Why People Fail – A series of No B.S. Articles from Dan Kennedy

If Your Income’s Not Where You Want It, There’s A Reason

“One of my earliest mentors had his office walls adorned top to bottom, side to side, with big, handwritten signs intended as cautions to others as well as reminders for himself. If you’ve ever been in a direct sales environment, you’ve probably seen such a place. Two of the biggest signs read “Thumb-Suckers Not Welcome Here” and “You Can Hire Spellers For Minimum Wage”.

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He was a millionaire, and in one company, held a commission record at the time of slightly over $1-million earned in 37 months. But he could not spell. And flaunted it. He said that, since you could hire perfect spellers for minimum wage, he preferred learning and thinking about more important things, things it was not so easy to pay cheaply for. He was talking about the concept of value. Value is fundamental. In In boom times or tough times, in big business or small business or any kind of business, even in any occupation or career, the person who makes himself most valuable and creates the most value for others (as they perceive it and are willing to pay for it) always prospers. If your income isn’t where you’d like it to be, you’re not creating enough value. His advice to me, said less elegantly than this, was to find and master something so valuable to enough other people that they will cheerfully pay just about anything for it, and devote all your time and energy to selling and doing that. Most people who fail to achieve their aspirations in business do the exact opposite. They let themselves be consumed doing things of low value, then are surprised to discover they reap small harvests. To be fair, getting yourself organized and disciplined to be relentlessly focused on creating value by making yourself more valuable – daily – by always learning more, acquiring and processing more information, running more experiments, making more useful contacts; and by doing the most valuable things you can do is not an easy task. I’ve written four different books that reveal different paths converging at this same point. Association with others working on this same skill is helpful. Dis-association from those not dedicated to this premise is also helpful.

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Which brings me to the other sign. He had zero tolerance for adults still sucking their thumbs. If you wanted to whine and cry like a baby when something didn’t go your way, you were told to go home, stick a pacifier in your mouth and hug your blankie. At the time I’m writing this, the economy’s a bit tough and bruising and I hear too many adults who sound like babies. Actually, it’s just one of those times that the entire economy woke up on the wrong side of the bed grumpy and is telling everybody: thumb-suckers not welcome here. And this must be your personal policy, if you are to prosper and thrive while most others do not. Which is, incidentally, all the time; fewer than 5% have 95% of the wealth flow to them all the time; the disparity is just more stark, the judgment of the critical marketplace more harsh and quick and visible at some times than others. You need zero tolerance for thumb-sucking, personally, or by anybody you permit in your world: staff, associates, vendors, even customers, friends, neighbors, media voices you listen to, authors you read. The power of association is an enormously powerful, irresistible force, for good or evil, for gain or loss, for growth or regression. You dare not discount or underestimate it. You can and should strategically use it for advantage.”

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As we go about our daily lives we are constantly exposed, if not bombarded, with messages and advertisement trying to get our attention. And not just to get our attention but to keep it long enough for us to take interest in what it is the sponsor wants to share with us. The end result of all of this exposure is that we have become resistant and sometimes immune. It affects every aspect of our lives. When we watch the news, listen to the radio, read papers and magazines; no matter what the media, we pay close attention to only those things that are of interest to us in our daily lives. We eliminate entire sections of a newspaper; we seek out specific sections on local news, weather and many search out the Sports Page above all else, men and women! We have been forced to become selective. Given all of this conditioning the chances of penetrating anyone’s advertising flak-jacket might seem small. But there are techniques today that are effective and work consistently.

Here’s a question that will prove that that last statement is true. Have you ever walked past a news stand and taken a quick glance at the various racks of papers available for that day? No doubt you have and when you did this I’m willing to bet that some of those papers stood out against the rest. That was not an accident on their part. Rather, it is part of a well understood and practiced advertising method.

Over time successful advertisers have developed many techniques to get your attention. The front page of every Playboy magazine should demonstrate that fact. Its success has spawned too many other publications to count although many might not be able to lay claim to the “I read it just for the articles” justification. The “Elvis is Alive and Living in Roswell” type headlines we see in the National Enquirer magazine certainly grab our attention too. Both demonstrate effective ways of getting and holding our attention. Once this has been accomplished the chances start to increase that we may take the next step and read more.

