My #4 Money Making Secret – The Paid Consultation

Let’s keep Glenn’s Money Making Secret count going:

1. Research
2. Contrarian Advice
3. Let the Market Change You as a Person

What’s #4? “The Paid Consultation as Your First Business Contact”

This one’s a tough one to embrace because it goes entirely against the norm and makes a lot of potential customers mad.

But it accomplishes three things:

• First and foremost it protects your time (and/or your sales people’s time) from ambivalent or unqualified prospects.
• Second, it dramatically increases closing ratios, because you’re only speaking with people proven willing to give you money to start with.  (I’m talking about 500% to 1,000% increase in my personal experience)
• Third, it protects the customer from purchasing things they’re not really ready to purchase, and/or things they’re not qualified to purchase.
• Fourth, it protects your business from unhappy customers (particularly important for service businesses)

Take my coaching salesletter for example.   (Click here to open in a new window so you can read along with the commentary)

With some frequency I get people who request FREE time to discuss their situation and see if it’s a good fit.   They usually say they’ve read my letter, but object to paying before speaking with me (or Ryan).   The vast majority of coaches, they say, would consider it very BAD business to require payment before the first consultation.  In fact, they don’t know ANY other coach who would insist upon this.

While I respect their decision, I stick to my guns.

You see, the vast majority of coaches HAVE TO spend their time developing business with free consultations whenever they can get them because they don’t really know how to market themselves.

But when you DO have the deal flow in volume, I’ve simply found it ineffective to offer time for free to a customer in ANY circumstance (other than the research phase of a business).   If  you read the coaching salesletter,  you’ll see I’ve actually set it up to try and dissuade all but the most well fit people from the program.

Because I’ve found if people don’t really already know that this is the right system for them, and we’re the right coaches, it’s an uphill battle to get them to actually embrace the work and take our direction.

There are literally dozens of turns and events within my system where the student needs to go against typical practices and engage in what their friends, family, and colleagues would perceive as a crazy way to do business.

And there’s no guarantee of success, even then.

So everyone winds up unhappy.

I worked really hard to develop the deal-flow to allow me to take this contrarian position because I believe it’s the only one which works for everyone concerned.  Otherwise you wind up with a kind of ”revolving door” practice with a lot of ambivalent and unhappy people who just pay for a few months at a high rate and then drop out.

Long story short, I thoroughly understand when a customer wishes to find another coach or work with another system given our philosophies and business practices.

Because if they’re not confident enough in what we’ve presented to commit to a refundable first month, then the odds are they’re not quite ready to work with us anyway, and we’d get a bad result for them.

There’s nothing at all wrong with people for choosing not to proceed under these circumstances.   I respect that as a perfectly reasonable position and  wish them the best.

(NOTE: I’m also not trying to maximize profitability in the coaching program, I’m trying to surround myself with people who embrace my systems successfully. They’re much more valuable to me both business wise and personally than the extra income from not-so-well-fit additional students.  This makes the “Paid Consult as Your First Contact” even more important)

I used a similar process when building Rocket Clicks.   All sorts of people wanted to get some free time to see if it was right for them.  And were incredibly annoyed at having to pay for the (refundable) consult.

But I diligently I did the work to build an effective salesletter and follow up system to drive people to a paid consultation.  And while most PPC salespeople would report a closing ratio of 10% or so, we had our pick of the litter (about 80% of those we wanted to take on as a client after the consultation could be sold)

So…

How can YOU free your time, increase your closing ratio, and grow your business with the Paid Consultation as the First Business Contact?

Love to hear your examples below,

Dr. G

Hyperresponsive Marketing Secrets |   Coaching

How Chinese Water Torture Ended American Slavery

In June 1851, US anti-slavery magazine “National Era” began publishing a fascinating story in 40 weekly installments. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, it depicted the life of a black woman, Eliza, who escapes with her son Tom who is sold “down the river” into slavery.

In 1852, Stowe’s 40 installments were bound together in book form and sold 300,000 copies the first year in print. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was translated into all major languages and became the most influential novel of the 19th century. It also became the best-selling book after the Bible.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery and triggered the Civil War. It was reported that in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln met her, he said, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”

drip, drip, drip….

