When Do You “Put the Meter Down”?
Issue #2042
- WEALTHY: Summer reading to make you a better investor (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: 2 powerful health benefits in your morning cup of joe (Jon Herring)
- WISE: Oliver Wendell Holmes on his speaking fees
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- A quick way to make a good first impression on a client (Bob Bly)
- Are you doing enough networking? (Ilise Benun)
- It’s Fun to Know… about running a family business
- Add "epicene" to your vocabulary
Imagine if There Were Only 6 Numbers to Choose from When Buying a Lottery Ticket!
Wouldn’t that be great?! Of course, the less the number of choices, the more likely your chance of success, right?
How many choices are there when buying and selling shares? Errmm… a LOT! Hundreds… One of the reasons I enjoy such consistent success from trading, is because I only have 6 options to choose from! Except this is even better in a way, because the lottery is pure luck…
… I only have 6 choices AND have a VERY good idea about which choice to make because of the insider signal.Click here to learn more…
- Patrick Coffey
Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: Porter Stansberry’s Top Investment Books
Back in 2004, we published a list of Steve Sjuggerud’s Top 10 Wealth-Building Books. Just recently, another friend whose investment acumen I admire, Porter Stansberry, published his own list of top books on investing.
Since Porter is responsible for three of the best investment advisories in the world today (Steve Sjuggerud’s True Wealth, Dan Ferris’s Extreme Value, and Porter’s own Investment Advisory), I thought you might be interested in seeing it.
Porter points out that though there are many other great books on trading, economics, the psychology of investing, the history of finance, etc., his list deals, almost exclusively, with the "how to" of successful long-term investing.
Porter says that if you read the books on his list and follow the principles they espouse ("buy value, buy safety, buy businesses with a durable competitive advantage, allow your investments to compound over many years"), you will be able to "easily earn 15%-30% per year, after tax." He says that investing shouldn’t require more than 10 hours of your time per week, and that "if you make more than two to three investments per year, you’re working way too hard."
Here, then, is his list…
- The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham
- The Dhandho Investor by Mohnish Pabrai
- Contrarian Investment Strategiesby David Dreman
- You Can Be a Stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt
- Value Investing by Martin J. Whitman
- Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael’s unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.]
"My fee, if I select the subject, is $150; if your committee selects the subject, the charge is $250, but in either case the speech is the same."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When Do You "Put the Meter Down"?
By Bob Bly
When you take a taxi, when do you expect the driver to put the meter down? When you first step into the cab and give him your destination? Or once he pulls away from the curb into traffic and starts driving?
The actual difference in cab fare is negligible. But the difference in the driver’s attitude - and your reaction - can be huge.
In the first scenario, the driver is saying to you: "I want to wring as much money from you as I can. You will pay for every second of my service!"
In the second scenario, the cabbie is telling you, "I want my customers to get fair value for their money. I won’t start charging you until I’m actually moving you toward your destination!"
If you’re in any kind of service business, the decision of when to start charging the customer for your time… when to put the meter down… has a similarly profound impact.
For instance, I recently contacted a major press release distribution service to get a quotation for distributing a press release to hundreds of magazines and newspapers. "We can’t give you a quotation unless you join us as a member," they told me, even though they are a service and not an association.
The membership fee, by the way, was $150. So, in effect, they were charging me $150 to give me a price quote on a service I wanted to buy from them.
The right time to put the meter down, of course, varies from industry to industry - and even from vendor to vendor.
For some services - such as home remodeling, business consulting, and laser eye surgery - the initial meeting and estimate are typically free. For others, vendors charge from the first second you meet them… and some actually charge more for the first visit (to diagnose your problem) than they do when they actually deliver their service on subsequent visits. Example: psychiatrists and neurologists who treat kids with ADD and other behavioral disorders.
The decision of when to put the meter down and start charging the customer for your time depends on several factors. These include what’s standard in your industry… whether preliminary assessment or diagnosis is necessary to determine fees… and how busy and in demand you are.
If you are desperate and need work, you’ll give a lot of free estimates and see people without charge in the hopes of getting business from them. If you’re busy and in demand, you won’t.
The key is to position whichever tack you take as a competitive advantage.
If you are desperate and need work, don’t tell prospects you are desperate and need work. But do convey the message that you offer a free initial meeting because you care about your clients and you don’t want to charge them anything until you are sure you can help them.
