In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “My advertisement isn’t working. What should I adjust?” * “Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?” * “I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and I’m disheartened. What can I do to get back up after a big loss?” Q: “My advertisement isn’t working. What should I adjust?” A: First, did you run the ad to the right market segment? A lot of times people’s profile selection is too broad. You have to make sure you target as qualitative and on-point as possible. Second, there are high impact factors in the ad itself such as the headline or its’ equivalent. Does your headline denominate the biggest payoff, benefit, advantage, outcome, protection, etc. that the prospect can get? If it doesn’t, test different headlines. After the headline, you can test the proposition. The proposition is the premise you’re taking. Assuming your headline is good, is your proposition on the mark? Next, you can test proof elements. Depending on laws and restrictions you can either use testimonials or not, and those testimonials could be abstract or concrete depending on what is legal. For example, you could list the kind of results people are reporting. Then you can test different risk reversals. Q: “Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?” A: People knock off people. That’s the reality of competitive society. If you can’t change it, you have to outthink it and constantly be ahead of it. Build up proprietary and aggregate programs, products and services that have unique advantages, twists and breakthrough technology to them and then partner by going to organizations and individuals and buy them your work, product or service so they can see results. If they do well, then expand the scope, reach and distribution. Q: “I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and I’m disheartened. What can I do to get back up after a big loss?” A: If you look at any successful company today, the average has to pivot three to seven times. If a business fails there are forces, factors and elements that are drivers of success or deterrents of success. You have to do a self-evaluation and see if you’re harnessing those drivers or you’re being a victim to them. Most failures are a function of decisions you made or didn’t make, actions you took or didn’t take, and forces you harnessed or didn’t harness. You have to evaluate your
thinking given what you know. From this point forward, ensure you make success a natural part of everything you do. Most of the things that fail are because your decisions aren’t astute. If you haven’t read my book The Sticking Point Solution, you can get a copy of it on Abraham.com gratis. It describes the 9 ways business get stuck and how to get unstuck. Overlay the lessons in that book to what you were doing when your business venture failed. Remember: You can always use relational capital to get back in the game as well as figure out what kind of value proposition you can build that is preemptive and preeminent.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?” * “I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting appointment and not showing up. What do I do?” * “I’m giving something away for free. How do I best position it?” Q: “How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?” A: You could go to entrepreneurs who don’t have the resources they need to grow. You create an assessment and isolate all the things they could do if they had money but can’t do because they don’t have money. You can then arrange to find collaborative ventures that would bring them the equivalent of that and you get paid in two ways: A nominal fee for your effort AND a tie-in with the collaborative relationships you engineer based on whatever they are worth. Q: “I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting appointment and not showing up. What do I do?” A: You have to be able to denominate what you’re offering, what it means, prove your claims and do it all in a powerful way. What will they get that is either bigger, better, quicker, easier, etc.? First, denominate that. Offer them to test your claim in which you buy them their first use of your product or service and tell them to compare using your product or service to not using it, and allow them to see which one produces better results. You can also explain the methodology and reason why behind your product or service and it’s results. What is it that makes your product or service better, quicker, easier, etc.? You can them preempt the incredulity by saying, “Most people think it’s impossible, and we did too before we developed this and studied all the research.”
You’ve got to prove all this, challenge them to experience it, and then project for them forward what they can expect after using your product or service. If results take, for example, 4 weeks, you can say, “In week 1 you’re going to experience the following:__________. In week 2, you will start __________. In week 3, you’re going to see __________ By week 4, you will __________. We’re willing to buy you (the first month/the first session/etc.) because this works. There’s only one catch: If you’re really not interested in a proven and powerful method that _____(results they can expect)_____ and only requires you to _____(what they need to do)_____ , then please don’t waste our time or yours.” When you powerfully denominate, prove and position your offering in this way, it can cause people to follow through with their initial commitments. Q: “I’m giving something away for free. How do I best position it?” A: Articulate and revere what has gone into making the item you are gifting. Don’t just say “Free”. Say, “We spent __#__ years studying this and we spent __#__ years refining this. We’ve now put it into a form that you can grasp it and act on it instantly. It means a lot to us to share this with you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you, but there is an expectation. If we do that, we’d like you to be willing to spend the time to read it and reflect on it and take action. We’re hoping it will help you appreciate it and want to do business with us.” Set a standard of what it is and why you’re doing it. It’s a waste to just say “free”. “Free” has to be animated, valued, and you have to connect it in an almost implicit or explicit agreement of hopeful expectation if upon actuating it produces a result.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “I want to develop a business. Where do I start?” * “I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the clients physical presence?” * “What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?” Q: “I want to develop a business. Where do I start?” A: First, you need to have your product or service. You can’t get partners, promoters, or performance-based individuals to set up deals with you if you don’t have anything to show them. Second, you need the marketing for the product or service to show people. If you aren’t strong in marketing you can run ads that say, “Marketer wanted to partner with/on ___(What You Have/Who
You Are)___. Equity and deferred fees offered. Call ___-___-____ to discuss project.” You don’t necessarily have to do it all yourself, but these two things are your first priority. Then you have a fork in the road: Do you fund it OR partner with somebody else for equity or interest in the business in exchange for them helping you build it out. This is how you start – and remember: The journey of a thousand steps begins with one step, so you got to break the process down into steps. Q: “I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the clients physical presence?” A: The easiest way to do this is to identify organizations and influencers who already have enormous reach, trust and credibility with the market you want. Work out with them a joint venture or a strategic relationship where they get a portion of the sale in exchange for being your advocate to their audience. They can say, “So many of our clients/readers/members/audience tells us they have the following problem: _____________________________________. Our relationship with ___YOUR COMPANY___ allows you to solve this problem at an affordable cost. The quality you will get is __#__ times what you would be paying. It will help you do the following: _____________________.” Start looking at organizations that already have access to the market you want and figure out how to incentivize them. You could give them a continuous share of the revenue, OR a front-end load where depending on what the profit margins are you could give them the initial sales profit, OR whatever compensation or alliance fee works to motivate them. If you do this right, you could have multiple entities, organizations and/or influential individuals you have structured arrangements with. The point here is that rather than doing this cold, it’s so much easier if you find somebody who already has the trust, incentivize them, and give them content or value-adds they can start sending to their audience. Q: “What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?” A: You can create reports, user guides or whitepapers that give people ideas that are really useful from experts AND that establish a buying a criteria. The buying criteria should establish what they should look for, what should be evident, and what they should demand in a provider – and you’re the only one that satisfies it. When you offer these guides in your advertising it will be seen as valuable, establish a greater commitment, and give you more prominence.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 9th and final question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #9: ARE YOU TRYING TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: If you want to grow your business and out-perform your competitors you can’t try and do everything. You must determine where you are the strongest and where that strength is the most valuable for your business. Once you do this, you’ve got to allow other people that have different strengths do the heavy lifting for you. In short, you must tap into “OPR” – “Other People’s Resourcefulness” or “Other People’s Resources”. Your job as the owner is to be the strategist, NOT the tactical person doing the heavy lifting. The only way you will flourish and prosper is to get other people who have more skill than you OR other people who are more capable of doing things that take so much of your time. Let them do these things so YOU can focus on high performance. In order to do this, you need to be able to creatively collaborate with people inside and outside your business. This could mean experts who work on a percentage, profit-share, or cost-saving, or partners with resources you can leverage. If you believe you have to do everything yourself, your business won’t last. The “go it alone” mindset is no longer useful in today’s business world. By leveraging other people’s resourcefulness and resources, you can increase your sales, enter emerging markets, add value to your customers, operate more flexibly, lower costs, access knowledge and expertise beyond your own limitations, and expand your business.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing
questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 8th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #8: IS YOUR MARKETING MEDIOCRE? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: Most businesses don’t know how much more powerful they can make their marketing. To have more powerful marketing, you must first monitor and measure how your marketing is performing. How many sales come from it? What kind of sales come from it? How profitable it is? What kind of buyers do you get? Do your buyers repurchase? How many times do they repurchase? How much profit is a buyer worth to you? You need to analyze all this and more. No matter how you market there are certain factors you need to look at. You must: * Telegraph the biggest, best, most powerful reason why, outcome, or benefit your product, company or service offers so that prospects will want to read your communication and take action. * Prove your promise with testimonials, analysis, comparison, and endorsements. * Tell them what benefit they will experience in their lives after they buy. * Incentivize them via bonuses, price advantage, guarantees, faster delivery, greater support, discounts on additional items, risk reversal, and many other possibilities. These elements can be added to: Your sales presentations…your ads…on the phone when people call you…on the phone when you call out…on your website…and you have to start using them because they will make your marketing perform better.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 7th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #7: ARE YOU BEING MARGINALIZED BY THE MARKETPLACE?
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: No matter what business you’re in there are a four forces trying to make you a commodity and make your products or service irrelevant. First is the consumer. They are so well educated that they want to work you against everybody else and make you a commodity. Second is your direct competitor. They don’t want you to be superior, preeminent or advantageous, so they work hard to make you irrelevant. Third are the alternative choices consumers have to your product or service. While not direct competitors, they want to make you a commodity. Lastly is procrastination, equivocation, contemplation and inertia on the part of the prospective buyer. This marginalizes you because they don’t get excited enough, committed enough or take action enough, and it’s a big part of your market. Instead of giving in to these four forces you must become fiercely proactive, massively preeminent, and position your company, product and service highly above everybody else in quality, performance and/or desirability. You have to become masterful enough in your selling communication to move people who procrastinate to action. The only way you can do this is to be masterful at putting into words what they will gain by taking action, showing them the pain they are tolerating by not having your product or service, and showing them the benefit of having your product or service at work in their lives. If you think of Aikido, it’s a Japanese martial art that redirects the momentum of an opponent’s attack. What you want to utilize is what I call the “The Aikido School of Marketing” and take the four forces trying to make you a commodity and turn those forces into maximum advantage. To do this, you must take charge. Do not succumb or accept the four forces that want to make you a commodity. Decide not to be marginalized. Make your business preeminent. Deal with clients and customers in a better way. Gain greater advantage. Communicate more powerfully, effectively and compellingly. Get your company and people caring more, being more, and doing more. Show that your product is a superior choice than doing nothing or choosing alternative products. All this and more has to become a conscious shift in how you do business. There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 6th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #6: ARE YOU STUCK DOING THINGS THAT ARE NOT WORKING?
If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: Most businesses waste much of their effort on activities or actions that don’t work. They don’t question them, they don’t analyze them and they don’t experiment or test different approaches, markets or marketing. As a result, they lose money, don’t make the money they deserve, and forgo double, triple, even quadruple the result they could be getting from the same result, time, effort and money. To overcome this, you must test different and better approaches. Ask yourself, “HOW COULD I: Target more qualified prospects…create better presentations…improve my guarantee and risk reversal…use more effective messaging…craft more compelling copy…test more effective sales approaches…run more profitable advertising…demonstrate a more powerful proposition or positioning…get buyers to buy repeatedly…ethically program buyers in the beginning of the relationship to buy…put in place additional products to sell…build referral systems…?” Recognize this: In an ultra-competitive market, you only have your ability to better think, act, transact, communicate and be more powerful. Working harder doing the same thing that doesn’t work is NOT going to get you anywhere except exhausted. Commit to finding breakthroughs. Unless you experiment, test and evaluate, you can’t do this. So commit to finding better approaches than the ones you are using now and you will produce more profit and move forward faster and more predictably. There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 5th question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #5: ARE COSTS EATING UP ALL YOUR PROFITS? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: Costs eating up your profits could be due to many factors: Cost of fulfillment; Underutilizing your peoples’ capabilities; Office and equipment costs; Non-optimal business processes; Not selling to the optimal amount; Margins; Not using opportunities to the maximum amount; and many more possible factors. However, there are ways you can fix these problems.
First, if you are underperforming in sales, marketing, productivity or talent performance, you can go to experts. Instead of paying them fees, you can offer them rewards that are based on the results they produce. If someone can get you extra volume every month or get your people being twice as productive., you can give them a percentage of that increase. Second, you could share services to lower costs. Other companies that are not directly competitive with you could share services with you such as warehousing, billing, bookkeeping, buying power and so on. Third, you could buy weaker competitors. Instead of paying cash, you pay them out of the accounts they have that you take over. Using this strategy, they eliminate their overhead, you service their accounts, they get paid a percentage of the profit and you gain greater utilization. Fourth, if your product doesn’t give you enough margin then you can find other products people buy before, during or after yours and package them together. You can do this even if they aren’t your product, because if you can get even half the products on an item along with your normal sale then you just increased your total profit on that sale by a large amount. Fifth, you can add complimentary products and services that people buy. Ask yourself, “What else do my customers buy besides what I sell?” Make partnerships to offer these products and services to your customers because they already trust you. Sixth, look at your business capacity. Most businesses perform under capacity in terms of their staff, facility, production and so on. You may be able to handle double or triple the sales with not much more expense other than your cost of goods. If that’s the case then selling a lot more, whether it’s volume or larger size purchases, could be very profitable to you. You might want to look at markets where you sell larger quantities at low prices because it takes your sales above and beyond the level you’re at now. Even though you don’t make as much profit per item, you’ll still be making more profit. If you do this in alignment with your normal activities, it’s another way to overcome cost issues. There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 4th question in this series. Be honest:
QUESTION #4: IS YOUR BUSINESS TACTICAL INSTEAD OF STRATEGIC? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: Most businesses are tactical, not strategic. Having a plan doesn’t mean you’re strategic. Being strategic means figuring out the most powerful system for continually driving a constant flow of prospects and buyers to you. It means that same system keeps buyers coming back to you and buying repeatedly from you. It means you avoid taking ineffective actions that are a waste. It means not doing anything that doesn’t advance or enhance your master strategy. If you want to win in the competitive world, you must be super strategic. Strategy is your long-term master plan. Everything you do to generate revenue, sales, marketing, advertising, promotion and more is designed to support this master strategy. Most people throw a bunch of random ads or marketing up without testing them, improving them, or making them consistent with any overriding master game plan. Once you establish your long-term game plan, never do anything that deviates or diverts you from advancing, enhancing and supporting it.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 3rd question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #3: DO YOU HAVE ERRATIC BUSINESS VOLUME? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: If you’re experiencing erratic sales volume it could be because you have erratic marketing. If you don’t do things with regularity, you can’t expect a consistent flow of prospects and buyers. From the moment you start a discussion with a prospect, you have to know how long it takes them to buy. Based on that (and the costs to run the business) you then have to determine how many prospects you have to generate so you get a certain number of buyers within a certain period of time and how many of those buyers will keep coming back. If you don’t have systems designed to generate, advance, and convert prospects to buyers, buyers to repeat buyers and systems that
get customers to re-active once they stop buying, then you can’t expect anything except erratic sales volume. Depending on the product or service you sell you may want to create or acquire a less expensive starter product or service to get people started in a buying relationship. If you sell only a few products or services, you may want to partner with other people who have products and services that are logical extensions of what you sell so you can add value, volume and consistency to your business. If you have selling cycles or seasons, you could acquire other products or services and sell them to buyers who would normally buy them during these times. You also want to be strategically quantifying your efforts. Some marketing pulls better than other marketing; some media pulls better than other media; some products sell better than other products; certain salespeople may be better than other salespeople; and so on. Unless you analyze these things, you won’t know where to make the best investments. Everything you do should be a strategic investment with optimal long-term financial and strategic business returns in mind. Analyze the data; it speaks. It will tell you what is most profitable and where to put your money so you experience more consistent business volume. There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let me ask you the 2nd question in this series. Be honest: QUESTION #2: IS YOUR BUSINESS NOT SELLING ENOUGH? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: If you’re not selling enough it may the method of selling. Most people are trained in product features and elements – not consultative advisory selling. Yet, consultative advisory selling helps you and your team members guide the prospect toward a trusted relationship with you and helps the prospect feel comfortable making a decision to buy from you. Get trained in consultative selling.
If you’re not selling enough you may not have a systematic process in place to keep generating new prospects. You must put in place strategic methods to target the best, most desirable profile of potential buyers and reach them continuously and regularly so they start a relationship with you. This may mean calling you, inviting your salespeople out, visiting your website, and so on. You don’t want to be doing things erratically or occasionally. You need to, again, put in place regular marketing, systems, and activities that reach the highest probable profile of target prospects you want to reach. Without this in place, you won’t put quality people into your sales funnel or system that will close. Take proactive control of your selling process. If you’re not selling enough you probably don’t have enough pillars in your Power Parthenon. You must find multiple ways to reach your target audience. It’s not just about using social media, or advertising, or word of mouth – you have to slowly and conservatively test multiple ways you can market at the same time to your market. The combination will cause people to take action and will reach people you wouldn’t normally reach. Another part of this is utilizing referral generating systems and having happy satisfied clients continuously and enthusiastically referring more people to you every month. Lastly, If you’re not selling enough you have to put together strategic alliances, partnerships and finding new forms of distribution. Ask yourself, “What do my customers buy and who do they buy from before, during and after they buy from me?” Start making partnerships with those kinds of companies. This is how you can reach your market from multiple ways at the same time and gain dominate competitive advantage. There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, I’m going to ask you 9 revealing questions – and then I’m going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them. So, let’s start with the 1st question. Be honest: QUESTION #1: IS YOUR BUSINESS LOSING OUT TO COMPETITORS? If you said “yes” to this question, let me give you a solution to consider: When you have a superior value propositions, a competitive advantage, and a preeminent position in the minds of your customers, you become seen as the only trusted company for them to deal with.
The very concept of advantage means you’re offering something more appealing, more beneficial, and/or more advantageous than competitors. You may offer better service, a better guarantee, quicker delivery, more bonuses – but in all causes it is beyond what everyone else is offering. If you don’t offer something beyond what other companies are offering, you can’t have advantage. Learn to become preeminent. This means your relationship with your clients, prospects and/or buyers is a closer and more caring one than your competitors. You have to be there for them in ways your competitors are not. If you care more, do more, respond more, offer more – you gain advantage. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?” * “I’m an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get paid for my effort. How do I do it?” * “I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?” Q: “Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?” A: After you get clients and they start repeatedly purchasing from you, you can write them and say, “Our business is predicated on finding wonderful people who appreciate the benefits our product/service delivers. We depend on, and appreciate, referrals. If you’ve benefited from our product/service, we encourage you to tell as many people as you can. When you do, we wish to honor, acknowledge and reward you in appreciation by gifting you the following: ____________________.” You can then decide what gift to send them that encourages them to refer people to you and shows appreciation. Q: “I’m an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get paid for my effort. How do I do it?” A: Go to your employer and say, “I want to create a division for us that is going to augment, not supplant, any business we do. I will build this division and work on it. I can work on it in my own time or take a portion of my current work time to work on it. When I build and develop it I will want one of three things: I either want a long-term participation in the revenue – OR – I want a lump sum based on what it’s worth at a certain point – OR – I want a buy-out of it, or if it’s not big enough I want the right to buy it out from you. If you don’t want to do this, that’s okay, but it seems
ludicrous not to do it because the worst case scenario is we try it and it doesn’t work. The best case is that I can build us a $________ profit center that is totally additive and augments what we do.” Q: “I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?” A: Don’t make it complex. Identify one or two no-brainer areas where you can start creating a measurable impact. Whether you measure response, conversion, dollars – whatever metric is easiest, use that. You can then go to people and say, “There are __#__ impact points in your business that can multiply your results. I would like to start with you on the two most immediate, impactful, and profitable ones. I will do it on a performance basis as long as I get ____% of the increased performance above and beyond a base metric we will agree on together.” After this you can add more, but don’t try and do too much at first. Find one or two no-brainers you can knock out of the park and you will win every time. Even if it’s not initially that lucrative, you can build on it once you have get results.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?” * “I’ve been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?” * “I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now sales are down. What do I do?” Q: “What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?” A: Look at businesses that have a lot of prospects they don’t convert, and/or buyers they have nothing else to sell to, and/or buyers that could be more perpetuated on recurring purchases. Ask yourself, “How can I help them convert more, sell more and/or perpetuate recurring purchases?” See how you can help them do more with what they do. You could also try to see what complimentary products and/or services could logically be purchased before, during, after and/or in association with what they sell and set up deals that way. You can also look for arbitrage where you connect gaps that aren’t being connected. For example: Someone may have a book on a subject without anything else. They don’t have an advanced course, or consulting, or a seminar, or a group program. You could find someone that has that and put the two together and take a piece of both sides, or you create the concept for them and have them give you a percentage. Q: “I’ve been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?”
A: I have a concept called the Aikido School of Marketing. Aikido is a martial arts category where you use the power of the enemy to your advantage. The key here is you have to use your negatives positively. Go to people who are somewhat iconic and start making relationships with them. Articulate a meaningful, concrete, well-documented, thoughtful vision that could be presented by the iconic individual to the people you want to reach. This individual is your bridge advocate and could make an introduction for you. However, again, the vision can’t be an abstract concept. It needs to articulate how it would work, why it will be powerful, how it can be conservatively tested, what can be done to adjust it, and it needs to show all the research you have done. Q: “I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now sales are down. What do I do?” A: If the business is dying, you need to stabilize it and turn it around. Run ads in the appropriate media to find the right person who is knowledgeable. The ad could say, “Partner Wanted: No investment required. Business established. Clients and revenue underperforming its’ potential. Investor wants dynamic and ambitious partner who can build the asset to be valuable enough to create wealth for both parties.” You go to media that would have this person and try to get somebody. Tell them that their only investment is going to be funding themselves. You can tell them that whatever investment you’ve put into the business, they get to leverage that investment for only the cost of underwriting themselves. You get people that want to do it and give them the right to build it. You could give them equity based on performance and/or phantom equity that is conditional and provisional based on performance. Next, look at non-competitive, complimentary companies that already have access to the market and go to them and say, “I’ve already invested $_________. I’ve got _______, _______, and _______ , but the lead person has left. I’ll make a killer deal with you: You can have this as the backend. We will split profits. You provide your team to run it, and when it gets to a certain point we can sell it to the outside market OR you can buy it from me at a pre-agreed upon under-market valuation.” Now, having said all this, depending on how much you’ve invested, the infrastructure you have, and your current cash flow, you may look at the reality of the situation and be better off closing the business down – OR – you could take the clients you have and sell them to somebody else for a piece of the revenue and then close down the business but keep the name and make it a division of somebody else’s business. Some people are so focused on taking their losing investment or disappointment with people they have backed and try to get it back and turn it forward. However, in our lives, all we have is our time, effort, opportunity cost, resources, capital, and so on. To spend too much time on something that is going to be very difficult to get above even, let alone get to high value, may not be the highest and best use of your time. If you can sell it on an earn-out and move it to somebody else or give
them the chance to keep it (even if you have them free rent for a while) and start monetizing it better, you could take that money and invest it into something you have skill, knowledge and expertise in. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “How do I better manage my time?” * “I’m providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?” * “I’m lacking confidence and/or people skills. What can I do?” Q: “How do I better manage my time?” A: This goes back to highest and best use theory. You look for where the highest and best use of opportunity is for the highest probability monetization. You bring on partners and employees, depending on who is most appropriate for the situation, and YOU only operate in the realm where you are the most powerful. For example: If there are 12 things you could do, but three of them are going to have 10 times the probability and 18 times the profitability, that is where you personally concentrate your time. You can utilize staff to source and verify opportunities before you involve yourself or talk to prospective clients. You have to know what is the most valuable and what is the least valuable, and you only work on the area of activity that is the most valuable. Q: “I’m providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?” A: When the statistical odds aren’t in your favor, do something where you have control. Why would you want to compete? If you have 500 competitors, why would you want to be 501? Sometimes we put ourselves in a position that doesn’t make sense. Do something where you get control. For example, if you could take those same 500 competitors and put them under you and get override on all of them, that would elevate you beyond being a provider and put you in the position of being a controller of the deal. If you can’t control a deal, don’t worry about it; it’s not the only deal that exists. Only do deals where you get the toll position. Like a toll road where you have to pay to use it, you want to be a position where YOU control the deal and get an override on, in our example, 500 people. This way you are no longer the 501st person in a low viability deal. Find someone who has something great, get control and then have all the competitors promote it. If they don’t want to do it? Don’t do it! Never do anything in your life where you are nothing more than a commodity. There is no advantage to that. Only do things where you have control of your destiny. Q: “I’m lacking confidence and/or people skills. What can I do?”
A: Watch, listen to, re-watch and re-listen to everything on preeminence. It will liberate you. Remember: It’s not about you; it’s about them. When you stop worrying about how you communicate, you will be more powerful. In Greek mythology, there was a famous orator who was trying to rally the townspeople to go to war. There was a big meeting in the town square, and the famous orator disseminated the most eloquent, wondrous speech he had ever given. It mesmerized, bedazzled, and impressed everyone who heard it. “What a great speaker,” everyone said. Then, a little uneducated farmer spoke. He loved his heritage, his freedom, and his countryside but he was intimidated, awkward and couldn’t even make eye contact with the people. However, he talked about his heritage, his family and freedom. He talked about how important it was for his children and for everyone there, and how tragic it would be for them to let that disappear. The speech was awkward – but sincere. It was not eloquent – it was emotional. When he was done speaking, the towns people exclaimed, “Let’s March!” Give yourself permission not to overthink what you are doing. The concept is always more important than the copy. If you convey the right purpose and positioning, it will be strong. You can transform people’s lives and make money with what you do and how you do it. You have the privilege, opportunity and obligation to make a difference in people’s lives. When you’re not worried about you, you will be much more fluid.
