Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for September, 2009

What do I need to do to increase income today, this week, this month?

I’m willing to lay odds that you’ve asked yourself that question at least once in the past couple of weeks.

That’s the question you ask when you’re focused on present banking.

But when you’re focused on future banking, you’re asking yourself a different question. You ask yourself, “How can I leverage what I’m doing today so that it continues to generate income tomorrow, next week, next month, next year?”

Write that sentence down and put it above your desk. Put it in your day planner or in your diary or whatever you use to plan your time. Because when you ask different questions, you’ll get different answers.

The answers to that second question – the future banking question – will help you to recognize the value of creating something that’s going to generate income and create wealth for you over time.  It will actually point you toward activities. You will somehow find the time to create products, because you understand that the product isn’t just about what it’s going to bring in next month. It has a more long-term value.

You don’t have to sacrifice present income for the sake of future income. That’s hardly practical or even feasible for most businesses. But, let’s say that you offer a teleseminar that brings in £6,000. If you do one teleseminar a month, you’ve just added £74,000 to your annual income.

And while you have that present income that the teleseminar generates, you can also record it and turn it into products that you can sell directly from your website. That could bring in thousands of pounds of future income over the next year.

So start asking yourself that second question about future banking right now.

If you’ve got clients later on this week, ask yourself how you can leverage what you’re doing for them so that it continues to generate income.

Here’s an idea ….    you might use a digital recorder to record your training session and have it transcribed. Naturally a percentage of what you cover will only be relevant for certain clients.

But a good portion of your material is probably generic and offers solutions that are relevant for a wider audience. You can turn this into a separate product.

That’s one concrete, efficient way for you to create products as you go. You don’t need to lock yourself in a room for 2 weeks to create a new product.

If you habitually ask yourself that second question, it will make a massive difference to your income.

And, ironically, the result will be that you no longer think about monthly income. You’ll be able to predict your income months in advance because of actions that you took yesterday or last month or last week.

This is something that you really need to think about. The difference between present banking and future banking makes a very big difference in your business and your income.

Start banking on your future today.

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Do you find yourself stumbling when it comes to selling your products to others? You’re not alone; plenty of otherwise savvy business people fail to reach their goals because they hesitate to ask someone else to buy their products. The stigma attached to sales in your own thinking may be what’s holding you back from reaching your goals..

If you suspect your hesitation to ask for the sale stems from negative mental associations, it’s time to break free. Let’s look at some of the stereotypes that can cause people to see sales in a negative light.

Salespeople are pushy: Maybe you or your parents had a bad interaction with a salesperson that used force, rather than educating the customer, to try to make a sale. Does that stereotype you developed keep you from becoming someone who relates well to customers and serves their needs? It doesn’t have to.

Salespeople are dishonest: Again, one bad experience with an unscrupulous sales professional can taint our own ability to offer our products to the people who need them. But that doesn’t have to be a permanent condition! We can decide to serve our customers in ethical ways that benefit both them and our businesses.

Sales isn’t a “real job”: How many of you were encouraged to finish college and then land a great job in sales? Probably not many. This particular stigma is persistent, that selling our products is somehow not a “real job.” The truth is, no business succeeds unless someone buys its products or services! Becoming a successful business owner is a real job. Successfully steering your company through hard times by continuing to sell products is a great accomplishment.

Setting aside the stigma others have ingrained in you about the legitimacy of sales can be the crucial first step to reaching your goals. Take an honest look at your involuntary reaction to the word “sales.” If it makes you squeamish, you have some work to do to change how you frame offering your products to your market.

Accept that you have something important to offer the world. Serve the needs of those who are looking for what you have to offer by educating them about your products.

Step over the mental roadblock in your mind about “sales” and enjoy the satisfaction of improving someone else’s life. There’s no stigma attached to serving your customers well.

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One question people always ask me is, ‘How long should my copy be?’ They ask this about brochures, sales letters and even web sites. Along the same line, when they see or receive those long sales letters, or scroll down lengthy web pages, they also ask, ‘Do you really have to have so much copy?’

Some ‘experts’ answer this by saying, ‘long copy gets better results than short copy.’ Like most truisms, you need to take that with a grain of salt. Long copy doesn’t get good results just because it is long. It works because it does everything it has to do, and nothing more. In fact, high-quality short copy will out-pull poorly written long copy every day of the week.

