"Yes, yes, but Brocton, how do I *use* the lemon leverage?"

First of all, it's "sour power", and it seems to be catching on!

(If you're lost, today's article is part two of an earlier post, which I will give you the link to below.

In the meantime, I recommend treating this like a Tarantino movie, revealed in reverse order, because today I'm going to share with you something that could make you quite the pile of duckets, and also show you how to really enjoy your sales work because we're going to dive deep into the creative element today, and I'd hate for you to miss out or get distracted!)

Now where were we?

Ah yes, seven years ago now, back in the summer of 2017, I found myself living in a quaint country enclave called "Green Forest" in Arkansas.

The population is something like 3,000 people, which is barely twice my high school class.

The neighboring town, Alpena, boasts an even smaller outcrop of only 374 people!

The point I'm trying to make here is that coming from the San Francisco Bay Area where I grew up, this was quite the adjustment.

Culture shock is probably more accurate a term.

Just shock, really.

There was no metro train here, that's for sure. No BART.

But we had 10 acres and a nice three-bedroom house that cost us roughly the same price as half a closet in Oakland or San Francisco, so we were pretty happy.

I could even shoot my 7x62 Mosin-Nagant at hay bales right in my own backyard! And the WHOOSH that echoed over the hills, MY HILLS, was ecstatic.

Fun as it was shooting hay bales, having a less-than-3% interest rate on our mortgage, and generally not having bills, there was also work to be done.

Somehow, in this time capsule of American real estate known as Carrol County, I had found a business with a real pulse that wasn't Walmart, and scored a job as their marketing manager!

It was called Kerusso (suppose it still is, actually), which is a Greek word that means to "proclaim". In this context, it was meant to proclaim the Gospel, as in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through t-shirts and gifts.

The owner, Vic Kennet, had a fairly amazing story about how he was doing construction work one day in Eureka Springs and was inspired by seeing someone walking around with a t-shirt with a Christian message on it.

From that moment, he immediately started making his dream come true by doing exactly the same, only better.

Today he owns the biggest Christian t-shirt and gift company in the world.

Maybe one day I'll ask Vic more about that because I think we all long for inspiration so clear and sudden, and purpose and direction so well-defined.

Anyway, I was the marketing manager at Kerusso for a number of months before our youngest son Mikey was born.

I had to resign after Mikey was born though, because at that time we had three children, two of which were in diapers and one barely out of them, and there was no way I was going to leave Cailee at home alone with all of this while she wanted to pursue her career.

But during my time at Kerusso, there was one particular marketing assignment that illustrated how to use sour power that made quite the waves.

Here was the situation: in the warehouse, there were 14,000 pieces of clothing in boxes collecting dust.

Unmovable inventory.

Surplus.

Overstock.

14,000!

Part of the problem was that 2017 was a hard year on retail, doubly so on the niche Christian retail market.

I remember doing research in our Facebook Groups and the grim tone of the reality of many of these mom-and-pop shops strewn across the south talking about going belly up.

Another problem was, this particular line of clothing, called "grace & truth" was something of a premium brand, and the price was a bit too steep for many of our vendors.

The phrase "blue-faced angry" popped up at some point, though I really couldn't tell you from where.

So we had this gigantic stock of surplus and it was costing money but not making much.

When Nic Kennet, Vic's son and a swell guy, who happened to be the Director of Marketing I was reporting to, explained the situation to me, I knew immediately what to do.

Perhaps sudden inspiration is available to all of us at times?

It was the classic set up for the fire sale!

A fire sale is an old furniture sales strategy where if a business has slightly less desirable goods, maybe there was a small (very small) leak in the roof at the warehouse during a storm, and there is superficial cosmetic damage that is barely noticeable, but demands it cannot be sold at full price...

Or maybe there was a fire at the warehouse, and some of the inventory was damaged, but not all of it, or not all of it completely at any rate...

Then you use this "act of God" as an excuse to have a blow-out sale and give people a great discount!

It's a win-win for everyone.

The business owner recoups some of the loss on the otherwise toasted inventory, and the buyer gets a fantastic deal.