Here’s the truth: Anyone can become a marketing genius. Right now, you really DO have the power to elevate, accelerate and multiply your business results… IF: You’re willing to replace old and outdated models… You’re willing to throw out attitudinal limitations and fears… You’re willing to welcome possibility and boundless potential… Once you release the constraints of the status quo, you will find everything you do become increasingly effective, almost effortless and wildly profitable. That stated, let me give you a short course primer on the three elements that make up YOUR marketing genius: #1 – AOS:
First, AOS (“The Abraham Optimization System”) gives you maximum profits with minimal time. Most entrepreneurs unknowingly limit, constrict and constrain the number of prospects they could be converting, the number of buyers they could be selling, the number of repeat buyers they could be generating, the size of the transactions they could be doing, and more. Yet, as part of your marketing genius mindset, optimization reveals all the hidden ways that revenue, sale and impact could be slipping through your business fingers. Optimization is about getting the highest and best use of ALL your time, effort, opportunity, access, people, relationships, capital – EVERYTHING. Even though the odds are high you are NOT getting the maximum performance, results, impact, sales and profits you could from everything your company, partners, distributors, vendors, associated and more are doing – know this: Once you gain a broad, comprehensive, expanded sense of how many better, safer, faster, higher yielding, less risky, more recurring options, opportunities, approaches and possibilities there are available to you to replace underperforming ones OR add to multiply what you’re doing now… your business transforms. That’s what AOS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset. #2 – APS: AOS only works optimally when you add the next element to it: APS (“The Abraham Preeminence System”). This is a strategic philosophy that is the lifeblood and foundation of superior performing businesses. It’s the culture you instill in your people. It’s the elevated way you communicate. It’s the formation of your advertising, marketing, and sales communications. It’s what you stand for. APS positions you and your business in the mind of the prospect as THE authority in your field – the only viable choice the prospect can make. APS takes you from being a generic provider of a service or product, to your clients most trusted advisor…the most elevated source…someone who always has their best interest at heart. If you truly incorporate APS into your business and marketing genius mindset, it allows you to charge more for your products and services without having to increase your costs, shorten your sales cycle while multiplying your trust factor, and create more value from every interaction and transaction. Imagine: Champion and advocate clients that love you and appreciate you so much that they each refer clients to you every single month. That’s what APS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset. #3 – ARCS:
As powerful as AOS and APS are, there’s one more element you must add to ensure cohesive, integrated growth: ARCS (“The Abraham Relational Capital System”). This is about creating a profit arc that supports and elevates your business expansion and stability by orders of magnitude. This means multiplying money through relationships. You can tie into millions, hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars worth of other people’s past, current and future expenditures, good will and credibility. It starts with a focus on OPR – “other people’s resources”. There are over 100 categories of OPR impact points that most people never even see, let alone harness and harvest. Through ARCS, your clients and customers become your best salespeople. You elevate and create newfound levels of credibility for you and your business. You connect with respected and prestigious individuals and create strategic alliances, advisory boards, and more with them where they have no liability yet lend their credibility, reputation and stature to you. You achieve extraordinary marketplace differentiation, preeminence, and pre-emptiveness. That’s what ARCS can do as part of your marketing genius mindset. When you implement all three elements of the marketing genius mindset – AOS, APS, and ARCS – you not only unlock and unleash passion, possibility, profit and purpose, but you also magnify the impact you’re able to have throughout your industry, community and life. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “My product/service could be helpful to a lot of people’s audiences/customers. How do I approach them?” * “What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and advertisements?” * “I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?” Q: “My product/service could be helpful to a lot of people’s audiences/customers. How do I approach them?” A: Identify a list of the most favorable list owners, bloggers, organizations, communities, publications online, publications offline and iconic people in your industry. Once you do this, you can offer your product/service as a non-competitive, ancillary product/service value-add that doesn’t diffuse anything that company, list owner, website or community offers, and rather
reinforces what they do and simply pay for results. Contact each of the partners and say, “I have line of products/services that __________. It’s designed to support the people you serve by __________. I would like to propose a collaborative marketing partnership where I provide marketing to you that you can use, and we sell the product/service on your site together at a price point of $_____, and we split the revenue ___% / ___%.” If you hit a receptive person, you have to have your marketing in place to show them. It must be compelling and you need good copy, but you can create this. If you do this, you have a possibility of building a great distribution network and you can then sell more products and services. Also, once you sell one of the products/services, when you ship it out or deliver it, you have an opportunity to offer more products/services and packaged offers where people can buy greater quantity or frequency. Q: “What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and advertisements?” A: There are many, but here are just a few recommendations: 1. My Life In Advertising/Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins 2. Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz 3. Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy 4. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy 5. Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone 6. How To Write A Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab 7. The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier 8. Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples 9. The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters Of All Time by Dick Hodgson 10. 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success by Denny Hatch 11. Million Dollar Mailings by Denny Hatch Q: “I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?”
A: First, create a book. The book could deal with why almost everyone in your industry/market is out of control and doesn’t even know it – and you describe how to get masterful control and sustaining improvement forever. You tell your story, talk about your contributions and your hardships and dysfunction in the industry/market that you see. The book can be your contribution to the industry/market to help the company’s in it understand where they could be stuck and methods they can utilize to gain more productivity, profitability, or whatever the measure of success is in your industry/market. Help them identify the problems they don’t see, the causes of the problems and the best prescriptive treatments. Describe the generators of dysfunction that no company in the field would want to be contributing to, but are — then give them rapid, sustainable phases for extracting themselves from that state. To make the process even easier, you don’t even have to write the book: Sit down with someone you’re comfortable with, break the book into sections and titles, outline it, and then just talk it through and record it. Send that recording to a transcriber, and once you get your rough transcriptions back, go to a local journalist student and ask them to edit it. Now you have a first draft you can start sending out to people – and you’re on your way! In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?” * “What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their business using my expertise?” * “How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?” Q: “How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?” A: You build a system so that once you initiate contact, it sustains the relationship and takes it to the next logical outcome. If you’re going to go out and meet 100 people and you want to have top of mind awareness that is building momentum, credibility and a bond, you have to ask yourself this: “What elements of value-based communication, content, gifting, information, introductions, books and so on can I do that will keep working hard for the outcome I’m after and will elevate and distinguish me and my business into a strata of awareness and appreciation that is beyond the crowd?” You don’t have to figure out what you’re going to send them, how you’re going to communicate every month/week, or anything of the sort. Put the system in place. How? Decide what frequency and format your system will have. Is it going to be a link to somebody else’s article? Is it going to be a book? Is it going to be a recording of something? Are you going to find the rights to something somewhere else and give it to your people? Whatever it is for you, have it ready so you don’t have pressure placed upon you after you initiate the relationship – instead, you have the system working for you.
Q: “What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their business using my expertise?” A: First, identify the entities that are the most appropriate profile or most qualified to work with you whether you know them or not. Second, you can allocate some capital every week and send out a number of letter (in accord with your schedule to follow up) along with something valuable they can utilize – a book, a newsletter, an article, or something else – and the letter might say something like this: “If history is any indicator, you’re a ___________. I see some wonderful opportunities in your future – but with those opportunities come some issues that need to be resolved: _____________. This is where I can be helpful. Rather than waiting for business to happen or for money to change hands, I’m going to invest first in you. I think this newsletter/book/article might be helpful. My goal here is very clear; I want a relationship. I want to invest in you now so when and if you ever need me, you’re comfortable that I will serve you and your company well.” In the letter tell them why you are sending what you are sending them, tell them what to do with it, tell them what it can mean to them – give them context, guidance, perspective and intended outcome. Third, after you send this letter, you follow up and you start a sequence. Remember: You’re much better off only sending 10 of these letters and being able to have a continuity and a complete cycle than you are sending 1,000 of these letters and just playing the law of averages. This is about quality of connection versus distribution. Q: “How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?” A: Don’t try to do it yourself. Find partners that already have the market, the buyers, the subscribers, the email list, the platform, the distribution and so on. Have a third party researcher or service spend time coming up with every category of business who would be a good partner for you, and then start looking at their website, stature, best-selling books, and so on. Then try to make contacts before you ever travel there. There are only three ways to grow any business. 1. Find and convert more prospects to buyers. 2. When you convert prospects to buyers, get them to buy larger units of purchase each time they buy. 3. Get buyers to keep coming back more often to buy more – and if you don’t have a lot of other products to sell, you figure out other complimentary products or services you can acquire, private label, joint venture or get rights to so you have ongoing revenue.
The goal of a business is not to keep finding new buyers all the time that never buy again…it’s to keep finding buyers that come in, start buying, and buy again and again. You then have a base that you keep building so you create predictable future revenue that you have certainty will keep coming in. When your business has predictable ongoing revenue, you have financial solidarity or security AND your business have value to others. Not only will you be creating a significant predictable, recurring, sustainable income, but you’ll also be creating a wealth asset you could sell to somebody in the future because it has predictable future revenue. Your advantage in business comes from gaining higher and better outcomes, performance and results from your time, effort, access and on. To drive up your performance to this level means understanding a critical principle… …STRATEGY. Most people are tactical and do things for the moment. Being strategic would mean having a master game plan fueling and directing everything you do. When you start with the end in mind and every action, activity or decision your put time, money or effort into is designed to advance and enhance your outcome, you’re being strategic. Let me give you an example: If your model was to do the easiest offering to your market that will get them to start a relationship with you because you knew the sooner they start a relationship the sooner you will get subsequent sales, then it would be strategic to make it easy to have a relationship with you. Your strategy in this case could be to go into various markets with different marketing and make offers that are irresistibly easy to accept so you can build a relationship and move people to the sale and resale. This would give you a great advantage over people who are just trying to sell. If your model is to get people started easily, move to them to the first sale, add more products to the first sale, add a re-consumptive product that the client would buy again and again, add ongoing structure that helps the buyer keep buying over and over, add more products or services so the client buys more things over longer periods and it makes you more profit…now you’re thinking at a heightened level of strategic discipline over your competition. The reality is, most people don’t have a well thought out strategy. They just try and sell something. However, when you think strategically it makes a huge difference to your results and outcomes.
When your business model is propelled by a great strategy and everything you do is congruent and consistent with your strategy, everything you do produces a greater initial and ongoing effect; so ensure everything you do advances, enhances and multiplies the long-term business game you’re playing. Strategic thinking puts you far above how everyone else is thinking – and a properly deployed strategy can yield exponential results. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “I want to make a deal between companies that have a product and bigger brands/companies that have customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?” * “Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?” * “How do I position me and/or my company as high end?” Q: “I want to make a deal between a company that has a product and a bigger brand that has customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?” A: Go to the big companies and get signed documentation that states that if you can produce, provide or represent to them a certain product, they will be open to buying it or distributing it. What you want is a Contingent Agreement. A contingent agreement states that “If you do X, I will do Z.” So, for example: “If you can get the rights to XYZ product, we will buy it exclusively from you.” You want to tie up the commitments from the big company first. Once you have five or ten commitments, you go to the companies with the products and show them you have commitments and give them two weeks to respond. You’ve already got the trust and commitment of the bigger company if you can deliver, so if the company with the product wants to do the deal with you they can – or – you can find a competitor. In this way, you’ve already got the arrangement locked up, and if the product company wants to work with you and make it worthwhile exclusively, you’ve now got buyers and distributors. If they don’t want to work with you, you have a list of alternatives. They key is this: Tie up the deals and relationships exclusively before you go to the product companies. Don’t do anything until you get those agreements. If you don’t get the products, it’s okay, but first get the bigger companies and send the distinctions about the bigger companies to the product companies so they can see what you got. Q: “Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?” A: If you are a quality provider that will not let your market down, go for the higher-end first. Once you build that, you can go to the mass market and say, “We serve the highest end people. However, there are a lot of smaller clients that need this. So, we’ve decided to make our
products/services available to you. While normally our model is doing $________ deals, we are open to helping you because we know most other providers are mediocre. We will be more expensive by ___%, but we will be more effective and the result will be more outstanding by about _________%. ” This way you can still charge a premium. Consider this: If a deal is $4,000 or $40,000 and you’re making 20%, on $4,000 you make $800 and on $40,000 you make $8,000. You want to experiment. As long as you have the performance validation that what you provide is high-end, you will make more with bigger deals. You have to do so many more smaller deals to make the equivalent of one big deal. So, start with the big ones and if it doesn’t work you can go down market. However, make sure you and/or your providers are so exceptionally qualitative and high on references and profile that you/they are worth it. Q: “How do I position me and/or my company as high-end?” A: Your position needs to be the preeminent provider that can be easily validated and verified before you ever make a commitment. You can say to prospective clients, “I will meet with you first to ensure you are compatible. Then I will introduce you to our process/providers. You can judge it/them against anything/anyone else you might have considered. It will either be clearly evident that my process/team is dramatically and incomparably superior – or it won’t. If you want mediocrity and you want to save ___%, I can’t help you. If you want mastery and greatness – then we have the process/people to do it. You have to decide because I can’t sell you. If you want something everyone else has that is not unique, profound or distinctive, then there are a lot of mediocre options to do it. My company refuses to even go there because that is not what we do. If you want this done so exquisitely that you can’t wait to experience the following: ______________ …then we are the ones for you. If you want to do something everyone else does/has that is basically a commodity, we can’t decide that for you. If you want something only we have that is so proprietary and so elevated, that’s what we have.” You’re likely familiar with the 3 Ways To Grow A Business model since I’ve posted it on this blog. Once you have this model well established in your business, you can utilize the 3 ADVANCED Ways To Grow Your Business… Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #1: Every year penetrate one new market. Take your product, service, knowledge, intellectual property, or skill to one new market. A market could be a different industry, city, country or even a different application.
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #2: Every year introduce one new product or service to your existing clients. You can introduce one new low-priced or no-price product or service in order to make it easy for market place to start a relationship with you – and/or – you can introduce a very expensive product or service because in any buyer base there are individuals who want more advancement, specificity, individualization and more. Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #3: Every year acquire a similar business in your same field and/or acquire a feeder business. Let me explain… First, you can buy a similar business in your field by paying the owner out of the profits and without having to write a big check. When you combine two businesses, you can eliminate a lot of overhead from the business you buy. If you have a good company that has areas of expense right now and you buy a struggling business where you combined their buyers (that you don’t have) with your buyers while eliminating the majority of the overhead they have, you would make a low-profit or unprofitable business very profitable….and you can do this over and over again. In terms of a feeder business, you can acquire a business that feeds your business OR a business that is fed by the business you’re in. When you buy a business, you have to think about what else do people buy before, at the same time, after and instead of the product or service. Once you identify these possibilities, you now have a number of other businesses you can acquire (or even start) that would either feed your business by bringing people to you who are ready to buy your product or service OR your product or service feeds the other business…and it becomes connected, synergistic, and everything feeds one another. When you’re determining where to focus your energy, time, effort, resources, capital, and more, you have to factor in the value of the best alternatives you forgo. Answer these 5 questions to ensure you’re getting everything you can out of all you do: Question #1: When you consider what you want to do, what’s the best area you can pursue using your skill/capital/relationships that has the highest success probability for the time you can invest? Question #2: When you consider what you want to do, where are the biggest gaps or voids in the market where you can take the greatest advantage?
Question #3: When you consider what you want to do, where can you bring your greatest advantage with the least amount of capital/time/resource? Question #4: When you consider what you want to do, where can you partner, or whom can you partner with, that has the highest probability of you being successful? Question #5: When you consider what you want to do, where are you ultimately trying to get to?
All Buyers Are NOT Equal: An Interesting Way To Find Overlooked Profit Opportunities In Your Current Business Jay Abraham May 26 2016
If you look at your company and you analyze: 1. Where you get your buyers… 2. How many different buying cycles there are within your buyer base… 3. Concentrations of types of buyers you didn’t know about… …you can start to focus and specialize. Here’s what that means: Most companies don’t know which buyers are most valuable, what source of buyers are the most valuable, what kind of buyers buy the most often, what buyers are the most profitable, and on. You can find hundreds of thousands — even millions of dollars — of opportunity you didn’t even realize exist. As you analyze the data, you will realize certain types of ads, marketing, sources of marketing and more produce a higher or lower quality of buyer. In fact, certain kinds of marketing may produce somebody who is more profitable right away, but that buyer may not buy as many things for as long a time as a buyer that came from another source. When you don’t know these things, it may looks like
the buyers from a particular source are great – when in fact they are only great because they make you profit one time, but they don’t buyer over and over again. Another source of buyer may be less profitable initially, but buy more things, more often, for longer…but you may not even realize it. As it relates to buyer concentrations, you may accidentally or unknowingly have a huge number of buyers in a category – say, Doctors, just as an example — even though you don’t sell to that category of buyer intentionally. If that’s the case, you would now be privy to the fact that the product or service really appeals to that category of buyer – in this case, Doctors — and you can start targeting Doctors, or whatever that category of buyer may be. When you realize all buyers are not equal, you gain an enormous advantage and insight from analyzing your buyer data that you can leverage and harness to maximize your profit and impact.
Harnessing The Power of Access… Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There’s a provocative and overlooked question I want you to consider… Ask yourself: “Who can I access?” The answer to this question can lead to vast array of opportunities in your life. Think about it – access can mean: * Acquiring knowledge from a mentor * Involving an advisor or investor * Partnering with an individual or company that has a list * Getting introduced to other people who are in your market
* And many more possibilities… You want to find everybody that has a product or service or media that reaches the same kind of a prospect or decision maker you are going to want to reach. You want to go to vendors or those types of products and see who they know outside the market you are targeting who do the same thing that might be a good company or individual for you to partner with, or get to mentor you, or who already have a success formula you can model and simply pay them a license. In fact, these vendors might also know salespeople who are unhappy working for their current company and that you could hire full-time or part-time to represent you. You want to find people who have stature to their name. It can be celebrities, individuals with jobs who have incredible importance relative to what you’re doing, people who write article for online or offline media, retired people with great resumes – and you want to ethically utilize these individuals by seeing if they will become advisors to you and see if they will let you use their name in your marketing and promotions so you increase credibility, give you insights and guidance you may not currently have, and even give you access to their network of relationships. As you gain access, you want to play to your strengths and avoid depending on your non-strengths, and find other people who possess the strengths you don’t and find ways to get them to help you. For example, if you don’t know a lot about technology, you can find someone who does and give them equity in your business or a share of the revenue that results from your business in exchange for collaborating with them. If they would normally charge something you couldn’t afford, pay them more (yes more!) but as a percentage of the sales that come. You want to get a Mastermind Alliance. This is similar, but different from advisors. Advisors possess distinctions you can use to your marketing advantage along with their expertise and network. Mastermind Alliance is the process of going into your community, community or anywhere in the world and approaching far more successful people in a very broad and diverse number of fields/industries – commercial, political, sports, and so on – and asking them to become part of your Mastermind Alliance. You get them once a month or once a quarter to spend time together either in person if it’s local or remotely if they are all over the country. Tell them what you are doing, how you are doing it, the goals you have for your business,
and you want them to give ideas for doing it better, faster, safer and with more effectiveness because these people have been where you are trying to go. You want to go to everyone and anyone you know, and ask them who they know who would be a good prospective buyer, or investor, or introducer of you to other people, or whatever the case may be in your specific situation. Like a fountain that has cascading flows, you have infinite outreach when you understand this. There are tons of people, organizations, media, experts and influencers that already have what you want…but you can’t maximize your ability to harness this power until your first understand and are clear about: 1. What are you trying to accomplish – and why? 2. What skillsets and abilities do you have and not have – and what are your strongest skills? Get clear on this, utilize even a few of these strategies and a world of possibility, opportunity and access will open up to you.
What Marketing Is All About (Part 1) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
The purpose of marketing is to educate and make a preferred target market that has the highest probability of being a buyer aware of a couple things: 1. That they have a problem or are pursuing an opportunity (and you have to get them clear on what it is…) 2. Have them see the advantage of either solving the problem or accomplishing the opportunity…
3. Have them see that you understand them, their problem, or opportunity better than anyone else because you learn to express it better than anyone else (and then you have to get them motivated to seek that solution or achievement immediately and only from you.) This is what marketing is all about. It’s about gaining the trust of your market. It’s about showing your market the benefit, advantage, and improvements in outcome that they can expect by doing business with you. It’s about speaking to your market in language no one else has and showing them you understand their objective better than they do. It’s about understanding the most tangible and intangible levels of risk that consciously and subconsciously occur to your prospective market and alleviating, eliminating, reducing or overcoming these risks and making it easier for your market to say yes than no. It’s about being seen as the only viable and meaningful trusted source they can turn to. It’s about having your clients best interest at heart. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “I’m a service business and I need a facility, but I don’t have the money for it. What should I do?” * “How do I make my sales team more effective?” * “I want to become a preeminent expert/consultant in my field. Where do I start?” Q: “I’m a trainer and I need a facility, but I don’t have the money for it. What should I do?” A: Find a facility that tends to be unused on weekends and evenings. Go to them and explain you’re starting a business and you think this business has the capacity to utilize their facilities every week/every evening/every month/etc. Tell them you have a very limited budget, but if they will invest trust in you, you think you will be viable and meaningful to them within ___ months, and
you will give them a share of the revenue instead of the rental fee. If the rental fee is normally $1000, tell them you will give them 10-15% of the gate until you equal or exceed $1000. Tell them it may not be that much in the beginning, but you’re committed and your resolve is to build this into something magnificent – and if they support you in the beginning, you will be loyal to them to the extent that they can accommodate it. Secondly, tell them you will allow them to send anybody they want – within reason – gratis. So if you would have charged $_____ every time they send somebody, they are going to get $______ worth of value, plus they will get the ___% you’ll give them. Tell them that if at the end of ___ months if you’re making a lot of money you’ll convert and just pay it – or – if you haven’t gotten to the point where the variable is even more than the fixed, you will sit down with them and either continue if you’re on a good track or you’ll move. Q: * “How do I make my sales team more effective?” Find out who excels at what in the selling process in terms of what they do, why they do what they do, and how they do it. Figure that out and teach that to everybody else. There might be 20 different impact points that different people in the organization are better or worse at. If you figure out how to improve all 20, you can gain hundreds of percentage of improvement in performance of the sales people. For example, you might find somebody who is great at opening accounts where somebody else is not as great at maintaining them. You might find somebody is great at selling one product, but not great at cross-selling. Somebody may be great at holding margins. Somebody else may be great at selling a specific clientele. You want to figure out how much greater they are than everybody else. If you figure out the 3 people that are 20% better than everybody in a specific category and you figure out what they do by way of Socratic interviewing, then you can translate that success. The mistake most sales organizations make is that they make everybody responsible for everything. It’s a delusionary, illogical and irrational assumption to think everybody is good at everything. By focusing on each impact point, you can usually increase sales 10% to 30%. Q: “I want to become a preeminent expert/consultant in my field. How do I do it?” A: Every day make a list of everybody out there who is an expert and known for it – these might include authors, consultants, trainers, professors, and so on. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the biggest individuals since they may be harder to approach, but you could try if you have tenacity, resolve and charisma. Once you have your list, pick people’s minds. Ask them questions. Ask them what the keys are. Ask them what they would do if they were you trying to do what you’re trying to do. Tell them they are the kingpin and you would never compete with them and ask them to share the big lessons they’ve learned and discovered. You could even ask to intern with them.
Ask them if they will train you and give them all the revenue for the first couple months. And you can do all this multiple times to where they educate you. When you talk to people say, “I am so committed and my purpose is to _______. I want to be able to make that difference and bring superior value in the results I can help them produce for themselves.” Utilize your intention, humility and successes as the vehicles to have these individuals talk to you. Another thing you can and should do is read everything out there. Go to Amazon and read everything you can of relevance. Look at the titles for insights. Look at the Amazon book reviews because they will give you insights into what people got out of the books, both good, bad and what they got out of it and what it taught them. This will help you understand the mind of people you’re trying to serve. Immerse yourself. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “If I’m doing a deal where I get paid a percentage, how do I ensure I get my percentage of the profits and integrity is always being kept in check?” * “How do I get people to work for me or my company based on performance?” * “How do I reach and get more customers for my business?” Q: “If I’m doing a deal where I get paid a percentage, how do I ensure I get my percentage of the profits and integrity is always being kept in check?” A: First, you start with as high an integrity ethos individual or company as you can possibly deal with. If there is anything in their background or dealings that is at all indicative that their ethical compass is not in the same direction as yours – walk. Don’t worry, you will have more opportunities than you have time to accept them. Second, if it’s a big deal, you can pay to have somebody monitor and be on site; you can ask for joint reporting and you can have audit privileges; you can have responses go through you in some sort of pass through that is online depending on what you are doing; you can talk as often as you want to a financial person, and there are enough ways to calibrate and correlate to see accuracy by talking to the sales managers, marketing individuals, delivery people, financial people – and you have it built into your agreement. If they balk, you can say: “Here’s why I’m asking for it, and I think it’s justified. I’m investing risk in you. You’re basically only going to get upside from me. I know you warrant that you will be truthful, but if you are fully intent on that and your integrity is inviolable, you should have no trouble as long as I warrant absolute confidentiality and allow me to verify from as many calibrating and collaborating points as possible. If that is bothersome to you, I’m fine taking a fee and letting you to have all the upside.”
