It is a cliche for a reason…
Did you know that people actually are more creative when they “think outside the box”? I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true.
Psychological Science conducted a study where participants were seated–literally–either inside or outside of a cardboard box and then asked to complete a simple experiment meant to test their creativity. The results showed plainly that the people seated outside the box (hence the catchy phrase) thought more creatively than the ones inside.
Take a look. Think you’ll try it next time you’re stuck?
Now, I have a question for you. Will you mention this to someone later?
Of course you will.
Sharing is one of the first things we learn to do as babies. It’s part of our DNA and the most social act, even as adults, that we carry out day-to-day. Sharing builds trust and it makes both the sharer AND the receiver happy.
The power of sharing is the secret behind the magic of Happy Grasshopper.
You see, when we started Happy Grasshopper we had one goal: to keep in touch. It really wasn’t more complicated than that. We were busy sales professionals and knew that the most successful salespeople throughout history were the ones who had mastered the art of keeping in touch.
There are all sorts of methods for doing it: greeting cards, phone calls, blogging, drop-bys, “sending gifts of value”… but, like we said, we were busy and each of these things took lots of time and/or lots of money. We knew there had to be a better way. So, we turned our focus to email.
But why email?
There are lots of reasons. For one, email is awesome (like, super-awesome). It’s also super-cheap. It’s instant. It’s non-intrusive. And everyone has an email address, right? Most importantly, it’s personal.
But what sort of email should we send? I mean, we could send things that looked like this…
Or this…
but (and answer this honestly) who would actually want to get those things? The answer? NO ONE.
Those sorts of messages were things we knew we wouldn’t feel good about sending and we knew our friends wouldn’t want to receive them either. They’d delete them (and US) in a heartbeat.
So, we turned to each other. We asked what the things were that we shared with each other day in and day out. What were the funny stories we couldn’t wait to tell each other in the morning and re-tell later that day?
Just like that, Happy Grasshopper was born. Once we stepped outside of traditional sales thinking and looked at things in a new way, it was easy. We started keeping in touch by sharing things with our audience; things that made them laugh or feel connected. And something amazing started happening. People started responding. Not just opening the messages but RESPONDING. We got into long conversations with them. Our friendships grew and we started closing more business.
That’s when we started sharing our system with other. Our new Happy Grasshopper clients got the same results that we did. Here are a few of their stories:
Steven Sharpe, REALTOR®, Chattanooga, TN — This is one of my favorite stories. I sent my first message and almost immediately, a guy that I’d been trying to reach for more than two years responded. He said he loved the message and it reminded him right away of why he’d wanted to work with my in the first place. He told me he wanted to move out of the city, so he had me list and sell his home, then help him buy a lot where he built a new hunting lodge. Because of that one email–and I think I was still on my $5 trial period–I made a little more than $26,000 in commissions, and it’s entirely attributable to Happy Grasshopper.
Katie Maxwell, Managing Broker, Intero, Houston, TX — I am really excited to talk about Happy Grasshopper. I can’t think of another system I would rather recommend to my agents. Within about 60 days of my office starting to use Happy Grasshopper my agents had about about $3 million in pending sales, and we recently got a $6 million listing from Happy Grasshopper. One of my agents had lost these people completely. Then they received on of her Happy Grasshopper emails. They thought it was hilarious. They called her and within a week they flew here out to Mexico to sign the listing agreement. It didn’t ask for sales, it didn’t push them away because it was tacky or weird. The emails Happy Grasshopper sends are just funny awesome ways to engage with the consumer.