Whether in the form of magazine articles in 1852, or timed emails in 2010, falling water wears away even the hardest of stone. And in our version of “Chinese Water Torture,” the ‘torture’ part is merely anticipation of what’s comin’ next. :^>

Who would have thought that the eradication of slavery itself would be triggered by a series of… autoresponders?

Thanks to John Fancher for telling me about this. John is my compadre in our Autoresponder Boot Camp. Starts next Tuesday at 2pm. Heck, if you want, John will write your AR’s for you.

If Harriet Beecher Stowe can free a million slaves with 40 installments of Chinese Water Torture, surely you can free yourself with 10.

http://www.perrymarshall.com/chinese-water-torture/

Perry Marshall

Try this 10 second Facebook experiment

Without sucking yourself into a big distraction (!!!), I’d like you to take TEN SECONDS and do a little experiment.

I want you to open a new tab in your browser, log into your Facebook account and look at whatever ads appear on the right side.

And ask yourself this question:

“How many of these ads hit my sweet spot? And how many of them are either mildly irrelevant or completely uninteresting?”

I think that for most people, less than 1 out of 3 ads are highly relevant.

If it’s true for you, it’s true also for your prospective customers. They could be seeing your ad and engaging with you instead of somebody else.

And that’s why, of all the places you can buy web traffic right now, Facebook Pay Per Click is generally the most “wild west”, the least competitive and the least expensive.

Bryan Todd and I are doing an extensive Facebook training and “Right Angle Marketing” session in London on September 12. On September 10, every single hot seat participant will have my personal assistance in re-inventing your hooks and marketing message, in a very small intimate setting.

It happens in 3 weeks – www.perrymarshall.com/ukvideo/

Perry Marshall

My #3 Money Making Secret – Let the Market Change You

(NOTE: The real title of this post should be “How a scuzzy little rodent made Glenn a better person”)

My #1 money making secret is Research.

#2 money making secret  is contrarian advice

Know what #3 is?

“Let the market change you as a person”

Here’s why this is so important.

Everyone TALKS a good game when it comes to equating marketing with empathy for your prospects and customers.  But truly empathizing with another human being means:

• making yourself vulnerable…
• being open minded and willing to change cherished thoughts and long held opinions…
• letting yourself FEEL the other person’s pain, joy, heartbreak, and despair…
• truly, deeply, and wholeheartedly absorbing their stories and desires into your soul…

It means changing as a person.  (Really)

It means that in at least some small but significant way you’ve yielded your ego to the other person, let your values disintegrate, and then put yourself together again better and stronger.  (A psychological term for this is “regression in the service of the ego”)

In fact, I only really know that I’m ready to go INTO a new market when I feel that I’ve been changed as a person.

I’ll give you a few examples to drive the point home, and I’ll show you how this translates into money making marketing insight.

HOW A SCUZZY LITTLE RODENT MADE ME A BETTER PERSON:

I have to admit I originally got into the guinea pig market as a purely mercenary marketing experiment (my first successful internet project).  I didn’t have any long standing love for the furry little creatures.

In fact, I basically thought of them like my mother did… “scuzzy little rodents with hair”  (I brought one home from summer camp when I was nine without telling her… that’s when I first heard them characterized in this charming way)

But I knew I could never ethically and honestly market guinea pig care books if I held onto those feelings and beliefs.

So I got myself a guinea pig (actually Sharon bought it for me for Valentine’s day in 2004) and started cuddling and playing with it every day.

But that didn’t really do it for me.

Still seemed a little scuzzy.  Still seemed like a rodent, even though it  occasionally made me laugh.

But then I started INTERVIEWING guinea pig owners (as in, you know, actually talking to people… like we OLD people used to do way back in the dinosaur era before computers), asking them WHY they wanted a guinea pig in the first place?

A surprising number of them said something like this “Because I got my little 7 year old Suzie a hamster last year and it died after just a few months.  She was devastated, and it rocked the whole household.  I heard Guinea Pigs live longer and I want our family to have a better experience.  I want my little one to learn how to nurture and care for another living creature, and to  successfully reap the rewards!”

This hit me in the heart.

I’ve got a little nephew who means the world to me.  At that time he was only three.  I remember how upset he was when his pet fish died.

