Thursday, January 30, 2014

Resume Builder: Instant MBA

This is not Eminem
James Altucher is a writer, trader, investor, and entrepreneur. He's founded more than 20 companies, written 11 books, runs a hedge fund and a venture capital firm, and blogs relentlessly and fearlessly about his failures, his successes, and his opinions about work, money, and life, which are many.

He's also offering a free MBA. Courtesy of Eminem.

More specifically, Altucher believes that the climactic scene in '8 Mile' is a masters course in sales and marketing. In fact, he says, "Eminem is a genius at sales and competition and he shows it in one scene in the movie."

Altucher proceeds to offer 12 lessons on sales and marketing from the movie's final rap battle. For example:

8) Basic Direct Marketing: List The Objections Up Front

Any direct marketer or salesperson knows the next technique Eminem uses.

When you are selling a product, or yourself, or even going on a debate or convincing your kids to clean up their room, the person or group you are selling to is going to have easy objections.
They know those objections and you know those objections. If you don’t bring them up and they don’t bring them up then they will not buy your product.

If they bring it up before you, then it looks like you were hiding something and you just wasted a little of their time by forcing them to bring it up. So a great sales technique is to address all of the objections in advance.

Eminem’s next set of lines does this brilliantly.

He says, “I know everything he’s got to say against me.”

And then he just lists them one by one:

“I am white”
“I am a fuckin bum”
“I do live in a trailer with my mom”
“My boy, Future, is an Uncle Tom”
“I do have a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob who shot himself with his own gun”.
“I did get jumped by all six of you chumps”

And so on. He lists several more.

But at the end of the list, there’s no more criticism you can make of him. He’s addressed everything and dismissed them. In a rap battle, (or a sales pitch), if you address everything your opponent can say, he’s left with nothing to say.

When he has nothing to say, the audience, or the sales prospect, your date, your kids, whoever, will buy from you or listen to what you have to say.

Look at direct marketing letters you get in email. They all spend pages and pages addressing your concerns. This is one of the most important techniques in direct marketing.

Check out the scene below, and then go read the text from Altucher. Just think of G:TB when you get that richly deserved promotion.


12 comments:

Danimal said...

interesting breakdown. never saw the movie. I and a coworker have a frequent discussion about conveying the likely objections up front. he's anti that method. I'm for it. where it can get you is if you bring up what you think will be an objection that isn't even on their radar. like..."yeah, I've done time for a b & e but...." that rarely works for some reason.

zman said...

Jim Kelly was on Boomer & Carton this morning. Apparently the surgery that removed his jaw cancer also removed half of his jaw. He now wears some prosthesis in order to sound like a normal person, eat, etc. He said that the prosthesis has to be adjusted every once in awhile and that his "oral surgeon won't want to hear this, but when I'm on the road sometimes I have to adjust it myself so I always have pliers with me just in case."

I encourage you to stop using dip.

Squeaky said...

Discussing objections upfront only works if you have the personality to pull it off.

TR said...

Discussing objections was a frequent process for me when trying to get girls to come to parties during college.

Danimal said...

another pi lammer heh?

Clarence said...

If only we'd had the sluts that JMU boasts, Danny Boy.

Squeaky said...

TR, was the line, 'See I'm wearing my weight on my name tag too'.

Mark said...

According to the internets its snowing in Gainesville. The high on Saturday will be in the 80s. Florida is so fucked up.

T.J. said...

America's wang, covered in the white stuff.

Clarence said...

Teej's comment reminds me of one of my favorite cover tune renditions of all time. Listen and wait until the very end. Ridiculous.

rob said...

ridiculous and out of nowhere

Shlara said...

The NBA fans out there should read this David Stern piece:

http://www.nba.com/2014/news/features/david_aldridge/01/27/life-and-times-of-david-stern-oral-history-by-david-aldridge/index.html?ls=iref:nbahpt3a

Mazel to him for building the league into the empire it is today