Marketing research has demonstrated that there is a process that successful marketers follow to help get through the spam advertising filters that people carry around with them today. The first one, as I have already demonstrated, is to get the attention of your target audience with the Headline. Once that has been accomplished you need to elevate their interests and emotions. In the marketing world today there is one company that has actually developed a 5 step process and incorporated it into an extensive marketing program of tools and processes. That company is Automated Marketing Solutions or AMS. AMS provides a full suite of marketing technology tools and processes that allow any company to deliver a comprehensive marketing program using tested and proven methods including emotional type advertising. Their twelve years of experience in Direct Response Marketing ensures that even the beginner can quickly integrate and take advantage of the benefits of this technique. And it doesn’t stop there. AMS provides the capability for a company to place their ENTIRE Marketing Program on Auto-pilot. Once a business marketing program (including voice messages, e-mails, faxes and other broadcast and mail out collateral) is compiled and sequenced, their Lead Management System or LMS provides the unique ability to manage and control that program without any further human interaction.

The benefits to this system are significant time savings on what would otherwise be labor intensive tasks and consistency in marketing messages. It also means that businesses never need worry about loosing customers who misinterpreted your lack of contact for apathy. If you would like to hear more about Emotional Advertising and how it can benefit your business, visit (website here) today. You will be surprised at how quickly and economically you can implement and start benefiting from AMS’ tested and proven technology and experience.

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“10 Most Common Marketing Mistake and How To Avoid Them”
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Hi, it’s Mike Kowalski from AMS. Welcome to this week’s Marketing Minute Tip. This week we are going to review all the different Toll Free Recorded Message Hotlines available so you can better decide which ones you absolutely need in your business. So let’s get started.

There are 5 different types of Toll-free Recorded Message Hotlines and here is how you can quickly determine which one best suits your needs.

1. The Information Hotline - This hotline is used with an unbranded ad (which is an ad that doesn’t readily identify you as the advertiser running the ad they’re reading) and has multiple ID numbers.

Here’s an example: I’m a Real Estate Agent and I advertise “6 Costly Home Seller Mistakes and How To Avoid Them.” I include an 800 number, the prospect calls the number and the caller hears, “Hello its Jack Lambert from Re/Max Realty and thanks for calling. To get your free report leave your name and address after the tone, thanks.”

Is the caller going to leave their contact information? No way. It was an unbranded ad and there was no mention that this was from a Real Estate Agent. The caller suspects the information is probably going to be biased and that it was an ad. So follow our earlier advice and keep the Recorded Message neutral not sharing any company information until they get your Free Report. You see, once they get the Free Special Report we always recommend you send after they leave their contact information, it doesn’t matter that it came from a Real Estate Agent because the information and the context now make logical sense. It’s giving the prospect information that they need and has positioned the agent as an expert who just wants to help.

Done this way your conversion rate should be somewhere between 60 and 80%.

This type of Hotline can have up to 1,000 mailboxes or ID numbers and allows you to attach different 4 digit ID numbers to the same script if you want to test the same ad in different mediums.

You can also have multiple scripts for different ads stored here. In the Real Estate niche some marketers have over 50 different scripts because they have over 50 different types of ads and they duplicate each script 3 or 4 times for tracking purposes. Another important factor is that this type of Hotline dead-ends at that particular mailbox to which the caller entered the 4 digit ID number. They can only listen to one specific message and that’s it, because that’s all you want them to do.

Later on, the reports this system automatically generates will show you the telephone number of the caller, their address, how long they listened to your message, and if that number is on the National Do Not Call List.

Sometimes, depending on what your philosophy is, you might want to call back the hang-ups. There are two thoughts on this. One is why would I want to call back a hang-up? They weren’t motivated to leave a message, so it’s basically like a cold call. The second way to look at it is, they were motivated enough to call they must have had some interest, so I’ll call them back.

If you choose to call them back your script should say something like, “Hello, it’s Jack Lambert from Re/Max Realty calling, I’m sorry to be bothering you, but you called our 800 number regarding the 6 Costly Home Seller Mistakes, and we’ve been having a bit of a problem with some of the messages. I’m just doing a follow up call to make sure we send you the Free Report if you wanted it.”

From there you can engage them in further dialogue. AMS knows of agents who make tens of thousands of dollars just doing that alone.

2. The Information Hotline WITHOUT ID Numbers – This is generally used with a Warning or Consumer awareness ad, but it can also be used with unbranded ads as well. Some marketers prefer to use separate 800 numbers for each ad they place…and they believe response will be higher because they didn’t ask the caller to take an additional step, i.e. enter an ID number.

But after performing several large scale tests in different niches, our results showed there was no difference in response rate. In fact one large test showed a higher response with a 4 digit ID number than without. This test was done to a target market group that had a high percentage of people over 50 years of age.

Unfortunately, I don’t know why that was. My only logical guess was because there was a 4 digit ID number, it reinforced their perception that a live person would not be answering the call.

Now these are the first 2 of 5 different hotlines you can use. At the beginning of this message I said this was a 2-part series. So to keep you from being totally overwhelmed with all this great information, I’m going to keep my word and save the rest of these juicy tidbits until next week.

