Stuart Chase And Targeting Prospects...Is He Right Or Wrong?

Stuart Chase (1888 - 1985) was an American economist. One of my favorite
quotes of his was the following:

I thought a lot about this in regard to how we target prospects as marketers,
regardless of what niche we're in. In all cases, we ultimately are trying to
convince the prospect that our product is the right one for them. And of
course part of how we do this is through social proof.

For example, we'll print testimonials from customers who have already used
our product, or we'll show proof that the product works, either in some form
of screen print, video, or whatever.

And, we are told, generally speaking, that these things are necessary to
increase our sales.

But after reading Stuart's quote over and over, I sometimes wonder how
true this really is.

Mind you, I don't claim to have the answer to this interesting puzzle. I am
going to leave that for those marketers who are a lot brighter than I am.
I invite everybody to throw their 2 cents into this question.

But first, I'm going to offer my opinion. And mind you, this is just opinion
and could very well be off base. I give this opinion solely on my own
experience as a marketer.

Since I deal mostly with the "make money" niche, I will confine my examples
to that niche.

I get many emails from people that read something like this...

"I've been trying to make money online for 6 years now and haven't made
a dime. I've bought into all the get rich quick schemes and none of them
worked. I have reached the point where I don't believe anything anybody
says any longer. So why should I believe that your product is any better?"

Now, think about where this person's mind is coming from. He's been
burned to death. It doesn't matter whether or not he's actually put any
real effort into any of these things or not. In his mind, he's been burned
and he's done believing.

Is any proof I can offer him, even if it was somebody calling him on the
phone who purchased the product and telling him that they made money
with it, going to make any real difference?

I have found from my own experience that it doesn't...no matter what I
say. Even if I agree with the prospect that most things are scams and
that you have to be very careful. Doesn't matter. I can't remember ever
converting anybody who has already made up their mind that they don't
believe. In other words, as Stuart Chase said, "No proof is possible."

And then there are the emails I get from the wide eyed newbies who are
so full of hope and can't wait to dive in. They start off by telling me, in
this real long email, what their plans are and how they're going to use my
product and build a business that they can retire off of in a few years.
And this is without having to ram a ton of proof down their throat (which
I rarely do in my sales pages)

As Stuart Chase said, "No proof is necessary."

Now, how does this actually apply to going after your ideal prospect? I
mean ideally, wouldn't you want to target people who already believe and
are just looking for a product to fulfill their goal that they've already
decided will be realized once the product is purchased.

I'll give you an example as it applied to me.

I just recently needed to get software to make CD inserts and labels. I
saw the product, saw it claimed to do what I needed (because that's what
it said on the sales page) and so I bought it. I didn't need proof. I
believed it would do what I wanted it to do.

Now, maybe that's a simple example because of the fact that the
application itself was so simple. Granted, maybe for something more
complex, I wouldn't be so trusting. I'd want more info or more proof.

This is where my head starts to hurt because it gets into the area of
human behavior and psychology. But I have to believe that somewhere
out there, somebody knows exactly where, not how, but where to tap
into a market of people who already believe and therefore don't need
any proof to be sold.

Or...is Stuart Chase wrong?

Does everybody need some sort of proof depending on what is being sold?

As I said, I'm inviting everybody to share their 2 cents on this subject
because quite honestly, I don't have the answers. I do all my targeting
by keywords and I seriously doubt that keywords alone are going to
separate the believers from the non believers.

What do you think about all this?

Something to it, or just a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo?