Oct

13

Brand Identity

October 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment

 Brand Identity

Most Businesses Have At
Least Brand Identity OR Goodwill;
Many Have Both

Brand identity means that the name, logo, a key product is instantly recognizable and is respected by a marketplace. And sometimes a buyer will foresee opportunity to exploit that brand identity in a new and different way - for example, the Heinz Corporation bought Weight Watchers NOT because they wanted to be in the weight loss center business but because they correctly perceived a lucrative opportunity to put the Weight Watchers name on frozen and pre-packaged foods sold via supermarkets.  Goodwill is less tangible and less exploitable outside of the business’ core customers.

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Oct

1

Pander To The Big Boys

 

 This is very important if you happen to be selling a small company to a big company; know that they will view you with disdain and they will be very willing to assume that, given their superior intelligence and superior resources, they will be able to do much better with your business than you have. If you are selling, this is a conceit you will want to pander to. (If buying, beware of your own arrogance.)  This is the kind of arrogance that causes a big company to buy something like Snapple then wind up selling it back to its old owners for a fraction of what they paid for it; Time/Life to buy a thriving mail-order business and then manage it into extinction. It is perfectly okay to be underestimated by people giving you money.

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Aug

31

Burning Desire

August 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I’ve been around only a few people who have exhibited sustained, burning, overwhelmingly intense desire to accomplish a particular goal or learn a particular skill and it’s my observation that such people rarely waiver from an optimistic, enthusiastic, constructive attitude.  “Fire in the belly” seems to prevent distractions in the mind.

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Aug

27

Honor Your Commitments

“To be punctual in all of your appointments is a duty resting upon you no less obligatory that the duty of common honesty. An appointment is a contract and if you do not keep it you are dishonestly using other peoples time and, consequently, their money.”
- S.D. Bremer

This is a big “hang-up” of mine; I detest being late and I detest being inconvenienced by others who cannot get where they’re supposed to get on time. I sometimes go to extreme and extraordinary lengths to honor my commitments, as small as a lunch appointment - and “honor” is a chosen word. I think peoples’ behavior with regard to honoring their littlest commitments very accurately reveals whether or not they can be trusted with bigger and more important things.

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Jul

31

This is one of my favorite “tricks”: selling Item-A for X$, then offering that customer a “bigger” Item-B, for Y$, but giving full credit for the prior purchase as a discount. This puts money in  the customer’s pocket that he loses if he doesn’t make the second purchase.

For example, we ran our SuccessTrak seminar business for three years based on a $25.00 deposit to guarantee attendance at the free seminar, then refunding double the deposit against the product purchase.

I nearly doubled my U.S. Gold client’s business with a $99 “Mini-Kit”, then full credit for the $99 when the full kit is purchased.

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Jul

20

Adapt To Your Circumstances And Make Them Work For You

“I am never frightened by revolutionary changes in my life, whether they are voluntary or forced upon me by circumstances for I do at least have control over my reaction to circumstances. And I exercise this privilege not by complaining but by searching for that seed of an equivalent benefit which each experience carries with it.”

- Napoleon Hill

Hill was a master at knitting many important ideas into a single affirmative statement like this one. I think that’s one of the main things that has so strongly attracted me to his works. Anyway, if we dissect this beauty we first get “I am never frightened”. Since fear is one of the paralyzing factors that inhibit most peoples’ performance, a statement of fearlessness is pretty significant. Saying he is not frightened by “revolutionary changes” acknowledges that there are frequently such changes. The flaw in most peoples’ approach to goal-setting is a lack of flexibility toward means of achievement, which causes over-reaction, negative reactions and, often, fearful reaction to unexpected changes. “Control over my reaction” - well, this is the only thing over which we do have total control. “Privilege” - Hill viewed his unique human ability to exercise control over his reactions to changing circumstances as a great privilege. I doubt that most people ever think of it this way. But it is. It is exclusively through this ability that we can control the outcomes of our lives. “Seed of equivalent benefit” represents a key part of Hill’s entire philosophy; that EVERY (apparent) adversity conceals opportunity.

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Jul

12

Lead in niche markets

Although I’ve rarely found the opportunities to do this personally, because I do not come from any niche, when I have done it and do it, it is always exceptionally profitable, and I’ve evolved into the practice of steering clients in this direction whenever possible as well as choosing clients to work with who possess such opportunities. Personally, I’ve made extraordinary profits in publishing, mail-order and seminar businesses in the niches of chiropractic, dentistry and professional speakers; and exceptional earnings by consulting in information product publishing and marketing, business opportunities, and TV infomercials (although I hasten to add, my total consulting activity is much broader). 