Suddenly a guinea pig was no longer a “scuzzy little rodent with hair”, and I wasn’t an uncaring adult with no use for them.   Now the little monsters were a vehicle of love, and a means to help create children who would responsibly pass love on.

What could be more important?

This immediately crystallized the USP for me: “Guinea Pig Secrets Which Can DOUBLE Your Guinea Pigs Life”

Then I just had to seek proof to support it.

Turns out there are about a half dozen little known guinea pig care FACTS which can double the average lifespan of a piggie. (AS A SIDE NOTE: You’ll be amazed just how ignorant the average market is, and how much blatantly wrong conventional wisdom gets passed around without scientific backing.  You can almost always find facts to support a better outcome in any market!)

What you feed your guinea pig, the litter you use, how you insulate them from stress, etc. CAN actually double their life expectancy.

The real killer, it turns out, was that most veterinarians didn’t realize that guinea pigs had a different type of bacteria in their gut than cats and dogs.  As a result, giving a guinea pig the same antibiotics as you’d give a cat or a dog can easily kill him.  So veterinarians were frequently killing these little pets by accident, can you imagine?

Let me TEMPLATE this process so YOU can repeat it in YOUR MARKET:

1) Dig deep into the market with surveys, research, and other online intelligence (like I teach in the Hyper Responsive Club)

2) TALK to people.  Go out and meet them.  LIVE the same problems your market is living

3) Know yourself.  Let yourself feel how the market is changing you.

4) When you get “hit in the heart”… when a deep feeling of change comes over you, know that you’re onto something which is probably the core of what your USP needs to be

5) Formulate your USP

6) Find proof to support it. (Intriguingly, there’s almost always proof available.  The thing is, hardly anyone really digs this deeply in most markets, so there’s LOTS of gold available for the taking)

I hope this is getting you to start thinking.

Have you let YOUR market change you?

How, specifically?

You should be able to articulate it in as much detail as I did above.  If you can’t, it means you need to spend more time IN your market, talking to them, smelling them, living their pain.

Food for thought.

For SERIOUS thought,

Dr. G

PS – The weight loss (emotional eating) market definitely changed Sharon.  She realized that these people were out of control and hysterical because nothing they could do THEMSELVES seemed to work for them.  They really needed someone to do at least part of the work FOR them.  That was a real problem, because overeating is usually something people really need to make a conscious decision to change.

But then she realized that HYPNOSIS could give people the head start they were looking for… that’s what would truly relieve their feelings of panic about their eating and bond them to her in a stronger way than ever before.

So she did nothing less than spend the whole summer getting certified as a hypnotist.  (My wife does NOT mess around once she makes up her mind)

Here’s a very fascinating little MP3 we recorded for the weight loss market about hypnosis for weight loss.   She’s already using it effectively with her clients.   (SIDE NOTE: If you happen to be interested, take her up on it in the next few weeks before she gets too busy… she’s offering lower rates to jump start that part of her practice.  Contact info at the end of the audio)

My Best Stuff |   Beginners A to Z |  SEO Blueprint You Can Trust
(Note: price of the SEO blueprint will be $30 less when you get to the checkout page for the next week or so.  Special discount for my list)

A Few of My Favorite Headlines

Fake cocaine: A legal substitute that fools even the experts!

Researcher Calculates A Snowball’s Chance In Hell To Be .000000000134%

Deaths Of 550,000 Confirm Which Mushrooms Are Okay To Eat

EATEN ALIVE! Giant tigers kill pretty zoo keeper who ‘loved all animals’

Hungover Couple Unaware They Broke Up Last Night

Headless Body in Topless Bar

500-ft Jesus Appears At UN

It’s Official: LSD, Special K, and Magic Mushrooms Are Now Good For You

Every secret but one* is in this book

Metal-eating bugs can chew through a car in just 5 days!

Sarah Palin’s Mother-In-Law: “I’m Not Sure What She Brings To The Ticket Other Than She’s A Woman And A Conservative”

Rat Rides on a Cat Riding on a Dog

Cave Paintings Reveal Existence Of Prehistoric Insurance Salesman!

Psychics Are Just Charlatans Used By Imperialist Dogs To Control The Population – psychic says

Mr. Rogers’ Ghost Terrorizing Children!

