What Is A Monkey's Fist

So we're going to think about the monkey's fist as the bait, or as the first date, maybe the coffee, "Would you like to have a coffee with me?" And we're going to help you generate more leads using this educational based marketing bait. So you're going to go from a seller to an educator or providing educational tools and resources. Where does it fit on the whole Architects' Marketing process? Right there. So as you go through this program and start completing the boxes you're going to end up with a completely full system that integrates. You can do parts of it if you only want to do parts of it, it'll still work. Each little piece works on its own but if you integrate them all as well, you'll get a bit more of an exponential effect.

So that's where that fits, here's our not so little secret. Majority of the Architects' Marketing Academy members were lured in with a small piece of bait. You would have nibbled on a little piece of bait that might have looked like one of these. So, there's the Super Six report, there's the Number One Client Getting Strategy, there's webinars, you can download flowcharts. Some people would come in because you've received the free CD interview with the Architect Marketing maverick, that's me. So there might have been a number of ways you've come in and we've got thousands and thousands of members, or subscribers, to our educational by putting out that bait first, works really, really well.

So, you know, just put the bait on the hook and the fish come nibbling. It's sure better than chasing people. It's got to be useful information that people want to consume. This one actually, ironically this one here, the flowchart that you see on the hook, has been so far our most successful one. So we've done booklets, we've done videos but this one page flowchart was the best. So it doesn't have to be a long book, you don't have to write War and Peace, you just have to put something out which is going to be instantly perceived as valuable. Number one client getting strategy, we've used that as well.

Right, so here's the first Architect monkey's fist that we've every produced and it was when I was working with [Mona Quinn 00:02:11] and we produced the seven mistakes people make when renovating and she drove round my neighborhood taking photos of bad architecture, or bad architectural renovations in her case, and put together a small booklet. So it was about seven or eight, 10 pages long, not very long, lots of pictures, little bit of writing, went down really, really well. Don't think of, "Oh I do commercial architecture, this won't work for me." Of course it does, we've got commercial architect monkey's fist. As long as you've got someone, a buyer, a client who has questions, problems, issues, confusion, education required, then they're going to be interested in finding the answer. So it's about coming up with good, short pieces of information that solve problems whether they're a commercial buyer, a hospital project, a renovation on a house, anything. It works anywhere.

It doesn't just work for architecture. It works for accountants, lawyers, as long as you have clients who have gaps in information, it's up to you to come up with the bait. Alright, so she got 120 leads in a single weekend, one of the strategies ... we went a reporter and said, "Would you like to write an article?" And the reporter wanted to write an article on her and we got the reporter to include the fact that Mona had this monkey's fist that was available for being posted out if people wanted it. So, you know, that's one place to put your bait. If you can get an article, see if you can get the bait into the article. If you do a mail out, obviously put it in the mail out. You can put it in your signature on your email. There's a ton of places, I'll show you more later. But anyway, she started with a hiss and a roar which caused a bit of problem. So much of a problem in fact, we had to automate the process.

I want to say, you don't need to automate the process early on, you just need to test that the bait you're using is going to be effective. No point automating zero, you know? You need to prove your case, that the bait you created and the place you're putting it is going to be effective, then you can automate it later. In a lot of respects, it's better doing it later anyway because it has more perceived value sometimes than sending out PDF. So a good problem, she had so many leads to follow up with.

So question is, what is a monkey's fist in detail? What is a monkey's fist? Well, the original monkey's fist story came when it looked a macrame piece. It's a ball that you have on a ship and inside that macrame ball ... you know this was in the olden days, they probably use something a bit more modern looking now, but there's a metal ball. A metal ball inside the macrame monkey's fist and what happened, where the story came from was there was a guy called Frank Bettger who wrote a book called How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling. It was a book put out in ... I think about the 1950s, I've got a copy in my house and he was sitting on the dock, watching the big ships come in and he was looking at these great big, huge ropes, he could see them going from the ship to the shore. He was trying to work out, how do they get these great big ropes, which are known as hawsers, from the ship onto shore? Because they're too big for a man to throw. So he thought, "I'll open up my sandwiches, I'll sit here for the next 20 minutes on my lunch break and see how they do it."

