The Power of the Deal

The amazing thing about understanding the world through a NEO/Traditional filter is that almost every day something comes along that just demonstrates the point perfectly.

I haven't posted for a while as I have been focusing on building a video based training product for people in the real estate field to be able to understand the importance of building your business around the people who are actually going to buy over the coming years, rather than banging your head against the wall selling to a market that has disappeared. We should be ready to launch this in a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately the government didn't get the memo!

The Cash For Clunkers program was a perfect piece of Traditional marketing, unfortunately it also highlights the reality of trying to get Traditionals to spend money when it doesn't feel safe to them to do so. The set up was perfect: A once in a lifetime offer for a very limited period of time, of what basically was free money. Of course Traditionals responded, they can't help themselves sometimes, as the love of the deal is just built into their DNA. Auto sales spiked, not of Subaru's, Mini's and Audi A3's (they were all selling pretty well anyway) but of Chryslers and GM cars - little "TDWs" - Traditional Deal Wagons - never bought for the experience, always for the deal.

Men in clip-on ties rejoiced as deal hungry buyers flocked back in to their domestic dealerships. Everything was well with the world again.

But then....

The deal stopped and with it so did the buying. In fact today it was announced that auto sales slumped in September, particularly for Chrysler and GM who dropped 42% and 45% respectively.

However before you go all Rush Limbaugh on me this does not mean the program was a failure. These people did not just bring forward the purchase of a vehicle they would have bought anyway - most of them were driving cars built when Monica was still going down on Bill in the Oval office! They were not buyers until they got a deal they just couldn't refuse.

This highlights the real difficulty of trying to sell to Traditionals in anything other than the best of times. The deal has to be irresistible and as soon as the deal ends, so do the sales. The only point of a sale or promotion is to beat the last one. It has to become breathless. Cut prices, offer guarantees and then cut prices again.

If you want to build your business on the mainstream Traditionals in 2009 you need to cut so far that what little blood that is left in your body oozes out of every available orifice. As and when $8,000 tax incentives or real estate foreclosures dry up and the "deal of the century" appears to have passed, the same will happen with low priced homes marketed to Traditionals. It is inevitable, sadly.

Thankfully it isn't my job is rescue entire ailing industries. I get to show people that another type of person exists out there. 59 million of them who have the spending power and mindset to buy when they find something that fits their own personal values. It means relookng at the whole way you do business and think about who your buyers are, which takes some effort. But if even the Federal government can't buy their way back in to Traditionals wallets, what are your other options?

Chris