Seinfeld’s Soda Machine Theorem of Converting Your Prospects Into Buyers

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the car dealership, where Jerry is looking to buy a new car in a dealership from Puddy, his mechanic and Elaine’s boyfriend at the time (George does a hilarious candy bar lineup, but I’ll talk about that one another time). Anyway, Elaine is trying to break up with Puddy, and she’s trying to convince Jerry (and herself) that their relationship has finished in one mighty blow. Jerry says there’s no way that’s possible and that: “breaking up is like trying to tip a soft drink machine over – you can’t do it with one strong push, you have to rock the darn thing back and forth until it finally tips over”

Words of wisdom indeed.

But wise old Seinfeld’s proverb can be applied to more than just dating.

That idiom is right for making a sale too – rarely does it happen with one mighty blow of conviction (that does happen once in awhile, but only with people who know, like and trust you already, i.e. they’re on your house list, usually past customers).

So how do you rock the proverbial soda machine into a sale?

Well, the first obviously (and popular) way is through emails.

Now, one important thing you need to remember when building your email sequence (that your competition is probably not doing because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing) is

People don’t want to be taught – they want to be entertained

The emails are where you bond with your audience and they get to know you, so don’t try too hard teach your audience. Rather, give them some entertaining content with a bit of soft teaching (i.e. tell them what they need to do to fix their problems but NOT HOW to do it), so they enjoy (and even look forward to) your emails, and they get the sense they’ve learned something informative while enjoying themselves.

Another way to rock your audience back and forth until their wallet falls out, which I’ve written about in previous articles, is engaging with them offline.

Direct mail still is, contrary to common belief, a very effective (and much less crowded nowadays) way to connect with qualified prospects and get them to bond with you even faster.

How come you ask?

Because sending someone direct mail with some attention-grabbing mechanism (check out my article about Dan Kennedy and the “grabbers” concept) creates 2 strong beliefs in your prospect’s mind:
That you’re a real person, not some virtual bot or a wet-behind-the-ears newbie trying his luck online, and…
That you’re a serious business – who else sends stuff by mail nowadays? Only big corporations, insurance companies, and the government. Although this is usually a much-hated crowd – they’re perceived as VERY serious, so being a part of that crowd gives the same sense of seriousness to your business.

To stand out of the crowd, go to the extents that your competition will dare not follow.