What he noticed was on the deck of the ship, the sailor would grab one of those monkey's fist balls, swing it round his head like a lasso and it was connected to a thin bit of rope and he would throw it onto shore. On shore, the longshoreman would pick out the monkey's fist and start reeling in the small rope through the water and then eventually, it was connected to the big hawser. So what they did was they threw something that was very easy to throw to get it on deck, on the dock I should say, but that was connected to the main thing they wanted to get on board. So they threw something easy that was connected to the thing they ultimately wanted on board. And he thought, "Wow, that's given me an idea." He was consulting to a company selling coffee door to door and the coffee salesman would approach 100 doors and he would make four sales. That was their average hit rate, four sales. Well by employing this easy thing to throw on shore, sort of concept, he was able to take that 4% to 40% and here's what he did. He just changed the script and the sales process slightly, they added an extra step, they added a monkey's fist.

So the salesman know would walk up to the lady of the house and go, "Hello, what a lovely day. Listen, I've got a free sample of coffee for you, I'd love you to try and see what you think." And she would go, "Oh, thank you, that's great." "Listen, I'll tell you what, I'll come back in a week's time, see what you think and if you like it you might want to buy some coffee, but if not, no problem, I hope you enjoy the coffee." So then he'd go away, he'd come back in a week's time, knock on the door and go, "Hello madam, how did you find your coffee?" And she would say, "Yeah, well I really like the coffee." And he would say, "Well, I'll tell you what, I've got another free gift for you if you make your first small purchase." And off and away. 4% to 40%, not too shabby.

So notice what he did, he added an extra step. He added a small step that was incredibly easy to sell. What he was selling was the free sample. Take the free sample for a week, much easier than selling the end products and by getting that first small sale underway, he was underway. So in the dating situation it's just, "Would you like a coffee?" Well we're talking coffee here too but you know ... rather than, "Would you like to get married?" We'd say, "Would you like to go on a date?" It's much easier to sell than, "Would you like to get married?" I think you'll agree.

So the old, "Let's get married ..." is a very large step to take. It's almost like a great big set of stairs that's almost sort of six feet high and you're asking someone to make that huge leap and most people won't. The odd desperate clamber might, they might climb up that six foot set of stairs to get married on the first meeting but most people won't and the reason they won't is because they don't know, like, or trust you. So we need to build that ... just like any normal relationship, we need to build that chance to know, like and trust you into our sales process. That's what most architects don't do, effectively you know, they're trying to sell their concept drawings. It's the first thing that a person will buy, which is a big step, so we need to engineer a way where there's smaller steps for them to take and that's exactly what we do. We need to enter a little bit of romance.

So where's the romance? Well, let's have a coffee, we need to get to know, like and trust them. So you know, in the Architects' Marketing Academy, what I would recommend to you is there's two smalls steps, that you will include the full concept drawings, is the monkey's fist and the LCC Now, you don't always need the monkey's fist, sometimes you can jump people straight to an LCC, okay? But we'll talk about monkey's fist as well if we really want to build up a list of people and it's a very easy step to get people on board. It's probably how you came into the Architects' Marketing Academy world, is you took that very first small step of getting a small piece of information, and then the LCC is the Low Cost Consultation, maybe a feasibility study, maybe a Needs and Options review. It's a small consulting exercise which helps the client make progress before they have to commit to concept drawings. So it's a lot easier to say yes to a $500 Needs and Options review, for example, than it would be to sign up for a $10,000 or $20,000 concept drawings, so we're just building with a couple of small dates.

Alright, so why is this different? You know, with a monkey's fist, it gets ideal clients calling you to receive specific information. When I say calling you ... maybe giving you their email address or filling out a form. Maybe they're calling you if you're going the old school way and it answers questions, or solves problems that's top of mind, that they're already looking for. So this is why, typically, you can get 10 times more leads using this approach than the traditional marketing. Now, I'm going to go through the details of why it works so well in a minute, in the next video, but just have a think of this whole concept of dating, how relationships work. They are a series of small, escalating steps. And have a think about the fishing process. Really, it's trying to get someone to take a bite of your fish, of your bait, and get them on the line and then reel them in. It's hard to just grab them out of the water.

So these analogies hopefully make it simple for you to understand this concept, and at the end of the day, what we're trying to do with the monkey's fist, its problem solving information, is we're trying to start the relationship by just helping them. We aren't trying to sell, there is no selling involved in this step, it is genuinely we want to help people and some people may come on board and some may not come on board with you, you know, for an LCC, or concept drawings, or design, or whatever, that's fine but we've helped people and we're going to help a lot of people and most of them probably won't come on board. We don't mind that, we're happy to help people so anybody that wants to be helped with this information that, you know, you're going to create, the bait, great. We're happy to help them.

You know, some of them will come on board, some of them won't but no problem, we're happy to put that good will, that good karma out into the universe. That's fine by us. As long as people are being helped, that's great but we do know that a percentage of them will take the next step. Kind of exciting this, a little bit different probably to what you've done before. Alright, let's go deep on the next video.