A big mistake people often make when they’re trying to generate leads by giving stuff away, is not selling hard enough, or not selling at all.

And here’s why: People foolishly think if you’re giving something away for free, then everyone should automatically want it, because it’s free.

Wrong-o, daddy-o.

This is flawed logic. First of all, you don’t want “everybody” to respond to your ads, you only want those people who want what you’re selling, and who are qualified to buy from you, to respond.

Me personally, I have the patience of a hungry saber-toothed tiger. The last thing I want or need, is someone wasting my time. But… your mileage may vary. Perhaps you enjoy wasting your time, I don’t know.

But if you don’t, you’re going to want to qualify or disqualify those buyers you do and do not want to come into your marketing funnel. Very important.

Second, what you’re competing for, really, isn’t a name and contact information. You’re competing for your prospect’s attention.

And attention is a very expensive commodity, especially today, when we’re all so deluged with so much responsibility and so much tension. Your prospects have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in… too many bills to pay and not enough money to pay them with.

So you’d better be making a pretty compelling offer if you want their attention — even when you’re giving something away that’s free.

You’d better sell the reasons why they should respond to your free offer, by pointing out all the salacious benefits (Salacious — that’s a cool word, isn’t it?) inside, and all the “what’s in it for them?” things you can.

The bottom line is, if you’re not making your offer worthy of your prospect’s time, then rest assured, they won’t either – free or not. And then, the ONLY people responding to your “free offers” will be “free loaders.”

Now go sell something, Craig

P.S. Now get not one, but TWO free sales copy and marketing critiques at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl (watch the video)

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I hope you realize, the most important thing you have in life, is time.

If you don’t place more value on your time than anything else, you will ultimately never make anywhere NEAR the kind of money you have the potential to, and frankly, your personal life will suffer, dramatically.

I know, because it wasn’t until I truly believed my time was worth something, that I started treating myself better. And suddenly, when I did this, others around me began treating me better as well.

And the truth is, you can’t expect anyone to treat you any better than you’re willing to treat yourself, so ultimately, this makes sense, right?

Good. Because if you really value your time, than one of the things you want to get your arms around, right away, is your ability to qualify the people you work with.

There’s nothing worse than looky-loos and tire kickers who do nothing but suck the life out of you and in return never do a thing for you.

So with this in mind, here are three proven strategies that help you figure out who to let into your prospect funnel… and who you want to avoid working with at all costs.

1. Ask yourself who is the most likely person to want this product or service?

Make sure your copy is written to attract these people above all others. Because if these people aren’t responding, then you’re dead in the water, because no one will.

2. Ask yourself who are the least likely people you want to work with?

Go out of your way to alienate these folks as much as you can. In fact, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve created a little snippet of copy that basically says “Who shouldn’t respond” to what I’m offering.

Like I said, the last thing I want is to get my time wasted and nothing does that as effectively as an ignorant prospect, so I avoid them like the plague. I also have the patience of a gnat, however, so your mileage may vary on this.

3. And lastly, make sure you give these ideal prospects from item #1, a reason to want you.

You know, in spite of what your mother may have told you, not everyone in the world is going to think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Don’t convince your prospects why they should want what you have to offer, just presume they already want what you have to offer. Simply explain what you have to offer them, and make them salivate over it by using compelling and emotionally provocative copy.

In other words, be different and tell them why.

If you care about yourself at all, and about your time, using these three strategies may be the most important business gift you can ever give yourself.

Or not…

It’s up to you.

Now go sell something, Craig

P.S. Is real estate finally turning around? Maybe, maybe not. But find out why some investors make all the money and why some never ever make anything close to what they deserve at http://www.kingofcopy.com/abcre

***

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Often times we have a cancer growing inside our own business, we don’t even know about.

Sometimes, this takes the form of a disgruntled or ignorant employee who feels stuck and resentful in their position. Instead of adding to the wealth, they want to take away from it, simply because “you’re rich already,” and they’re not.

Ha ha, right?

Other times it’s bred out of sheer ignorance.

Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

The other day my wife had to schedule an appointment with a new doctor. She wanted to get some more information about the doctor and about the practice (basic stuff like where it’s located, what they do, and things like that), so she called up to ask them their website address.

The call went something like this:

Anne: Hi, I was wondering what your website is.

SP (Sales Prevention): You want WHAT?

Anne: I was calling to find out the website of this medical practice.

SP: Who is this?

Anne: My name is Anne Garber.

SP: WHO is this?

Anne: My name is Anne Garber.

SP: And what do you want?

Anne: I’m trying to find out information about this medical practice and I was hoping to be able to look this up online.

SP: Why do you want this information?

Anne: Because I’m a new patient.

SP: Oh… wait a minute…

(Muffled voices…)

… OK, it’s www dot…

Now I’d bet a thousand dollars the physicians or whoever runs this practice isn’t aware of this, and I’d also bet the SP who answered the phone isn’t doing this on purpose. In all probability, she sincerely believes she’s “protecting” the business.

But obviously she’s not.