Niche markets offer smaller opportunities than the mainstream, public marketplace, but they also provide a long list of appealing, offsetting benefits, including lower testing costs and investments, more predictable results, ease of message-to-market matching, affordable use of many media, high dollar units of sale, high margins, and so on. There is also this opportunity: to quickly and (relatively) inexpensively establish a visible, recognized leadership position.

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Jul

6

The Successful Business Life

“To be in business is to be assaulted by relentless adversity and crisis; it comes with the territory.”

                        - Carter Henderson.

I’m very happy that I read this book fairly early in my entrepreneurial career, because this statement leaped out at me - everything else I’d read seemed dedicated to the premise that if you did things right, you could do business problem-free. This certainly was not my experience, and I was beginning to wonder if I was hopelessly screwed up when I first encountered this simple statement. With 25 years of entrepreneurial experience and 20/20 hindsight, I appreciate this profound statement even more. You see, it is my experience that even doing everything to the very best of your ability, and even trying to do everything with integrity, you will still deal with “adversity and crisis” constantly. When you are in an aggressive stage; growth, building, creating, then dealing with adversity, opposition, crisis, etc. is an unpreventable, unavoidable part of the game. The important thing to do about that is to make mental peace with it so that you do not overreact, or become so frustrated you can’t function or can’t enjoy what you’re doing, or conclude there’s something wrong with you, or worse, quit altogether. You’ll find throughout my writings about entrepreneurship a philosophical acceptance of the truth of the entrepreneurial experience as stated by Henderson.

How to build an exceptionally successful business life…….

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Jul

3

One of the great truths of finance is: “Money’s expensive when you haven’t got it.”  Multi-million dollar empires have toppled for want of a few thousand dollars. If/when you lack cash, you usually must pay an exorbitant price to get it, will gladly do so at the moment, but will often bitterly regret the terms of the deal later. This begs several ideas:

•           It is better to be the one with money than the one without

•           Be eternally reluctant to do anything that so diminishes your cash position that you might get into trouble

•           The time to get money is before you need it

•           No matter how severe your immediate need, stop to thoroughly consider the long-term ramifications of the terms

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Jun

26

Selling Prevention

“How many people buy medicine to prevent athlete’s foot, compared with those who buy to cure it?”

 

- Clyde Bedell

When facing the need to sell “prevention”, the very first thing to do is look for a way to reposition the product or service as a “cure.” If that turns out to be impossible, I advise finding some other business to be in. Selling “prevention” IS that difficult.

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Jun

17

Hit The Sweet Spot

“All politics is local.”

- Tip O’Neil

“Personal self-interest” is the “sweet spot” to hit with a sales pitch.

In my business of speaking/training, many speakers/trainers and consultants selling sales training programs err in talking about the benefits derived by the salespeople instead of the benefits derived by the sales manager approving the purchase. They fail to speak to the “personal self-interest” of the decision-maker.

Those in the business of selling educational materials and services for students err by emphasizing benefits derived by the students instead of the benefits derived by the parents.

When Tip said “all politics is local”, he showed how well he understood the importance of appealing to personal self-interest. Tip knew that, whether you’re running for councilman or President, the pothole on my street is of far greater interest to me than a war in a faraway land or an impending national economic crisis.

Check your marketing to be sure it is focused on the personal self-interest of your customer.

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Jun

10

The newsletter is, I think, the most useful tool in maintaining relationships with customers and keeping them interested in you, your business, your products and services. Since “publications” get better readership than “sales materials”; articles get more readership than ads, it simply makes sense to put your messages into the format of a publication, and into the context of articles.

Sadly, many marketers are terribly lazy about this, and can never get their act together, to put out a good, interesting newsletter every month. 

Content Tips

  1. Information/education directly linked to your products and services
  2. Information/education linked to the customer-type (egs.  homeowner; CEO; parent)
  3. Customer recognition and appreciation
  4. Promotion of new/selected products, services
  5. Stimulate

 

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Jun

8

The Power Of Results

“DON’T TELL ME ABOUT THE LABOR PAINS -
JUST SHOW ME THE BABY.”

Ordinary people are process focused and task focused, but exceptional success comes from being results focused. People who are obsessed with the telling and retelling of all the details and minutiae they went through to get to a particular result waste your time and slow down the entire organization.

