular social media branding. Don’t take social media lightly as a conduit to a higher profile and evidence you can serve people to allow them to trust you more readily. It works! Yes, it takes some work but heck, if you’re going to go to work and do something everyday, why not do it to the best of your ability? For those of you who have an aversion to social media, I encourage you not to judge it by the weirdos, freaks, and psychos on it. It is a good tool that just needs to be used properly. “It’s like a cyber hammer. What can you do with a hammer? Tear something down or build with it.” It’s not the hammer, it's the person using it and how that matters. Get it out of your sales tool box and put it to work! You’ll be amazed at its power and how it can help you share those magic moments through which you can help change people’s lives for the better, therefore your own, and those you love.    

“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.” – Brian Solis      

“I'm not into things that feel like a sequel. There's just something magical about when something happens for the first time.” - Nathan Fielder