So in my opinion, the right length for every piece of copy is the exactly the same. It should be as long as it needs to be to get the job done. If it takes eight pages to get the response you want, then that is the length it should be. If you can get as many readers to take the same action in a single page, then one page is sufficient.

Avoid The Pressure of Squeezing It All In

My original job was as a salesperson. In all the time I sold face-to-face, I never had a sales manager say to me, ‘Bernadette, I want you to go into that office and get the order. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got you on a stopwatch. You have to do it in five minutes.’

No sales manager would ever do that. A few might feel the urge from time to time, but it would be very rare to find a sales manager that would actually put a sales team or their customers under that type of pressure.

And yet, you do hear people saying things just as impractical when it comes to sales materials, such as ‘I need to write this letter, and I’ve only got two sides of an A4 sheet to cover it.’ Why would you deliberately put yourself under that kind of pressure?

Length Is Not Really The Issue

A better approach is to forget about length entirely. You need to write the copy first, using enough words to convince the reader to do what you want. Once it is written, then you can see how long it is.

This is true not only when you are writing for a web page, but also when you are getting something printed. You have got to first see how long it needs to be, and then make the decision about how many pages you are going to get printed.

Yet how many marketers go to a printer first, get a quote for a certain brochure size, and then try to squeeze all of their sales messages into the available space? They have simply got it the wrong way around. It really is putting the cart ahead of the horse.

So if you remember only one thing about how long copy should be, let it be this: Your copy needs to be as long as it takes to get the job done—not a word more and not a word less.

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It’s been said that there are only seven stories in the whole world. Of course you’ve heard hundreds and hundreds of stories, but actually many are basically the same recurring themes, just told with different characters.

Telling a story -­ your story – is one of the best marketing techniques you can use. Incorporating this technique into your marketing promotions will help you to engage your prospect and motivate them to buy from you.

To get you started – here is an overview of Christopher Booker’s, “The Seven Basic Plots.” See which one fits your business story.

1. Overcoming the monster. Think of the story Dracula, where an other-worldly monster turns victims into the living dead. It must be slain. Now think of the monster in your business, the thing that you absolutely had to get rid of once and for all. How did you do it? That’s the story you should tell. Teach your customers how to get rid of the extra paperwork, or the extra taxes. Use the drama of turning the burden into a monster. Then teach them how to overcome it.
2. Rags to riches. When Vivian Ward wins the heart of Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman, she is transformed from someone who started out in rags to literal riches. Rags to riches is the story of transformation – financial or personal. It could be about your own experience or about experiences you’ve helped others to reach. If the theme of your business is transformation, telling rags to riches tales will hold prospective customers spellbound.
3. The quest. This is a story that takes its hero on a journey to find a promised land or prize. And along the way, the hero must overcome obstacles and threats before reaching his goal. Homer’s Odyssey is a classic example, as Odysseus strives to reach Ithaca. So if you’ve figured out how to get from point A to a much prized and distant point B in your business, that’s your quest. You’ve reached the prize and can share your journey with others through your marketing.
4. The voyage and return. Think of Peter Pan and Robinson Crusoe. They share the theme of voyage and return, starting with someone in an ordinary situation who finds themselves transported into a strange world. When they return to their reality, it’s often with a new perspective. But the real story is what they encounter along the way. So if you’ve taken your voyage and returned to your business, tell your audience all about the pirates and mutineers you met along the way, and how those experiences brought you to where you are now.
5. Comedy. This is a very broad category, one not easily defined by a specific example. But if humor and comic situations are part of who you are, they might be the best tools to describe your business. Remember Animal House? The theme was that some people just don’t fit in – does this describe your “outside the box” business? If you’ve managed to break out of a boring day-in-day-out routine, you might think of Groundhog Day. The point is, if you can apply comedy to your business story, by all means use it.
6. Tragedy. Hopefully your business story isn’t a tragedy, but you may be able to use the theme in your marketing. If you think of Bonnie and Clyde or Madame Bovary, they are stories of people who knew better but were unable to stop their destructive behaviors, with tragic results. In marketing, you might talk about customers you were too late to help, or those who didn’t take your advice and made a mess of their business. You could also tell about a mistake that you made along the way, and how you’ve come through it.
7. Rebirth. The classic example here is A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge is a mean man who is reborn after a series of dreams and interventions completely alter his personality. This theme fits anyone who says, “I finally saw the light.” Stories could be about someone struggling for a long time and then suddenly seeing things in a whole new way because of some new information or a new understanding. If your business has been reborn, tell your customers about the experience.