People around you have to be taught, conditioned and constantly reminded how to communicate with you. Here are two examples of employees, same situation:

“Bill, we had a problem this morning. All the phone and FAX lines were out and we couldn’t get any calls or orders. I went across the street to the pay phone and called the phone company. I was on hold forever. Then the first person told me they’d look into the problem as soon as possible and get back to me by tomorrow. I got to a supervisor and pushed. Finally, somebody agreed to put a repair crew on it immediately. They were here an hour ago. The head guy said we’ll be up and running by noon at the latest.”

****

“Bill, we had a problem this morning. All the phone and FAX lines were out. I already got a repair crew out here and the head guy says we’ll be up and running by noon at the latest.”

Which do you prefer?

By the way, the biggest Negative Power anybody has is in usurping your valuable time. If you have somebody around you who is “high maintenance”, you need to get rid of them.

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Jun

4

Although I’ve rarely found the opportunities to do this personally, because I do not come from any niche, when I have done it and do it, it is always exceptionally profitable, and I’ve evolved into the practice of steering clients in this direction whenever possible as well as choosing clients to work with who possess such opportunities. Personally, I’ve made extraordinary profits in publishing, mail-order and seminar businesses in the niches of chiropractic, dentistry and professional speakers; and exceptional earnings by consulting in information product publishing and marketing, business opportunities, and TV infomercials (although I hasten to add, my total consulting activity is much broader).

Niche markets offer smaller opportunities than the mainstream, public marketplace, but they also provide a long list of appealing, offsetting benefits, including lower testing costs and investments, more predictable results, ease of message-to-market matching, affordable use of many media, high dollar units of sale, high margins, and so on. There is also this opportunity: to quickly and (relatively) inexpensively establish a visible, recognized leadership position.

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May

20

“You may depend on the inner-mind absolutely. Everything you need to know will come to you when you need to know it.”

- Dr. Edward Kramer

Decisiveness is one of the most prized and valuable of all personal characteristics, but it is also often misunderstood; many books written equate being more decisive with learning better processes for making decisions, but this is not the way super-decisive individuals operate. Instead, individuals in this category have a hyper-active “inner voice” and they listen to it and act on it confidently, unhesitatingly. Some call this “intuition”, although that term has been tainted over the years with gender issues. And this is not “hunch betting”; but the environment of wagering is a place where the distinction can be explained. At the track a “hunch bet” is picking a horse because it’s name is the same as your cousin’s. An “inner voice bet” occurs, for example, when you are suddenly reminded by your subconscious that a certain jockey has only one mount all day in a late race, which is very unusual for him, and it is unlikely he would take the trouble to come out to the track just for that one mount unless it had a legitimate chance of winning. In that instance, “stored information” rises up out of the recesses of your subconscious. The trick of course, is developing the ability to recognize this and the confidence to act on it.

Kramer goes beyond this. The essence of Kramer’s ideas is that each individual’s mind (sic. subconscious) is directly connected to all intelligence (”universal intelligence”) and therefore all the knowledge of the universe, past and present, is stored in your mind and accessible for the asking. This follows demonstrations by a Harvard prof, Dr. Sidis, in which very young children were able to do complex math problems or recite poetry, etc. without it being taught to them, but by it being stimulated from them. Sidis/Kramer argued that formal education errs in “stuffing in” information as opposed to helping individuals develop the powers of the mind. It’s conceivable that many things little children do that, in observing them, we pass off as “instinctive” is actually know-how. Just for example, little children are often able to calm and befriend a scared or violent horse when adults fail - is it possible the child is using know-how that is later “un-learned” as adults?

Even if the Sidis/Kramer idea of essentially unlimited innate intelligence and knowledge existing in each person isn’t totally valid, it certainly is true that the subconscious mind stores every little bit of information it is ever exposed to and has it all available for lightning speed recall, but we find all sorts of ways to jam up that machinery. Learning to get out of our own way consciously and let the subconscious mind do more of the heavy lifting is a path to much greater, less stressful achievement.

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May

18

“You are subject to your environment. Therefore, select the environment that will best develop you toward your desired objective.”

- W. Clement Stone

The reason that conditions of parole typically prohibit associating with known felons, past criminal associates and, in many cases, frequenting certain previously frequented establishments or even sections of town is simple: there’s abundant evidence that doing so dramatically increases, in fact, virtually guarantees recidivism.

