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In order to maximize your message’s response, you need to consider your message’s timing. In a previous article, I talked about tactics you can use to get more qualified leads, considering the past history of your prospect’s awareness and their sophistication with your product or service. The idea is to catch prospects who are agreeable to your message.

There is more to timing, however, than your prospects past awareness and sophistication with your message. You also need to consider their present and future timing. In this article, I’ll discuss one aspect of your prospect’s present time horizon that is critical for you to get more qualified leads.

When timing your message, you need to consider your prospect’s present state of mind. You need to know your prospect’s general mode or disposition at the time your message is passing their time horizon. By knowing their disposition and timing it right, you’ll lift your responses.

Let me show you how.

What you need to know about your prospect’s

present disposition to increase responses

According to the British psychologist Michael Apter, your prospects are always in one of only two modes or dispositions. These modes help them associate certain motivations and emotions with your marketing messages. The modes relate to how your prospects feel under any type of arousal.

Prospects either seek excitement or relaxation. When they seek excitement, they avoid boredom. And when they seek relaxation, they avoid anxiety. Either theyll be thriving under high arousal and feeling excited, or else miserable because they feel bored; or they’re thriving under low arousal and feel relaxed, or irritated by the low arousal and feel anxious.

So, every time you send a message to your prospect, you’ll find them either seeking excitement and avoiding boredom or seeking relaxation and avoiding anxiety. Apter has also found that your prospects don’t stay permanently in one of the two modes; they can switch modes. And those who seek excitement can actually switch modes more abruptly than those who seek relaxation.

He additionally noticed that prospects are not only motivated to switch modes, but the motivation has a directional tendency. Prospect are either concerned with carrying out an activity itself or with goal achievement.

When your prospects are seeking excitement, they’re trying to avoid boredom at all costs. Their satisfaction comes from being involved with the activity itself. Their primary motivation is to do a job well done. Their focus is on the means or activities, and they’re willing to sacrifice their goals to ensure the continuation of their enjoyment.

In this mode, they never feel anxious or relaxed. This is because their mode provides a protection against anxiety; they feel confident about dealing with any problem that comes along. They’re so involved in the activity that the activity itself acts as a risk-free safety zone, and they feel a sense of detachment from others, even in threatening situations.

You need to particularly pay attention to this mode when selling to engineers or entrepreneurs who thrive on excitement.

When your prospects are seeking relaxation in a calm energy mode, they’re trying to avoid the high emotional arousal of anxiety. Their satisfaction comes from making progress towards their goal achievement. Their primary motivation is to achieve their goal. In their case, the goals never change, but the tasks change as their beliefs change as to the best means to achieve their goals.

In this mode, your prospects will only feel anxiety or relaxation, never excitement or boredom.

This type of mode is susceptible to managers.

What you need to do to time your message

perfectly with your prospect’s present disposition

Adler also found that you could persuade prospects more easily if they’re in a relaxation-seeking mode. In this state, they judge things more positively. Also, they tend less toward risk aversion. But this doesn’t mean you cannot persuade the excitement-seeking prospect. For them, you need to persuade using as little ambiguity as possible. The reason is, in this mode, your prospect dislikes conflicting ways of interpreting a situation.

You can also induce a change in their mode by threatening those who are excitement seekers and pleasurably intriguing those who are relaxation seekers.

Also, because age affects your prospect’s disposition (younger people are more likely to be in a relaxation-seeking mode), you should try to differentiate your message according to age.

You can see how this works in the business-to-consumer markets. Consumers buy more during public holidays and special occasions. They also tend to associate certain products with relaxation.

John and Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy, in their book Persuasion in Advertising, use a good example to demonstrate how this works. Beck’s, the German beer, markets heavily to what they call destination markets. When people drink beer to relax at a bar or during a holiday, they’ll tend to associate those relaxing times with their beer. Therefore, even when they want to relax at home, they’ll prefer to drink Beck’s.

In the same way, you can look at the business world. Business also has its own calendar. There are times during that monthly or yearly calendar where most of your prospects will be dealing with goals and budgets. At other times, they’ll be more interested in doing their everyday activities well. Also, depending on what’s happening in the economy, people in certain sectors of the economy can be going through a high excitement mood, and others can be in a calm energy mood.

The idea, then, is to try to either find your prospects in a relaxation-seeking mode, or try to persuade them toward a relaxation-seeking mode. Another possibility is to get your prospects to associate your message with something they regularly do while relaxed.

Understanding your prospect’s business calendar is very important. In their distinctive calendars, businesses have specific days and times that induce various types of modes. Understanding this cycle and the type of person youre targeting will help you time your message properly. You want your message to arrive just in time.

Here is a good example of an ad that seeks to put the engineer in an anxious mode. When the engineers are in an anxious mode, they’ll seek relaxation in order to seek help.

The ad is a current Microsoft’s Visual Studio. The headline reads:

It Took a Thousand Years to Build Rome: Your Dev Team Has a Month.

Defy all challenges.

Your challenge: finish big projects eons faster. Defy it: communicate and collaborate better with Visual Studio Team Systems. More tips and tools at defyallchallenges.com.

Here is another ad that seeks to help you get in a relaxed mood. Its a current AT&T full-page ad:

The scene is a businesswoman sitting in a boat, cruising down a river with a major city as the backdrop. She seems relaxed, looking around with a laptop opened on her lap.

The copy at the top of the page reads:

Achieve real-time collaboration, without boundaries. Your job is to connect your workforce. No matter where they’re working. With our extensive global reach, your employees around the world can work together as if they’re in the same room. That’s collaboration. Delivered. For everything you need for your world, And it’s onward, business.

Not knowing what type of response these ads are getting, I can only say they seem to be on the right track. Although the mood of the ad or letter makes a difference, what’s important is to learn your prospect’s calendar and time your message properly. Preferably, the message needs to come in at the time when your prospects are relaxed.

Much has been written about when the right time to send emails is. For instance, studies have shown that Monday mornings or during lunchtime are not good times to send emails. The importance of timing emails is no different for any other type of message. Your prospects calendar will tell you how to best time your message.

In Brief:

1. Considering the present mental mode or disposition of your customer will improve response.

1. Your prospects are in either of two modes: excitement-seeking or relaxation-seeking modes.

1. When your prospects are in the excitement-seeking mode, they’re trying to avoid boredom; when they’re in the relaxation-seeking mode, they’re trying to avoid anxiety.

1. Although your prospects have a tendency to stay in one of these modes (depending on their work), they do change modes depending on their business calendar. Also, those who seek excitement tend to change more abruptly towards the relaxation-seeking mode.

1. Your prospects will respond better to your message if they’re in a relaxation-seeking mode.

1. When your prospects spend most of their time in an excitement-seeking mode, your message needs to be very clear in order to achieve maximum response, with little or no ambiguity.

1. You can also improve response by engineering your ad or message to help your prospect get into a relaxation-seeking mode.

1. Learn your prospects monthly and yearly calendar and consider timing your message to their present mode or disposition to get better response.

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