Dysfunctional
Family Feud
How
To Be Too Smart For Your Own Good
From
the desk of Timothy A. Gross
Saturday
Night Live had a funny sketch called "Dysfunctional
Family Feud".
In
the comedy sketch, the dysfunctional family on the game
show was asked, " Name something families say
to recent college graduates", and the son
guessed, "I bet you think you're smarter than
me now."
When
asked, "Name something you find in your bedroom
closet besides clothes", the son answered,
"A loaded gun".
When
the daughter was asked, "Name something you
find in your bedroom closet besides clothes",
she answered, trembling, "My father?"
...And
the comedy came from the fact that those answers were correct,
while the non-dysfunctional family lost the game
because they weren't dysfunctional.
Why
You Need To Be Able To
Win The REAL Family Feud
Have
you ever watched the actual television show, "Family
Feud"? On most game shows, the way you win is to be
the best at something, to know more than the other contestants.
But
on Family Feud...
You
Win By Being As Average As Possible
Family
Feud polls 100 people at random to answer a question, like
"What are the favorite things people do on a Saturday
night?". And the contestants have to guess what the
top 5 answers are, like 1) Go to the movies, 2) Go out to
dinner, 3) Go dancing, etc.
| But
the main point of Family Feud is if you're
not in touch with "the masses", you're going
to lose. If your Saturday night favorite activities
answer is, "Go to the opening of an art exhibit",
or "Take my yacht sailing", you're going to
LOSE! |
Often
times, advertising agencies are very out of touch
with middle America. That's why so many commercials and
ad campaigns you see sort of... well... suck.
The
Solution:
Stay in touch with your target market. Take a tip from Family
Feud... All it took from them was to poll 100 people to
get their results for the show.
So
if you were going on Family Feud next week and you knew
the questions to be asked in advance, you could spend a
week huddled together with your family to debate the answers,
or you could...
Go
Out On The Street And Ask 100 People Yourself
If
asking people is how Family Feud gets their answers, that's
how you should get your answers. And that's how you
should get the answers for your business as well:
Ask
Your Customers & Potential Customers
I'm
sure you know you're supposed to ask your customers
and potential customers for feedback and opinions. Yeah,
and you know you're supposed to floss your teeth every night
too, and you probably don't do that either.
Or
- you may have polled your customers once a year or two
ago. Guess what, that's not enough!
The
reason: It's a pain! You've got to set up some type of form
capture system, figure out how to store/read the results,
there can be some technical issues, and that's enough to
make you put it off. But it is important, so:
I'm Gonna Fix Those Problems Right Now
I'm
going to turn you on to an incredibly simple, turn-key copy-and-paste
way to automatically get the feedback you need to succeed
from your customers and prospects. It's called Ask Database,
and to try it out you can just Click
Here.
Not
only does it put your feedback collection on autopilot,
it also actually does a word count of all the aggregate
replies you get, and lists the highest-frequency words that
occur in your customers/prospects responses.
This
Is Invaluable
Why?
Because you can use those frequently used words to put into
your sales letter, which means you're actually feeding your
prospects' hot buttons right back at them, telling them
what they want to hear - And that will increase your sales
conversion rate!
Well,
I'm off to go sailing on my yacht. (Oh wait, I live in the
desert, I forgot for a minute)