So that's what we did.

I learned as much as I could about every piece of the puzzle, especially Vic's story and his thoughts on the matter, then I slept on it. This is probably the most important part of creative work, is forgetting the problem, and especially letting a night of sleep help you to find the answer.

The next the morning, I wrote a 606-word letter, signed by Vic, that had our phones ringing off the hook because it had used sour power to resonate with the audience.

Within days of sending this letter, 47.2% of the list of B2B retailers had placed maximum orders for grace & truth, that they had refused to budge on before, and even written us angry letters and called us with angry calls about.

We moved 8,000 units of the 14,000 that were thought hopeless in only two weeks, which was more business for this line of clothing than the previous 9 months!

How I used sour power to do more business in two weeks than had been done in 9 months, and completely change how people felt about... well, a lemon!

Here's the breakdown of the famous "grace & truth" letter. The letter will be written in italics, and my commentary in plain text below:

From:

Vic Kennett

East of King’s River

Berryville, Arkansas

Wednesday 10:52 a.m.

This is a technique I used that combined two elements, each one I learned from a different copywriting guru.

Gary Halbert used to start all of his letters with a location, and Matt Furey teaches that an easy way to capture the imagination to tell a story is to start with time and place. Furey learned this from watching Ronald Reagan, who would use the gambit often.

When you describe a time and a place, it helps people go into that place in their imagination where they understand that it's story time. This helps because we live in an ever more distracted world, and there are a legion of very strong internal and external triggers competing for your reader's attention at any given moment.

If you can get them to begin painting a picture in their imagination, you are very effectively helping them focus on what you are saying.

Dear NAME,?

This shirt is a free gift, from me to you. There’s a very important reason for this gift, and if you’ll give me a couple minutes to explain, I believe you’ll agree it’s been worth your time.?

It is my hope and prayer that by the end of this letter, you’ll be thrilled to join me in pouring out the blessings of the Word of God, and welcoming those blessings into your business and your life!?

Here’s what it’s all about:?

Reciprocity is one of the most powerful tools you can use, especially when done on a small scale, to earn someone's good will and attention. I say on a small scale because gifts that are too large, especially from strangers, introduce an awkward and maybe even very uncomfortable level of tension into the interaction.

Notice, the old Hare Krishnas used but a single flower as a gift to get attention at airports, and they were quite successful.

I learned about reciprocity from Dr. Robert Cialdini , author of the classic "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion".

There is also an element of curiosity here. We are teasing that there's an important reason for this gift, and we build rapport by reminding the reader that this letter is from a fellow believer, and so we establish rapport in a religious sense.

This sort of bridge is an effective one for communication, but what's much more important is that you are honest about it. Vic Kennet honestly does share this faith, and so my conscience was clean writing this.

But I've seen plenty of examples of smash and grab marketing online from authors who are happy to "use" these techniques to manipulate people with no intention of having a good long-term relationship or being trustworthy or considering the needs of their clients.

You, my dear reader, probably don't fit that mold. But I warn you anyway, in case you are ever tempted, never to lie in your advertising. It forever creates bad juju, and the world is a worse place for it. Just be honest, and everything will be much better.

The mission of my company, Kerusso, is simple: to proclaim the Good News to the world through products about Jesus. To serve this purpose, one of the best products we’ve ever made is our new line of women’s clothing called “grace & truth”. The idea behind grace & truth is to give women soft fabrics that are comfortable to wear, fashionable fits for all body types, and the Word of God stated in simple, elegant, graceful presentation.?

I’m very proud of my team for accomplishing this mission so well. But, something unexpected happened. We made too many! Now I’ve got 14,000 extra grace & truth shirts in my warehouse. That’s a lot of extra shirts. And, if I hadn’t been doing this for 30 years, I might think this was a catastrophe.?

But you know, I believe the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Romans, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28?

Okay, this piece of the puzzle is very important. We are establishing a different way of seeing something that the audience already had very strong feelings about.

In order to do this, we had to draw on the credibility of Vic's origin story. By doing business with Kerusso, they had already, either explicitly or implicitly agreed that yes, this is who he is, and yes, this is why he does business, and yes, we feel good about doing business with him.

