CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Traditional marketing says that you have a product or service and that you have to try to get that product or service into the possession or use of as many people as possible, so that you can make as much money as possible. So you have to go out into the world and put up billboards, and place ads in newspapers and on Facebook, and appear in videos on YouTube, and get interviewed on radio and television, all with the aim of contacting, persuading, and conquering the resistive

We saw in the last article that the things that we have become accustomed to calling 'customers' are actually almost vacuums disguised as people. A prospect is someone with a vacuum (a need, a desire, a gap, something missing); a customer is someone who has decided that you can fill that vacuum, enough to have made a monetary commitment to you - they buy something. You don’t need to ‘develop a product’ to make it convincing or attractive - you need to develop your understandi

So far in this little course we have learned about a range of things including what a customer really is and how he or she is attracted to a product or service. ‘Conversion’, we have learned, is about transforming one type of prospect into another, the type that becomes a customer. And we have learned that all of this has much to do with something that we have termed a ‘vacuum’.   Please remember that whenever we use the word 'vacuum' we are talking about need . The point of

You will have read a lot about ‘conversion’. Conversion is normally seen as the change from viewer or reader or prospect to customer - that is, the process by which a person becomes committed to you and what you have to offer. It’s worth noting exactly how this process works, as well as why you should place just the right amount of attention on it, neither too little nor too much.   In the same way that a reader is pulled along by a story, so is a prospect almost physically p

In the second part of this series, we saw that it was possible to devise something called a ‘customer template’ - in effect, a model customer or the ideal sort of person who would be completely fulfilled by your product or service.   If you describe a customer in terms of vulnerabilities, losses, threats, weaknesses from which they are suffering, perhaps someone who has had previous ideas crushed or made fun of, leaving a feeling of weakness and hopelessness, an interesting t

So many assumptions, so little time…   You think you know what a business is? What a product or service is? What a customer is?   Some of your assumptions as to what this things are are getting in the way of you being as successful as you would like.   Some Radical New Definitions   Let’s run through some quick definitions of the above - which you will have to take at face value at present.   Business:  a ‘business’ is an activity or operation designed to fulfil a need. Per t

So you want to be an entrepreneur?   Or someone who owns and runs a successful business?   ‘Entrepreneur’ could be defined as a ‘business creator’.   Every successful entrepreneur or businessperson begins with their existing position, and that position is one of seven potential starting points:   1. You are trapped in a job from which you would like to escape, with a vague notion of what you would like to do but no clear idea of how to get away or how to put together any kind

We’ve talked in earlier articles about the spectrum which lies behind story-telling - how a core vacuum or great threat or imminent disaster lies at the heart of any successful tale, ready to swallow up those who get too close, and how, coming out from that core, there are bands as represented by various characters and events, until, right on the edge of things, lie (in the majority of stories) freedom and wisdom. The arc of any truly great story is towards its core: some sto

How does one get to a position of power as a writer (or in relationships or Life as a matter of fact)?   As has been covered in earlier articles, there are seven distinct phases through which a person moves on the way to success in anything. One starts by being unaware of an urge which is nevertheless powerfully present, so much so that, unless it is acknowledged, it might reach explosive proportions. One may seek to distract oneself from it with various activities; some neve