So start to think about which plot fits your story. Maybe you’re already using one of them. If so, that’s great. If not, see which one best describes your business. Which is the story that will emotionally engage your audience? That’s the tale you need to tell.

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If you’re at all fascinated by the concept of passive income, the first thing you need to realize is that time is completely irrelevant to how much money you make.

Now, it may take awhile for you to truly accept this. Even though you may understand the notion in theory, until you actually experience it, as dancers say, “in the muscle,” passive income will remain a fascination, not an everyday reality for you.

This is because there’s a big difference between knowing something in your mind and experiencing the same thing in your body – just think of the difference between seeing a rollercoaster and riding the rollercoaster.

Chances are that you have certain beliefs and attitudes that are blocking you from getting to the point of making passive income – or making money in your sleep, as I like to say.

The main deterrent is the notion that your income should be directly proportional to your time and talent. You may know intellectually that this isn’t true – but your subconscious clings to the belief that it is true.

One of the biggest steps you can take is to make the change from selling your time to selling your expertise. You need to break this time-money trap and really start to get vigilant about where time and money are connected, where they don’t need to be connected, and the things you can do to break that connection.

If you’ve got the time-money trap going on anywhere in your mind, you can know all about passive income streams, you can know about having products, you can know about having an information empire, yet you will consistently hit setbacks and delays, and encounter obstacles as you attempt to put these in place in your own business.

So if you’ve been trying to get that product off the ground, to get your new website going, to put everything in place – and yet it just feels like you’re pushing water uphill – chances are it’s not because of the process that you’re following. It’s because there’s some psychological or emotional block that’s getting in the way.

Perhaps the most challenging thing you’ll face as you build your own business is really quieting down the voice in your mind that says things like: it’s not supposed to be that easy, you haven’t earned it, you don’t deserve it.

That voice just keeps telling you that the money you earned should be proportional to the time you put in.

You need to stop listening to that voice. It doesn’t want you to succeed. If you can stop hearing it, you’ll be on your way to breaking the time-money trap, and reaping the rewards of passive income.

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Everyone loves a happy ending. Think of Cinderella and Pretty Woman. Basically they’re the same story – the story of someone who started out in rags and was transformed to riches.

And if you think about marketing campaigns, you’ll realize that this type of story is frequently used to emotionally engage customers. People love hearing about how someone rose from having nothing to having it all – or at least to being well on their way to the top.

Is the story of your business a “rags to riches” tale?

A “rags to riches” story describes a transformation. It could be about your own experience, or it could be about experiences that you’ve helped others to create. It may be a story of financial transformation. Or it may be more about a personal transformation that someone has gone through.

Whichever is the case, it just might be the story that will help you to emotionally connect with your audience and attract new customers.

Perhaps you’ve come up from having very little to now running a successful business. Or perhaps you are in the business of working with clients on their images, helping them to rise to riches. Either way, there’s a transformation, a before and after story, that you can tell.

A good example is this headline from Rich Schefren’s “Internet Manifesto:” “Learn how young broke cocktail waitress went from living out of her car with two dollars and three cents to her name (there’s the specificity there) to earning her first million in two short years.”

That’s classic “rags to riches”.

So if yours is a Cinderella story, make it the theme of your marketing. Consistently tell stories about the transformation that you have achieved or have helped other people achieve.

Share with your audience how you went from sweeping ashes to wearing the glass slipper. Engage people with your story, take them along on your climb, and they’ll want you to help them make the same transformation.

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Wouldn’t it be incredibly exciting if you could make the same sale, over and over, for as long as you want? If, instead of doing work and getting paid, you do the work once and you get paid, paid, paid, paid, paid, paid.

I can’t stress strongly enough how packaging your content in different ways can meet the different preferences in your audience.  And from those different packages, you can create more and more duplicate sales.