To learn more about how hotlines can help you turn your prospects into profits, go to www.AutomatedMarketingSolutions.com

Or, to see more information about our complete membership system, go to www.ProspectsToProfits.net or give one or our reps a call at 1-800-858-8889.

To your marketing success,

Mike Kowalski
President
Automated Marketing Solutions

Welcome to this week’s Marketing Minute Tip. Do you know what this #1 mistake even is?

In case not, the #1 mistake that business owners make when creating, revamping or just updating their websites is this. Telling instead of SELLING! They go on and on about how wonderful their customer service is, how dedicated they are to client satisfaction, how terrific their products are and how many enviable awards they’ve won. No doubt you’ve seen this personally. You may even know people who have been guilty of it.

And here’s the issue with this approach. Who really cares? For sure your prospects don’t because they don’t know you that well since they have not had time to build a relationship of trust or see these things for themselves. Even if they are well on the path to this point you certainly don’t want them to have to slog through a boring website filled with this self proclamation. Remember this; what they’re really more interested in is what you are actually going to do for them SPECIFICALLY. What kind of discount, deal, special service, hard-to-find-item, etc. are you going to provide?

That being the case, these become the unspoken questions you must answer on your website? And this can be accomplished by avoiding these 2 classic blunders…

1. Injecting every bit of useful, free information you can find about your field and generously populate it all over your website. This may set you apart from the “image advertisers” but it probably doesn’t put more money in your pocket. The reality is that web surfers are loyal to no one. Just because you gave them lots of free information, it doesn’t mean they’re going to choose you. It’s kind of like leaving your front door unlocked and then being surprised when thieves take every valuable thing you own without so much as leaving a calling card.

2. Providing a list of third party links of “interest.” It’s a nice gesture and I know you want to be perceived as being helpful. But, what you are really doing is injecting distraction that will take the prospect away from his or her main mission. And this mission is to digest what you can do for them and opt into your website so YOU get the lead and can start working with them. No doubt the surfer will appreciate your helpfulness, but it won’t pay your bills, will it?

Instead, try giving them just enough valuable content to get them involved and then GET SOMETHING IN RETURN i.e. their name and contact information so you can continue marketing to them indefinitely. It’s like the old adage goes, “Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.” SO, use your website to get your prospects involved with you! And once you have them involved, they will begin to understand why you’re the ONLY one of your kind they should do business with.

To learn more about how proven marketing tools and strategies can help you turn your prospects into profits, go to www.YourMarketingRobot.com

Or, to see more information about our complete membership system, go to www.ProspectsToProfits.net or give one or our reps a call at 1-800-858-8889.

To your marketing success,

Mike Kowalski
President
Automated Marketing Solutions

Welcome to this week’s Marketing Minute Tip. Remember those teachers in high school who gave you “open-book” tests? Remember how relieved you felt knowing you had easy access to ALL the answers?

Well, I’m going to do you one better. I’m actually going to GIVE you the answer key.

I’m going to show you EXACTLY how a profit-producing Voice Broadcast should go.

Here it is in 6 short steps:

You have a database of phone numbers for people with whom you already have some sort of relationship.

You write up a short, but motivating message that you want to leave them. Here’s an example for you.

“Hi, this is Michael Jasper from Re/Max Alliance. I’m calling you because you’re one of our best clients, and I wanted you to hear from me personally about a special Foreclosure Property Listing Program we’ve instituted for our top clients. Since you’ve been so great to work with, we’re going to offer you a 15% discount on admission to this program. All you have to do to qualify for this price break is call our 24 hour, toll-free recorded message line at 1-866-666-5555. If you listen to that message, you’ll get the secret password that will get you an extra 5% off, making the total discount an amazing 20%! You can also find this secret password on our web site, which is www.michaeljasper.com. Thanks for being such a great client, and I look forward to seeing you make more money with our program than ever before!”

You record this message using a regular phone; you then email your list of recipients to a place like Automated Marketing Solutions (AMS).

AMS then sends this message to the list of numbers you provided, during a specified time of day, when your client is least likely to be home and your message is most likely to be picked up by voice mail.

That’s it! Your clients just received a personalized message from you, without you having to call 20, 200, or 2,000 people! They weren’t harassed by a sales call, you didn’t waste time with someone who’s not interested and they can replay the message at their leisure to collect the pertinent information when it suits them.

And if a live human answers, the system simply hangs up! No one wants to bug them, and this system prevents that completely!

To learn more about Voice Broadcasting or any other AMS product, service or Marketing Membership program, go to: www.AutomatedMarketingSolutions.com

Or, to see more information about our complete membership system, go to www.ProspectsToProfits.net or give one or our reps a call at 1-800-858-8889.

To your marketing success,

Mike Kowalski
President
Automated Marketing Solutions