Pack Of Wild Cocker Spaniels Terrorizes Wyoming

Orgy a logistical nightmare

Google Launches Enhanced CPC

Google released their latest addition to the bidding features family - Enhanced CPC. It's been in beta since March, but Enhanced CPC officially launched yesterday, August 16th.

The premise of the tool, much like Conversion Optimizer, is to "boost your ROI with an easy to use, automated bidding tool." Enhanced CPC will automatically adjust your max CPC bid based on the likelihood your ad will convert.

How It Works

For each auction Enhanced CPC calculates a predicted conversion rate using conversion data and other factors including:

Search Targeting:

• Broad vs. Exact match type
• Specific words that are present in the users query
• Historical performance of your ads on the site

Content Targeting:

• Historical performance of your ads on the site
• Match quality between ad and site content
• Current content on the site

User attributes:

• Users location
• Browser
• Operating system
• Language setting
• Time of day

If a click is likely to convert, the system increases your max CPC bid - it may be increase up to 30%. If a click is unlikely to convert the system will lower you max CPC bid - there is no floor for lowering the bid.

What's happening behind the scenes?

Initially the system only modifies bids in 50% of the auctions your ad is eligible for - remaining auctions are treated as a control group.

The system compares the performance of the modified bids against the unmodified bids and assesses whether or not it is having a positive impact on your conversion rate and CPA.

If performance is strong, Enhanced CPC will modify bids in up to 75% of auctions. Enhanced CPC continually monitors and optimizes its performance by keeping a portion of your traffic with your regular (not enhanced) max CPC bids. If it detects that it's hurting your campaign performance, Enhanced CPC will automatically reduce its impact. Enhanced CPC will not completely stop modifying bids because at some point it could start performing better.

Why you might want to try it out:

The possibility of increased profits from spending money on clicks that are likely to convert and saving money on clicks that are unlikely to convert. Ideal results would increase your conversion rate while your CPA remains the same or decreases - improved ROI.

It's very easy to try. On existing max CPC campaigns where conversion tracking is already installed all you have to do is check a box to get started.

It can save your time. Let the AdWords system automatically modify your max CPC bids to improve your ROI.

Lastly, Google is able to consider other factors that you have no way of knowing as an account manager and it factors those into its bidding decisions.

How to Set it Up

1. On the Settings Tab of your campaign - click Edit next to Bidding and Budget.
2. Choose Focus on Clicks and select either manual bidding or automatic bidding.
3. Check the box underneath Enhanced CPC to enable.

As always, give your campaign a few weeks to run with Enhanced CPC before analyzing results.

Enhanced CPC Notes

• Enhanced CPC works on Google, the Search Network and the Display Network.
• With Enhanced CPC you can continue to manage and optimize your max CPC bids as much as you like.
• When using Enhanced CPC with Automatic Bidding, the Automatic Bidding works as normal where the system will select a given bid. The Enhanced CPC system will use its technology to apply additional data to decide how much to increase or decrease the bid originally chosen by the automatic bidding system.
• Just like Conversion Optimizer, Enhanced CPC requires Conversion Tracking.

Things to watch out for:

• Enhanced CPC is not compatible with AdWords Editor.
• The only indication that Enhanced CPC is running is on the Settings Tab, under the Bidding and Budget section - where you enabled Enhanced CPC.
• There is no notification when the system begins to modify bids in more than 50% of auctions - it happens automatically with time and performance data.
• A breakdown of stats across modified and unmodified bids in not available in the AdWords interface.

“How to get new customers without spending a fortune” – MP3

How can you get new customers to your website without a major investment?

How can you get more prospects, sales leads and sales?

In this MP3, Bryan Todd and cover 5 hot traffic sources and the pros and cons of each:

1) Google ads – what they’re capable of, and their limitations; when they’re cheap and when they’re expensive
2) Solo emails to rented email lists
3) Advertising in online publications
4) Article marketing – the RIGHT ways and WRONG ways to do it
5) Social Media and Facebook Ads (when it will work, and when it’s just a time-suck)

In less than 1 hour you’ll have a clear picture of where you can go to get more traffic and more customers. And you’ll gain birds-eye view of these 5 traffic sources.