The fact is, you can make this happen. And when you do, it will be like making money while your sleep.

I remember the first time this happened for me. You will probably laugh because the sale amounted to only £25. But that isn’t where your focus should be.

There were many people that, for one reason or another, couldn’t attend a seminar I held on a particular day. So I delivered the seminar again via a series of eight teleseminars. But, I didn’t stop there. I recorded the teleseminars. They explained a lot about why self-employed people struggle with marketing, and they offered a lot of practical solutions.

One segment of the teleseminar focused on lead generation. You know what a popular topic that is.  So, I took this bite-size chunk from that seminar and created a recorded product that I could sell via my website.  And, I sold it for £25.

All I did was put the product on my site, naming it and giving the price.

Now today I would tell you that if you’re going to sell a product, online or offline, you need to tell the story and you need to spell out all of the benefits and you need to overcome all the objections. Really drive home to the reader why they should choose this particular product. I didn’t do that. I hadn’t done anything to promote this – not even an e-mail to my client list.

Luckily, my clients were more persistent than I was.  A few days later when I checked my email, there was a new order notice in my inbox.

I will never ever forget that sale, because it let me know that someone had just bought and downloaded the recording. I had literally made money in my sleep. I had received the money, delivered the product, it had all been done.

This just goes to show that even small steps can get results. Though that sale was only worth £25, I’ll never, ever forget it, because something inside of me shifted at that point.

Something that had only existed in the realm of possibility became a real experience for me. That was my pivotal moment.

It’s not the £25 sale that should excite you – it’s the idea of really moving something from an intellectual concept into something that you’re physically doing. That’s what I want you to create for yourself.  The experience. It’s not the amount of the sale that will change things for you – it’s the experience. It’s having the reference experience. It’s like a dawning realization that even though you’ve already been paid for the work you did a month earlier, you’ve just been paid again.

Whether you are working, whether you’re on holiday, whether you’re looking after your new baby, you could possibly continue to receive income from that hour indefinitely.

Now, that is what should inspire and excite you.

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There’s a very well known saying that “time is money.”

But don’t believe everything you hear.

Because as long as you agree with that statement in any way, shape or form, you’re inhibiting your ability to create wealth.

Making a strong connection between time and money is really quite normal. We’ve come to accept it as a psychology that we’ve been taught since early on.

But it’s time for a new psychology, one that will let you break the time-money link. Because this time-money link is holding you back. And once you break through the mental feelings that keep you trapped in its grip, you will make more money, more easily, more often.

In my first job as a teenager, I was getting paid by the hour. Chances are you were, too. This idea of time and money being connected has been drummed in from a really early age, so it seems natural to continue with this line of thinking.

And most service businesses are based on this model. To start with, this can be a good thing. What I discovered when I began my training business, was that I could sell my time to a client for a lot more than I’d ever been able to sell it to an employer.

So I had replaced the idea that I got paid for my time with the belief that I got paid for my time and my talent. So there was some progress.

But it doesn’t take long to see the limitations of a business based on selling time. Because the problem is, if you want to take a month off, the price you have to pay is lost income.

Robert Kiyosaki says that, if you can’t go away from your business for a year and come back to find it’s in better shape than it was before you left, you don’t really have a business, you have a job.

And as long as your business is based on selling your time, you don’t really have a business, you have a job. It may be a well-paying job, but it is still just a job.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re getting paid £10 a day, £10,000 a day, or more. As long as your ability to produce income is solely based on you selling your time, you’re basically manual labor.

When I started my business I was really focusing on my daily rate, and how I could increase my daily rate and how I could increase the number of days that I sold.

But finally I realized that actually, however high those numbers got, there was always going to be a limit on them. There was always going to be a limit on time.

So, start to acknowledge the fact that time is not money. It is a finite resource, but your ability to use it wisely is unlimited. Accept that it’s not the number of hours you put into your business, but how you use those hours to create more passive income, that will take you to newer heights of success.

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Have you tried offering free samples of your services to help you lure new clients? If you have, and it hasn’t increased your income, it’s time to look at your free sample strategy. Here’s how to leverage those sample sessions correctly so they’re actually bringing in new business.