I wanted to remind the reader of this before we suggested grace & truth might be something different than what they imagined.

We also started explaining the fire sale situation, with the massive level of overstock, which set up the solution, which would offer a chance for the vendors to think about things differently.

Here, we are diving deeper into Vic's origin story and using sour power, getting them to imagine the scene and join him right there in that Eureka Springs construction project, to be a part of the origin story.

From that point in time, and seeing what happened after, it's much easier to get a different perspective. In the last article, that introduced the concept of "sour power", I suggested that if you reverse engineer the states of mind and emotion that would help your audience see what you needed them to see and put your creative mind to work about which images would do that most powerfully... this is a prime example.

What could be more powerful a lever to help them see this opportunity the way Vic saw it, than to join him in a time machine and go to the beginning of it all?

From that moment in time, it's very easy to feel inspired and enthusiastic, because that's what Vic was feeling, and I put them there in the story in this letter.

It’s really incredible how God works in our lives, because on July 28, 2017, my whole company had a big luncheon to celebrate our 30th successful year in business! And to think it all started in such a humbling situation.?

This was another piece of credibility, and there's something more subtle going on. By travelling 30 years through time from that moment Vic was doing the construction project, we are building massive credibility that this phenomenon called Kerusso is standing the test of time and has momentum in the right direction. It was a celebration of the 30th successful year in business. A celebration!

How do you feel when you celebrate?

This is a much better position to be able to imagine how grace & truth might be a great thing after all! A much better position that considering things only in the context of a retailer doing their best in hard times in 2017.

Anyway, I don’t believe in accidents, and I see a great opportunity here to pass a blessing on to you, so that your business can thrive, and you can pass on the blessings to your customers.?

And I want to do this in a way that makes it easy for you.?

Because grace & truth is one of Kerusso’s highest quality products, I have never been able to offer it to you at such a low price. But, as you know, price is determined by supply and demand. And suddenly, we have an overabundance of supply!?

The price for this premium brand was the big sticking point for vendors. It made it too difficult to sell. Now though, after we had taken the reader to a much different place, so they could see things from a different perspective, we offer a believable (because it was true) reason we could offer a better price.

This almost cinches the deal by now, but there's a bit more here before we close.

Deals like this don’t come around very often, and neither do chances for me to directly offer you such a great way to profit your business, your life and the life of your customers.?

Actually, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to offer this deal, based on the numbers so far, it’ll probably be gone by Christmas time.?

If you feel that this is a good way for you to bless your business, and bless those who do business with you, please call my sales team at 1-XXX-XXX-XXXX right now.?

I want to make sure you get every opportunity to succeed with grace & truth.?

In the meantime, I will be praying that God guide you like He guided me, and have a blessed year!?

Sincerely,?

Vic Kennett

CEO Kerusso

So here at the end you see we remind them of the (honest) scarcity, a clear call to action, and sending them away in good faith feeling great about having read.

Now what you don't see here is the price sheet that was included with the letter, as well as order forms that made sense of the discount mentioned.

Sidenote: I cannot emphasize how important it is to be honest in your dealings and sales communication.

Fake scarcity, trumped up timers, LIES, if you please, make the business world a worse place. Your clients lose trust, and rightfully so, and you lose trust of yourself because you know in the back of your mind, you're just doing it to get a result.

Do that long enough, and you will see all of your communication with everyone important in your life slowly (or tragically, many times not so slowly) erode into the insubstantial crumble it is.

I wish I didn't have to write this, but I do, because the business world is drowning in it.

The bottom line really isn't worth what you give up, what we all give up, to get there.

DON'T LIE!

Alright, eh hem. Sorry. I didn't mean to get so grim on you! But it's an important warning.

So there you have it.

A concrete example of how to use sour power to get massive results and save the day. To find hope when it's hopeless!

To find a love in a hopeless place!

No wait, that's Rihanna.

See you tomorrow! Goodbye!

.P.S. If you want to learn more about "sour power", here is part one of the article that explains it all: click here.