Download MP3

Join me in London September 10-12 where we’ll provide in-depth treatment of Facebook Pay Per Click, Email Marketing and my personal interlocking system of marketing tools and strategies. Attend the optional Friday Swiss Army Knife workshop and get an exhaustive marketing makeover.

If you procrastinate, these 384 words are worth your time

I took a customer survey earlier this week. The last question was totally open-ended:

“If you could ask Perry any question what would it be?”

The most common question was:

“How do I stop procrastinating and just DO the stuff I need to do???”

Let me tell you what I do.

I have an accountability buddy.

Every morning I email or text my friend with a list of the 3 super important things I’m absolutely going to get done today. In the evening I email or text him and confirm that I got them done.

Every evening he texts me with a summary of some daily habits he wants me to hold him accountable for. FYI his daily habit list is:

• Do 1 thing to get new clients every day
• Get out of the house and get some exercise
• Connect with one of his family members
• Do something creative or artistic that feeds his soul

Again, he just pings me every day to let me know how he did against his checklist.

This has been *extremely* useful for both of us. It forces me to focus on 3 BIG things because it is incredibly easy for me to get sucked into the other 300 little things that don’t matter so much instead. Focus and not procrastinate.

For him, it’s made his inner world and personal life much more satisfying. He falls into bad habits far less often. This is a seriously cool system because it’s simple and it works.

My friend, I just described a $1 million habit to you. Most people cannot appreciate the compound interest of cultivating simple disciplines over time.

When your saw is constantly being sharpened and you are constantly FOCUSING that blade on true hot spots of opportunity, you can’t help but improve and improve and improve.

Get yourself an accountability buddy and watch your productivity soar. It’s THE best way to slay the procrastination demons.

DO THIS: If you struggle with procrastination, call up one of your friends – one who values and appreciates your mission as an entrepreneur – and set up a buddy system. Do it RIGHT NOW, before you finish this email.

You’ll feel good on the inside as you hang up the phone, because you’ve picked up a $1 million habit.

Perry Marshall

Text Length: 384 words

Grade level: 7.9

“10 Minute Daily Action Injection”

I’m doing a little experiment, that you might like.

For the rest of this week and all of next week, I’m going to do a 5-10 minute “mental focus” teleseminar. Every day at 11am Central Time.

I will share ONE thought that you can take action on and be encouraged by. A 5-minute picker-upper. Or maybe a story or a really short interview with someone interesting.

Lately I’ve been running across a lot of people who are feeling discouraged and this is one way I can do something about it.

Time: 12pm Eastern, 11am Central, 9am Pacific, 5pm London . (See www.time.gov for time zones.)

Dates: Thursday August 12, Friday 8/13 and Monday-Friday August 16-20.

MP3′s will be posted for Renaissance Club members and above.

For now this is an experiment. Depending on how this goes, maybe I’ll keep going.

How to appease the Search Engine gods

Does Google ever seem like a Greek goddess who demands burnt offerings from her fearful worshipers?

If you’ve ever done any Search Engine Optimization, you know what it’s like to get sucked into all kinds of time-wasting activities, hoping they’ll someday pay off.

And if you’ve ever wondered what it might have been like to toss a damsel in the volcano, hoping rain would finally come . . . well, maybe you do know what that’s like :^)

I’d be hard pressed to name any topic with more urban legends, flim flam men and mystical freaking voodoo than SEO!

Eric Ward did link building for Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com Books back in the mid 90′s, and I’ve arranged for him to do a free webinar on link building strategies that produce fast results, improved SEO rankings and FREE traffic.

Thursday, Aug 12, 2010 12:00 PM Central time (1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific / 18:00 London)

He’s going to explain some dire pitfalls that most SEO guys are currently selling as “really cool hot strategies.” Some of these strategies will get you banned and almost none of them produce lasting results.

After this webinar is over, I’ll also send you Eric’s new 30-page “how to” manual for link building (this is a Perry Marshall exclusive!) This guide will show you how to add to and diversify your site traffic with two new sources of FREE traffic: (1) traffic from Google, and (2) traffic from the sites who link to you:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/187993971

Enjoy!

Perry Marshall