The CHuMS Framework: A way to 9X your sales

Today I'm going to reveal the CHuMS method of creating insanely effective marketing. It's a method I have used over the years to improve all aspects of my marketing, and it's based on science and everything! So if you want to find out how this simple change will mean you can improve your marketing results by up to 3 times, read on…

Sales and Marketing can be hard, I get it.

But there's a very good chance that you are not the problem – its the way you are communicating that's letting you down.

Back in 2007, I stumbled upon a psychological theory that explained why 75% of my adverts, emails and sales meetings failed.

I turned this inot my CHuMS framework, and when I implemented this simple change to my marketing:

• My adverts (on Google Adwords) performed 3 times better
• My follow up emails resulted in 3 times more sales meetings
• My sales meetings converted almost 3 times more prospects into customers

3 times more leads, 3 times more meetings, and 3 times more sales means 9 times more customers!

What this article will cover:

Over the next few minutes, I'll show you:

• A simple tweak that revolutionised the way I did sales and marketing (sold on the idea already? Click here and I'll send you the Template Cheatsheet via email)
• A controversial idea that a mother-and-daughter psychology team discovered in 1944 (and how it forms the base of this framework)
• How to outsell your competitors 4 to 1 (and build huge brand loyalty and trust in the meantime)
• The actual psychology nuts-and-bolts behind this idea (and how I made this work for my company)

Let's get started then.

It was January 2007, I was failing badly, and I desperately needed to convert more customers

I was so frustrated. The adverts I created barely generated any leads, and those potential customers that did enquire just didn't seem to ‘get' what I was saying.

And of course those sales meetings I did have were a car crash. I was quickly running out of money.

The enquiries I got were mostly cost-conscious prospects, and no matter how I tried to turn it around, I had to almost twist their arm up their back, just to take a sales meeting.

When I did get a sales meeting, prospects would sit with their arms crossed, either bored, sceptical or downright hostile.

I knew there was a problem somewhere, but I just didn't know where to look.

Quick note: My company was a debt management and Sell and Rentback company, and I was actually trying to buy their house for just 60% of it's value! Yup, it was a hard sell.

Now I'm ruining a date

At the time, I was dating a woman (who would turn out to be my wife) and one night, over a couple of pints of imported lager in a fancy Manchester, I was pouring out my troubles to my very patient date.

“They just don't listen. That's the problem with them. I wish I could find people who I could actually help.”

She just sat there, quietly listening, and sipping her drink.

After I finished, she said something quite simple, yet very profound:

“People listen in different ways – are you changing the way you talk to them based on their personality?”

I was not, I admitted.

In fact, I wasn't even sure I understood what Leanne was talking about, but it was our third date and she was a fancy psychologist, so I couldn't admit to that…

She went on to explain a theory devised by a Swiss psychiatrist called Carl Jung. It proposed that almost everyone falls into one of just four main personality types.

Fast forward to the 1930's, and a mother (Katharine Cook Briggs) and her daughter (Isabel Briggs Myers) took this theory and ran with it.

They came up with a personality test that would help some discover which of these 4 personality types they fell into.

Anyway, my wife-to-be explained that although the psychology world don't believe it tells the whole picture of someone's personality, it's a simple, and effective way to classify most of the population.

Drowning in the research

A light bulb went off in my head.

I immediately realised that I was saying the exact same thing, in the exact same way, to 100% of my prospects. This meant i was effectively ignoring 75% of them.

No wonder the majority of them wanted me out of the house as soon as possible!

That night I started googling MBTI, Jung and the more I learnt, the more it made sense to me. One article summed it up perfectly.

The article said that the world (and therefore my prospects) falls broadly into one of 4 types of people:

• The Competitive
• The Humanistic
• The Methodical
• The Spontaneous

In other words:

• Competitive: Those who like to beat others, or like to compare things to find a winner
• Humanistic: Those who care about the human story behind ideas, or how things affect other humans
• Methodical: Those who like to know every detail before making a decision, and who value detail
• Spontaneous: those who make quick decisions, or like the information summarised

I recognised my self as mainly ‘spontaneous‘ so I'd been writing all my marketing materials with minimal information and a pretty compelling ‘book a meeting' button, because that's the way I bought things!

However, I was ignoring the other 3 types of prospects (75% of my entire audience!) who consumed infomration and made decisions in a different way.

I knew things had to change, so I immediately started rewriting my ads (I was using Google Adwords at the time).

Spoiler alert: It worked

I started with my Google Adwords adverts:

I could see clear as day that the advert above appealed to those who made decisions quickly – in other words the Spontaneous types.

I immediately started writing adverts for the other 3 personality types. Below you can see what the adverts for each would look like today (Google changed the format of ads recently so mine would have had a slightly different layout)

I rotated these 4 adverts continually, and suddenly got 3x better click-through rate (that's the % of people who click on the advert).

