Use 4 Key Learning Styles to get your message across to 100% of people

Part 3 of 5 of from the great interview between Eben Pagan and Frank Kern up on Kern’s blog

Your probably missing  70-80% of your potential sales.

4 Learning Styles is the most powerful of the 10 frameworks taught in Eben’s latest course on info product development, and his most powerful communication technique that can be used in any medium: live or email. Using it can help you dramatically communicate with 100% of your audience, rather than being poorly understood.

The 4 Learning Styles originates from David Kolb (often misheard as David Cole) a Harvard Psychologist, who in studying the way people learn, discovered 4 distinct learning styles, that tended not to overlap.

The four learning styles are:

1. Why
2. What
   
3. How
4. What If

They need to be presented in that order, else you will lose people.

Think of them almost like different color blindness. One person is color blind in red, the other in blue, the other color blind in green.  So to reach them all we need to broadcast in all the colors.

The order is VERY important, and can be used anywhere, copy, teleseminars, content, you name it.

Most people You may not realize it but the way you learn is also usually the only way you teach which means you’ll only be reaching the learning styles you use.   This means you’ll only reach 20-30% percent of your audience. Wasting 70% to 80% of your market (and your money).

Also notice that this overlaps with the classic marketing AIDA formula:  Attraction, Interest, Decision, Call to Action, which is great for doing PPC ads, which gives you 4 lines exactly.

Connect with 100% of your audience, just follow these steps:

For this example we’ll say we’re making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a lunch

1. Ask Why: First ask yourself why they should pay attention to you, right now.  What are the emotional motive drivers of the information?  Write these down first.

• And what terrible pains will they avoid? (E.g. starving horribly while all the other people eat, spending all the money on outrageously priced , or running out of time to each waiting for your meal to arrive)
• What benefit they will get? (E.g. You’ll be happier, have an easier life, happier family,be more attractive, and save time +money, with this portable, tasty, filling, and inexpensive power combo).

2. Ask What for: What is it?  What purpose is following you for?What is  the vital essense, the history, the key concepts and the underlying theory.  How this is better, faster, cheaper than alternatives. These people need to see the whole the process.  Write these down second.

• In a single sentence, what is it that they are going to learn?
• Where did it come from?  (peanut butter was invented in 950 B.C.!)
• What are the key concepts?  (Fat + sugar give immediate and lasting energy)
• Is there an underlying rule or theory, that helps unify all the information? (p+b sandwiches could end all wars)

3. Ask How: The how people— they need action steps, specific procedure.  They want to get inside, how it produces results. They’ll put up with the previous two, as long as they get this. Write these down third.

• What will the goal look like when it’s finished? (Picture of person eating the sandwich)
• What are the prerequisites to start? (E.g. must go to the store and get peanut butter, jelly and bread, and something to spread it with)
• What is the first thing they must do, be specific (open the jars).
• What is the next thing they must do?  (Spread peanut butter on both sides)
• …repeat   (do the same thing with jelly)
• What is the last step, how will they know it’s finished?
• What are the possible trouble spots and solutions? (Natural peanut butter must be stirred first; peanut butter on both sides of the bread will keep it from getting soggy with the jam)

4. Ask What If:  What if I use this product to… These people are action oriented— they don’t really need to know why, or how, just the to “Just do it!“  Write these last.

• How could they use this in other than the obvious way (what if you filled a whole bag of sliced bread, you’d have lunches for the kids for a week, what if you experimented with different types of jellys and nut butters)

• What are the immediate results they will get? (tasty filling quick easy and cheap! What if you did it started right now)
• What if you did this everyday for 30, 60, 90 days, a year, a decade? how would you benefit?

Call to Action, What to do right now.

• What’s the immediate specific action the user needs to do RIGHT NOW?
• Write it: “Go do this one thing right now”.    (go to the store and get the peanut butter right now!)

Eben notes he uses these everywhere: his seminars, info products, and with his 80+ employees, constantly cycles through these patterns all the time, to keep the entire audience’s attention.  He has found dramatic increase in his team’s comprehension and appreciation of what’s being done.   He challenges people to steal those 4 steps (Why, What, How and What If) even title that in their own emails, and sales campaign. I’m trying it right now, it seems to be helping organize the writing faster. Neat.

Another great article on this is from master Alex Mandossian, if you enjoyed this, go read this on how he uses this framework to make super successful teleseminars..upto 12K of them,  it’s a quick read

Note: the real information on David Kolbe’s work can be found at his website “Learning From Experience” and is also called “experiential learning theory” or ELT.  It is much more academically focused and worded the four basic groups are named very differently (but more accurately).  In reality I believe we all embody all 4 aspects at differnet times.

There is a good short 5 min video from Mike Koenig covering more of the Kolbe, it interesting varies signficantly from what Eben covered in a way that can’t quite be matched up. Watch that great 5 min video here.

• The Sales personality: persuaders and motivators, ask “Why?”,  35% of the population
• The Scholastics: objectives and outcomes, “What For?” 18% of the population
• The Technicals: operations and processes, “How?”  25% of the population
• The Advocates and Marketers: creatives and marketer, focusing on opportunities “What If?”, 20% of the population.

You can find more by doing a search on “Kolb Learning Style Inventory” which returns some great pages like this great one,

Mike (and possibly Eben) originally heard it from Alex Mondossian

For part 2 of the interview go here for part 4 of the interview go here

For more tips on how to use these sorts of frameworks to make better products and other cool tips, opt-in in the above right.