And see, my wife has the patience of a saint (she has to, to be married to me for nearly 15 years). But I have the patience of a gnat, and I wouldn’t have lasted beyond that second “WHO is this?”

I’d have been gone like the wind and off to find another shaman.

Anyway, the bottom line is, the same way you check the telephone number and voice mail recordings you might leave in a mailer or a display advertisement when you’re trying to generate leads — you want to check ALL the various tentacles of your intake process, in general.

ESPECIALLY the ones where people are involved.

Cause you might find a medical condition… that not even a doctor… can repair.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S.: If you DO want to generate leads, and you want to know how to construct and develop your two-step lead generation “Free Report”, check out the 139 minutes of Audio on: http://www.kingofcopy.com/leads

***

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Last week I sent out a tip about how to choose the right customers. You can see that article over here: http://blog.kingofcopy.com/2009/01/what-its-like-up-there-in-sales-heaven.html

This week I’m going to cover a few more traits you’re going to find in your best buyers.

These are called “selects” if you are buying names from mailing lists, and selects typically come in many flavors: gender, zip code, purchase price, type of home, location of home, number of children, married or single, company name, company ownership, type of car, type of plane they own, value of plane, income level, value of home… the list is pretty long, and it depends on what you’re looking for and how the list was put together.

Selects are basically characteristics of the members of a given list. And the point of each of these items is to narrow down the people you want to make your pitch to.

See, casting a wide net might be great when you’re fishing, but when you’re spending money on marketing or advertising, you want to spend those dollars on reaching out and making your offer to those folks “most likely” to want to order from you.

Of course, if you don’t know who your customers are, you’re sort of screwed, but that’s another story altogether.

Now one characteristic that’s often overlooked is something called “recency.”

Recency has to do with how recently someone made their last purchase. These are also often called “hot list” names.

The theory is that when people are hot for something, they’re HOT for as much of it as they can get. That’s because people will typically go on buying sprees for things.

So I know myself, for instance, when I get into something, like drawing… I’ll go out and buy a bunch of books on drawing, and then start accumulating the tools I need (pencils, pads, erasers and things like that), in a big burst over a 30 to 60 day time frame.

People are the same way with loads of different things: self-improvement, real estate, investing, supplements, business ideas… you name it, this is how it works for loads of buys.

Now as to whether or not people use all the crap they buy, well, that’s another issue entirely. That’s what ebay and your garage is for, right?

Anyway, don’t overlook recency as a select. These names will usually cost you a few pennies more, but the ability to get someone who’s super horny for whatever it is you’re selling, is usually well worth it.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. How To Turn Your Part-Time Real Estate Investing Business… Into A Full-Time Career!: http://www.kingofcopy.com/abcre

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Ever go to sales heaven in a dream?

You know the place — everyone you speak to, or everyone on your e-mail list buys from you… they all buy the first time they meet you… all the orders stick, and they all move up your sales funnel, almost instantly.

Nice place to be, isn’t it?

Only two problems with sales heaven: One, you have to die to get there… and two, there’s no merchant account.

Look, the reality is you are never going to be able to sell everyone. You can’t even make everyone that’s in your life happy all the time, so how can you possibly sell to them all?

So put away your optimism and let’s talk about reality. The truth is, there’s one thing that is in your control and that is your choice of customers. Deliberately choosing the right customers in the first place, is half the battle for most people.

The more you just “take anyone who comes along” into your prospecting funnel, the more you waste your time.

Which is one of the problems with the internet, by the way. It offers you the least amount of prospecting control of almost any media. Not that I don’t like it, or profit from it as a media, but that’s just the way it is.

So how do you choose the right customer? What makes someone pre-qualified and what makes them unqualified to buy from you?

The answer is simple. There are three things, actually:

1. They have to have money. Broke people or people too broke to buy from you won’t pay your bills or feed your children. So stay away from them.

Repel them like skunk odor, and do everything in your power to avoid contact with them — at least, if you’re trying to run a profitable business, anyway.

2. You have to be able to reach them through your marketing. So for example, if you’ve developed something for undercover FBI agents or NFL football players, I don’t care how valuable your widget is, it’s gonna be tough to sell, simply because these two marketplaces aren’t very accessible.

3. And lastly, the people you’re selling to have to be comfortable buying through whatever media you’re using. For instance, there are some people who just won’t buy anything online, so unless you give them an alternative way of ordering, it’s going to be difficult to make them your customers.

Make sense?

This is an important subject that gets very little attention. Most people just think in terms of volume. You know, “Throw enough shit up against the wall and something’s bound to stick,” sort of mentality.

And that’s all well and good if you’ve got infinite dollars to spend on marketing and you don’t care how much time you waste, but since most successful people value their time more than anything else in the world, this really isn’t a good option.

(You can always make more money, but you can’t make more time, right?)

See where I’m going with all this?

There are a few more characteristics you should look for to find the best quality prospects, and over the next few days we’ll talk about some of them.

Hopefully… you’ll listen.

Now go sell something , Craig Garber

P.S. In this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter, I answer these three critical lead-generation questions, sent in by members:

* How long (or short) can these “free reports” or sales letters be?