It is hard enough converting from criminal to citizen without trying to keep one leg knee deep in a criminal environment. When I decided to end my heavy drinking, I found it very helpful to stay out of bars. Yes, I can sit in a bar or lounge and not indulge. These days I can have one, enjoy it and stop. But I still do not make a practice of frequenting bars. Why subject myself to such an environment, unrelated to achievement of my goals and potentially distracting or destructive?

People can and do escape their environments, as we see that in people who grew up in ghettos or received nominal education or were raised by abusive parents, etc., who become stellar citizens and successful individuals. However, there’s also a great deal of “you can take the boy out of the _________, but you can’t take the __________ out of the boy” to be observed as well. It is very clear that environment has enormous impact, and I doubt you’ll find a dissenting psychologist or sociologist.

In recognition of this, I began selecting my environments fairly early. I sure didn’t do a perfect job of it, but I did a better job than most. And I’m very conscious of it as an adult.

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May

12

“What would you do if you HAD to make your next mailing work? What if you could only mail ONE letter and if you didn’t get a response you would, quite literally, be beheaded?”

- Gary Halbert

This is the prelude to Gary’s discussion of “A-pile vs. B-pile mail”, based on the correct insistence that America sorts its mail over a wastebasket. (In biz-to-biz mail, the gatekeeper sorts it first over her/his wastebasket, then the intended recipient sorts again over her/his wastebasket.) And, of course, this is the argument against envelopes with “teaser copy”. It is this thinking that has led me to favor “a-pile look” in 90% of all situations - except when mailing to established, responsive customers who welcome mail from the mailer.

However, here’s an interesting FACT: direct mail covered with teaser copy is used more than “a-pile mail” by about a 100-to-1 ratio, and thus, far more goods and services are sold via the “junk mail look” than with the “a-pile look”. Some of this can be chalked up to more mailers using bulk mail than any other class and thus losing the opportunity to use a pure a-pile look, some to stupidity, but, still, this fact also suggests the wisdom of testing the one approach against the other in just about every situation.

The most important point I would make is that if or when you violate pure a-pile - such as having a corporate name or logo in the return address or mailing bulk - once you’ve crossed that line, you are best advised to go way over the line……to use every available inch of both sides of the envelope as billboard space.

My preference remains a-pile.

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May

9

“The opening sentence of a letter IS the letter. If these words do not say anything, there is no conception of philanthropy that could reasonably urge any man to read more.”

-J. George Frederick

Here’s a very simple copywriting test: put only your first sentence on a page. Looking at that and that only, would you go onto the next page to find the next sentence? Or try this one: if you received the letter with nothing but the first sentence* and all the other pages apparently, accidentally omitted from your letter, would you chase down the sender to get the rest? (*Same tests for first paragraph. For first page.)

I spend a lot of time working in environments where all circumstances conspire against grabbing the attention of the prospects. All my speaking at the Success events is at the very end of a ten hour day, after 8 to 10 speakers, after the last celebrity, with a crowd leaving. In my work in the infomercial industry, we battle the “clicker” with every word, the “ugh, it’s an infomercial” reaction at the start of every program. I think; I hope these kinds of situations sensitize me to the importance of the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page.

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May

3


Recognition creates repetitive behavior (just as non-recognition does!). Again, with the manufacturing business, we started a formalized “thank you” program aimed at those who paid as agreed, and we very quickly turned good payers into great payers.

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Apr

30


Lewis Waterman was an insurance agent. After persuading a man to take out a large policy, he handed him the pen to sign with and it leaked ink all over the contract. By the time Waterman got another contract prepared, the prospect changed his mind. Waterman was so disgusted he quit insurance and devoted his life to the invention of a reliable pen.

I’m not sure where I first found or read this story, but it stuck in my mind and has never left. In my book ‘How To Succeed In Business By Breaking ALL The Rules’, I tell a very similar story about the inventor and invention of the product, THE CLUB. The idea demonstrated by both stories - and hundreds others like them - is the way these people responded to an annoying, adverse experience; instead of just being angered or frustrated, they saw the opportunity inherent in the problem - and acted on it. It is interesting to me how many great products and businesses have this unique inspiration behind them. Disney’s unhappiness with dirty, unimaginative parks; Kemmons Wilson’s grumpiness about the lack of clean, reasonably priced lodging for families traveling cross-country by car, etc., etc. You might call this The Principle Of Constructive Dissatisfaction.

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