I then tackled my landing page (the web page that people saw when they clicked the advert).

I create 3 more pages, each slightly different and designed to appeal to the personality type of the person who clicked the advert.

In other words:

• Ad 1 (Spontaneous) went to the original landing page
• Ad 2 (Competitive) went to a page that leaned more towards comparisons and winning
• Ad 3 (Humanistic) had a page that was main;y testimonials and stories
• Ad 4 (Methodical) had all the facts and figures, as well as the content from the other 3 pages

This tripled the numbers of people who downloaded the report!

What about the other web pages though, Al?

You're right – this only worked when someone clicked an advert – at that point I could take a guess on their personailty type.

That clearly won't work for people coming to the website from other sources.

I thought long and hard about this and that's when i came up with the CHuMS Page Framework (you can download the template here).

I wanted to appeal to all 4 types, so I restructured the other main pages so that:

• The most important points were first, which appealed to the Spontaneous readers.
• The next two paragraphs were a story of how my solution helped others which appealed to the Humanistic people
• Then I did a comparison table and a ‘Quick Win' section which appealed to those of a Competitive nature
• Finally I went into in the detail, with various links, facts and worked examples for those Methodical guys

My analytics showed that I was getting my readers to stay on the page for almost twice as long!

So I then set to work on my follow-up emails*, using the same CHuMS Page Framework.

*The follow up emails were a suite of about 30 emails that went out automatically over a period of 120 days to anyone who downloaded my report

Again, the results were great. I was getting more people who'd downloaded the report to contact me, even months after they'd click that download button!

I started doing it in my sale meetings too…

“If it works via the written word, I wonder if it would work in a face to face environment?”

It did!

During my sales meetings, I would:

• started off with a quick summary of what the meeting would cover and what their options were at the end (this satisfied the Spontaneous people)
• I then asked them to tell me the story of how they got in debt and related it to a previous customer of mine (ticking off the Humanistic element)
• I would then put my solution forward with a comparison of other solutions. I'd also talk about how to beat the lenders and annihilate their debt (which made all those Competitive people sit up and take notice)
• Finally, I offered an in-depth ‘ask me anything‘ session for all those people who were Methodical

My sales went though the roof!

I was suddenly building much more trust and rapport with my prospects because I was literally speaking their language.

One person actually got out all the offers they'd got from my competitors and lined them up on the table and asked me to help him compare them (have a guess what type he was!)

And of course, it's important to note that the CHuMS Method isn;t suggesting we're only one of those 4 personality types.

We're all a mix of 2 or sometimes more. (I'm probably 30% Humanistic and 70% Spontaneous, for example.)

But most of us have a dominant trait, and that's the one we're appealing to.

If you liked the science then you'll love this website

As I suggested earlier, these 4 personality types are a very simplistic version of the highly complex world of personalities, and any psychology professional will tell you that there's much more to learn here.

Each of the 4 mentioned here have a further 4 sub-personalities, making 16 personalities in total.

If you like to know all the ins and outs, then I suggest you spend some time on the amazing website 16personalities.com.

There's so much more information there and you can methodicalise (yep, just made this word up!) to your heart's content.

For the rest of us though, here's a summary of your next steps.

Your next steps

Start with your landing page (or if you don't use online advertising, look at your flyers or sales material) and:

• Insert a ‘take action now' link near the beginning of each page (maybe it could be called ‘In a Hurry?') to appease the Spontaneous people
• Try to include a customer story or some testimonials (with photos!) to make the Humanistic happy
• Do some comparison tables, or show them a ‘quick win‘ box. These to appeal to the Competitive
• Towards the end of the page, include plenty of further information and data for the fact-hungry Methodicals that walk amongst us!

If you want to see this in action then look no further than this guide… Yep, I've been using it on you, and you've not even noticed.

Looking back, you'll probably now see how I've structured the article.

• Notice how the beginning of the article was written for those Spontaneous readers where I offer a download of a template as a shortcut?
• Watch me charm those Humanistic readers with the story about my wife and our date
• See how I ruffle the hair of those Competitive types as I talk about winning and comparing the before and after
• And finally, note how I've linked to another website with loads more details towards the end of this guide for those who are Methodical in nature and love more information

If you want to implement this in your business, I've created a Template Cheatsheet that will:

• Provide a Quick Start guide that will give you a shortcut to engaging content
• Help you improve the relationship between you and your customers by using the language and structure that appeals to them most
• Easily dominate your market by making your competitors' marketing irrelevant!
• Show you step-by-step how to take complex ideas and make them appealing to your target audience

PSST: Did you notice that in the paragraph above, I still appealed to all four personality types?

Check out the phrases in bold! This stuff becomes second nature after a while.

So if you want this free cheatsheet, click the button below and my clever automation thingy will send a copy right to your inbox in seconds.

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