Pre-Frame Your Offer

The most surprising reason free sample strategies don’t work is that the professional never presents his offer to the recipient. Introductory sessions are great for attracting interest, but it stops there unless you ask for their business once they’ve sampled your services.

To set the stage for new business, it’s crucial to pre-frame your offer with the prospect. What I mean by that is that you must begin your offer of free services with the understanding that it represents a snapshot of what you normally do for clients. Further set the stage for on-going services by telling the person receiving a free sample that during your session you’ll be explaining how they can become a client.

By telling them in advance the sample is intended to introduce them to the benefit of being a regular client, there’s no surprise when you make your offer. You’ve set the expectation and they’ll be waiting to hear what you’re offering.

Give Them a Taste

Once you’ve booked a sample session, it’s time to give the prospective client a taste of what working with you regularly can mean. What is the primary benefit of doing business with your company? Even though a sample’s not meant to solve all their problems or make them rich in thirty minutes, it is possible to use that introductory session powerfully by giving them a clear idea of what you can do for them.

While offering that taste of what it means to be your client, cover the benefits, listen to their questions and let them know you’ve worked successfully with others with similar issues. But don’t overreach during this introductory time. After all, if you solve all their problems during the sample session, what’s the point of on-going services?

Make Your Offer

This is the hardest part for people who say they don’t like “sales.” The problem is, unless you actually make your offer regarding on-going services, there’s little chance you’ll secure their business.

Imagine going to your favorite grocery and being handed a delicious sample of pudding. But the person handing you the sample doesn’t say a word about how much it costs or where it can be found in the store.

Only a motivated shopper would go the trouble of hunting for the pudding on his own. That’s exactly what happens when you hand a prospect a sample of your services but fail to tell them how to buy more.

If you pre-framed your offer before giving them a snapshot of your product, they’re expecting to hear how to sign up for on-going services. Introduce the subject of paid services as you wrap up your free sample. Unless you do, only the most motivated of prospects will ask you how to become a client.

Learning to successfully use the sample services strategy can move you quickly toward a stable client base. Pre-frame your offer before giving them a taste of your services and then be sure to make your offer by the end of your sample session. That’s a strategy that will have you tasting real success.

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Does Your Free Report have an Effective Call to Action?

Does your free report elicit a response from the reader? Does the reader know what they are supposed to do, why they should take action and where or how they can? While these questions may initially seem obvious, many marketers fail to include this most important part of their free reports – the call to action. Or, if they include one, it does not generate the level of response they desire. And after all, the primary purpose of your free report is to pre-sell your products or services. So, how can you create an effective call to action?

Do the Opposite of What your Instinct Says

Yes, I said do what feels opposite. The first instinct for most professional salespeople is of course to sell. But, when creating an effective free report and call to action, the opposite technique is actually more effective. Don’t take the first opportunity you have to sell. This will require the ability to resist temptation. Instead, sell your credibility. When you sell your credibility, your products and services will sell themselves.

The best example I can think of, is how Richard Schefren created his free report, the Internet Business Manifesto. Even through to page 17 of this report, he hasn’t mentioned any of the services that are available within his organization. He hasn’t spoken about what he is offering. Instead, he shares the problems that people are facing while weaving in his past experience. He is selling his credibility and he is establishing his authority. This is the same focus you should have when creating your free report.

With that said, you of course eventually need to get to the point. You need to communicate to the reader what steps to take next in order to solve the reader’s problem.

Creating your Close

Throughout your report, you should focus on utilizing emotional language, to not only establish the reader’s current problem, but to agitate it. While I don’t typically recommend agitating people, in this case, it is an effective marketing strategy. The language you choose to include within your report should discuss and outline the consequences of their problem going unchecked. Then, it is your time to introduce your solution as THE SOLUTION to this problem.

Once you have outlined your solution, you don’t need to go into too much detail about your program. The most important thing when creating your close is to leverage powerful words to create the emotions which surround the individual’s current problem. Once you present the solution, tell the reader clearly what they need to do to get this solution. Whether they need to visit your website, call a customer service representative or send in a form, this step needs to be clearly identified.

When you implement these techniques when creating your report and your close, you will convert more readers into buyers, ultimately driving your bottom line through the roof.

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