Q: ““How do I get people to work for me or my company based on performance?” A: If you put them in the onerous position without you having a success validated model, you are doing irreparable damage to them and it’s not fair to make them your guinea pig. So first, you must have a doable, provable, documented, success validated model. Then, if they are going to take all the risk, you have to be very generous on either the front-end or the residual to them. Then, you have to have strategies, scripts, target audiences, time you allocate for them to report successes or failures. There is a moral responsibility and obligation that if you are going to recruit men and woman for your benefit who have lives to service financially, families, hopes and dreams, you have to protect them and provide them with high developmental and growth abilities to help them be successful, or you’re stealing from them. Instead of asking the question to figure out how to ensure they are successful for you, the question is how do you make sure they are successful for themselves. If you want to pay them a salary, that’s one thing. If you want them to take the risk and you don’t have a success validated model, it’s terribly abusive of their opportunity cost, passion and precious time. Q: “How do I reach and get more customers for my service/product business?” A: Go to other people who have complimentary products or services. They probably have people who start and stop using their products and services who are past or inactive clients. You can go to all of them and say, “You have people who have started and stopped using your product or service and are past or inactive clients. Let me have their names or you contact them and tell them that for whatever reason your product or service didn’t seem to be appropriate, but you have a wonderful relationship with me and I have a product/service that is ________ and it can help them do the following: _________. And since you are so confident in the benefit to your clients, tell them you have arranged with me to buy them ____ sessions/access/days/etc.” – that’s one way to do it and you pay them on result. Another way to word this is to have the company referring who you are paying on result say to their past or inactive clients, “We are buying you this $_____ introductory product/service and you should have an experience that is very powerful. You will experience these results: __________. If you do, then we hope you will want to continue.” If you have limited funds or limited clients, you need to find endorsers, power partners, joint ventures or relational capital you can leverage off of. You could go to local papers, and if an ad costs $2,000 and you don’t have that money, say: “If you run an ad for me, I’ll give you the first $2,000 of whatever results. If it’s only $1,500, you’ll get that,” and you start building your reputation. However, if you don’t have a lot of marketing money or clients who refer you, you have to utilize astute marketing.
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “I’m starting a business with little or no capital. How do I demonstrate credibility to clients if I don’t have any testimonials?” * “What can I do to stand out to my clients in the crowd among existing competitors?” * “I’m a service provider. What business models can I use to grow?” Q: “I’m starting a business with little or no capital. How do I demonstrate credibility to clients if I don’t have any testimonials?” A: Go to people who have your market and offer them a non-cash, non-investment equity in your business in exchange for referring business – but first have them nominate 10 or 20 people they care about and trust, and ask the people to compare your business against anything else. A second way of going about this is you could also go to people and say, “I want to be your provider of _____ service/product, but it’s unreasonable for me to ask you to invest in me when you know nothing about me. I could tell you my background, values, and criteria for providing you my product/service – but telling is very different than showing. Since somebody has to take the first step, I am offering to invest ___ months of service/___ dollar of product to you and pay for it. In other words, I will buy you $____ of my service/product with only one stipulation attached – and it’s a moral one; not a legal one: If I over-deliver and outperform on everything I promise, you continue using me thereafter as long as I deliver. Anytime I stop producing that level of outcome, you stop because I don’t deserve your business.” Q: “What can I do to stand out to my clients in the crowd among existing competitors?” A: First, determine your unique abilities and positioning. Once you do this, you can go to influential people who have the respect of groups, their own database, publications or platforms, and explain your unique ability and positioning. Then, either on the phone or in writing, share some of your strategies, techniques, methods, principles, and proprietary approaches. Explain the difference between this and the way everyone else buys, acts and transacts. Say to them, “I will buy you or your company an experience with me or my product for no other compensation other than if it exceeds your expectations, you endorse and introduce me to others – and I’m fine in sharing that revenue with you.” Earn the trust of influential people and companies by performing for them at your expense and ask them to introduce your newly emergent brand to all of their constituents. If you have a book, you can send that to them and buy them access to your product or service. You may make no money for a couple of months if you do this for a lot of people, but
you can end up with many people endorsing you and many of them partnering with you. Going through this process demonstrates your grit, ability, resolve, and level of commitment. Q: “I’m a service provider. What business models can I use to grow?” There are many business models. You could do projects; coaching; masterful thinking partnerships; performance-based deals with measurable criteria you establish that when hit you get success fees or shares of the measurable enhancement; mass trainings; private clientele who pay you a retainer; onsite training – and the list goes on. You can even give away a lot of content to be established in the eyes of the market as a more elevated, qualitative and distinctive state. You can buy clients a half a day of your time – or if it’s a huge client, a day of your time – and treat them as if they paid you as long as they understand that upon conclusion if you come up with enough meaningful insights, ideas, recommendations and demonstrable evidence that you can grasp what is there and you have great solutions and strategies, they will go forward with whatever your deal is. You may even want to get less fixed monetary compensation and instead get a share of the profits if it’s a big deal – if it’s not a big deal, a fixed compensation may be preferable to you. In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “What method of marketing is the easiest for me to focus on first?” * “I’m generating leads for a client/customer in XYZ industry – how do I make the relationship with the client/customer more valuable?” *“I’m in the supplement business and I can’t make any claims or use any testimonials – what can I do?” Q: “What method of marketing is the easiest for me to focus on first?” A: It depends on your business and a multitude of variables, but if you currently have a business going and growing, referral generated clients are the most responsive, most lucrative, fastest to closure, and they buy more, more often and refer more people. There are approximately 93 different referral generating systems we’ve identified. All 93 won’t be applicable to you, but no matter your business many of them will be and you will have a huge advantage in leveraging goodwill and relational capital. There are referral strategies that are ongoing, situational, seasonal, social and more. You can adapt, adopt, modify and morph these strategies to fit your
situation. If you’re interested in accessing all 93 strategies, email Joseph (
[email protected] ) and he will help direct you to them. Q: “I’m generating leads for a client/customer in XYZ industry – how do I make the relationship with the client/customer more valuable?” A: If you’re in a specific industry and generating leads for a client, here’s what you can do to make the relationship even more valuable. Once the leads you’ve sent the client buy from the client (and you don’t disrupt the process and cannibalize your own efforts) – or – if they didn’t buy or they didn’t upgrade to a higher level of service/product with the client, then you can go back to the leads and say: “You are obviously motivated strongly to ____________. The client has a really great program. You didn’t sign up/You didn’t upgrade to a higher level of product/service. Maybe the timing wasn’t quite right or the cost was an issue. What I’d like to do is introduce you to another well respected program / product / service / platform…” All you have to do is look up products, services, programs or platforms in your category. You have an infinite amount of repurposing and redeployment you can do. Q: “I’m in the supplement business and I can’t make any claims or use any testimonials – what can I do?” A: You can use the laws to your advantage and you can utilize the Aikido school of marketing. Aikido is a martial arts that uses the force and power of the enemy against the enemy. Your regulatory constraints do not allow you to say anything? Use that to your advantage. How? Say this: “We wish we could show you the __#__ testimonials we have. We wish we could show you all the results people have sent. But we can’t. It’s illegal. It’s more frustrating to us than to you. However, what we can do if you click here is show you, not 3 or 4, but __#__ satisfied clients smiling, healthy, glowing pictures after they started using our product. We should also tell you that the vast majority tried many of our competitors. You have to make your own decision, but if you’ve tried other solutions, product or supplements, and have been disappointed or outright frustrated with the outcome, all we can say is this: These are real clients who were thrilled and eager to send their picture to help encourage people like you who were a little bit apprehensive or uncertain. In addition, we don’t consider any purchase you make of our product final and binding on your part until you’ve personally used it for at least ____ days. You will see the outcomes you’re after or you won’t.” What do you want to do? “I want to run a company that has 1,000 employees and generates $50 million.”
“I want to build a chain of 500 retail stores.” “I want to make $1,000,000 in a year.” What is it for YOU? Now, once you know what you want, let me ask you a question: If there’s an easier, safer, less demanding, less expensive, less stressful way to get to your end result – wouldn’t you want to know what it is? Here’s a reality most people miss: There could be ten easier, faster, safer ways to do what you want with a lot less management, less fixed commitments, and so on – but you have to be informed. For example, maybe you want to make passive income. You can make passive income from OTHER PEOPLE’S assets, relationships, media or distribution, where you work very hard for a short period and then you get recurring income over and over again. That recurring income can be used to finance and stabilize your transition to the next level when you figure out what your next level is; that income can be used to finance at a bank; that income can be used to supplement your lifestyle and relieve you of stress… No matter where you are right now, the differential between where you are and where you want to be – the delta – is your current gap. Most people try and get from where they are to where they want to be very quickly, very dangerously and very poorly because they don’t know a lot about it. I recommend you slowly stair-step methodically a little higher and make sure that you have stable, predictable, solid revenue behind you all the time that will always be there to support and finance whatever new things you want to do is. This is a way of thinking; a mental mindset. It’s important that you create business vehicles that work harder for you than you work for them – AND – the best way to do it is safely, without needless risk, utilizing high probability success methods.
A Strategy You Can Use to Build a Wealth-Generating Brand (and
a Short-Sighted Mistake People Make Trying to Do This…) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
When you build a well-liked, well-received, and well-respected brand, the money it makes is almost secondary. What’s primary? This: The brand has enormous wealth creating value. Here’s a strategy for building a wealth-generating brand (while generating profit windfalls too): Go to a company that has a quality brand that targets quality buyers with limited products or services. This could be a perfect market for you to get control of a complimentary product or service without being competitive and do this: You or them put a joint brand on it and get a licensing deal where they will distribute the product or service through their distribution channel, salesforce, trade shows, catalogs, website etc. – and they get half the profits and you get the other half. You engineer this by figuring it out, acquiring a product or service you white label, and put a proprietary private label of your own on it so it becomes you and your new partners product. This way you’re always building a brand versus building somebody else. Now, some people may do this for OTHER PEOPLE’S products. Here’s where people tend to be short-sighted: The reality is you can go to ANYONE’S product with this strategy – different products every day – and you can make profit. However, doing this means you are not building anything other than the fact that your clients know to buy the products. Everyone who buys other people’s products are going to start repurchasing from other people and not from you. On the other hand, if you get control of products and sell them as YOUR brand through YOUR distribution and they want to repurchase – they repurchase from YOU. This means you control the client/buyer and the majority of the profit… and… you are building a brand you create in your name that has enormous market value that a company will pay 6x or 8x the cash flow or profit you make when you’re ready to sell it.
Want to Buy a Business But Don’t Have the Money? No Problem, Try This… Jay Abraham May 26 2016
If you’re an entrepreneur who is just starting out AND/OR you simply don’t have the capital to buy a business you want, here is a way to do it with ZERO capital: Contact business owners and say the following: “Would you be interested in selling this business to me in the next few years?” If they say maybe or yes, you can respond with this… “I would be willing to work for you for up to ____ years full-time at a reduced salary to be your intern to turn into the General Manager with this understanding: I would start with the option to buy into the business at the end of _____ months/years if I perform at a certain quality/level/volume/etc. If I add value and can prove I can run the business and make it better, you agree to sell it to me in _____ years. We will work together whether you sell me all of the business or part of it – but I earn the right to buy it when I come in IF I perform. You have control. If I don’t perform well, it’s nullified and void. If I do, then every month I work for you I get credit for what I do because I’m going to take a lesser fee. At a certain point I will have the right to buy either the entire business or a portion of it; whatever we agree to, and you will allow me to pay for it out of the increased profit that I will have created for you – out of the increased revenue I will have generated for you.”
What Every Young Entrepreneur Ought to Know About Starting a Business Jay Abraham May 26 2016
The world is filled with delusions, misinformation, confusions and hallucinations about what it takes to start a business and be an entrepreneur. You think you have to go into terrible debt? Not so. You think you have to work mercilessly hard? It’s not true. You think you have to be miserable and beleaguered until you finally make it? Wrong again. Yes, you could opt to be this person and you’ve very welcomed to follow that path… but I wouldn’t. The truth that every young entrepreneur ought to realize about starting a business is this… You can have the fastest, safest, easiest, most result certain first endeavor. You can start a business that has the highest probability of making money so you have predictable cash flow that can be used to subsidize your current income; and/or finance products or services or equipment you might need; and validate to you that you have the capability of making and creating commerce and making new profits and revenue happen. You don’t have to put your life in jeopardy financially. I know a lot of people who put everything on the line – and they won. However, I know a lot of people who put everything on the line – and they lost everything. There are many more of these
stories than the former. When they lost everything, the worst thing they lost was their entrepreneurial spirit. They lost the willingness to try again. They lost the capacity to see themselves as someone who was destined to succeed. They lost the ability to have passion for creating a business, enterprise or vehicle that they owned, could grow, and utilize to create many other vehicles. They lost all of that passion, possibility and purpose forever… I don’t want to see that happen to any young entrepreneur … I don’t want to see that happen to you. I want to help take you through a methodical way of thinking, and then through a series of safe, proven, high success probability actions where the only way you will get stressed, depressed, and fail is if you don’t act. The truth is you have virtually unlimited directions, options, possibilities and choices available to you to start your business.
A High Probability Success Model You Can Leverage Starting Right Now Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Go to a business that is successful, but limited in its geographic scope. It could be a great restaurant, dry cleaner, animal hospital, car repair store, clothing retailer, and so on. Go to them and say: “Are you planning on expanding outside of _____(Geographical Region)_____?” Now, you will get several types of responses…and depending on how they respond, here are some possible responses back.
If they say, “I have no interest in growing my business past the current one in this location.” Ask them, “If I can immerse myself on my free time and figure out how to blueprint, codify and replicate your success model – meaning, how you do it, your processes, your procedures, your marketing, your operations – and I can get partners for us in other cities outside of this region and get them to pay a fee and percentage, will you share that equally with me if I manage it?” If they say, “I haven’t thought about expanding outside my region.” Ask them, “Would you like the revenue without the risk or expense of expansion?” Unless they are control freaks, they will say yes, and you can share a variation of the previous response. If they say, “Yes, we want to expand, but not for ____ years.” Ask them, “Why?” And then, depending on their reasoning, you can respond with something like this: “If I could figure out how to do it in ___ months, not years, with no capital, but you would give up 50% of the profit – so you have to share some of the revenue with me – but you’d have no downside risk, you would get cash flow upfront and then ongoing, and you would have qualitative control of how your business was replicated, and if somebody didn’t follow the process we would have the rights to terminate the relationship… would you let me license other people outside of the market instead of waiting ____ years?” If they say, “Yes, we are planning on expanding.” Ask them, “When would you do it and how would you do it?” You’re asking them about their timeline and whether it would be company-owned or if they would try and get partners – and you can utilize a variation of the previous response. This is a high probability success model you can start leveraging right now.
Your Life 2.0: Thinking About Your Next Level Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Wherever you are right now in your life, career or aspirations – you have the capacity, capability and responsibility to determine where you want to be. Once you do, you can take safe, predictable, high-probability success steps to get there. In order to get to where you want to be, first you must optimize. That means getting the highest and best use, result and return from your time, skill, efforts and investments. However, you can’t optimize anything until you first understand a majority of the alternatives, options, opportunities, and possibilities available to you so you can select the wisest path that will get you most safely to your next level. No matter where you are today, know this: You are on a permanent progression. The key is answering this question:“Where do I want everything I am doing to ultimately take me?” Since you can’t optimize until you think about your options – so let’s start there. FIRST: Wherever you are personally and professionally, you have to decide your level of commitment. Why? Because this will determine what strategy will work best depending on where you are at right now. For example, if you’re an entrepreneur, but you are currently depending on your job for a paycheck, it may not be wise to abandon your paycheck and throw caution to the wind and just start a business without much thought. However, in this scenario, it would be advisable to start a part-time business with a high success probability that utilized your greatest skillsets – even if it didn’t initially make you a lot of money. Whatever your level of commitment, you would, of course, still put very passionate, focused, purposeful attention to everything you do. The point is: First you must determine your level of commitment to your next level – whatever that next level is for you.
SECOND: You must determine where you are strongest and where you are weakest. For example, if you are terrible at selling or dealing with the public – it’s not highly likely you will be a great deal maker, BUT, you can easily find someone else to make and close deals for you. You might also have a skillset that is very desirable and you may have never known it. You have to ask yourself the questions: “What problems are people trying to solve on a regular basis that they recognize – and – What opportunities are they trying to achieve every day?” Once you determine the problems people want to solve and opportunities they want to achieve, you can see if you have a skillset that can provide the solution or opportunity for fulfillment – OR – if you can get control of someone else who has that kind of ability and work out a partnership where you make it available and they provide it. So, honestly determining your strengths and weaknesses is the second step on the path to your next level. THIRD: Always start with something that has a very high probability of success. This will reinforce your psyche, mental model and start with a win that works as you move toward your next level. This also means being comfortable that whatever you or the person/people you enlist to help you is adding value to the people you serve. Ask yourself: “What’s the value of what I, or the people I enlist, do for other people?” There’s no shame if you haven’t thought this way in the past – but there’s great shame in not thinking this way now. Take charge of your next level and your destiny.
The Four Types of Markets You Will Meet In The Marketplace Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There are four categories of markets you have to understand so you can source the best market for your products and services: MARKET #1 – Unaware and Uninterested: These are people who are unaware of what you have, who your company is, what your service/product is – and they aren’t interested.
MARKET #2 – Aware and Uninterested: These are people who become aware of your products, services and company, but are still uninterested. MARKET #3 – Aware, Interested, but Not Ready To Buy: These are people who become aware of your products/services, are interested, but they are not ready to buy your products/services. MARKET #4 – Aware, Interested and Ready To Buy: These are people who are aware of your products/services, are interested, and are ready to buy… but need you to provide the bridge to purchase and repurchase. By looking at your market through this clarifying lens, you can massively increase the probability of success when offering your products and services.
Upselling and Downselling 101 Jay Abraham May 26 2016
All buyers are not the same — and all buyer’s needs, requirements and desires are not the same. If you treat them all the same, you are doing them and yourself a disservice. Here’s why: Some people are going to want more quality, more quantity, more combinations and so on. Some are going to want to start with less. You have to understand that there are different strata’s up and down the buying process that you have to make available because different people are at different points of progression, desire or ability. For example, someone may not be ready for a full program you offer, but they may be ready for an introductory product or service that gives them the foundation and fundamentals. So understand that different people are at different places, and you have to know how to sell more things to the people ready for a lot more and how to sell less things to the people who would love to buy your major offering but perhaps they can’t afford it, aren’t motivated for it, or the timing might not be right for it.
The Rarely Talked About Reality of Repurposing Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Repurposing can be summed up in a question: “What else can you ethically do to serve a buyer after you have sold them everything you have to sell them – or – to serve a prospect who doesn’t buy from you?” The answer could be offering them complimentary, additional, and even competitive products and/or services. Plus, there is a rarely talked about reality of repurposing I want you to consider: You might make more on repurposing than you even make on selling your basic product or service. For example, you might make money from people who don’t buy from you, and you can introduce them to alternative products or services that fill the same need. Making more money from what you don’t sell than what you do sell – imagine that!
37 Ways to Nurture Customers (Part 1) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
What follows is a reprinted section from five-volume set of my best-performing mindset and methods called “The Super Books”. The five-volume integrative set was designed to sell for $2,500 (that’s $500 per volume). Here are the complete Tables of Contents from all five volumes for you to review: http://abraham.com/breakthroughs/Superbooks . Contact Rob Colasanti at
[email protected] if you want access to them.
1. Stop acquiring and then abandoning your customers for trivial reasons or expenses. 2. Do not neglect your customers. 3. Marketing is educating people to recognize and appreciate the value and benefit from working with you. 4. If you do a lot of work behind the scenes then tell them so. They don’t know it if you don’t tell them. 5. Let your customers know the care you take preemptively. Tell them what they are likely to say and see. 6. If you have a good friend in your life, how many times a year do you communicate with him/her? Should you communicate with your customers any less? Do you think your communication “goes deeper” with each and every communication? 7. People want to feel special, unique, valued, respected and care for. Your customers are dear and valued friends who have trusted you and valued YOU. Reciprocate by letting them know what you mean to them on a consistent basis. 8. Let the customer see the business through your eyes. Let him view the relationship through your eyes. 9. If you can’t establish contact personally then have an operative do it on your behalf. 10. Treat your customers as dear and valued friends or relatives. If you did, how would your relationship change/evolve? 11. The name of the game you are playing is affinity. The more bonded you are to your customers, the more your business will grow broader and deeper. The more affirmed, valued, appreciated they are the more they will reciprocate. You must demonstrate through your efforts. 12. Try ongoing frequency of continuous communication with your customers. 13. Do not be self-serving.
14. Disseminate information. 15. Give them valuable ideas, recommendations, experiences, studies. Anything for the customer to be better educated, informed, knowledgeable. 16. Let in on the reason “why.” 17. Letters, calls and more letters on a continuous basis. 18. Try “change-up” pitches so a customer does not become acclimated to your information. What follows is a reprinted section from five-volume set of my best-performing mindset and methods called “The Super Books”. The five-volume integrative set was designed to sell for $2,500 (that’s $500 per volume). Here are the complete Tables of Contents from all five volumes: http://abraham.com/breakthroughs/Superbooks . Contact Rob Colasanti at
[email protected] if you want access to them. 19. Send audios. 20. Send interview transcriptions. 21. Buy the copy rights to a book and send it to your customers. 22. Tell them how you help another client. 23. If confidential material, do it without acknowledging the client. 24. Show them how explicitly they can benefit from the information you are sending. 25. Focus on doing all you can do, to help that client be the best they can be. 26. Send them valuable information on activities outside of your area of expertise. Show them that you care. 27. “Over-acknowledge” your clients. 28. Telephone them once a month. Keep them abreast of what’s happening right now.
29. People don’t appreciate what you are and what you’ve done for them unless and until you go through the effort of authoritative and respectfully educating them. 30. Offer free education. 31. To increase your affinity with your customers, send your communications more frequently. 32. Communicate from the heart about their interests, not yours. Make it a benefit for them. Educate, inform, suggest, share, recommend, tell them about new breakthroughs, etc. 33. Have your salespeople or service technicians communicate with your customers if you can’t personally. 34. Make offers. 35. Ask customers what you are doing wrong. But be humble and don’t make them wrong for doing so. But look for the opportunity. 36. Send personalized notes, letters and cards. The less institutionalized it is, the more value it has. 37. Send thank you notes or notes that acknowledge their situation.
Why People Stop Buying From You (and What You Can Do About It) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
When people stop buying from you, it’s for three different reasons: Reason #1: They have an interruption in their life that has nothing to do with your product or service. Maybe they were on vacation; maybe they had to work on a
project; maybe they got sick; and so on. They stopped doing business with you for no reason that was negative about your company. Reason #2: They had a negative experience with your company. Maybe the delivery caused them dissatisfaction; maybe a promise wasn’t kept or an expectation wasn’t met; maybe the assembly went wrong; and so on. This accounts for the majority of reasons people stop buying. Reason #3: They no longer benefit from your product or service because their situation has changed. What can you do about this? Try implementing one of these solutions depending on the reason they stopped buying: Response to Reason #1: Contact them and express how they haven’t bought from your company in a while and sincerely ask them if anything is wrong and ask if you’ve done anything wrong – then, express how if you did something wrong, it wasn’t intentional. The important point here is to do whatever it takes to make them happy, be aware of their well-being, and satisfy them. Response to Reason #2: Contact them and humble yourself by making right whatever went wrong. Do whatever is necessary including giving them something free or giving them their money back. If they are so upset they won’t deal with you, tell them you understand but that you don’t want their last interaction with your company to be a negative one – and then do something that will leave them with a good memory of doing business with you. Do whatever it takes to make it right. Response to Reason #3: Contact them and express genuine concern for and interest in their current situation. Ask them if everything is going alright with their new situation and look for ways to offer them complimentary products or services that could add to or enhance their new situation – even if that means referring them to competitors. When you look out for their best interest, it will stand out in their minds, and many times these people who no longer benefit from your product or service will refer you to other people who would benefit. Statistically, if you respond in the aforementioned ways via calls, letters, in-person meetings, and so on, it will renew business activity from all three situations where people stop buying.
How to Uncover a Profit Windfall From Leads and Prospects Who Don’t Buy Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There are enormous numbers of companies that generate enormous numbers of leads and prospects that they don’t sell. These leads and prospects invested time in contacting these companies or connecting with them – and what most people don’t realize is this: The majority of the money these companies spend to find the people who buy are sunk costs, and these companies are spending money mostly on finding the people who don’t buy. Think about it: If a company generates 1000 leads or 1000 visitors in a year to their business, and they close 5% every month – 50 people – they could stop right there and be content…OR…they can realize all the majority of the money has been spent on people that didn’t buy, and they are in fact losing money on the 95% of people that don’t buy. This realization can result in a profit windfall opportunity for YOU. How? Let give you three ways: #1: You could find ways to go to the people who didn’t buy and get them to buy. #2: You can determine the profile of the leads/prospects, figure out other things for them to buy, and make those things available. #3: Just because they didn’t buy today from the company, doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy from somebody in a few days, weeks or months. You can make arrangements with competitors and set up a deal.
The bottom line is this: There are companies that have already sunk a major investment in the 95% of people who didn’t buy anything…but those people can be mined to buy something else. You can work out an arrangement with the company that has those unsold prospects, visitors or leads. You can work out a deal where they keep using your strategy over and over to get those prospects to buy, and as long as it works you receive a share of the revenue that comes in continuously.