* What proportion of content should be included? And…

* How can you give away good content without giving away all the good stuff in what you’re selling?

Find out the answers to these questions, and a hell of a lot more, and take your free test-drive at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

***

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When it comes to developing a new idea or product, most people hit some sort of an invisible “wall” that stops them dead in their tracks, and washes defeat over even the strongest levels of enthusiasm before you can even get started.

This happens simply because like love, you may be looking for inspiration in all the wrong places. See, most great ideas aren’t really new ideas at all, they’re just answers to questions. And the more successful the product, the more people were asking the question the product was the answer to.

Make sense?

Here, let’s look at a couple of examples:

In the 1920′s, several publishers were having a hard time selling books through mail order, at a profit. Customer acquisition costs were simply too high, and unless there was some kind of a huge back end product to offer, the business just didn’t make sense.

If these companies could somehow sell multiple books for the same customer acquisition cost, then the business would make sense and be profitable.

So, Harry Scherman, an ad man from New York thought to himself, “Why not sell books on a monthly basis, like magazine subscriptions?” And with that idea, the Book Of The Month Club was born, as was their USP, “Don’t miss the important new books you want to read.”

See, Scherman asked the question, “How can we sell more books to the same customer so we can make a profit?”

And the answer to his question launched an empire.

How about this one: In 1913, James L. Kraft was a 29 year-old unemployed salesman who desperately needed to earn a living. So he began peddling cheese door to door, and he discovered a few things along the way.

For starters, the flavor of the cheese was inconsistent and unreliable, because the packaging was so poor and inadequate. Not to mention, it wasn’t very clean and sanitary.

But while Kraft was making his deliveries, he took notice of the fact that the milk inside the bottles left on his customers front doors, somehow managed to stay well preserved, regardless of the temperatures outside.

So Kraft began tinkering with pasteurization and packaging, and within a year, he nailed the formula down so that the cheese he delivered was flavorful and consistent, as well as sanitary.

Last quarter alone, Kraft Foods did almost $10 Billion in sales.

But it all started with a question, “How can I sell fresher, and better quality cheese?”

Next time you’re looking for inspiration, ask a question you need an answer to. And I mean that, literally.

Figure out the most pressing problems your customers have, and ask the question of yourself that will give you the solution to solve their problems.

Sit down with a yellow pad and a pen and write down the question at the top of the page. Don’t have anything else going on in the background like e-mails or the television or whatever — just you and your thoughts.

You’ll be amazed at the answers you come up with once you put your mind to it, and… once you actually ask the right questions.

Because remember, only the right question… gets you the right answer.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Need hot leads who want to do business with you? Find out how to get LOADS of ‘em, right here, and… find out, step-by-step, how to write a lead-generation “free report”: http://www.kingofcopy.com/leads

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There are only three components of your business, regardless of what you do for a living.

They are selling… making products (or developing your goods and services)… and generating leads. These are really the only three things you can do.

At least, they’re the only 3 productive things you can do, anyway.

And for the most part, you should spend an equal amount of time in each of these areas.

The nice thing about this is, when you analyze your business very simply — like this –it is very easy to identify where you’re lagging and need to spend more time.

So for instance, if you only have one item to sell, then obviously you need to spend more time creating products or finding products to sell from someone else. (Like doing a “JV” for example.)

If you’ve got a huge following and several products, and you’re still not earning a lot of money, well… then you need to spend more time selling or creating selling processes.

Like I said, when you look at your business this way, it becomes very easy to manage your time commitments, and very easy to pin-point your weaknesses.

Or not… it’s up to you.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Marketing Example 1 in this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter is a simple 225 word sales letter that gets a flood of customers to bum-rush your store or business… and gets them in there, to buy!: Test-drive it free at: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl (Make sure you watch the goofy video!)

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Did you know most lottery winners have absolutely none of the money left over, 5 years after they hit the jackpot?

Know why this is?

There are two reasons, actually.

For starters, the overall demographic of people who play this game aren’t exactly the most financially responsible people in the world. By nature, they’re banking on something “else” happening, other than something within their own control, to change their financial destiny.

In other words, whether you can manage money or not, is mutually exclusive from whether or not you actually have any.

Second, stroking a financial home run without putting the commensurate time into training, means what you get is “found” money. And found money is far less valuable than money earned. Money gained by merit is more respected than found money.

Why?

Because you’ve got some skin in the game. When you’re invested in something, either through sweat, or cash, or some sort of a sacrifice, that’s the only time it’s meaningful to you.

This is exactly why free consultations over the phone, for example, generally have a very low conversion rate. There is virtually no effort the person you’re helping has to make, and as a result… no value either.

There’s a huge difference between sending out an e-mail to give your prospects a chance to judge your competency, and giving away your precious time for free.

Qualifying your prospect by making them do “something” produces a much higher conversion rate, a much better buyer, and much less stress and anxiety for you.

Remember, having “skin” in the game is critical.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. REVEALED in this month’s Seductive Selling: How to create… and write… effective bullets! Test-drive it free at: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl (Make sure you watch the goofy video!)

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