"The Lightning Speed Internet Sales Success Course" LESSON #17 © 1997 B.S.A. / F.M. http://web.idirect.com/~bsa/index.htm _______________________________ THE TOPIC: How to start with a reachable market with money first (never start with the product!), then find out their desires and sell them the solution in the format they want it in. THE ANSWER: <<< Excerpt from "World's Easiest Profession" >>> The word "offer" is a common term used in direct marketing to describe a product or service you're selling. A good mail order offer can be priced anywhere from $50 and up - the sky is the limit. Anything under $50 is a "lead generator". Please remember that. Never forget it. Whether it's step number 2, 3, 4, or 5 in the sales process, SOME of your customers must be brought up to the buying level of $100 or more for you to survive as a direct marketer. Otherwise your costs of paper, stamps, Internet access, phone bill and everything else will eat you out of business ... and what you'll end up doing is merely an expensive hobby masquerading as a "business". FOCUS ON READILY AVAILABLE MARKETS I mentioned in a previous chapter that I created, some years ago, both software and a book which could not, in the end, be marketed successfully. I would have saved an awful lot of time by studying the size and availability of my markets first. The size of the market is important because only a large volume of sales can justify the creation of a product. The market for an asthma book is: asthmatics who actually want to help themselves and believe that a drug-free cure could exist in the form of a book and are willing to buy through direct response offers. That's probably less than 1 in 5000 people in the U.S. and Canada, by my estimate. And there's no good way to target them. The availability of the market is important for obvious reasons which are far more important than the mere existence of prospects. If there is no way for you to reach your prospects, you're doomed. For example, there's probably at least a million people who would be interested in buying a book about falling out of love with somebody who doesn't love them back. But there's no way to reach that group of people yet. Perhaps in future there will be a magazine called Unrequited Lover's monthly and we'll be able to buy the subscriber list. (I did a paper in University on this topic. Oh well, you can't sell everything you write. Sometimes it's just for grades and stuff). The best way to determine whether there is a marketing channel where you want there to be one, is to 1) ask yourself whether anyone is already selling what you're thinking of selling and ... 2) call a major mailing list broker and ask them if they have a list of the people you're trying to contact. If there's already a lot of business going on with regard to that product or service, then you're gambling on a winner. If you're trying something that apparently hasn't been tried (successfully) before, you'd better ask yourself some tough questions about how focussed and repetitive an attack you can make on the market (and make sure they do want it). Can you reach this group of people through specialized mailing lists, advertising during certain TV shows, etc.? NEEDS AND WANTS Take a good look at what people already want to do. Because of the brainwashing women have received, there's huge money to be made selling them weight loss and skin treatment programs. Similarly, men are paying thousands of dollars apiece for hair loss treatments. This is big bucks marketing which is taking advantage of pre-existing wants and beliefs. Of course, you might want to do something to help humanity, rather than just find a way to make money. People immediately buy what they want. They are not quite so eager to buy what they need. What are you doing to make people want what you have to sell? When you try to sell people what they need, instead of what they want, you have to spend a lot more time and money educating them before they'll buy your product. That's not to say that you shouldn't make the effort. Just be warned. The human buying process is 100% emotional. There is a feeling behind every thought and action a person has, and there are feelings that result from them. People buy something to alter their mood, most likely right away. If people respond to your sales letter or ad with hallucinations of happiness or some other positive emotion, they will purchase your product. The very best products to market right now are specialized information, products and services. Big, established industries contain vicious competitors (sharks) and huge warehousing firms (whales) that make it necessary for the littler fishes to seek a safe place to market where they won't be overwhelmed by those who outprice them and/or eat them alive, or simply overwhelm them with more extensive marketing, large customer bases, etc. Remember, you can't change the weather by leaving your door open. And you can't sell something unless people are willing to give you money for it. People want things from companies that they are familiar with. But when you offer something new to a specific group of people, they'll have to give their money to you, or do without it, because the whales and sharks haven't got it. Another benefit of being a little guy with a specialized market, is that a lot of money to you is probably peanuts to the big boys, and they couldn't be bothered to muscle in on you for what is such a small payoff for them. Besides, there is no limit to the possibilities of defining a reachable market with money who will buy by mail, and creating the ideal offer for them. There are an infinite number of possible ideas that could bear fruit to the tune of $1,000,000 or more. My latest hot tip is to find a directory of listserv groups on the Internet. Some of these deal with emotional topics and are well-populated. A listserv is simply something you subscribe to which sends a lot of e-mail your way about a specific topic. Anyone can subscribe and contribute messages. It isn't too hard to figure out a good information product that many of these groups would like to buy.