Q&A with Jay (Part 7) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
In this Q&A, I answer the following questions: * “How can I distinguish and differentiate my offer from all the ones my prospects have had before?” * “I want to help businesses grow. What can I say in my letter to them?” * “I tried to buy someone’s business and they reject the offer. What can I do?” Q: “How can I distinguish and differentiate my offer from all the ones my prospects have had before?” A: Assuming your business is profitable and you have a marketing budget of some amount, use that same marketing money to buy people of influence an experience. Even if you have a limited amount of money, buy them something they can utilize and will find valuable relative to your proposition. This can not only enhance your stature in the marketplace, but also earn you endorsements. Go to the influencers and say, “Everyone else asks you to do things for them: I’m not. Pick somebody you know and care about who is a representative; it could someone from your list, a colleague, your son/daughter, your wife’s business – and I will buy them _________ of our service. After that, judge us accordingly.” If you know you’re going to win, more often than not, this is how you do it. Take your budget and invest it in a strategy like this. Q: “I want to help businesses grow. What can I say in my letter to them?”
A: Here’s something you can start with and send to 50 people if you have a small budget or 500 people if you have a bigger budget: “If you’re too busy or if you have any days, times or seasons in the year where business is slower, we are offering to help you and make you one of the businesses we represent. We are contacting you because by all outward indicators you are a quality business that does very good service. We believe on an annual basis we can provide you with an extra $__________ to $__________ of income. If you have a staff, then multiples of that. If you wish to explore working with us, we want to verify your credentials and you reputation, as you should us. Our fees are very reasonable at _____% – _____%. Let’s talk about it.” The ones who are interested will contact you and then you can start dialoguing with them and build the vision of what you’re going to do. There’s one caveat to this: You want to find businesses that really get the value of this and have a growth desire. You want to start with people who ‘get’ your proposition and are receptive and not try and go against the grain by trying to sell those who are complacent. Q: “I tried to buy someone’s business and they reject the offer. What can I do?” A: You can say to them, “What your business is worth right now is $________. If you want to sell the business, and our offer is out of range – let’s look at it differently. Let us help you sell it for the maximum amount. We will operate the business for $________ fee plus we will take its current EBITDA and its current trend, and if we can increase it by ___% – ___%, you just added a ___ times or ___ times or a ___ times multiple, and we want ___% of that when it sells OR the right to match the best real offer that comes in. If we can liberate the untapped potential in your business before you sell it, you’re going to get a lot more. Why would you mind giving us ___% of an extra $_______, particularly when we charge you a relatively modest amount to achieve it and it comes out of the growth. We can set up a milestone at the end of ___ months or a year; if we don’t have a growth trajectory that’s a minimum of whatever we agree upon, then we can do a systematic withdrawal.”
The S.T.E. Connection Jay Abraham May 26 2016
You might remember my previous blog post titled “One Principle That Leads To Increased Performance, Outcomes and Results”. If you haven’t read it, CLICK HERE to read it. I want to come back to that and suggest the following to you: Never do anything as a tactic that does not consistently and congruently advance and enhance your overall strategy. This means being ruthless in ensuring every ad you run, every brochure you use, every sales message you put out, every email – everything – conveys what you are trying to achieve strategically. Ergo, you must know what your strategy is, what your strategy is not, and why. If you know your strategy, then you must choose tactics to support your strategy. How? Start with this action step: Clearly identify the most direct, cost-effective, lowrisk, highly predictable source of the most targeted market. When it comes to tactics, I strongly encourage you to engineer as many partnerships, joint ventures and strategic alliances that you possibly can. If you can align with other companies and individuals that are already dealing with the same target audience you want to, something wonderful happens: They’ve already spent the time, money and effort to attract and win trust, credibility and patronage, and they can shorten all the time, money, and risk elements you have to deal with by orders of magnitude. This is how you can make getting clients less costly, more probable and happen more rapidly. If you have figured out your strategy and tactics, it’s time to execute. Execution means properly implementing, articulating and utilizing the tactics that are going to drive your business. Execution doesn’t mean just “doing” them – it means conservatively testing them and making sure you are effective, successful and resultproducing with each tactic. The odds are high, initially, the tactics won’t be expressed or implemented correctly; you have to play around with it. The name of the game here is perseverance, practice, iteration and re-iteration. When you make the S.T.E. connection and line up your Strategies, Tactics and Execution, the wheels of your business vehicle are in alignment and success becomes much more probable.
5 Copywriting Formulas That Sell Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Copywriting is about assembling words that sell. The words you use in your ads, in your selling, on your website must position, attract, convince and motivate your prospect to want to do business with you. The truth is this: Creating copy is not as difficult or complex as you might think. In fact, I’m going to give you some formulas. If you incorporate them in any and all your marketing communications – including your ads, emails, website, brochures, sales literature, and more – it will enhance and multiply your success many times over. These are formulas that some of the greatest copywriters in the history of copywriting used. All you have to do when you write copy (or you have someone write copy for you) is make sure it contains many, if not all, of these elements. If it does, it will have a multiplies success probability – and if it doesn’t, it won’t. #1 – The AIDA Formula: A: Attention. Get attention. I: Interest. Arouse interest. D: Desire. Stimulate desire. A: Ask. Ask for action. #2 – The Robert Collier Formula: Attention. Interest. Description. Persuasion. Proof. Close. #3 – Victor Schwab’s AAPPA Formula: A: Attention. Get attention. A: Advantage. Show people an advantage. P: Prove. Prove it. P: Persuade. Persuade people to grasp the advantage. A: Ask. Ask for action. #4 – Bob Bly’s Formula:
1. Get attention. 2. Focus on the client. 3. Stress the benefits. 4. Differentiate yourself from competitors. 5. Prove the case. 6. Establish your credibility. 7. Build the value. 8. Close with a call to action. #5 – Bob Stone’s Formula: 1. Promise a benefit in the headline or first paragraph and make it the most important benefit. 2. Immediately enlarge upon the most important benefit. 3. Tell the reader specifically what they are going to get. 4. Back up your statements with proof and testimonials. 5. Tell the reader what they might lose if they don’t act. 6. Rephrase the benefits in your closing offer. 7. Incite them to take action right now. These five formulas apply not just to copywriting, but selling as well. Copywriting is simply salesmanship multiplied. You can include and incorporate these same components in everything you do with your sales people or anyone on your team that communicates with your clients. The ability to demonstrate, denominate, show benefits, prove them – all of this gives you the opportunity to be advantageously superior and more marketing savvy and methodical than anyone else. No matter your business, marketing copy is critical in terms of what people read, hear and say. All your selling communication will be enhanced and improved if you incorporate the fundamentals from the aforementioned formulas.
What Every Entepreneneur and Business Owner Ought To Know About Marketing
Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Marketing is not manipulative, hyperbolic, or taking advantage of people. It’s the opposite. MARKETING IS: *Educating people; *Acknowledging people; *Demonstrating to people how much better they can be by deciding to take action with you; *Proving it before they act; *Gaining trust by respecting people more and demonstrating that respect; *Taking a ‘You’ attitude with everything you do and communicate; *Over-delivering; *Being there when they need you after the sale; * …and it’s all rarely practiced. MARKETING IS ABOUT: 1. Educating another person about his or her unmet problems, challenges, needs or issues – or – helping them recognize their unachieved desires or opportunities. It’s about educating another person that solutions to problems or realizations of opportunities are possible. 2. Proving to the other person that you understand their circumstance in a better, more complete, more respectful, and more empathic way than most other people. 3. Showing the other person how they can gain the solution or solve the problem. 4. Showing the other person the difference between their life/the circumstances they are experiencing now versus the improved circumstance they will experience when they have your product, service or company in their life. 5. Getting the other person to desire that outcome, solution, or achievement at such a complete intensity that they take meaningful action.
6. Fulfilling on the other person’s expectation, preferably over-delivering, so they will want to continue doing business with you over and over again. This means they will have trust in, believe in and buy any other products and services you offer them, and they will be comfortable, eager and highly motivated to continuously tell other people about your products, services and company. Your marketing must be externally focused on the benefit and advantage you bring to others. You have to educate people. The reason is because many people don’t realize they have a problem or the possibility of a better alternative, more potential, or greater achievement. You must intensify their awareness, educate them to what is possible, prove to them it is possible, show them the dangers or downfalls of remaining where they are, and show them the advantages of dealing with you. You must prove why you are, relative to all other options, a better choice, a better outcome, a better value, and a better result or benefit to them at whatever price point you’re at. The educational component at the heart of marketing makes it wonderful. You’re not manipulating people. If you have to manipulate people to get their money or business, then you are not authentic in your marketing. Marketing is based on authenticity and caring enough to tell people the truth. Your marketing should help people by giving them a selection or buying criteria. The more able you are to accomplish this, the more impact, motivation to buy, and sales you will produce from the marketplace.
The Ultimate Way To Build An Unstoppable Business Jay Abraham May 26 2016
You can harness the power of geometry in your business using a multitude of leverage points. When you do, you multiply your results, yield, impact, payoff and profit in everything you do. One of the ultimate ways to do this is with The Power Parthenon.
Most businesses generate the majority of their revenue and income from one primary activity or source. In other words, one pillar supports their entire revenue stream. Here’s the problem: If anything ever goes wrong (and so many things CAN go wrong) with this one primary source of revenue – the company is compromised. Like a diving board, this approach never sustains upward growth. Here’s a different strategy for you: You want to build multiple pillars of additional sources of revenue. These may be different channels, marketing approaches, media sources and so on. If you imagine this visually built out to look akin to the Parthenon from Greece with pillar after pillar, you can see how it’s much stronger and impervious to the elements that would destroy a typical business built on a single pillar diving board approach. If your business already exists and it’s been primarily generated by one source, imagine adding seven or eight more sources and each one only adds 5% to 10% more sales. The compound effect would cause your business to double and re-double. While all your competitors are working harder and harder, you’re working smarter and smarter and allowing the power of geometry to work in your favor. Every pillar you add can be created as a profit center. You can implement them slowly and safely and create a foundation that is broad and strong. When your business is built on a multi-pillared foundation, it becomes almost unstoppable. From this day forward, never do anything that is incremental if you can invest the same effort, energy, time and opportunity to make it exponential. You want everything you do to produce multiplied results – not linear results. When you do this, you unleash enormous growth and profit opportunities in your life.
A More Systematic Approach To Take With Your Marketing If You’re Just Starting Out… Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
The biggest problem most entrepreneurs have when they are starting out is that they are episodic, erratic and without a systematic approach when it comes to selling and marketing. They don’t have systems or processes they follow. If they happen to have a system or process, they are often chosen arbitrarily without validation whether they are good systems or not. Part of what stems from this lack of systems and process orientation is a fact that most entrepreneurs starting out miss: The clients you serve are at different levels of readiness, reception, receptivity, trust and interest. Treating them all the same is a mistake because they are not all in the same experiential place. Your marketing ought to segment and target different progressive states of readiness in your prospective market. You have to consider all the attitudinal and buying maturity cycles because if you deal with everyone as if they are all ready to buy from you this moment, it will limit you. Buyer aren’t always at the same place of readiness. On the other hand, if you have different marketing that addresses different segments of the progressive market – you can own the market. You can develop systems that keep progressing them forward. I urge you to study everyone in your market. You want to see all the different ways other people are reaching the market, the different messages they are taking to the market, the different proof elements and promises they are utilizing – you want to look at and for everything. Look for gaps. You can do what they aren’t doing or you can borrow and model from a different categories. Invest the time and attention to study the competition in as many forms as possible. The payoff and return on your investment will be huge.
Finding More Ways To Contribute To and Serve Your Market Jay Abraham May 26 2016
As a trusted advisor, your job is to lead and guide the market you serve to their optimal and maximum benefit, outcome and result. This could mean moving them up to a higher quality, larger quantity or better combination of products and services. The important point is this: You only do it when it is in their best interest. Most people don’t buy what is in their best interest. They buy what they often haphazardly decide to buy. Your job, again, as the trusted advisor, is to guide them to the best category, quality, quantity or combination they can access. This could also mean adding products and services to their purchase that naturally compliment, complete, or enhance the performance of the single product or service they were going to buy. These products and services could be ones you sell or ones you acquire from outside providers. Some people may not be ready for bigger products and services. In this case, you can sell them a starter product or service or one in which they will receive a benefit and you will have the opportunity to begin a relationship with them which you can develop, nurture and grow. To do all this and more, you must stay constantly connected to your clients. You must keep them aware of all the advantages they are gaining. You must communicate continuously and add value. None of this is manipulation; it’s contribution and service. If you know in your heart that buying one thing will not deliver the maximum outcome that is possible if they added other products and services to the transaction, know this: You are leading, guiding and advising them, as well as doing them a service and making their life easier, when you acquire or offer the maximum beneficial combination of products and services.
$2 Billion. Zero cost. Zero risk. Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There are a multitude of intangible elements that exist within and outside your business that can give you infinite access to almost any resource you ever want. You are never stuck with limitations or constraints. Think don’t have enough capital? Think you don’t have enough sales people? Think you don’t have enough products? Think you don’t have enough marketing capability? Think you don’t have enough credibility? Think you don’t have enough technology? None of this is EVER a problem. Why? Simple: Somebody else already possesses everything and whatever you could possibly want. All YOU have to do is figure out how to structure a joint venture, strategic alliance, affiliate arrangement, power partnership, distributorship deal, licensing deal or buying and selling a right. You simply talk and negotiate with the people who already have what you need. This is the methodology I’ve used to generate over $2 billion worth of profits for my clients and myself – with zero cost, zero risk and massive profitability. Let me give you an example from my own life: We did $250 million in two and half years in the seminar business without spending much of anything. We did this by going to all kinds of other organizations that already have the entrepreneurial individuals we wanted. We went to business magazines, consulting firms, business book publishers, thought leaders and so on, and we got them all to endorse and partner with us – so we only paid them when they produced results for us. They would send powerful and positive emails, webinar and so forth to their list about me and my event. We only paid them after they generated attendees that paid us $5,000, $15,000, or $25,000.
I had a client that was a small seller of gold bullion. I went out and did joint ventures with financial newsletters. Those newsletters endorsed our gold business because we were not directly competitive. The result? They built us a $2 BILLION business. Somebody already has whatever you resources you need: Sales forces, brand endorsements, licenses, distribution, space at trade shows, processes, knowledge, intellectual property, displays, technology, products, marketing, and on. It’s all within your reach without risking anything and without spending any money. The impact to your business could be millions of dollars. It’s not just possible – it’s probable if you decide to do it.
Some Straight Talk About Selling (Plus: 6 Action Steps You Can Take To Become An Authoritative, Trusted Advisor) Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Some Straight Talk About Selling (Plus: 6 Action Steps You Can Take To Become An Authoritative, Trusted Advisor) By Jay Abraham All elements of life and business require and incorporate selling. You sell products and/or service to prospects. You sell distributors on taking on your products and/or services. You sell your vision to prospective employees and team. Most people believe selling is manipulative or a bunch of techniques. As you already know from reading this blog, that is so far from the truth it’s almost laughable.
To be massively and continually successful in whatever business you start, buy, or partner with, you must understand the needs of the other person and become the ultimate advisor in their life who gives them perspective, tells the truth, and helps them evaluate situations. You do this by helping them get clear on the result, benefit or goal they are trying to achieve, the negatives they are trying to avoid, and you serve as their advisor – guiding them, being socratic, and giving them well-reasoned, objective, externally-focused advise and recommendations. You are not focused on selling anybody anything you can for any reason. You are committed and focused on advising everybody on what is in THEIR best interest. How do you this? Here are 6 steps you can take: 1. You give them reality as you see it. 2. You tell them what you recommend they do. 3. You tell them why you recommend they do that. 4. You tell them what you believe the outcome will be for them. 5. You tell them what the penalty will be if they don’t do it. 6. You respectfully establish why doing it through and with your business is a wiser decision that doing it through a competitor, via an alternative, or not doing it at all. When you sell, you are taking on the role of a professional advisor or consultant. You are always looking out for the best interest of your prospect or client. You are on a crusade for the betterment of your clients and getting them the best results, benefits, success, experience – and – helping them avoid negatives. This also means being able to teach, instill and install advisory selling in all of your team, because your team needs to be consultative and authoritative in guiding and advising the client to what is in their best interest as well. You NEVER manipulate anyone for any reason; Manipulation is not allowed in advisory selling. You must always advise, counsel, direct and consult someone in what you believe in your heart of hearts is in THEIR best interest. You never try to get someone to buy what they should not buy. Conversely, you must not allow someone to buy less quality or combinations than they should buy. You have a moral responsibility to the client to advise and tell them what is in their best interest, why it’s in their best
interest, and project them forward into how much better their life and experience will be when they take the action you recommend. You must make clients better off because you and your company are in their life. This is a way of thinking. It’s not based on structured phrases or scripts; it’s based on assuming the authentic and legitimate role in your entrepreneurial life as the most trusted advisor to your marketplace.
13 Characteristics of High Trust Leaders and Companies Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There is one element, maybe more than any other element, that defines your success probability and how the market sees you, your team, your products/services and your brand. That one element is TRUST. The question you must answer is this: “How do I create a connection with my market, team, vendors, community and influences where they see me as the most trustworthy representation of having their best interest at heart?” After researching some of the highest trust leaders and companies in the world, Stephen M. R. Covey identified 13 common characteristics of high trust. This is what the highest level of trust looks like. When you apply these 13 high-trust characteristics, you build greater levels of trust with your market, team, vendors, market, community and everyone around you. #1. TALK STRAIGHT: Be honest. Be authentic. Tell the truth. Don’t be covert or cryptic; Say what you mean.
#2. DEMONSTRATE CONCERN: Everyone matters. Show you understand, respect, appreciate and acknowledge their life. Have genuine concern and respect for their life. #3. CREATE TRANSPARENCY: Open yourself to others equitably, purposefully and transparently. #4. RIGHT WRONGS: Correct disservices that happen in your life. Don’t let pride get in the way of doing the right thing. #5. SHOW LOYALTY: Show loyalty to everyone including your team members, clients, vendors, community members and on. People will multiply their commitment on your behalf, expand their willingness to move mountains for you and intensify their respect. #6. DELIVER RESULTS: Mediocrity doesn’t count; deliver results that far exceed the minimum expectations. #7. GET BETTER: Commit and program constant growth into everything you do every day. Grow your ability, understanding, respect, trustworthiness, relationships, appreciation and knowledge base. #8. CONFRONT REALITY: Don’t avoid the real issues and don’t bury your head in the sand. Address issues head on and acknowledge the unsaid. Lead conversations courageously. #9. CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS: No two people hear the same message when people talk. No two people have the same experience or values; they interpret everything based on their unique experiences. If you want to make sure your prospects, team members, clients, vendors – everyone – is committed to the same noble purpose, you must clarify expectations. No matter what you communicate, make sure both sides say and hear the same thing. Ask everyone to tell you what they just heard you say and tell you what it means to them. If there is misunderstanding, you can correct it. #10. PRACTICE ACCOUNTABILITY: Don’t blame others when things go wrong; hold yourself and others accountable. This means taking responsibility for results.
#11. KEEP COMMITMENTS: Say what you’re going to do, then do what you say you’re going to do. Make commitments carefully and keep them. #12. LISTEN FIRST: Find out what is most important to the other person; don’t presume you have the answers. Understand first before you diagnose. Listen before you speak. #13. EXTEND TRUST: Demonstrate the propensity to trust and learn how to appropriately extend trust to others based on situation, risk, and the character and competence of the people involved. Extend trust to abundantly to those who have earned your trust, and conditionally to those who are earning it. As an entrepreneur, you want authenticity. You want to be the best – not just in the quality of your people, products, services – but in the quality of your intention and quality of bond you create with everyone you relate with including clients, prospects, referrals, marketplace influencers, distribution channels, vendors, advisors, and so on.
Increase Your Sales 20% to 5000%: A Different Way to Look at Selling Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There are a lot of people who erroneously believe selling is manipulative. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me give you a preeminent paradigm and perspective from which to look at selling: Selling is nothing more than the passionate ability to advocate, champion, and represent a concept, solution to a problem, way of achieving an opportunity or desired outcome with such compelling certainty and trustworthiness that the
prospective market you are selling to totally and absolutely embraces and accepts what you are saying – and they trust you enough to take action. You want to be seen as the most trusted advisor to your market. An advisor counsels people in what will give them the best outcome. If you advise your market on what is in their best interest, more often than not you will make bigger and larger quantity sales. The reward to you for doing what will make your client get a better outcome is you will get a larger sales and increased profits. When you and your organization become consultative and advisory oriented in your sales approach, this approach can increase your organizations sales from 20% to 5000%. In fact, get everybody in your organization who interfaces with the public – not just the sales people – trained in consultative advisory selling. It will transform your results, it will transform your culture, and it will connect you to your clients in a way you can’t fathom.
Maximum Trust=Maximum Success Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There is a huge area of business most people totally overlook and don’t grasp the magnitude of, but when embraced will multiply your business and transform your life – and that area is… Trust. Research shows that individuals and companies that enjoy maximum trust with their marketplace, teams, vendors and community perform nearly 300% more profitably and predictably than people who don’t. A maximum trust environment where your mind, heart, soul and communications convey and establish maximum trust at all times is vital for maximum success. It’s also very liberating and a wonderful way to connect with people. The more trust you
can create with your prospective market place, your buyers, and the people you’re working with, the faster they will work for you, the more they will do for you, the more loyal they will be to you, the more they will repurchase from you, and on. The greatest ethical advantage you could possibly possess is to be more trustworthy than your competitors because you will win at such a greater level on every criteria: Speed of sale; longevity of relationship; effort of your people; attitude of your market; quantity and quality of opportunities that come to you; and more. Trust is the most important element inherent in all good businesses, all good leadership and all good life conduct. By being trustworthy and transparent, the power you will yield in your world will be amazing.
A Brand New Porsche Every Year… Jay Abraham May 26 2016
There was a young man who wanted to drive Porsche automobiles all his life…but he couldn’t afford one. He then found out a Porsche dealership was for sale in his city…but he couldn’t afford the $1,000,000 down payment. Instead of seeing these things as problems – he saw an opportunity. Car dealers can allow people to drive “demonstrators”, which means you can take a brand new car and for 3 months maximum you can drive it and it’s still considered a new car. It uses special plates and it’s not registered as sold, and then it goes back to the dealership. Now, he didn’t have the $1,000,000 down payment for the Porsche dealership, but he knew there must be a lot of Porsche car enthusiasts who really wanted to drive Porsches and didn’t have the money to keep buying new ones.
So he ran an ad in the newspaper: “I can give you a brand new Porsche to drive every year for the rest of your life. Instead of spending $100,000 every year for a new one, pay $75,000 one time and you will never pay another penny again.” 200 people responded. He said to these people that if they gave him the $75,000, he would use the money together to buy a Porsche dealership and as a Porsche dealer he would allow them to drive a demonstrator for 3 months every year for free. He would simply take it back and give them a new one, and they would keep doing that. He never had to pay a penny in interest to the banks because it wasn’t a loan. He never had to pay a penny to any partners because it wasn’t a partnership. He used this simple philosophy and raised $3,000,000, bought the dealership and got $1,500,000 extra as a bonus. That’s the power of creative thinking.
An Ode To Entrepreneurs Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Animated. Excited. Passionate. Possibility-Oriented. These are just a few terms that characterize entrepreneurs. They have the vision to see opportunities to help people be more successful, more productive, more effective, less stressed, and more. They have the ability to look at an industry and see gaps that can be purposely, advantageously and beneficially filled. Entrepreneurs not only have a burning desire to create something – but something of value. It only through value-creation – by way of the quantity, quality and significance of problems they solve and opportunities they create for others – that they are rewarded.
The entrepreneur’s world is of limitless possibility with a constant focus on adding more value. Entrepreneurs are multipliers; not diminishers. What they do and how they do it makes everything better. They make their clients feel better, their product or service makes their clients life better, they improve their industry by way of their innovation and service improvement, and they have a greater respect and appreciation for their employees, vendors and clients. They multiply the impact their product or service makes in the market. They bring benefit. They bring advantage. They make people better off because their business, company or product is in people’s lives. Whatever negatives, problems or weaknesses exist, they see as the greatest opportunities. They are transformers of more productive and rewarding outcomes. Their commitment to their team is to grow, develop and cultivate an environment of contribution where passion and success can flourish. They care more about the people they serve than almost anyone else. Ultimately, it’s the entrepreneurs mindset and ingenuity that makes our world a better place.
12 Money-Making Business Seeds Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Whether you want to start a business from scratch with no money at all, leverage a skill you currently have into a new business, or make your current business more profitable, here are business seeds that you can blossom into full-fledged moneymakers; simply add action:
1. Take a skillset you have that other people don’t that you could offer full-time or part-time. 2. Take a company that has only one facility in one area and make a partnership to take that facility and have them finance you opening another one ore licensing their business in another city. 3. Get the rights to create new profit centers, service models or products under the brand of other existing companies. 4. Partner with offline/online media (e.g. newspapers, websites, magazines, social etc.) to create products or services. 5. Create service companies with no employees or equipment, and joint venture with companies that have employees and equipment but aren’t utilizing them fully and have them provide the fulfillment while you sell it under your company name. 6. Acquire rights to tangible/intangible items such as a product that is popular in one industry but not used in another industry and you get the exclusive rights to sell it in an industry where it doesn’t exist. 7. Get the rights to help grow businesses profits or save businesses money, and if you don’t know how to make them profit or save them money, simply find other people who know how to do it and partner with them and bring them in to do it while you create half the profit for yourself. 8. Find a successful business outside your country and get the rights for no capital outlay to license, franchise or partner with other successful companies in your country. 9. Find successful companies in your country that would be successful in other countries but they haven’t taken it there – so you license it. 10. Find prominent people such as celebrities, business people, athletes and arrange to represent them, and then go to companies and make them that company’s endorser and charge a fee plus a percentage of the improved sales that endorsement creates.
