Clients buy emotionally and justify their purchase intellectually. The best companies in the world structure their sales and marketing programs around this concept.
When I bought my first BMW, the salesman put the top down, made sure the A/C was ice cold, and turned on a little rap music to heighten the mood. He knew that if I was going to buy that car, I had to fall in love with the emotional experience of driving it.
After I bought it, I received emails and snail mail that affirmed the good decision I made in purchasing that vehicle. BMW sold the car emotionally, and reinforced the sale intellectually.
Rainmakers is on the path to following the same concept for our member purchase and retention process. Hosting fantastic events is the emotional experience. After a prospect is “wow-ed” by an amazing event, they attend the WOMMM (Creating a Word of Mouth Marketing Machine), and reinforce their thought process to purchase intellectually.
WOMMM was launched in Indianapolis last month, and our new members (and current members) love it! I have already noticed members like Jeremy Zucker getting a faster start, and creating conscious results, with their relationship marketing efforts as a result of attending the WOMMM.
Now it’s time to work on creating an amazing emotional experience for members and guests at events. I have been to almost all of our events in Indianapolis. Some of them are awesome. Some of them have been fairly lame.
What could we do to create a model so ALL of our Indy Rainmakers events are awesome?
I would love to see 50 members and 30 guests at every event. There is a buzz in the room. People are passing business, and connections are made. Every attendee leaves Rainamkers events with a renewed sense of energy and passion that is like none other in the marketplace.
That is the vision of the event that we could create.
Here is one idea I presented to the chairs yesterday during an event “experience” discussion. What if we used our most successful events as true “hubs” that supported 3 to 5 power circles of 10 people apiece, and they all hosted the event together. That way every event was guaranteed to have more people in attendance, and the pressure to fill the room with guests was removed from each individual action board? We would also be able to start more targeted power circles, and they could leverage the power of “getting the meeting” faster at the event that they co-host.
The Indy chairs seemed to really like the idea, and thought it could create some real leverage for our events and our power circles. It’s easier to invite guests to awesome events. It’s easier to make a decision to go to a fantastic and inspiring event.
Those are just some of the thoughts. What do you think of this idea to create a fantastic event experience?