Trolls grunting "principles vs tactics!"
Published: Thu, 05/16/19
...grunted the troll who was displeased with an email I once sent.
And that grunt was as amazingly glorious as it was useful.
Here's why:
Ever since being one of the marketing voices in the wilderness talking about the late, great master of negotiation Jim Camp 11 years ago, and about his “principles vs tactics” mindset, there's been no shortage of goo-roo fanboys on my list who can’t think deeper than a sound byte trying to “call me out” on things they think I do or teach as “tactics!"
For example:
Several months ago, I did a promo selling an offer about using cold emails.
In the bonus, the gentleman who created the offer describes his method for using cold LinkedIn messages to get new business as a… a… a… (oh noes!!!!) *tactic.* And, right on schedule, I got a handful of emails that day asking me about how I could DARE promote a tactic.
Most of these comments were simply foolish (assumptive), but not malicious.
In other words:
They did not ask for clarification, and simply made assumptions. This is, ironically, something Jim Camp was 100% against, and even had done entire teachings about the neuroscience of assumptions.
But others, like with the bloke quoted above?
Pure basement troll.
And now I’d like to help these wannabes pounding their chests on social media about “principles vs tactics!” stop embarrassing themselves every time they knee-jerkily squawk about the subject without even knowing the context of what they’re quoting.
Here’s how it breaks down:
A tactic, by how Jim Camp defined it (since that’s who these blokes are mindlessly quoting, whether they realize it or not) is doing something that takes advantage of an enemy’s weakness.
That was *his* definition.
Not the same, necessarily, as what’s in your dictionary.
In marketing, I believe you can liken it to dirty tricks.
Like, for example:
I recently got “Email Players” trademarked. And, during the several months of waiting for it to go through, I got multiple pieces of mail trying to trick, er, I mean sell… me on helping me protect the mark. These mailings all were extremely legitimate-looking pieces of mail, that looked like they came from the US government, to send them money.
A truly low-class jackass trick.
And, probably something that works on a certain number of people...
Once.
If you have to use chicanery and deceit to get someone to send you money, that would be a tactic.
i.e. taking advantage of someone’s weakness.
In the above case, taking advantage of someone’s weakness of being naive, or in a hurry, or their lack of discernment, or just plain stupidity.
Now, contrast that to Gary Halbert’s “A Pile” direct mail teaching.
On the face of it, it’s somewhat similar:
You make your envelope and sales pitch look — at a glance — like it *could* be personal or from some kind of place the recipient would not dare throw out without reading it first, but not misleading or trying to trick someone into sending money, or talking about something completely different, etc. The great Gary Bencivenga teaches a variation of this in his Farewell Seminar. It is intended to get it opened, and get it opened in a way that gets the person primed and ready to read the letter — it’s also in perfect harmony with the laws of human behavior and sound, principled thought. Jim Camp was a big fan of not spilling all your beans too early in a negotiation or, as Mr. Bencivenga refers to it in his seminar "spilling your candy in the lobby."
Another example:
Click bait email subject lines that have nothing to do with the email body or offer.
Nobody likes that.
And, it may work once, but will likely never again work from that same company.
Contrast that with using simple curiosity.
If you use a subject line like, for example, this one I used:
“Why I think about you in the shower”
…. and the email is *about* how I get ideas for content for my customers while in the shower, with the hot water stimulating the right side (creative side) of my brain, it’s not a trick. Nor is it a tactic. It’s in harmony with the unbending law and rule of “curiosity always overpowers programming” (hat tip to the late Stan Billue for that gem). In fact, that subject line is what originally got me on the radar of the great Clayton Makepeace. I have heard him even use it as an example when talking about email — which always makes my day.
Anyway, so that’s that.
I suspect this won’t stop the "principles vs tactics" ex-spurts from squawking.
But, now they know the full context.
All of which brings me to the rub:
My long-time pal Michael Senoff recently spent several months securing the rights to Jim Camp’s original trainings and teachings — which were recently re-discovered in the Camp Estate vaults on audio cassettes. These recordings reveal Jim Camp at the top of his game. They are unlike anything I had heard before, including when Michael personally grilled Jim Camp on over 150 of his best methods in a Q&A program (that I sold as an affiliate last December). These “lost” tapes — remastered on downloadable digital MP3 — contain Jim’s entire 18-part methodology he taught live to his elite private students. The only other way to get this material is to spend months tracking down and even outright nagging the Camp Estate to sell them to you. But even then, you’ll have to pay $597 — while they have agreed to give Michael the exclusive rights to sell them at $97 for a very limited time.
And guess what?
Until this Sunday at midnight PDT you can have these nearly impossible-to-find recordings at this $97 price if you use my blatant affiliate link below.
You also get a few other “goodies” too.
Including:
* An 80+ minute video of Yours Crotchety showing you exactly how I have been applying Mr. Camp’s methods to my own business for over a decade
* An interview Michael did with David Garfinkel — The World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach — about how David applies Jim Camp’s methods to copywriting specifically. David is probably the only prominent copywriter left who learned directly at Jim’s feet, and had a decades-long association with him.
* An interview Michael did with Jim Camp’s son — Todd — who uses his father’s methodology to help some of the world’s biggest and most successful companies.
To grab all this before the deadline, use my affiliate link here:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/camp
Ben Settle
P.S. If you’ve been on my list a while, realize:
**This is NOT the same as the $20 Q&A Jim Camp offer I sold last December.**
This is Jim’s full system directly from the Camp estate vaults. Those Q&As were the appetizer to the full course found on these audios.
P.P.S. No-doubt to the horror of the hand-wringers yelling “principles vs tactics!” on Flakebook trying to Virtue-Signal about how smart they think they are… Jim Camp teaches several things on these audios that he even describes as “tactics.”
Especially when it comes to the logistics of a negotiation.
Tactics are not the devil.
They are your friend & ally, and help you serve your customers better.
That is, if you use them correctly, and not as a social media sound byte...