11. Purchase businesses without any initial capital by paying the owner out of the future earnings and the growth you create and extra profit you generate. 12. Tie up and secure the rights to something (e.g. buy the rights to a business outside of your geographic area) and then sell those rights to someone else (e.g. bring it to your geographic area and partner with a larger facility)
A Short Course In Positioning Yourself For Maximum and Total Success Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Most business have the wrong positioning or no positioning at all. This leads to opposite messaging than you want or no distinction, differentiation or advantage at all with your market. WHY is positioning so important? It is the defining differential, meaningful advantage and reason why your target audience will want to buy from you instead of buying from your competition, alternative choices, or doing nothing at all. You have to be able to define, differentiate, describe, contrast and compare the reason why they ought to choose YOU over anything else. If you can’t tell your prospective buyer the reason why they should buy your product or service, favor your company or deal with your personally… they won’t do it – and you will only prosper accidentally. WHAT is positioning? It is the integrated message you send out and that your product, people and business conveys and communicates to the market. It is a way of being – not just words. You must decide what you intend to be to the market. You must know what you are, the
perception you want the market to gain, and the fulfillment you want to project and deliver. Until you know this, you can’t create a positioning. HOW do you position? You starts by deciding what you are and what you are not. Look at your business as it is operating successfully (or as it should be operating successfully) and decide who the market you are going to serve is – and who you are not going to serve. You can’t be all things to all people or you will dilute and water down your message to the point of being ineffective. Positioning Question #1: Who do you want to be reaching? Once you know who you are targeting, your message has to convey the value you represent, the benefit they will gain from dealing with you, and the advantage you represent and will provide above and beyond other choices. This means having a message that matches the market and ensures your business can deliver on whatever positioning promise you decide to stand by. The buyer must see the advantage before they will seize whatever you are offering. Positioning Question #2: What advantage will your business represent to the market? Once you know what advantage your company is going to represent, look at how different companies use positioning. Study everyone else in your category (and outside your category) by looking at their ads, websites, value propositions, copy, claims and so on. This will tell you whether you are truly bringing more, better, and/or different advantage to the market, and it will show you where there are voids and gaps. Also, understand this: You’re not just competing with direct competitors, but indirect alternatives as well. Study the copy, positioning, psychology indirect alternatives use too. Look for voids your product, service, or company could fill and success processes you can borrow, modify and model. Positioning Question #3: Where are there voids/gaps you can fill? Positioning Question #4: What success approaches can you borrow, modify and model for your product/service/business? If you have clear answers to these questions, your job now becomes defining and developing in the mind of your prospect the value you represent. How do you do this?
One way to do this is with a positioning strategy I call, “Dividing and Conquering”. This is a powerful process you can utilize in your advertising, marketing and selling to separate yourself from the pack. Imagine communicating this: “There are a lot of people in the market selling __________(Your Category of Product/Service)__________. Most of them are good, honest people. However, none of them are approaching you the way we are: __________(Describe What Is Different About You Here And How You Do It)__________.” Sometimes what differentiates you is simply telling the prospect how you create your product, select your product, support your product or do what you do. Once you have your positioning, you have to incorporate it into all your activities. You have to be congruent with whatever your positioning is. You and your company’s messaging and conduct has to be in alignment. Positioning is not just an abstract word; it’s a thread that runs throughout everything you do. Once you figure out what your positioning is, you have to ensure all your conduct, communication and consideration of everyone you deal with is congruent with it. When you figure out who your market is, what it is about you that is defining, and in an integrated way you convey it congruently – your product, service and/or company enjoys attention, response, purchases, ongoing business and elevated status in the marketplace. No matter what you are selling, when you do this, you stand out.
Your Greatness and Profit Destiny Awaits: Never Limit What’s Possible For Yourself Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Many people think, “There’s no way I can be a millionaire” or “There’s no way I can have a big, successful business.”
Never allow yourself to limit, constrict or constrain what is possible for yourself over your lifetime. There ARE absolutely safe, success-proven ways to start with one strategy, activity or business – and utilize it to grow and multiply. You are a unique person, and there are optimal profit destinies that will work for you. Over the course of reading this blog and accessing the spectrum of videos, templates, keynotes, interviews, insights, downloadable books, articles and over 100 high level resources you can get right now over at www.Abraham.com, you will see how many options you really have. You’ll see the wide range of possibilities you have to build your own unique business success plan. Not only this, but once you have success, you can take it higher. Here’s what I want you to know: You have within you greatness. It’s a greatness that has always existed but probably hasn’t been allowed to develop for a myriad of reasons. You have the ability to achieve greatness in many elements of your life including as a husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancé/fiancée, friend, value-contributor and even in your character, passion, compassion, appreciation and on. In achieving greatness, remember that the first steps are not always successful. This doesn’t mean these steps won’t allow you to reach your greatness; it simply means it requires building your skill and proficiency. If you can accept that at first you will have some less successful starting points, the good news is you will discover safe, easy ways to build your abilities, develop your skills, and achieve success. So where are you now – AND – where on the continuum do you need or want to be as it relates to your greatness? You have the capacity to liberate and emancipate within yourself talents, abilities, creativity and opportunities you never dreamed possible. Success is a function of whether you execute, implement and believe. You are capable of so much more for yourself and others.
Think deeply and committedly about your greatness. See it in your mind’s eye, because I believe you are destined for greatness.
Gordian Knots Untangled: 7 Creative Ways To Outsize Your Business Performance Jay Abraham May 26 2016
Strategic and creative thinking is never more important than when you’re facing a seemingly unsolvable problem or a complex Gordian knot. These are the sort of challenges and problems I’m asked to untangle and come up with solution to every month on a conference call series I curate called the “Outsizing Your Business Performance” Program. What follows is a summary of some of the key takeaways from the call I had February 2016 that you can start utilizing in your business to achieve greater revenue, profit, relationships, positioning, prominence, market dominance and more. If you find it intriguing and if you’re curious to learn more, you can contact Rob Colasanti (
[email protected]) and he can get you the program details. However, if you do nothing else, I hope you’ll take these approaches to think beyond your current circumstance and consider where the most strategic connections and collaborations are in your business and life. Gordian Knot #1: Approach a competitor that has the same customers you want. Here’s a script to consider sending to the owner: “I have a very provocative proposal for you. I would like to partner with you and have you sell my ______________ through your distribution. I can help by doing the following: _________. I think the alignment will create $________ for me. I will give you, in exchange for this growth, not only half of all the revenue/profit, but ALSO – as long as it grows to a certain level – the right to
buy the product line/business from me at a very under-market multiple in ___x___ number of years so that you making my growth possible is only going to be an asset for you. The growth I get from you will fund my ability to grow my service in other markets and you will be the beneficiary.” Gordian Knot #2: Create profit from thin air by leveraging struggling businesses. APPROACH #1 (For a non-competitor who is struggling): “I want to buy and grow your business. Whatever you’re making – you’ll always get that amount. Above that, I’ll take all the risk, the marketing of it, management of it and you just fulfill or we’ll take it over and it’s a negotiable thing — and I will either buy it out from you at a preagreed upon price that will be paid out of the proceeds that I create for us OR I will just take half interest and you get a free ride by continuing to do what you’re doing and I’ll just keep half of everything above that. We’ll agree upon a certain benchmark timeline, and if I don’t hit it then I’ll let you take over and pay me a share for what I’ve created for you.” APPROACH #2 (For a competitor who is struggling): “Everything I know, seen and heard about you is that you’re a quality company/service/product. I think you work too hard and your products and services are too good for you to make less than you deserve. I have a proposal: I’ll take over the business and consolidate it into mine and put my marketing muscle, resources, capital, and know-how behind it. You will eliminate all your expenses and costs. I will give you 25% of the profits from everything we make from what you’re doing – and you’re now free to do whatever you want, and for as long as we sell your product/service or keep your clients/customers, you’ll get a permanent percentage from it, and any add-ons we ever sell to them or any other business that emanates from it you’ll get a piece of that…and you don’t have to do anything except, if you want, go out and generate more.” Gordian Knot #3: Accessing and penetrating a country you’re not in. There are likely some number of companies that have licenses to either import or manufacture products. Start a search and discovery process of asking the companies you have relationships with if they have licensees for any of their products in the country you want to access. Further, you could go to 300 to 500 companies and say, “If you have a licensee in X country, I believe I can make that relationship bigger,
better, more successful, more profitable, less problematic, etc. and better partners for you.” Gordian Knot #4: Maintaining full control and transparency when you’re the middle man. Say to both parties: “I have the ability to increase your business, augment not supplant, and give you windfall access to _______ which you would have never had on your own, and it’s all newfound revenue. If I can do that, may I have ____% of the initial sales and all the residual?” Have both sides/people/companies say yes to this and put it in writing. Neither side should mind the percentage you’re making because incrementally, even though they are going to make a little less, it’s all additional revenue. In fact, the money they are making now is going to service overhead and this revenue is above and beyond. Once you have all this accepted, depending on the deal, you can incorporate reporting into your deal. If it’s a big deal you can put a full time person there. You can get joint copies of the deposits. You could have it go through an online method you have control of or collaboration on. You can have the money distributed such that a certain percentage is automatically given to you and/or to the other person. Gordian Knot #5: Accessing and penetrating a market where certain long-time vendors or suppliers are favored. If you have clients right now that aren’t using those “favored” vendors/suppliers, but are instead using you, you can clinically, analytically and comparably denominate and prove the reasons they use you over the other companies. Then, compare these metrics to a similar representative client, and if you see you can make the case that there may be recommended or “favored” providers, but the clients you have are more successful than the average. This would give you a great story, and you could do an introductory pricing for new clients and earn their business by performance while saying, “We have demonstrable evidence to prove we will outperform dollar for dollar what you’re doing now by ____________ . We will allow you to use our service at a steeply reduced price for a period.” Don’t sell with abstractions, generalities and platitudes; create data no one else, exempt what it doesn’t prove and play to what it does prove.
Gordian Knot #6: Wanting to do a Joint Venture where the parties don’t seem to trust what you’re proposing. Ask them to let you do a survey and go back to a number of their past clients. See if before, during or after those clients utilized the service/product you’re proposing they joint venture on. If you can prove statistically a lot of people will use it and choose someone to do it anyway and the money is going to go to someone – then you propose, in totally transparency, you will not compete with them in any way. All you want to do is maximize the totality of the expenditure their clients will have already done, will do concurrently or will do after. The solution here to simply prove your hypothesis so you can monumentally enhance trust. Gordian Knot #7: Access an audience or list at lightning speed without taking years to build it and start increasing revenue fast. Acquire a license to a quality product that has valuable testimonials from the target market you want to reach that affirm the value of the product. Find people/organizations/communities that already have a forum to the market you want to reach and start partnering. Explain what you got and make the deal very lucrative for them. If, after set up, it costs you incrementally very little, you could give a portion of the upfront revenue to the partner in exchange for promoting the product, and create education based components you disseminate to win the trust of the audience and also allow the partner to make a preferential offer for the product to their audience.
17 IMMEDIATE MARKETING SOLUTIONS (Private Notes From Tony Robbin’s 2016 Business Mastery Event) Jay Abraham
April 9 2015
Just this year I was asked to speak at Tony Robbin’s 2016 Business Mastery event in Florida. Out of my 2 hour presentation, a third of it was dedicated to solving attendees biggest challenges, opportunities, issues and problems. Not only was it great fun, it was also very well received. Each person had 2 minutes maximum to ask a question and I had 3 minutes maximum to answer. What you will find here is a condensed version of what was shared, distilled into marketing solutions you can start applying immediately. Since you’re paid in life for thinking differently, my hope for you is the insights that follow will reward you richly not just in monetary terms, but also in thinking differently as well. #1. “How do I improve my business?” Talk to the highest performers making the most money in the area you want to improve. Talk to people specializing in different industries and see what they are doing. Look online at everyone else doing what you want to improve and see if they sell their technology: Contact them and offer to buy a license. Look at every model similar or related and see how it’s working. Look at everyone reaching the audience you want to reach to see if you can possibly set up joint ventures. #2. “How do I keep up with my competitors if they are growing past me?” Go to your best referrers and say the following, “We need to invest in the people you refer to us more generously than our contemporaries. So, anybody you think we can help, we will buy them the first ______________ , so there don’t have any apprehension in patronizing our business.” Secondly, there are probably people who have smaller businesses or semi-retired individuals from whom you could buy their client base and give them a perpetual piece of the business if it’s legal. #3. “How do I get new clients at better price points?” Don’t play the same game everyone else is playing the same way they play it. Whether locally, nationally, online or offline, find people who specialize in industries and make them marketing partners if they don’t have the piece of the puzzle you provide. You can also go to people who have your piece of the puzzle, but if you have an advanced product or service, do deals with them to take their offerings to the next
level. Find people who have sold everything they can sell to their client base, and offer these clients your endorsed products and service. So find out who already has the market – and it could be a competitor if they don’t have as deep a product or service – and find utilization with their clients. #4. “How do I build trust with prospects better/quicker/easier?” Instead of making the relationship overwhelming or creating implicit fear, say “Call this number and we will first invest in you. We’ll educate you; we’ll show you the good, the bad, the ugly. We’ll show you who is right. We’ll show you strategies. We’ll give you a way to test our concept. Then we’ll follow up and discuss it with you, and if we’re compatible then we’ll invite you in.” Offer less threatening ways to educate prospects before they have to make a commitment. #5. “How do I get the attention of high level people/companies/decision-makers for my product/service offering?” First, find out who else is doing this, how are they doing it, where are they doing it and how well are they doing. You don’t need many to begin with. After you get just a few high level individuals/companies, you can validate you already have clients. Go to the bigger clients with your proof and say “We believe we have an offer that will play out and pay off, but we’d like to buy _____________ of the service gratis to begin with and let you judge it on the most critical criteria we can come up with together, and earn your business.” #6. “I don’t want to do business the same way everyone in my industry does it. What should I do?” First, work on building more referral sources. A referral generated client is many times more profitable, less likely to waste your time and easier to deal with. You can’t build referral sources until you have a unique value proposition. So learn all the referral strategies you can and invest real value in developing, building and enriching relationships with people that have access to the market you want. Another possibility is to find people who may be retiring and they have goodwill with your ideal clients, and make a deal with them where you take over their brand and integrate it while paying them 25% forever and work their clients for them.
#7. “There are so many possible audiences for my product/service. Where should I focus my marketing efforts?” Willie Sutton was the greatest bank robber who ever lived. He robbed more banks than anyone else. When he was arrested, he was asked, “Why did you rob so many banks?” His answer was straight forward, “Because that’s where the money is.” Think about it pragmatically and go to where the money is. #8. “My competitor is for sale, but has a broader customer base that I service right now. Is it strategic to buy them?” If they have a lot of growth you could add by being a better marketer, strategist, make it more preeminent, set up relationships with people who have access – and if you analyze their client base and find verticals you could expand on too – then there’s a definite possibility. If they have clients you couldn’t support, you could probably sell them for an earn-out to someone else who would love them. The real question is this: Who, if anyone, will buy it? Can you make the competitors employees part of an ESOP? Are there other suppliers that have a big enough interest they would put up the money to be exclusive suppliers? Think about all the possibilities before you write a big check you don’t have to. #9. “My business is coming from different sources. How much importance should I place on each source?” Look at the numbers and what they are telling you. Of one hundred percent of the business you do, how many come directly from each source? That will pretty much tell you what to focus on. #10. “Give me a specific step-by-step referral generating system I can use.” Sit with them and say, “Before we start this process, I want to share something serious and relevant with you. We started this business _____ years ago with a very unique belief. We belief that our success can only be predicated only the success we create with clients like you – and – your desire to share that success with as many other people you care deeply about. So we have a process: We have a choice of spending our marketing budget on radio, seminars, advertising and so on. We’ve chosen instead to invest in research, educating our people so we are the best we can be for you. Every client we take on we share with them what we are going to do with
them first. We’re going to _____________. We’re going to concern ourselves, care and be there through anything that happens – good or bad. We will never avoid anything negative and always give you the most well-reasoned decisions and we’re committed to _____________. What we ask is this: Upon achievement of this, you agree in the beginning to refer to us at least __#__ quality, like-minded people you care deeply enough about in your life whom we can explore the possibility with. We’ll give them best reasoned second-opinion, we’ll give them our straight-forward philosophy and on. They don’t have to use us, but we ask this of you because if we don’t get this from our clients we have to run ads, charge you a surcharge and it gives us less time to do what you really want us to do which is ____________.” #11. “How do I escape the price/commodity business and become more profitable?” Quantify the soft attributes and show what it means in dollar savings, time savings, personnel saving, what the output is worth and so on. Quantify your performance. #12. “How do I keep and retain more of my clients/customers?” You have to understand what people value when you’re not in their life. You have to find implicit and explicit ways to keep them aware of the performance and value you are providing beyond just the service. Doing more things, educating them more, bringing them experts, investing back some of your profit so it will be so explicit you are in this for the long haul – and don’t just do it passively. Your competitors will try and take your clients/customers to lunch, so you’ve got to be able to express more of the reason why you are committed to them for life. Invest in them because they are your long-term investment and you know they are worth it. #13. “How do I create win-win partnerships to drive traffic to my business?” Find people that have the clients that are doing relative things. Make a comprehensive list of your customer profile and go to people that have the market directly or indirectly. Who already spent the time, effort, performance-fulfillment and has the trust and credibility with the same market you want and can introduce you, partner with you, put you on the their blog, create a program with you, and so on? Find out who already has direct access/distribution and start there. #14. “How do I get my message in front of more of my target market and have them self-identify themselves?”
Don’t waste your time calling cold. Find out who already has the market and from there you have lots of flexibility. For example, give them a self-diagnosing test to selfidentify themselves. #15. “How do I calculate my customers Lifetime Value?” You’re going to have different products/services, different categories of buyers and different sources of those buyer. First, look at the first sale that predictably emanates from different products, categories or medias or distribution; Then look at the real profit or loss that accrues; Then, in a realistic timeline, look at what flows from that in terms of repeat orders, alternative orders, referrals etc. and compute conservatively. Example: Profit from first sale = $200. Average repeat: 5 sales. Average client stays 3 years. So, in this case, Lifetime Value would be $200 x 5 x 3 = $3000. So every time a new client comes you would be accruing $3000. You could increase business by incentivizing sales people with 100% of the first $200 sale since the business would make $2800 over the lifetime of the client. #16. “How do I reach more clients?” Leverage the people who already use you and ask if they will introduce you to their contemporaries and counterparts. #17. “How do you overcome objections major/large companies have about doing business with my company?” Ask them to give you their worst problem no one else wants or can solve, and you take it on gratis. Then have them promise to give you more if you solve it, and grow together. You re-channel marketing dollars into subsidizing the creative solutions to the problems. There are certain problems you could find solutions to – even by going out and hiring three of the top people whom all they did was solve the problems, and you utilized your marketing dollars for this – and you become the company that takes it on and figures out the solution, and you don’t even charge for it. The simple quid pro quo is then executed and honored if you deliver.
Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan
Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan
Jay Abraham: Welcome to Encounter! Today, our guest is a man who’s a very dear friend of mine, but that’s not the reason we’re interviewing him. I’m interviewing him today because he is a legend in an industry which is legendary. He’s probably helped introduce technology nationwide to more nooks and crannies, and educate more people than any five people I know, and I know a lot of people in this field. He is a legend who basically took a concept in its embryonic, infancy stage and turned it into one of the largest companies of its kind in the world. In the process, he’s been on the cutting edge of more technological advancements for the consumer than I think I can count.
In addition to that – and I’m not trying to flatter him, I think he’s a brilliant entrepreneur. I think he’s one of the most gifted educators I’ve ever met in my life. And education is the ability to explain the complex in very simple terms, and he can do that masterfully. But he’s got so many other attributes that I want to focus on, and talk about today, that rather than build his ego any higher, let’s get right to it. My guest is Drew Allen Kaplan, founder of DAK Industries, creator/originator of the famous DAK Catalog. All you “DAKonians” know what I’m talking about. And before I start, I should say, we’re sitting in one of the most comfortably air-conditioned studios in all of Southern California, when it’s 112º outside. We’re sitting here shivering, but having a great time. So Drew, how are you? And welcome. Drew Kaplan: Hi Jay. Thank you very much for having me, and that’s a very flattering, and somewhat embarrassing introduction. What I am is a simple guy who loves electronics, has always loved electronics, has always loved cutting edge in science. And all I’ve tried to do is bring that hobby of mine to everyone else. Jay: It’s interesting – when I asked you to come here, you thought I was going to ask you just about copywriting, and about the mail order business, and about technology, when in fact, I think the greatest gifts you have to share are your knowledge, your experiences, your understandings of all the aspects of business building…of being an entrepreneur…of breaking into a changing, or a cutting edge industry. So with your permission, I’m going to take you on a very broad, and a very fascinating journey. We’re both going to have an educational adventure of our own while we’re doing this interview. As you know, I’ve had the good fortune of interviewing, of working with, and getting to meet a lot of entrepreneurs. One thing’s been real evident to me: If you go back in time and look at their origins, many – not all, but many of them started out with little enterprises, even when they were kids. They started out collecting Coke bottles, or pop bottles, and selling them for money and using the money to buy a bicycle. Or they had a news route, or a lemonade stand, or they bartered, or traded, or they reconstructed things from scrap and resold them in a reconfigured manner. Did you do anything like that when you were young? Drew: Well Jay, the first thing that I did that was productive and profitable was laid bricks, and it happened to be at home. We lived in the mountains, and I laid over 2,000 bricks, and terraced a hillside. Jay: How old were you? Drew: I was about 13 or 14 at the time, and no one thought it could be done. We were very fortunate – we lived next door to one of Disney’s head architects, and every morning on his way to work he’d come out and say, “Well why don’t you use a string to straighten that wall out?” And anyway – but I learned how to lay bricks. I learned how to mix concrete, I learned how to
thread pipes… Jay: And you’re 13 at this time? Drew: 13, 14…I did that one summer, and it took me three months, but that hillside today still exists, with all the brick walls in place. !1 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: A question comes to mind. When you did that, what inspired you to want to lay 2,000 bricks? Drew: Well, it may seem trite, but it was there. I looked at all this hillside of ivy, and I said to myself, “This has to be changed.” I wanted to change it. So I removed all the ivy. I used to pay the city trash man to take it away. There was a 5-limbed, 100-foot-high eucalyptus tree that had fallen, and the stump was there, so I bought a chain saw and cut the stump out, and then dug it out, and then… Jay: Had you ever used a chain saw before? Drew: Never. Never. Sorry – I tried that too. I had to dig a hole six feet around it by hand, and then I rented a chain, and when the trash truck would show up once a week I’d hook the chain up, and the trash drivers would pull out whatever I’d cut. So I started really young, but it was high school that I really got going. Jay: What did you do then? Drew: I was really lucky. I – as you’ve probably guessed, I love technology. I used the money I earned laying bricks at $1.25 an hour. I bought a tape recorder, which in those days was very, very new. And I made tapes of the music that I loved. My mother’s a concert pianist, and I also loved folk music, which was kind of an interesting combination. Jay: Interesting combination, yes. Drew: A very interesting combination. I still love classical music - I was a cellist - and I still love folk music. But I wanted to buy more and more tapes, and so I needed to support that habit. And so, I started installing 8-track car stereos. Jay: This was when? Drew: This was 1963, ’64…I was about 16, and by the time I was 17 and I was driving, I was the pride of Beverly Hills, because I spoke English. And I’d go to people’s houses, and for $50 I’d install a car stereo. And so, by the time I started college – UCLA, in ’64, I had a real good business going installing car stereos for custom installations. Jay: Now, what do you think drove you at that period to be that enterprising, that entrepreneurial? Drew: I’ve always enjoyed taking on a project – something that looked difficult, but when you took it apart, was easy, or could be done. It wasn’t a great masterstroke. It was a matter of, it was there – I wanted to do it. I never was comfortable sitting. I always loved electronics, and I used to put an electronics catalog inside my schoolbooks and read that instead of the schoolbooks. But I was always stuck on tape - tape recording, and music. So that’s how it all came together for me.
