More Stinky, Rotten Tactics to Avoid — if you Want to Build Valuable, Long-lasting Client Relationships

Greetings from my temporary home in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France, where I’m staying in a 600-year-old house, along a back alley that reminds me of Diagon Alley.

I got lots of great feedback regarding my email last week about rotten marketing tricksters who “swim in the shallow end of the tactical gene pool.” 

Like this reply from subscriber Gill who wrote:

I got the following text message yesterday:

‘Hi…It’s James White with First Class Funder, we chatted a while back about working capital for your business, are you still searching for the right program? You should qualify for our new Tier A line of credit Program. To learn more please text me back. Text stop to end“

Of course, Gill had never met “James White.” Never chatted with him about working capital for his business. Never chatted with him about anything.

Gill’s take: This guy isn’t swimming in the shallow end. He’s washed up on shore and is flopping in the dirt gasping for oxygen.

Yep!

I get these fake “we’ve met before” messages almost every day.

Like this one last week from a spammer who started her email by thanking ME for reaching out.

I’d never reached out. So I replied, “When did I reach out?” 

That ended the conversation. No reply from her. She crawled back in her hole. 

I called out Ryan Deiss for his trickery last week.

Who else teaches these stinky, rotten tactics? 

Maybe there’s a school in another dimension…

Dogfart’s School of Trickery and Treachery. 

I imagine sneaking in, hidden under my invisibility cloak, eavesdropping on Professor Fakealot’s “Introduction to Misleading Marketing” class.

I would hear something like this: 

“The best way to get someone’s attention is to pretend you know them. Thank THEM for reaching out. Tell them it’s ‘good to hear from you.’ Claim you’ve chatted with them before. This fools ‘em every time. Good as gold, I tell ya! At first they may not remember you. They may be a bit confused. But they won’t be able to resist replying or clicking or doing whatever you ask them to do. And then when they reply or click or whatever, you’ve got them right where you want ‘em. Easy prey. The suckers will reach for their wallet every time.”

Here’s one of many things wrong with this approach:

Suckers and Victims Make Lousy Clients.

Sure, you may trick them into the first transaction. But they won’t last. They won’t refer. They won’t be the clients you most want to work with. 

Last week, Dean Isaacs and I hosted a 5in25 training about the most important metrics to measure marketing success. 

One of the five: Lifetime value of the customer (LVC).

In many businesses, your relationship with a customer does not begin and end with the first transaction. Customers buy again. They upgrade. They choose different products and services. They stay with you years. 

Those are the best kinds of customers – the ones with great LVC. 

Prospects you trick into buying usually become customers with the lowest LVC.

They’re often one-and-done. Some demand refunds. 

They’re not worth your effort. 

So you don’t have to enroll in that stinky School of Trickery and Treachery. 

Drop out and spend some time,  instead, learning the other four most important metrics to measure marketing success. 

We recorded the training. Click the big blue button below to get instant access.