When I moved into the dorm at UCLA I had nine tape recorders in my dorm room. And I was not a real popular person. Jay: That’s wild. So here you are, what, 17 or 18 years old… Drew: 17. 17 years old. Jay: …You’re in college, and you’ve got this enterprise that’s really thriving. Drew: Thriving, yes. Absolutely doing great. Jay: Did you have people working for you, doing it? !2 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: By the time – I had three people then. After the first year at the dorm – this was Dykstra Hall at UCLA, suggested I might run my business elsewhere, because too many people were showing up at the front desk buying recording tape… But let me just tell you, what I was doing was, I had these nine tape recorders. Cassettes hadn’t been invented yet. And I found a way to buy used recording tape from the studios. We had all these studios here in LA. When you were recording Frank Sinatra in one of the studios and you had an 80-piece orchestra, you didn’t use the same tape for out-takes. As soon as you went through one reel of tape you’d pick up the next. So the used tape with the out-takes in it was generally thrown out. So I started buying it at roughly $1 a reel… Jay: Was that really cheap? Drew: Oh, yeah. Tape was $6-7 then. Jay: OK. Drew: So I’d buy it for $1 a reel, and I took it and I used it myself. And then I took it back to the dorm and I’d sell it for $2 a reel. So I literally started the company, DAK, the first company, with $100. I bought 100 reels of tape, brought them back to the dorm, sold them for $200, went back and bought $200 worth of tape, sold it for $400, and by the time I was, oh, maybe a junior, I had bought a tape factory for $20,000 that actually made tape. And that’s when I moved into a warehouse where I lived for seven years while I finished college and went on to found the company. Jay: Now, I’m going to get to the company, but I want to ask you some questions. I’m obsessed, almost, with learning how your mind thought. How it saw opportunity, challenge, issues. Because you see life different than I do, different than a lot of people, and I want to understand what you see positively that we don’t. So a question I want to ask is this: You said earlier, from the time you were 13 and laying the bricks, you were always fascinated with challenges and projects that were not as hard as they seemed. How did you see – I mean, most people see a project as insurmountable…as unpleasant…as so complicated and intimidating, it’s not even worth trying. How do you see projects? Drew: I tend to object to looking at things straight on, the way that most people would look at them. Jay: Tell me why. Drew: Well, because going at things in a straight line is A) the way everybody else does it. That
means that there are a lot of smart people who have tried going at things in a straight line, and if anyone can do it, why should I do it? I’m only interested in projects and products that no one else can really sell, or no one else can really conquer. Jay: Have you always been that way? Drew: Always been that way. I mean, my happiest days are when I can take a product – and I’ve really enjoyed products. I don’t know as much about services, but – product or service that other people have failed at, or said, “This can’t be done.” And that’s like throwing the red flag in front of the bull. To me, that’s “OK. How do we go about that?” An example, back to the company, again…there was a company that was making computers. It was a terrific, early IBM computer. And it wasn’t selling, and they weren’t going to survive. And they handed it to me, and they said, “Well, what can you do with this? We have two thousand of them.” So I looked at it, and I said, “Ah. This is really a sophisticated typewriter,” which is what a computer was in those days. So I came up with a headline called, “Unfair Competition”. And I went out, and I bought a Xerox Memory Writer, and I bought an IBM, I think it was a Wheel Writer. And they were each about $1,100. And I offered this computer for $1,000. It was a word processing program that I created, very basic, that was nothing more than a typewriter and a Daisy wheel printer, for those people who remember the little spinning wheels. !3 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: Sure Drew: And I called it “Unfair Competion”, sold it for $1,000, used the metaphor of the two typewriters, showed the receipts of what I’d paid for the typewriters, and said, “Well, you can go buy one of these typewriters, or you can have a computer that does everything the typewriter does, lets you keep everything in memory, rewrite things, edit things – and play all the IBM software that there is. So the whole concept of coming at it from a different direction. It’s not a computer; it’s a sophisticated typewriter. Jay: Did it work? Drew: Oh, we sold – there were 3,000 of them? We sold 23,000. We kept that company in production for two years. But it was exciting, because it was something that had already failed, and yet it was a great product. And that’s something that I hold as a caveat: You should only offer to anybody a great product or a great service. Don’t offer junk, because it will haunt you forever. You have to have integrity with what you offer. So I can’t take a bad product and make it look good. That’s not what Drew Kaplan does. You know, I look at a product, and I look at it as a solution rather than a product. I don’t care how big it is, what size it is, or what it does. I care what it does for the individual who’s reading the ad. So when I wanted to sell an intercom, I didn’t just call it an “intercom” – I called it a “Hey, Martha phone.”
The reason is, everybody can identify with, “Hey Martha, come to the phone!” So it’s a combination of a phone and an intercom. When I wanted to sell a pulse watch…”pulse watch” doesn’t have the same sort of appeal as “Wrist-EKG.” So it’s not just a good name, but it’s putting it in a different venue. It’s putting it so that people think of the result…think of the quality…think of what it’s going to do for them. So another really good example might be, I had a camcorder. It was one of the first camcorders made. A really neat product – nobody knew what it was. Did I call it a camcorder? No. I called it, “Daddy’s Pride and Joy.” Why did I call it that? Because I had surveyed people as to why they’d want camcorders. Most of them wanted to record their children. That’s the main reason people bought camcorders – that and weddings. So what I did is I told the story about my younger son, who was making a speech at school, and I had to be away on a business trip. So I called it “Daddy’s Pride and Joy.” I sent my wife with a camcorder. She recorded it, and I got to see my son. And I told the whole story and sold 20,000 camcorders. So that was in the days when there were no camcorders, so I would have really missed seeing my son. And when I sold a tape deck that had no hiss – it had a certain noise reduction system – I called it “Stealth Bomber Update.” So I attacked the reason…I went after the reason that it would be good for people, and I came up with a new name, a new concept for the product so that they’d understand it. And that’s really what I do. I mean, even the first product that I carried, the used magnetic tape - I called it “studio recording tape,” the tape that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis recorded on. If you called it “used,” then nobody would have been interested in it. But associating it with leading names like that made it really exciting. It made it a better than new product. That’s what lateral thinking brings to advertising, and what it brings to problem solving. You don’t go in a direct straight line. Any smart person can do that. The creative mind tends to attack things from the side, and it’s easy to do. You just stop looking in a straight direction and think about it, and say, “Well, how else can I think about this? What are the other alternatives?” And when you do that, you find a whole multitude of ways to look at products and services, and make them exciting for your potential customers. Jay: Drew, can you give me a little formula that might be useful for anybody in any kind of business or profession to develop this kind of a mindset? Drew: Sure, it’s actually really easy. Here’s an idea: Write down ten words that are totally unrelated, like “brick,” like “music stand,” like “cello,” (I’m a cellist) like “tall.” And then, put your product, or your concept, or your service, or whatever it is you’re going to do next to them. And then write a sentence using your product, your service, your idea with each of those ten words. And you know what? You’re thinking laterally already. It’s just that simple.
!4 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: That’s fascinating. When you looked at an electronic, or a computer piece of equipment, can you sort of go through what your mind would do? You’d look at - for example, I’m looking at some of your lateral - what’s “Smart Sound Detonator”? Drew: “Smart Sound Detonator” is one of my favorite products. It was an equalizer that made your stereo system sound 5-10 times better than it sounded before you put this in the system. What it – an equalizer… Jay: But most people wouldn’t even know what an equalizer was, would they? Drew: Well they didn’t know, before I sold them 170,000 of them. What it is – very simple. If you have a tape deck, you put it in the tape loop of your stereo system. And then, instead of having one volume control and a bass and treble control, you have 10-12 volume controls for each channel, and each of those volume controls controls one segment of the frequency spectrum – like 20 Hz, and 60 Hz, and 400 Hz – Hz being cycles per second. So your string bass, which is down around 60 Hz, you slide that volume control up, and all of a sudden the bass just resonates through your room. You slide the 16,000-cycle slider up, and your cymbals will crash into the room. So what it does, is it gives you instant control of the sound, so you get it just the way you want it. I learned that in the recording studios when I was a kid. Consumers didn’t know about it when I started selling equalizers. It was terrific. Jay: But you educated me, right? Drew: Right. What I did is not so much educated as shared something that I knew, was fortunate enough to learn, in my past and apply to a new product. And that’s what I do with a stereo or with a computer. A computer’s full of chips. You look at the computer. In the early days you could show a picture of all the chips, and everybody’d be impressed, and you’d say, “Oh, this is powerful.” Today, and even over the last few years, want people want to know is, “What will it do for me?” And so a computer isn’t a “thing”. People say that they’re using an IBM, or they’re using an Apple Macintosh. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, what does the particular program that you’re running on that computer do for you? Is it word processing? Is it graphics? Is it sound? All of these things are available to you, and people get hung up on the mechanical parts – it’s this fast, or it’s this big, or it’s that… That has nothing to do with the actual motivations behind why people buy, and that’s true, whether it’s in mail order, whether it’s in person, whether it’s on the telephone – all of these things hold together, and lateral thinking, and explanation and education - they all tie together. Jay: Now there’s something that’s got to be evident, because it’s surely evident to me. When you talk, you don’t talk without inflection. You talk with such passion emanating out of every pore of your
being… How do you become passionate – about your product, about your service, about what it does for other people? About looking at it in this CAT scan perspective? Drew: I think you look at your product…you learn about your product…you fall in love with your product. Jay: Drew, you’re on a little bit of sacred ground here for me, because I’m on record as teaching and advocating that you should fall in love with your customer or client, not your product or service, and there seems to be a little bit of an incongruity. Can you help clarify, or tie it together – or if you can, you can refute me, whichever is…I just want to get your perspective on it. Drew: Oh, well Jay, I agree with you 100%. When I fall in love with a product, I don’t mean that I fall in love with the physical product; I fall in love with what it’s going to do for the end user, for the customer. Not what the product is unto itself. Jay: So - how it’s going to enrich, enhance, protect, expand, help me in my life. Make it better, richer, more prosperous - whatever. Drew: And save you time, which of course is my main critique. I believe that saving time is the best thing that I can do for my customers, or one of the best things. That’s why I’m here. !5 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: That’s great. It reminds me…I’ll go shopping frequently and see a dress. And I’ll fall in love with that dress because of the vision of how attractive it will make my wife look, or how happy it will make her feel. Are we saying the same thing? Drew: Exactly. That’s what a product is all about. It isn’t a thing unto itself; it is what it means, in this case, to your wife. Jay: Great point. We’re harmonious - let’s move on. Drew: OK Jay: OK, but before we move on, give me a summary. Lateral thinking – what would you tell anybody, in any field of endeavor about how and why lateral thinking should be a critical part of what they do every day? Drew: I tell people to look at things sideways. First approach it head-on – how would you normally do it? Then come up with six or eight other solutions to the problem of explaining it to your customer, to educating your customer, to helping your customer or your client. And when you do that, you’ll find that you start thinking laterally all the time, and most of the time you’re going to find that lateral thinking helps you do a better job, provide better service, and make your customers happier people. Jay: But I suspect it will also make the process of your business or your practice a lot more fun, won’t it? Drew: Oh, sure. It’s been fun. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I loved every minute of it. So yes, lateral thinking gives you new ways, new creative ideas, and it keeps you going. It keeps you excited all the time.
Jay: That’s great. You’re leading me, and setting me up for the kind of questions I really want the answers to, so I’m going to ask you another one. I’m taking you on your career, and I’m almost on the precipice, probably, of DAK. But I don’t want to get there yet. I want to know about your attitude on selling - on helping people – customers, if you will – seize the benefit for themselves, not just the enrichment to you, of a product or service. Before you started DAK, you were selling tapes, you were manufacturing tapes. How’d you sell them? And why, and what was your motivation? Drew: Well actually, tapes were number two. First was the 8-track car stereos. Jay: OK Drew: First of all, I was installing them, and I worked for a – not for, but with – a stereo store in Beverly Hills called The Sound Center. The owner was a friend of mine. As would be expected when you’re 17 or 18, and you have friends who are in electronics, what do you do? You hang out at the neighborhood stereo store. Jay: Sure Drew: That’s what I did. When I was in high school, on the same corner as the school there was a store called The Hi Fi Corner, and we all used to congregate there. There was a small group of us that I guess today would be called “nerds,” because we all loved stereo and electronics. And stereo was just coming in right then it was still hi fi. Jay: Yeah, sure. Drew: Monaural. But it was a really exciting time, and as each new product has come out, I’ve been able to put my hands on it, play with it, and then, it’s always been fun for me to explain to other people what made it work. And that’s, I think, where I come in, and where what I do is a little different, or !6 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan what I’ve always done is a little different. Whether I was installing an 8-track car stereo, and then I was the first Lear Jet – remember the airplane people? Jay: Sure Drew: I guess they’re still around, but they also introduced the first 8-track car stereo that had a special motor called a “Paps Motor” – boy, you’re taking me back a long way. But this motor had a very heavy flywheel that spun on the outside, rather than a belt that caused flutter and “wow”, meaning a waving sound in your car. Jay: What was the advantage? Drew: The advantage was that you had better, smoother music, and it didn’t go “Rrr, rrr,” when you hit a stop, or when you moved, and this was a far better system. Jay: A breakthrough. Drew: A breakthrough. It was literally a breakthrough. And I became the first dealer in Los Angeles, so not only was I installing for people, I started selling. And I started in advertising in where? The Daily Bruin. I was at UCLA, I was a student, so it was just – it was the beginning of, “If you’re like
me…if you love stereo…if you want to hear your…” Jay: Is that how you wrote them? Drew: Yeah. Jay: Now what was your advertising philosophy, and what was your motivation when you were writing ads as a college student in The Bruin? Drew: Well, why I wrote them was because I had this great product that no one else had, and that I could make money and support my habit, and buy more and more tape recorders. And live a life style that was more in keeping with the way that I wanted to live. And by the way, I had no problems. My parents wanted to pay for my college education, but by the second year it became sort of, you know, not important, because I started at UCLA in September of 1964, and by October I was self-sufficient. Jay: That’s really good. Drew: So it was really - it was a lot of luck, and a lot of good fun, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Jay: So you’re installing. You’re now a dealer. So take me to the tape. I want to know about your method of selling, of persuading, of connecting with your customers. How’d you do it? Drew: Well, it was easy, because I loved electronics. I tended to hang around with other people who loved electronics. And as an example, before, when I was very young, I actually had my door open and close to my bedroom when I was 12 automatically. There was no stereo in those days, but I had nine speakers in my room. And I had remote control of my drapes. And I think I was about 10 or 11 when I almost burned the house down using used wire that I had soldered in about 10 different places. So my love of electronics started very, very young. Jay: And did your parents nurture that? Drew: They nurtured it. They weren’t into electronics themselves, but they were into allowing me to pursue my interests as long as I was headed in the right direction, which was college, I could do pretty much anything I wanted to do. So they nurtured it, they supported me, and I had extremely supportive, very intelligent parents. So, when I looked at my own needs as an owner of nine tape decks, knowing what I needed in the way of tape, in the way of equipment, it was real easy for me to recommend to other people in the dorm !7 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan which was the first stage, Stage One – all the people on my floor, 5 th Floor, Dykstra Hall. The second stage was to expand beyond that to the rest of the dorm verbally, telling people. I became pretty much the dorm expert. Jay: But give me your presentation in a summarized minute. Drew: It was, “Here is the best tape you can use. It’s the same tape that all of the professionals use. This isn’t tape from a hi fi store that may or may not be good. This is the same tape that people like
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis were all using. I had their voices on these tapes. It was really exciting to listen to these tapes! They were Ľ” and ˝” tapes running at 15 inches/second, and I had the recorders to play them. Then I would erase those tapes, and wind them to 7” reels, which was the size most people could use. So I was offering to people at UCLA in the dorm the best tape that money could buy – the same tape the professionals used, and I was offering the very best tape that money could buy, not at $6 or $8, but at $2 a reel. Jay: So the precedent was set. Drew: The precedent was set. It was the best tape, bar none, and it was at a price that was a third of what they could buy any tape for in a hi fi store. So there was the price, there was the “This is the tape that Sammy Davis used”, and this is the best tape coming from Drew, who is really the nut with the nine tape decks. And then I started running ads in the Daily Bruin that said, “Studio Recording Tape”, you know, “Use the tape of the professionals.” And I had some of those ads. I was looking at them a couple of months ago. And the whole concept was, use the same tape. Don’t use inferior tape. Because there was cheap tape around, just like there are cheap cars, there’s cheap everything. This was the best tape that could be bought. This was the tape the professionals chose, and I was offering it at a great price. So you had the concept of professional, and you had the benefit of cheap price, which of course, for college students, very important. And that business continued to grow, until I ran out of used tape. The studios weren't producing enough to tape to support how much I was selling. So then I went to the government, and I found out that there was great reams of government surplus tape. At that time they were using tape for all the space shots. Those were the days, in the '60s and early '70s, when we had a very active space program, and most of it came from Fort George Mead, outside of Washington D.C. And I found a way to negotiate with the government through bid, that no one else knew what to do with the tape. And I used to buy truckloads. At one point I was buying 40" truckloads, 8, 10, 12 truckloads at a time. Jay: And you're how old now, 21? Drew: I was…Oh, no, no - 19, 20. Jay: OK Drew: I moved from the dorm to an apartment, a two-bedroom apartment, grew out of that and moved to a four bedroom house, grew out of that, moved into a three thousand square foot warehouse. I was in the three thousand... Jay: You were living there too? Drew: I was living in the warehouse. By the time - I had an indoor hot pool, I had an indoor sauna - I was very comfortable. I had palm trees. It was great, I was baking bread...I was doing all sorts of neat stuff in my warehouse. Having a wonderful time, still going to college. And I was able to bid on what
they called government surplus tape. And then I had enough tape. Because then I could buy all the tape I wanted, and we were bringing in 40’ truckloads of tape, 8, 10 at a time. A 40-footer also coincidentally holds 40,000 pounds of tape – that’s a lot tape! And so I started selling that tape as still, used recording tape, and I was selling all of that that I could make and slit. And at that point, I bought a tape factory and started making tapes, and that's about when cassettes hit, and I started making cassette tapes. Jay: And how old are you now? !8 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: Oh, by this time I was 20, 21. Jay: Had you graduated? Drew: No, I actually spent five years at UCLA and actually never graduated. I have one class left, Statistics, to take. Jay: That's funny. OK, so you're in the tape business, manufacturing cassette tapes… Drew: Cassettes, open reel, and video tapes, all three. Jay: OK, and videotape back then was a much different market than today. Drew: It was a much different market. There were no cassettes. They were actually 7" and 10” reels of tape, half inch wide. I had 200 people at that point working for me, slitting this used tape and manufacturing new tape. So I was a tape manufacturer, the same as Scotch or Ampex. They were my competitors. And we were one of the few people that actually manufactured tape. We coated it. We bought the Mylar from Dupont; we bought chemicals from the various chemical companies; had 9,000-gallon underground tanks at Ball Mills; mixed all of the oxides; coated the tape... Jay: Now I've got to stop. I’ve got to stop and ask a question. Here you're a young man, figuring out how to do all these rather complex functions, relatively technical, competing with very large, multinational companies... First of all, what gave you the confidence to do it in the first place? No. 2: How did you figure out how to put it all together, and what was your selling proposition to your customers? Drew: Basically the concept was - no one told me I couldn't do it. Jay: Interesting. Drew: And it’s a very trite phrase, but if somebody tells you can’t do it, you tend to be afraid to try it. If nobody tells you can’t do it, and you try it, - it works! And so my first tape was not very successful, but by the second, the third, the fourth, or the fifth time, I was making very good tape. And so our tape was comparable to any of the major brands. In fact, I had many state contracts. I was selling by mail, obviously. And let me step back for a moment. How did I sell all this tape not just at UCLA? Remember, I said my friends were tape nuts. Jay: Yes. Drew: One of them was a service manager for a company called "Concert Tone,” which was the early TEAC, which is a major electronics company. Another one was UHER, a German tape recorder
company. I happen to have terrible handwriting, so I became a very good typist. I took all their warranty cards, and I typed the names and addresses from all of the warranty cards that had come in from these various tape deck manufacturers, and created a mailing list, not knowing anything about mail order. Jay: Just intuitive. Drew: Intuitive. I don’t know that intuitive is even fair. I’m not sure it was that good. I knew the people, I had the warranty cards; I said, “Why don’t I send something to these people?” And so in 1965, ‘66, I was already mailing things, and I had my own string tyer; I did bulk rate by myself... I just sat down and… Jay: string tyer, for all... !9 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: Oh, I'm sorry, when you mail something bulk rate, you have to put ten pieces to a zip code together and tie them up with a string. And then you put them in a trailer, which I rented. Hooked it to the back of my station wagon... Jay: This is very enterprising! Drew: …And drove them down to the terminal annex, downtown Los Angeles. Jay: Now stop. I’ve got to know this question. Something in your being has got incredible ambition, incredible resourcefulness, and incredible focus. What do you think it is? What happened? Drew: Well, I was very fortunate. I’m not a first-generation immigrant. My parents were, and they taught me a work ethic. And they espoused a work ethic, and they lived by a work ethic. Jay: Can you summarize what that ethics is? Drew: Ethic is: work hard, save, do well, help people, and you will do well yourself. And my parents have always contributed to the community. And I think it's a very important that you do something with the community, and that you work hard. And I can’t – I’ve tried, I have two children of my own that I’ve tried to instill this work ethic. And I think we’ve been successful. Of course it’s up to them, but you either have to work ethic or you don’t. I don’t know how to tell anybody how to work. I know how to tell you how to work smarter, faster, easier. That’s what the beauty of technology is. But you have to; you have to want to do it. That’s the only thing that you have to have within yourself. Jay: I suspect that it’s a misnomer. I don’t think work to you is drudgery. I don’t think work, to you, is anything but a sheer joy. Am I right? Drew: You’re absolutely right. I love creating. I don’t mind looking something up in the dictionary, or the encyclopedia. I will look and do research for fun, because I’m interested. I mean, I read an article yesterday, in Discover Magazine, on Easter Island. I’ve always been fascinated by Easter Island. Somebody just did a complete dissertation on what happened at Easter Island. But I took an hour and read the article – I’ve always read everything I can get my hands on. And I think that one of the things - when I just said that people have to have that inner drive
themselves, that’s sort of unfair. If you know you can do it, that drive tends to generate itself. If you don’t know how to go about accomplishing something, or you’re afraid to do it, the drive stays dormant. I know that if I don’t have, right now, a computer next to me, I don’t tend to write. But if there’s a computer right there and something that I can see finishing, I’ll write, I’ll create, I just can’t contain myself. I want to get more out. Jay: Like our new letter. Drew: Like our new letter, right! Thank you, Jay! But if there’s nothing - if there’s no end in sight, if there’s no goal that’s obtainable, I’ll sit around and clean up my desk for two weeks without accomplishing anything. Jay: So what’s the lesson there? Drew: Deadlines. Deadlines are wonderful things. Jay: Do you impose them on yourself? Drew: I impose them on myself. I say, “I’ve got to finish this by tomorrow.” And it may be two, three, four in the morning, that I’ll keep going, just because I want to finish it. Rather than leave it until tomorrow, because if you don’t set a deadline you never finish anything. And that’s just a bit of selfdiscipline. That once you start doing you’ll find it makes life much, much easier. !10 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: OK, now it’s time. I've got to get you forward, because I’m getting excited. I’m getting really excited. So we’ve got you in this 3,000 square foot warehouse... Drew: $300 a month for rent, which I was really nervous about, because it seemed like a lot of money in those days. Jay: But something tells me you had a surplus in the capacity to pay it comfortably. Drew: No problem. Jay: OK, so let’s get to the big event. So how did this glint in your eye turn into reality? Let’s talk about the concept, the inspiration, the formation, the whole emerging, sort of genesis of DAK? Drew: Well, the whole concept - it already was DAK, but at that time I was in my fifth year at UCLA studying psychology, and loving psychology by the way, but I realized - and I was very fortunate at a young age to be able to say, “I want to do what I love doing.” And that’s something I think everybody should strive to do. Because if you’re unhappy at your job, you’re unhappy in your marriage, you’re unhappy in your life – you’re not going to accomplish anything. So I had to make a really tough decision (and this was during my fifth year) that said “Am I going to become a psychiatrist (which was the way that I had been heading and with which I think I would have been happy) or am I going to pursue this technology that I love, that I seem to never be able to get enough of?” Even today, 35 years later, every time I get near something new, I can’t keep my hands off it. I’m out, I buy it, I play with it, I explore it. I go over to the Orient and I play with it, and I invent it. I love this.
And so I chose, I was very fortunate at a young age to say, “I have - I can always go back. Let me give this a shot for a few years and see what happens.” And that really, I would say, was more the genesis of DAK, was the ability to say, “What have I got to lose? If it doesn't work out, I withdrew gracefully, with good grades - I can go back.” Jay: But you went into it with full, unbridled passion, didn’t you? Drew: Oh, I started DAK in ‘64, it was unbridled passion. Jay: But you and I both know, because we’ve had the bad fortune of seeing a lot of people who play-act at business as they do at life with no passion, or a very low level of passion. Drew: Well a lot of these people went into business, went into work, went into life, to make money. Jay: As opposed to? Drew: To going into it with passion, with love for accomplishing something. For building something. For inventing something. I believe that if you do what you love doing, the money will follow. You’ll have enough money to do the things you want to do, and often, you may have a goal that is earning more money because you’re so miserable at what you’re doing. That’s a terrible way to run your life, is to be waiting for weekends, or two weeks off at vacation. You should love what you do. When you get up in the morning you should be enthused. Jay: Now do you like Monday mornings? Drew: I don’t like Monday mornings, because the phone starts ringing. Other than the phone, I love Monday mornings, but I don’t have a problem, because I work seven days a week. Jay: I was going to say, you and I are not dissimilar. Drew: It doesn’t make any difference. Jay: But it’s not work! !11 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: The only difference for Monday morning is that everybody else comes in, and they call you with whatever they didn’t finish the previous week. So I don’t love Monday mornings, but it isn’t because of going to work; it’s - I work Sundays. I still am putting in 8, 10, 12 hours a day of - some would call it work. But it is working with things that I love doing. And no one – don’t get me wrong. You will never love every minute of what you do. But if the overall thrust of the day is powerful, is potent, and you feel you’ve accomplished something at the end of the day, the two or three hours of perhaps, negotiating, or doing something with someone you don’t want to do it with - that fades away. You concentrate on the good parts. And it is a wonderful way to live one’s life. Jay: I can tell by your eyes. You’re sparkling. But I’ve got to get to DAK as a catalog company. So here DAK, the tape company, is rolling merrily along, and what year is it? Drew: OK. Let me fade for just a minute, and then I promise we’ll move forward. Jay: OK. Drew: In ‘64 or ‘65 my first catalog, which went out to the first tape people, its headline, its byline, its logo said, “Importing And Exporting of Products; Close Outs; Introduction of New Products.” It
was pathetic. It was just - it was - I don’t know where I came up with the three or four things that were part of what I considered the logo, but they were there. It ended up in DAK being importing and exporting of products. It ended up introducing new products, and it ended up doing closeouts. And - oh, and the fourth was mail order. And it ended up being a mail order company entirely. I loved all of those things. So the original genesis really never dramatically changed. It was what I liked to do, and it was the way it evolved. So DAK, the catalog of electronics that everyone is familiar with, really had its genesis in the early ‘80s – ‘79 to ‘80. And that’s already ten years into a company that was doing millions of dollars. What happened was an event changed my life. Jay: What was the event? Drew: The event was very simple. It was a man. Name’s Joe Sugarman. Jay: I know Joe. Drew: Probably the greatest copywriter, really the greatest promoter. And a great gentleman, real good friend of mine. I went to one of his seminars. Jay: Now I’ve got to stop. Joe Sugarman had a company - he still does, but he had a company. JS&A, that in the early... ‘70s? Drew: Through ‘79 or ‘80. Jay: Was...was like an icon for selling high-tech, low priced, modestly priced, breakthrough consumer products. Drew: Not necessarily low priced. Jay: That's what I said - high-priced consumer products. Drew: Right. Jay: I’m easy! Drew: No, it was a great product !12 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: But I remember him, just for clarification, he had the same gift, or you and he were kindred spirits on opposite sides of the country. I remember one of his classic, classic successes. He looked at a little walkie-talkie set, and he said, “You know what that is? That’s a pocket CB.” Didn’t he? Drew: Absolute classic Joe. Jay: And he recharacterized it, and what did he sell, something like $20 million worth? Drew: At least. And it was a fabulous concept of taking a walkie-talkie, which he did the same sort of thing that I do. What he did is, he looked at that, and he went to the manufacturer and said, “Explain it to me.” And they explained, “Well, it’s this, and it’s a walkie-talkie, and it’s this…and it broadcasts on this CB frequency, #14.” He said, “CB frequency 14?” He said, “Yes, all walkie-talkies are on CB frequency 14.” Jay: This was back when CBs were really hot, and you couldn’t get them. You couldn’t buy them if you wanted to. Drew: Right. So Joe came up with “pocket CB.” It’s a perfect example of taking a product and showing - again, his sort of view of it is lateral as well. Looking at it, instead of it being a walkie-talkie, he
made it a “pocket CB.” And he sold more than he could ever deliver, as usual. Jay: And he sold numbers of products like that. Now, at this time, I happen to know because I was operating in the mail order business back then - that he got the desire - and I don’t think it could’ve been profit motivated, because he didn’t sell it for that much- but he got the desire to start offering to a select group of people...was a weekend or week? Drew: It was a week - five days for $2,000 dollars... Jay: Which was nominal. Drew: …That you could go and listen to Joe explain the concepts behind how he created advertisements and marketing. Jay: And tell me - so, just as other clarification – it’s the year 1978, 9? Drew: 1979 or ‘80 - it was in that range. Jay: OK. Joe Sugarman, the classic, most successful, at that point, consumer electronics mail order retailer, is offering a select group of people the chance to come to his mansion in, was it Wisconsin? Drew: Wisconsin. Yes. One in Wisconsin, he also had one in Hawaii. Jay: He offers to train a handful of people for a real nominal amount, because he must have been making millions of dollars then. Drew: He was making a lot more. Jay: It couldn’t have been the money. Drew: It wasn’t the money; it was the concept of working together, and the feedback. Jay: So Drew, what did you get out of that seminar? You attended, what, four times? Drew: I attended the seminar four times. I must be a slow learner. The first time was exciting; the second time was really great. But life’s experience helps a lot, because the first time, I hadn’t written that kind of advertising. The second time I had. By the third and fourth times, I was busy writing hundreds of ads, and each time, my enthusiasm would be raised to such fever levels. I came home ecstatic - ready to write. !13 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan But I want you to know that Joe Sugarman’s seminars changed my life. And he changed the life of a lot of other people who attended his seminar. And I learned a lot. It was the seminal difference between normal writing… And what he unleashed with me was the ability to write ads like “Illegitimate Child for a Headset.” The “Can You Be Bribed?” ad, I wrote after that seminar. Joe was the most important single individual in forming the kind of advertising that I write, and he really unleashed this kind of concept in my head. Jay: Without breaching proprietary or intellectual property, because I know that he still occasionally considers doing that and it’s a legendary program. And back then was very expensive, and today it probably, for the value would be real inexpensive but. . . Can you share what you think were the embodying traits that he taught you that no one else at that point, and perhaps no one else even today understood? Drew: Well let me share something that I think is really important. I’ve been to a lot of seminars; I’ve read a lot of books. One: Joe Sugarman has done it. Joe wrote ads, he created products, he did it. So
when he came to a seminar to tell us what he did and to interact with us, he was able to do it in the real form. He was a real businessman, not a teacher that had never done it. And what he was able to do, was to impart his wisdom, his knowledge, his experience to people at all levels of sales and marketing. The experience was really terrific. He taught nuts and bolts, and he taught concepts. And that made the seminar really worthwhile - not once, not twice, not three times - but ten times if he had kept giving the seminars. Jay: I’m going to get you on a tangent for just a minute, so you can help me and help our listener. Joe Sugarman doesn’t regularly give those seminars anymore. How can I, or how can our listener get the same kind of a real world, hands-on experiential-based learning process? What you think the closest comparable alternative to participating in a Joe Sugarman seminar might be today? Drew: Well, you know maybe Joe will do some more seminars, and I’ll tell you, I’ll be number one on the list. Two, I’m thinking of doing some seminars and some tapes on the nuts and bolts of marketing. Jay: I would encourage that. I think that’d be a great gift to the whole world, and certainly to every business owner, or perspective one. Drew: Well thank you very much. I think that what I’ve done is really exciting. I’ve had a good time doing it, and I understand it. One of the reasons that Joe gave the seminars, and the reason that I’m thinking of doing it is, it helps you codify your ideas. Joe got a lot out of the seminars, as do the students. Because Joe was able to codify his ideas that he had used subliminally over time. When you give a seminar, you have to be able to elucidate. You have to be able to clarify. You have to be able to make those ideas really clear for people listening to you. Often, we write, we create, and we don’t know why we do it! We start with a blank piece of paper, and when we’re done, we have a really creative ad. A painter has a great painting. But most of us don’t really know what it is that we went through to get there. Let me give you an example: A couple of years ago I was trying to teach some writers how I write. And they said, “You know Drew, you write in triads.” And I said, “Gee, what’s a triad?” And they said, “Well Drew, it’s a group of three consecutive ideas that tie together, and that makes a really powerful mental impression.” And I said, “Gee, I hadn't noticed.” So I looked through my catalogs, and lo and behold, virtually every ad was loaded with triads. I mean, I looked at a phone ad. It says, “It’s smart, it’s tough, it’s fast.” I mean, that was the way that I wrote about an automated phone. I had another - a temperature controller. It says, “Check the temperatures of anything from your Jacuzzi, to your aquarium, to your attic.” You had a security system that said you can “watch for pilferage, shoplifting, or accidents.”
Let me kind of give you an idea of how I would use a triad in a paragraph, and it’s sort of the style that I write. This was an ad for an answering machine, but before we explore just how easy it is to use, and all of the sophisticated features such as toll saver, two-way record, and remote erasing of messages, let’s take a look at the phone. Well, you see the triad in there? That kept them going, and it kept them interested for what was coming later. And then I said, “But let's stop for a minute and look at the phone.” !14 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan So that’s another writing technique, but the triad is so strong that it kept them reading, because they wanted to find out about those three things, that I'm going to tell them later in the ad. Jay: So, if you follow through, which I encourage you, and I’ll be one of the first to attend your program, and you do that, that’s great. But if you don’t, or if it takes you a year or two, what do I do if I live in New York, or Pennsylvania, and I want to get exposure to someone who’s done it? Someone who understands business? In some way, maybe you could go in your neighborhood - did you ever go and intern, or just basically network with anybody in your field? In your industry, when you are running DAK? Drew: You know Jay, I wish I could have networked, because I had to reinvent the wheel, and do things that I thought were original that turned out You know, I recently read a book I should have read years ago. A book by Claude Hopkins. And Claude Hopkins was, I think, in 1930, one of the great advertising men. Just a fabulous guy... Jay: One of my heroes. Drew: ...And I had never read his book. And I read his book, and in his book he tells a story about a department store that was just about facing bankruptcy. And it had a set of old mackinaws - that tells you how old it is. Rain slickers - that weren’t very good. They were really cheap, and they weren’t selling. So they went to an advertising man - Claude Hopkins - and they said, “Could you write an ad? Because we’ve got to move these, or we’re going to file bankruptcy next week.” And so, Claude Hopkins wrote an ad that said, “You know, we’ve got some really second class mackinaws. They’re not good, but not really terrible either. But for two cents each, they’re a really good buy, and you’re going to love it.” And so Claude ran the ad, and before the ad appeared, the president of the department store called him and screamed at him, and said, “How dare you do that? You’ll put us out of business! We have absolutely no chance!” By 10 o’clock in the morning, every one of the mackinaws was sold - the store was saved. That’s a true story. That’s what happens when you tell people what’s wrong with something, and that’s the kind of thing that I’ve done throughout my advertising career. Had I read the book earlier, I
would have known that. I wouldn't have had to learn that myself. Jay: So, one more time. The sooner you get your seminars, or your tapes, or your books together, great. But until that time…I’m a dentist in Ohio. Or I’m a contractor in Philadelphia. What do you think might be the most intelligent and viable approach I could take to get the equivalent of your Joe Sugarman? Drew: Well, I think what you should do is look around the city you’re in, because it’s the easiest and what you can do the fastest, and find the people who are the most successful at doing what you want to do, and go to them, and meet them. And try and understand what they’re doing, and spend time with them. Maybe intern with them. You know it’s only time. If you’re willing to spend some time and help them, you’ll learn what they know, and then you’ll carry that knowledge with you for the rest your life. So I strongly recommend that you spend the time to go and meet the people that you respect. And follow them. And that will lead you on the road to future success. It really isn’t difficult. All you need to do is pick up the telephone, make a few calls, and you get in to these people. Smart people generally aren’t threatened by teaching other people. It’s the mediocre people that are threatened by teaching you. And you don’t want to be mediocre, and therefore the people that you seek out will probably be willing to talk to you. Jay: I think in confirmation of that, Drew, is the fact that when Joe Sugarman did his seminars and charged a lot then, $2000 - what did he limit it to, 20 people? Drew: 12 people. Jay: Yeah, so he made a whopping $24,000, which sounds like a lot, but at the time his business was earning him millions. I know he didn’t do it for the money. He did it for two reasons: People are really skilled love to teach, and they also love to learn in the process. And as you say, the more you ask someone to explain how and why they do something, the clearer it becomes to them. So it’s a dual growth. So I think everyone here would be very benefited by following that recommendation. !15 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Why do you think, though, that some people like yourself are willing to seek out other experts, colleagues, kindred spirits, mentors - people who can train, can direct, can nurture, liberate their energy, their ambition, their resourcefulness, their passion - and many people don’t have the wherewithal - even if it doesn't cost, because there’s no I mean, I remember myself when I was young, I worked all night for one year at a job so that all day long I could go sit out and hang out in the offices and pick the minds of successful business owners in Indianapolis, where I was raised. People thought I was crazy. No one would do anything like that, but it taught me so much. It sounds like you were willing to spend a relatively substantial amount of money, and travel a relatively large number of miles to gain access to somebody else’s expertise.
Drew: It’s an apprenticeship, and Jay, you should understand that, because thousands of people pay you tens of thousands of dollars to attend your seminars. And they come away from those seminars because I’ve met a few of them - very, very enthused, and with a better understanding of how to change their lives. So I think that there – I’m not the only person in the world that came out of Joe’s seminar or your seminar fully charged and ready to go. Every time you listen - you can go a 10, 20, 30 times, and each time you’ll pick up one more thing, or ten more things. It’s really exciting. Jay: People don’t realize - and again, I don’t want to get too far afield - but there are experts and mentors that I’ve been impacted by at a very, very, very high level, who I’ve gone back to their well, either in a written form, audio form, and whenever I’ve had the opportunity in the live form dozens of times, and they may say the same thing to me over and over again, but I hear it with greater clarity. I see nuances. I see depth. I see connectivity. And I sense that’s what’s happened to you. Drew: Well, it’s life’s experience. I mean, they often say, “Education’s wasted on the young, and youth is.” But when you have already been in business-when you’ve written a thousand ads, and then you hear someone talk about advertising, you know where the chaff is, and how to separate it from the wheat. So, Jay, let me give you another example of a wonderful product that had a problem that I turned into a real opportunity for my customers. And it was really good for them. This one was interesting. I called it, “The Thunder Lizard Mistake.” And it was a super 15-inch stereo speaker system – a 15-inch woofer, 8-inch mid-range, and it had a crummy little paper tweeter. It was made by a company called BSR. And when you plugged them in, they sounded like thunder. They didn’t have much high end, but they had a great bass. I happen to like bass. So, I looked at them, and I asked them, “Why’d you make these things? I'm not going to sell them. They don't sound very good.” They said, “Well, there was a mistake. We put the wrong tweeters in them. We actually were going to use these great horn tweeters, which was a 3, 4-inch plastic horn. But we didn’t.” So we got these three thousand. I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy those from you. Give me the horns.” And they said, “OK.” So I bought them, and I ran an ad in my catalog, and I said, “Dear Customer: Here is this incredible speaker called ‘The Thunder Lizard Mistake,’ and it has the greatest bass, has great mid-range, but it has a lousy tweeter. “So what I did is, I went out and I got these tweeters for you, and if you have a screwdriver you just take the tweeter that’s in there out – unscrew three screws – put in this great horn tweeter, and you’re going to have great highs to go with the great lows. You’re going to have the greatest speaker system in the world.”
Jay: But at a fraction… Drew: Yeah, but at a fraction of what it would have cost. And there were a couple thousand of them. We sold 35,000 pair of speakers. And we started – by the time we were selling these things, we just started shipping them with the new tweeters in them. Because the ad was so successful. Because I took what was a disaster, and what could be a wonderful speaker, and gave the customers really good value for their money, but I gave them a story. It was fun. It was interesting. And I explained what a crossover was. I explained what the woofers did, what the tweeters did. They learned more about speakers than they ever knew before, which is part of what I do. !16 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: That’s great. I want to talk about words. I want to talk about words that compel, words that sell, words that grip, words that induce, ethically, people to believe, to attend, to respond. You’ve used a lot of great words in a lot of years to sell about, what, $250 million worth of products? Drew: Well over $1 billion. Jay: Excuse me, four times short. Drew: In just the last ten years, actually. Jay: OK. Give me a billion-dollar education in about five minutes. Tell me about some selling words and their implication. You’ve got a psychological background – tie it together and explain it for me, and wrap it up for me in about five minutes. Drew: OK. Words are critical. I like strong, powerful words. I like words like “thunderous.” I like attack words, like “propel,” “ignite,” “rocket you into the future.” I like things that are really exciting, that reflect my passion for the kind of products that I’m selling. You know, if it isn’t just passion, I want to involve you with a word like “imagine.” When I say “imagine” in an ad or in a context of a conversation, you’re thinking in terms of “imagine if you had this product in your hands.” It puts you in with me. It’s part of the bonding process. But power words are where I’m at, and I use words like “eradicate” and “letter-cruncher” and “unfair competition” and “blunder” and “force field” and “extortion” and “detonate” and “thruster.” I had a sound processor; we called it “The Hiss Assassin.” And “Astounding writing for a wordfinding device.” And “Marriage Saver” for a pair of headphones that saved marriages because your spouse could go to sleep while you watched TV. And a stereo – a little Walkman that I called a “Station Stalker.” I sold some microphones, and I called it a “Microphone Gamble,” because I hired The Limelighters, my favorite folk group, to come to Carlos and Charley’s Nightclub, use my microphones with 150 people, and perform for the first time and they used microphones. It could have blown up in my face. But we did that, and I put that on the cover of a catalog. So – yeah, I like to find words that are really, really strong. When I sold a ’62 CD collection of various classical music, I called it “Mozart’s Revenge.” Again, you see a strong word like “revenge.” Why was it revenge? Easy – I was only charging $3 a CD. The rest of the world was running $8 or $10. But the
concept is, when they bought 62 CDs at one time I sold over 2 million CDs. But it was really exciting, because people looked at it, and they understood the concept – the metaphor “revenge against the record companies.” So, I like strong words. Jay: That’s great. Let me ask you a question. How can I, or any of our listeners, use strong, power words to help their sales efforts, their advertising efforts, their sales letters, their direct selling, their in-store selling, their trade show activities? Drew: Well, you know, my brain over the years has sort of turned into a Thesaurus. But it’s not difficult to write your story, your letter – and letters are very important. Don’t just think about this for ads. A letter is a sales letter, no matter what letter that is. You’re selling your idea, your concept – even if it’s a love letter, it’s a sales letter. Draft the letter - everyone’s doing it on computer today – and then check your Thesaurus. Don’t just pull words randomly, but look at the words, and that will broaden your ideas. There’s nothing wrong with using a Thesaurus, and when they’re electronic, it isn’t like thumbing through the old Roget’s, where it took you forever. Now you type a word and you have 100 choices. It’s wonderful – it gives you lots of options. And soon, you may not even use it. But don’t be afraid to use it. Jay: What do you think our obligation is, as businesspeople – men and women – as professionals, to help our customers or clients get a better appreciation, a better clarity, on the result, on the value? Do you think words are the critical connection? Drew: I think words and concept are the two critical connections. Jay: What do you mean by “concept”? !17 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: Well, why are you writing a letter? Why are you writing an ad? I think you have to plan ahead as to what it is that you want to accomplish with your letter, with your ad, or with your telephone call. If you pick up the telephone to try to make a sales call or an informational call, and you haven’t written down a few notes, you’re not doing a service to your customer. The way that you express yourself denominates the kind of person that you are. The kind of language that you use. I don’t use the word “employee.” I use “associate.” I never was comfortable with having employees. I liked having people who were working with me. I don’t really like the word “customer.” I liked “DAKonian,” because by using a name like that, I didn’t have to separate myself. It was “Let’s examine this together.” That’s the way that I like to do things. It isn’t “us and them,” or “them and us” – it’s us together. We’re exploring new frontiers. We’re exploring ways to make our lives better, our families happier, our communities stronger. This is what we do together. When you choose your words, don’t choose “separation” words; choose “together” words. Make a decision of whether what the person is going to buy from is for them – a
“for me” buy - meaning, are they buying it for themselves, or are they buying it for somebody else. And then sit down next to them, put your arm around their shoulder, and have a discussion with them, just like we’re having now about how best to fill that need. Jay: I think you stand out as a great model, I hate to say the word “icon,” but an icon, almost, of what is right about educating and respecting the intelligence… Somebody can be very intelligent, but they can be computer illiterate. My hand’s up - I’m one of them. I don’t consider myself dumb, but I don’t understand computer-ese. Drew: But if you’ll sit down with me for 30 minutes, I’ll show you how to use a program – any program. And there are some programs that are more complicated than others, but most programs are easy to use. You don’t need to be computer-literate to use the power of the computer. And I don’t claim to be computer-literate. I know how to program some, but nothing like an engineer. So the whole premise that someone is superior to somebody else is a mistake. You want to be an authority on the subject. You want to be intelligent about the product. You want to be able to explain it. And it’s not a process of selling – it’s a process of sharing. It’s sharing the experience, examining together. Joining hands, and saying, “Let’s explore this product and see what’s good about it, and what’s not good about it.” And that’s really the focus of what I believe you should do, whether you’re selling by mail, whether you’re selling within a company – you’re part of your department, or you’re trying to interest management, or you’re selling as a salesperson, face to face. The first thing you do is you look at the person you’re talking to, and you try to understand that person. What do they want? Why are they there? How can you help them? They don’t care about you. They don’t care what you want. They don’t care that you need to make this sale to make your mortgage, or you need to make this sale so that you can buy a new Mercedes, or Rolls Royce, or airplane, or whatever – what they care about is what’s in it for them, OK? So the first thing you do is, you put yourself in their position and say, “How can I use this tape recorder?” Or “How can I use this computer?” Or “How can I use this air cleaner?” and you then approach your advertisement, your sales message, your discussion on their terms, in their language. And one thing to always remember is, there are going to be objections. There’s no such thing as a perfect product, at least not in electronics, and not in any product that I’ve ever bought. Jay: Or service. Drew: Or service. So whatever your service or your product is, think about a few of the disadvantages. Why isn’t it perfect? And if you’ll insert one or two of those disadvantages in your advertisement, in your sales presentation, when you talk to people, when you write to people, you will get two major, major bonuses. And this is something I strongly believe in, is tell people the truth. Tell them what’s good, because
that’s a given. We all know we’re going to get out there and say, “We’re going to puff.” That’s an advertising expression for “build up the product.” But very few people have enough courage to tell people what’s wrong with the product when they’re trying to sell it to them. Let me give you an example. There was a product awhile back, not an electronic, but for TV, called the “Beam Scope.” What it was was a Frennel lens. This was one of those big pieces of plastic with little ridges on it, and if you put it in front of your TV it made your TV seem about three times as big. !18 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: With good clarity? Drew: Great clarity, and quite bright. It was really a good product. Jay: So you could actually turn a small TV into a quasi-big screen one? Drew: Quasi-big screen – you could turn a 13” into like a 21”, or a 21” into a 30”, OK. And it was… Jay: Reasonable resolution. Drew: Excellent resolution. Jay: OK Drew: Really a good product. I got the product, looked at it, said, “This looks pretty good.” Got the sales literature. The sales literature explained exactly how to demonstrate the product. It said, “Turn off the TV. Bring the customer over to a chair. Sit them in the chair. Turn off any overhead lights that are exposed, because they will reflect in your beam scope. And make sure there are no windows that could reflect on it. And then when that’s done, and you’ve sat the customer down, turn on the TV, and then they’ll enjoy thrilling, wonderful big screen size.” So I took an ad, and I wrote to my customers, and I said, “Hi guys. This is a really great product. You’re going to have this great big picture. It’s really bright. It is a terrific product, but I’ve got to tell you, there are two things about it. One: if you have an open window during the day, and there’s a reflection on it, you’re not going to be able to see the TV. And two: if you have any naked light bulbs that aren’t covered by shades, they’re probably going to reflect in it, and depending upon what angle they are, you may see them. Aside from that, it’s the greatest product in the world.” I sold tens of thousands. It was really, really successful. They ended up using my ad as an example for all their sales people, because what I did was, I was honest with my customers, so when they got the product they were happy. They knew what it would do for them, and what it wouldn’t do for them. And so I felt good that I could tell them that. And two, they felt comfortable buying from me because I told them some things that no one else would tell them. Jay: You made it very credible. Drew: I made it credible. Jay: And real. Drew: Right. So I sold more to start with, and they stayed sold because they didn’t get it home, see a reflection on the screen, and not be able to watch their TV. Jay: I like that.
What I want to do now is really going to be fun. I want to take you, rat-tat-tat, down a bunch of your actual offers, and I want you to dissect the anatomy of the offer, the key selling component, the psychology, and the element that would probably have universal appeal and value to anybody, in any industry, in any business, in any profession, in any product, in any service, who might be listening. So I want you to comment, almost like the ultimate psychological marketing Rorschach test, OK? Drew: I got it. That sounds like fun. Jay: OK, all right. Let’s talk about “Ten Tapes.” Drew: Ten Tapes. Ten Tapes was, I think, my #1 project. I brought in over a million and a half customers… Jay: Not dollars, but customers. !19 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: Customers, customers - profitably, into my company. And the way that I did that was really interesting. As I told you before, I was a tape manufacturer, I was making tapes. I sold the tapes for about $2.50 apiece. And when I tried to get new customers, I’d put them on sale for $1.99. But who cared? They weren’t buying them for $2.50. Getting them for $1.99 – they still didn’t know it was a deal. At $.29, they didn’t know it was a deal. So I came up with this concept called, “Can you be bribed?” And what I did is, I gave you ten tapes and a watch for $5. So I sold you the ten tapes for $2.49 each - $24.90, OK? It’s the only was I sold them - $24.90 – and if you bought those ten tapes, you could buy a watch for $5. Now this was when LCD watches were $30. I brought them in from Hong Kong for $7-8, but if you look at it, I sold the watch for $5, losing $3, but the tapes, which I sold for $29.90 only cost me $5 to make. So the whole package was very, very profitable. Jay: So on a net basis, you were ahead of the game how much? Drew: Oh, $17 an order, plus postage and handling. Jay: Did you sell many of those packages? Drew: I sold 1.5 million packages of ten tapes and a watch, ten tapes and a calculator, ten tapes and a phone, ten tapes and a camera, ten tapes and you name it, and I did it. Jay: What do you think the lesson in that experience might be for anybody? Drew: Well the lesson in that experience for anybody isn’t selling ten tapes and a watch. Jay: What is it? Drew: The lesson is, how do you build a company with $100, and build it into a multimillion – at that point, almost $100 million operation? And the lesson is this: Look at the back end of your business. I made enough money on the ten tapes and a watch promotions to break even and make myself a few bucks. I was doing fine. But the interesting part of this – and this is why I’m so excited about this – is who cares about selling them ten tapes? Think about it for a moment, OK. What did you know if they bought ten tapes and a watch? You really didn’t know how much they wanted the ten tapes or the watch. They knew it was a good deal, and
the watch was fun. But they wouldn’t have taken the ten tapes at any price if they didn’t have a tape deck, OK? Jay: Yes. Drew: That’s where this gets really exciting. If they have a tape deck, what else do you know? They’ve got a receiver, they’ve got an amplifier, they’ve got speakers. They have a stereo system. I then went on and sold 200,000 equalizers. I sold over 100,000 sub-woofers. I sold over a quarter million sets of speakers. So what I did was, I entered the hi-fi field – the stereo field that I loved so much through the back door, looking at it sideways. I didn’t care about selling ten tapes and a watch. I made money, it was fine. But what I was looking for – the bigger question is, why sell a product in the first place? And it’s to get a customer. Not to make that one sale, but to get a customer that will be happy, and buy other things from you, long term. And that’s what I think what everybody listening should really internalize is, don’t go and sell something once. Sell an annuity. Sell something that you can keep selling to your customers. That they love you for. That they’re going to come back to you for, over and over again. Don’t do one shot deals. Jay: Or…If I may be so bold as to recharacterize what I’m getting out of this, sell something which opens the door to a deeper, broader, more substantial ongoing buying relationship that maybe makes it easy for someone to raise his or her hand – a customer, a prospect, a client – and without intimidation. But it reveals a lot more about their needs, their desires, and the applications you might be able to benefit them with. !20 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: Exactly, it’s beautifully stated. The concept is, I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t know why. I knew it was working. I knew I wanted those people, because I had identified them. They were selfidentifying themselves to me as being stereophiles. As being stereo owners. Therefore, I could then sell to them all of the other products. And in every box of tapes that went out was a catalog full of – guess what? Audio items! Things that went with their stereo system. And I sold tens of thousands of lots of products that everybody else had been unsuccessful in selling them. To sell a quarter million speakers by mail, where those people had never heard them before is a tribute to the fact that people believe in you if you give them a fair deal. Jay: I don’t think that most people think about establishing affinity, a trust, a connection based on a customer feeling that you, the seller, understand, respect, know what they’re feeling, and are there for them. And that’s what you did. But I’m going to move on, because time’s a-wasting. Drew: OK Jay: Let’s talk about the Radar Challenge.
Drew: The Radar Challenge was one of the most fun projects we ever took on. I had a very good friend of mine who was president of a radar detector company called Maxon. And Maxon made an excellent radar detector, but the whole market was tied up by a company called Cincinnati Microwave. They were #1. They made a radar detector called The Escort, and later, The Passport – two radar detectors. No one could touch them. They had every magazine review locked up. They were the best in the world. And indeed, they were. They made a great product. But while they were making the great product, the great unwashed mass of the other ten radar detector makers was getting better and better, so there wasn’t all that much difference. So what I did was real simple. I challenged them. I issued a $10,000 check in the name of Cincinnati Microwave. I put a picture of it in an ad, and I said, in short, “We think our radar detector’s just as good as yours. Come meet us on the road, and if our radar detector isn’t as good as yours, I’ll give you this $10,000 check.” And I ran that ad, and 450,000 radar detectors later – 3 or 4 ads later – DAK was one of the top radar sellers – the #2 in the country. Jay: And they never took you up on the challenge. Drew: They responded to my letter saying that the $10,000 was “de minimus,” which in plain English, for the rest of us poor folk, who would like to put a $10,000 check in our pockets, it was a lot of money. So I responded to them, and I said, “OK, I’ll raise it to $20.000. I’ll scrape together $20,000.” Now we were spending $20,000 apiece on the ads. I ended up mailing 8-11 million catalogs at a time, so I was spending $5 million mailing the catalogs. From a business level, they were right. $10 or $20,000 wasn’t a lot of money. But from a psychological level, from us as consumers, when we take off our business hats, and we go home, and we look at our bills, and we look at the cars, we look at dinner, $10-20,000 in our pocket’s a lot of money. So they batted zero when they came up against us in their response. And I printed their letter, which they never thought I’d do, saying that our radar detector was a cheap, Koreanmade radar detector. Jay: And you refuted it. Drew: And I refuted it. And I said, “OK, well, let’s have the challenge then. If you think it’s made in some rice paddy,” – and I said rice paddy, right in the ad – “you ought to be able to beat it.” And they avoided us for awhile, and finally, we hired the head-testing engineer from Road and Track Magazine to hold the test, and we held our own. We beat ‘em in a few places, lost in a few, but it was about a break even. The radar detector technology had really improved, where the best of the best was only a few percent better than the mid-class. Jay: But you were selling a better value. Drew: I was – oh, I was an enormously better value. They were selling a $200 radar detector, and I was selling a $69-$99 dollar radar detector, and what I did – when they said that ours was cheap, and in a !21 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc.
Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan rice paddy, I did something that no one has ever done before. This is where it really gets to be fun. I bought stock in their company. They were a public company. I published their 10K in our next ad, and they made $45 million on sales of, I think, $140 million. So I responded by saying, “OK, maybe your radar detector is better, but it isn’t because it costs that much more to make, because look at all the profit you’re making!” Jay: That’s wild! Drew: So they didn’t like that very much. Jay: What’s the lesson I can learn in my business or my practice from that very aggressive, very innovative, very lateral thought-based action? Drew: It’s really simple. It doesn’t matter how big the competition is. It doesn’t matter how well thought of they are, how much power they have with the press. If you have a good concept, and you go after them, you can win. Jay: But you have to have a quality product that performs a quality service or value for your customer. Drew: Absolutely. A) You never involve yourself in false advertising, and competitive advertising is tough. You have to be absolutely sure of your facts. You never leave out a fact. If you list ten things you’re better than your competitor in, be sure you list the ten things they’re better than you in. If you don’t do that, you’ll get yourself in trouble, and you won’t be honest. And customers know when you’re not being honest. Jay: I agree. I could get into this subject for another hour, but again, the clock is ticking. So let’s talk about bread making. Drew: That’s one of my favorite subjects of all time. Not because we sold 900,000 breadmakers, which makes it the #1 selling product, but because it was a product that everybody said wouldn’t work, wouldn’t sell, and wouldn’t be successful. I took a look at the product, found it in Japan, brought it back to the United States, and said, “This could be a big winner, or it could be a loser.” I brought in 10,000, nobody thought I could sell them. The first thing that we did – we being my wife and myself – we sat down with the breadmaker and created 50 really exciting, interesting recipes. We created an onion-dill bread recipe, which I… Jay: Onion dill? Drew: Onion dill. Jay: How does it taste? Drew: Wonderful bread. It happened to be my signature bread. This is a bread that I had already made in the manual form. It has sour cream in it; it has cottage cheese in it, onion and dill. It’s a wonderful bread. We adapted it to work in the breadmaker. We had cherry cheesecake bread. We had macaroni and cheese bread. Even Diet-Rite bread, what I happened to drink. We had strawberry – peaches and cream bread. We came up with the most exciting recipes…
When I met with the people in Japan, they said, “Oh, well, this will be good for farmers.” I said, “No, no, no. Farmers have plenty of time to make bread. It’s working people in the city that don’t have time to make bread, and have that great smell in their home.” So we created a 50-recipe cookbook. And then I wrote an ad. In that ad, I said, “Hi. My name’s Drew.” Which is the way I start a lot of my ads. And I said, “When I was young and single, I had this great stereo system, and I had a great video system. And I used to date, and I’d bring the girls back to my apartment, and they’d look at the video and they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s very nice.’ They’d look at the audio, and I’d turn on the stereo, and they’d say, ‘That’s very nice.” But when I brought out the home made bread, that did it. That was my character.” !22 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan And the ad actually said this; it was a bit of a sexist ad, but it very successful. The 10,000 were gone within weeks. And then we started bringing more and more in. At times, we were 60,000 pieces backordered. But in all, we sold 900,000 breadmakers on basically the one ad and the cookbook. And I’d made the cookbook because I thought it was important, not just for the ad, but for people to be able to make exciting kinds of bread. If you want white bread, buy it at the supermarket. But if you want oat bran bread, with peaches and bananas, make it in my breadmaker. And so, these exciting recipes, and then a couple of gourmet gazettes, where we made you a club member, and then every couple of months, we’d send you some more recipes. It really ignited the passions of people, and everyone loves the breadmaker. Jay: What’s the lesson here? Drew: The lesson is, go the extra mile. Find out, not what a product is, but what it does for people. Figure out what home made bread is worth to somebody. Not the machine – the machine was terrific, but that wasn’t what was important. What was important was getting people to imagine smelling home made cinnamon raisin bread in their home, with less than 5 minutes in the kitchen. And that was true – it actually took me 3 ˝ minutes. I did it 22 times before I actually ran the ad, which was titled, “Five minutes to home made bread.” It took four hours for the first bread makers to make it, but it took less than five minutes in the kitchen before they could walk out and forget it. Jay: That’s wonderful. Drew: It was a wonderful product. Jay: I’ve got to go on. I would like you to tell us a couple more of your success stories, particularly the story about the CD-ROM. I love that. Drew: Oh, Jay, I love CD-ROM. CD-ROM opened the door, for both education and general knowledge in this country. Up until the advent of CD-ROM, which I introduced in 1990, 1991, hard disks in computers were very expensive and generally about 40 MB. There was no way to store large amounts of data for the consumer.
CD-ROM changed all that. A CD-ROM disk, which only costs about $.75 to make, can hold 680 MB of material. So you’ve got the capacity to have 1,000 books…90 million phone numbers. You’ve got the capacity to have a map of every street in the United States, all on one CD-ROM disk. And the capacity is mind-boggling, but what you have to remember is that this is sort of Internet on a disk for the consumer. They’re very inexpensive. They’re very easy to operate, and you can have 1,000 magazines on one disk. So all you do is type a name, and instantly, everything about that name that’s on the disk appears. One of the best uses is encyclopedias. I have two encyclopedias at home, but I use my CD-ROM encyclopedia, because if I type something like “thermocouple”, everything about thermocouple comes up on my screen, and there may be five or six articles. And all I do is hit return on the keyboard, and each article is in front of me. It’s really exciting. What’s really important, though, as we talked about earlier, is that CD-ROM itself is just a medium. The question is what does it do for the consumer? And that’s why I got so excited when I introduced this. I produced a 24-page book about CDROM, explaining to customers that this isn’t some black box technology. It isn’t scary. It’s really very simple. All it is is like an old-fashioned LP record. It just contains data. Instead of an up and down needle movement, it has pits that a laser, a little laser reads. So the data is all contained, just like it is on a floppy disk. Everybody understands how a floppy disk works, or at least that it’s an easy medium. A CD-ROM is basically even more simple than a floppy disk. And all you do is plop in a CD-ROM, and in a few seconds you have an encyclopedia loaded. Pop it out, pop in another one, and you have 90 million phone numbers, or 10 million businesses. This is really great for a small business owner. When you start wanting to trademark your name, or market to somebody, type in the name you want to trademark. Immediately, you have 9 million businesses in the United States, and you can see if somebody else is using that name. And you can call them, and you can see what business they’re in. This is just an example of what these powerful CD-ROM programs can do for you. Jay: So tell us about your best CD-ROM promotion. !23 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Drew: I think my favorite is still called, “Library of the Future.” A friend of mine owns the company. I fell in love with the product for what it could do for myself, my children, and my customers. Over 1,000 books - every word that Shakespeare wrote; every word that Plato, Aristotle; every word that Dickens wrote; War and Peace; the Bible; The Code of Hammurabi, which happens to be one of my favorites – it’s all there. And if you type in, “To be or not to be,” you’ll find it, of course, in Shakespeare. You’ll also find it in Huckleberry Finn, and you’ll find it in several other locations. You can
read the books onscreen, because the screen’s easily adjustable. Every word is there of every great, major work. It’s fascinating. It gives me access to more books than I could ever fit in my livingroom. Imagine, well over 1,000 books – and where would you keep them? In boxes - I have boxes of books in the garage. Now I have it at my desk. Any time I want to look at a book, especially a classic, or a history book, or anything that’s really interesting, it’s all there on that one CD-ROM. Jay: That’s great. What were the components of the actual offer? Drew: The components of the offer were similar to what we’ve been talking about. I didn’t sell a CD-ROM drive. I sold a CD-ROM drive with 6 CD-ROMs. So the concept was that I didn’t just sell you something that I described – I gave you the power that you needed to get started. And again, we were the first to do this. I gave you the encyclopedia with the drive. I gave you a map of the United States. Every city, every state, every road, basically – all the major roads – a history about each city, rules; the phone prefixes – all the basic information. I gave you a world atlas on CD. You put the CD in, you can pick any of over 100 countries and you can learn about their history. Look at their capital cities – see even pictures of their cities. Understand their education level. All the information’s there. Of course, the “Library of the Future” that I’ve described. Also, another book called The New York Public Desk Reference, which contains the most frequently asked questions at the New York Public Library. It’s a neat reference book. I mean, if you’re like me, and you can’t figure the difference between meters and feet, or gallons and liters, this will give you everything that you ever want to know for converting. When did something happen? Who was president at what time? All of the questions that the New York Public Library gets - which they answer for free - are contained in this book that they put out. But this one’s on CD-ROM, so you have everything instantly. Jay: That’s fascinating. As a futurist – and it’s a little bit off the subject, but – what do you think the future implications of CD-ROM will be? Drew: Well, the future implications are already light years ahead. The CD-ROM right now, as I said, holds 680 MB. They’ve already got a CD-ROM with three times that much. The Internet has hundreds of thousands of CD-ROM-type home pages, where you can get information on just about anything. So, what’s happening is, the CD-ROM is a metaphor for a public library. Imagine you’ve got a public library. Most school libraries do not contain half of the books that are on one CDROM, like “Library of the Future.” Jay: Wow. Drew: You can go now, with your computer, and access information. And information is power, make no mistake. 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we humans were very primitive. We still are, but a couple hundred
years ago, we lived by being big, strong, and bulky. Today we live by our brains. Today, being strong doesn’t really buy you anything economically. Being smart does. Having knowledge does. So you need to learn how to use a computer. You don’t need to program a computer, but you need to learn how to access that information, because the power of the future is knowledge, it isn’t strength. You know, it’s really exciting. We’re making great strides in finding our ancestors, and Neanderthal Man was short, and strong, and had a much stronger jaw – but we don’t need all that anymore. What we need now is to use our brainpower, and we have that brainpower, and all we have to do now is access the information, and we can answer any question. And that’s where the future lies, that’s where profitability in the future lies, and that’s where making a good home for your family lies. !24 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan Jay: Interesting answer. One last promotion, then we’ll move on. Tell me about X-10. Drew: X-10 is a delightful product which does so much for so many. X-10 is a remote control system that allows you to retroactively automate your home. It allows you to turn lights on in your livingroom from your bedroom. It allows you, if you hear a noise at night to turn on all the outside lights. It allows you to dim the lights romantically by your bedside. All of this without ever touching a screwdriver. It used to be that if you wanted to turn lights on, or turn on a coffeepot, or turn on an air conditioner, you had to get up and go do it. You couldn’t do it remotely, you couldn’t do it when you were away from home. With X-10 everyone now who doesn’t build a new home can have complete, instant control of their environment. They can put the lights on in their curio cabinets by touching a button. They can walk around their house with a RF, radio frequency, meaning no wires – a little remote control, and turn lights on as they go on the patio – have all their patio lights come on. It’s really a great service to people. Everyone should have X-10 in their home. Jay: I already want one. But how did you compel – how many did you sell? Drew: Oh, hundreds of thousands. Jay: How did you compel hundreds of thousands of people to want one? Drew: Well, it was easy. Everyone wants one. You just heard me describe it. I don’t have to do any work – all I have to do is tell you, “Would you like to turn on all your lights if you hear a noise?” Jay: Stop. You mean all you have to do is tell me the result, and the benefit, and the advantage? Drew: Is this a surprise? It’s what we’ve been talking about! A good product sells itself if you merely tell people, your beloved customers, what it is that it does for them. X-10 does a lot for you, and it’s cheap, it’s about $9-10 a module. So it’s inexpensive, anybody can plug them in, it’s so easy to do, that you can have instant control of your environment, and isn’t that what we’re all trying to achieve? Jay: You’ve probably sold successfully 100, 200 products? How many?
Drew: Oh, thousands. Jay: Thousands of products. What do you think the single, most universal sales lesson you’ve discovered that is essential and integral to all your successes has been? Drew: Pick the best products that will help people the most, that need an explanation. That are not commodity-types of products. In my opinion, the best future is in the niche marketing areas. Pick niche markets. Pick small markets, or markets that you can go after that you can be special; that you can be knowledgeable; that you can be the best. And you don’t need to be the biggest. You shouldn’t be the biggest. The best fun, the most excitement comes from going after a major company in a product category, and being the best, because most companies don’t pay attention to their customers. And if you pay attention to what it is that makes a customer want a product, and that’s a legitimate reason for owning the product, you will succeed. Jay: That’s a great answer, and a great lesson. I should stop there, but I’ve got to take you to a flip side. What if I’ve dedicated my business life to a commodity-type business – what should I do then? Drew: There’s nothing wrong with commodities, but you have to be the biggest, or you’re only going to make a small percentage. You know, I’ve printed hundreds of millions of catalogs, but I could never be a printer, because printers make money two cents at a time. They make money by running their businesses very, very carefully, and watching every nickel, and every sheet of paper that comes in or goes out the door. They don’t go after home runs. They don’t go after major breakthroughs. They don’t go after !25 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan the kinds of products that I look at – not just high tech. If you have the best hammer, you’re out of the commodity field. If you have the best pair of underwear, you’re out of the commodity field. But if you go in, and just try and be, say, a telephone supplier of basic telephones, without differentiating yourself with anything but color, you’re not going to make big money, but more important than that, you’re not going to have a franchise with your customers, because you’re not supplying them with something that everyone else in the world – Jay: You have no benefit – you have no unique advantage to offer. Drew: Exactly. So why do it? Jay: But if I’m already deeply involved in a business…I’ve invested my life, and maybe mortgaged my home, and my family, and my retirement, and the well-being of my children, and my kids’ educations, and everything else, and the livelihood of 25 families who are dependant upon me are all in the offing - what would you have me do, or recommend that I do, to turn my commodity into a proprietary business? To turn my non-advantage into an advantage for my customers or clients? Drew: OK, well let me tell you, because I have a two-part answer for you, and the first one may be a bit of a snipe, but let me say it, and then, let me give you the real answer.
The first answer is, you may have to sell something and provide a service, or lay bricks like I did to make a living while you make the transition. So stay with what you’re doing. Don’t give it up. But start thinking laterally about the service you’re providing, and see how you can differentiate that service, and broaden that service, and build more out of the customers that you have. Because I think that’s your road to freedom, to building a franchise with those customers. Increase what you’re doing. Find new ways to use your product, and go after those ways so you’re no longer a commodity. Jay: That’s a very good answer. I want to talk about business. I want to talk about business management. I want to talk about psychology, motivation, lessons learned. You have a distinction – starting from scratch at a very young age, you took an idea, you modified it, you turned it into over $1 billion in sales over 4 million very, very loyal customers – DAKonians. You probably singularly were responsible for spending, investing, $500, $600 million dollars in ads and letters. You probably singularly were on the cutting edge of introducing more technological computer, electronic, audiophile-type breakthroughs in the last 10 or 15 years. You’re synonymous with selling, advertising, copywriting, innovation. I’d like to ask you questions about none of those now. I want to know what you’ve learned about management. About managing business, about managing people, about managing money, about managing vendors. Do you mind? Drew: No, Jay, actually, I don’t mind at all. As you know, my expertise is marketing. In order to market, I needed an organization. DAK had 450 people, so I did work with people, and what I learned about working with people was very much like what I learned about working with customers. You have to respect the people you’re working with. You have to hold them in esteem. You have to understand what their needs are, and at DAK it was particularly difficult, because I wrote the ads, and my name was on every page. People didn’t get the satisfaction of seeing their names, and having the public notoriety that I had. So I had to work especially hard to make sure that my operations people, the financial people, the people in the warehouse - understood that they were important, and that writing the ads was important, but it wasn’t the only part of the business. So I think it’s a basically simple response: Treat them as you would treat your customers – with respect, and they will treat you well in return. So that’s how I handle the management of people. Now vendors – one of my expertise’s was working with vendors. Because I loved the electronics that I dealt with, I understood the products they were making. One of the things that I used to do – and this is good for anybody who buys anything – know what it costs for your vendor to make the product you’re
buying from them. That may sound like a strange proposition, but let me tell you, it is probably the most important, single, solitary part of buying, and let me tell you why. !26 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan When somebody offers you a product for $100, how do you know what to pay for it? Do you automatically negotiate, and say, “Oh, I want it for $80,” or “I want it for $70.” When you do that, every time the vendor comes to you, they’ll be at $120 if they want $100. So how do you figure out what to pay? Well it’s very simple. You take the product, you open up the product – in my case it was electronics. You may be in hammers. You may be in office supplies. You may be in anything, but open up the product, and count the number of transistors. Count the number of resistors. Count the circuit boards. Weigh the plastic. Figure out what that product costs to make. Once you know that it cost $42 to make, give the manufacturer 10, 20% markup, whatever it is you feel is fair - not particularly what he feels is fair – and then pay him that amount. Because if you make him an offer that’s less than it costs him, he’ll walk out, and he’ll hate you, and he won’t do business with you. Pay him $100, and you’ll leave $20 or $30 on the table. So the most important thing I can teach you is, learn what it costs your vendors to make the product. Another easy way, by the way, is to get quotes if there are lots of vendors for a given product. You should do this with office supplies. You should do this when you have letters printed. You should do this with whatever you do, because there’s lots of money to be saved. And it’s a lot easier to save money than it is to make money, for most people. Jay: Great point. Continue. Drew: OK. Now let me tell you what DAK taught me about managing growth, and managing money. First let’s talk about growth. Growth was really easy, because the marketing worked, and we were able to grow from $100, back in the days of the dorms, all the way up to well over $200 million. The growth was fun, it was exciting, it was stimulating. Each new product was bigger than the last. But managing growth is very important in a business. You have to control the operational side of the business, because just marketing doesn’t solve all your problems. Because you can sell a product doesn’t mean you can deliver it quickly to your customers; doesn’t mean that you can even afford to bring it all into the country. So you need some money, and depending upon how fast you want to grow, you have to make decisions about how much money you want to bring into the company. Early on, I made the decision not to bring in venture capitalists, and I kept 100% of the company. I used bank financing. And while it slowed the growth a little bit, because we only had a sum-certain
amount of capital, we were able to grow because our front end advertising – the tapes that I told you about before – was profitable. But over the years, we were able to get the financing we needed to import the products and supply them to the customers. One of the reasons I like mail order is, you don’t have open account. So when I shipped a product, I cashed a credit card the next day. So if I shipped your order on Monday, I got your money on Tuesday in my bank account. So a mail order company doesn’t require the kind of capital that a manufacturing company or a wholesaling company does. So that’s one of the reasons I love mail order. We were able to grow each year, culminating in a year of about $238 million. At that time, we thought we had a long-term relationship with the bank, and unfortunately, due to the changes in the economy and the changes in the value of the dollar, the bank changed its mind about the size companies it operated with. And DAK had to find new banking. We weren’t successful in finding new banking, and unfortunately, that caused the demise of the company. My view is that you have to learn to be a winner, and you have to learn to sometimes jump into the abyss. So I consider this all a positive experience, and now I look at life with a whole new perspective. I’m ready to start a new DAK in a minute. Jay: Thank you very much, you’ve been very candid, and I appreciate that, and I’m sure our listener does as well. I want to ask a couple final questions. #1, you talked about the fact that in a heartbeat, you’re ready to do it again. What do you really going to do when you grow up? What are you doing with yourself right now, besides me trying to do things with you, and I am. I’m encouraging you to do about 7 different projects with me. What do you want to do with yourself? Drew: I think doing some seminars and tapes, like we talked about, would be fun. But Jay, the one thing that I think I really told you before we started this interview, is that I’m not as excited about !27 ©1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc. Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan positive mental attitude as I am actionable nuts and bolts technology. I wanted to make sure that – and if I can, can I talk to our listener for a moment? Jay: By all means. Drew: OK. I want you to get out of this tape some experiences from what I did, and some actionable things that I did that you can apply in your own business, your own practice, your own industry today. I don’t want this to be just an interesting, I hope, story about Drew. I want this to be a real educational experience. That’s what I hope for you – that’s why I agreed to talk to Jay. Jay: That’s what I knew you would insist on giving to our listener. You’ve been an incredible interview, and I’ve grown personally, and been very enriched by the time we spent together. Thank you very, very much. Drew: Jay, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. !28
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