Let’s say you are a consultant billing $1,000 a day. You meet with potential clients for an hour or two in their offices, without charge, to determine whether there’s a good fit - and to convince them to hire you. You give that meeting a value-added name. Instead of calling it a "sales presentation," you call it a "free consultation." And you put a dollar value on it. You note that it is a $500 value.
On the other hand, if you really are busy and in demand, by putting the meter down immediately, you convey how busy and in demand you are. And you reinforce that message by making it hard for a prospect to hire you … or even speak to you. For instance, your assistant would never say, "Would you like him to stop by today?" He would say, instead, "Let me see if I have an opening next month or the month after."
Prospects may object: "Your competitors will come and see me for free. Why can’t you?" A good answer for them is, "Why would you hire someone who is in so little demand they will rush to you at the drop of a hat and not charge you for their time?"
There is an advantage to being busy and unavailable. After all, if you needed brain surgery, which doctor would you be most comfortable with? The experienced, highly recommended neurosurgeon whose waiting room is always filled with patients? Or the neurosurgeon whose schedule - and waiting room - are empty?
But there is also an advantage to being available, flexible, and accommodating.
You can’t be all things to all people. So be what you are. Whatever you are, there are more than enough prospects out there to buy what you are selling, the way you are selling it.
[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a popular Early to Rise columnist, self-made multi-millionaire, and the author of more than 70 books. He is also the editor of ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition.- a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail business.]
“$41,000 without touching the keys… and I did it Three Times in the last two months.”
In the last two months alone, Steve Cook made $30,000, $41,000 and $19,000 on three quick real estate deals – so simple he never even touched the keys. His methods can help you…
- Do quick real estate deals from home with nothing but a laptop
- Never touch the keys
- Never deal with tenants
- Never deal with banks
- Make $17,000 to $41,000 or more per trade
Find out how you can use his strategy to skyrocket your income.
- Justin Ford
Main Street Millionaire
Coffee and Your Health
By Jon Herring
Researchers at Harvard and UCLA recently presented the results of a review of nearly 400 studies investigating coffee consumption and cancer risk. They confirmed that drinking coffee appears to offer protection against colon and liver cancer.
The scientists also found that coffee can help prevent Type II diabetes. In one study, men who drank six cups a day reduced their risk by more than half, while women who drank the same amount reduced their risk by 30 percent.
While it is well known that coffee is a rich source of beneficial phytochemicals and antioxidants, we are not certain which components are responsible for these preventative effects.
But don’t take these results to mean that you should be drinking cup after cup of coffee. There are risks associated with drinking too much coffee, including stomach cancer and high blood pressure.
If you enjoy coffee, keep it to a few cups a day. That should give you the pick-me-up you’re looking for, and it might just improve your health. But be sure to buy an organic brand. Coffee is one of the most heavily pesticided crops. And if you take it sweet, use a natural, no-glycemic sweetener like stevia instead of sugar or artificial sweeteners.
Networking Tip: Schedule One Event a Month… Minimum
By Ilise Benun
Think of all the contacts you could make if you networked more often. New customers, potential partners… all sorts of people who can help your business explode.
But how often should you be putting yourself out there?
One networking event per month is the absolute minimum. And if you’re serious about growing your business, you should attend at least two - one where you can meet prospects and one where you can meet colleagues (those who do what you do and with whom you can share resources).
New Jersey-based copywriter Mistina Bates, of Market It Write, dramatically ramped up her networking this year. She’s been attending two networking events per week, then scheduling up to four one-on-one meetings with the people she meets. As a result, she has more work than she can handle and is already on track to pass the six-figure mark in her third year of business.
[Ed. Note: Networking expert Ilise Benun is the author of Stop Pushing Me Around. Get more networking strategies with Ilise’s free e-newsletter, Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.]
It’s Fun to Know: About Running a Family Business
Having a business that passes the century mark is a pretty noteworthy achievement, but how about 14 centuries?
Until its assets were acquired by a large construction company in 2006, Japanese temple-building company Kongo Gumi had been run by its founder’s descendants for 1,428 years, making it the longest-running, continuously operating family business in the world.
Prior to being taken over, Kongo Gumi had been struggling for several years. As you might imagine, the market for its temple-building services had been declining.
(Source: Business Week)
Start Making Money Today
Interested in getting a nice little side-business going on the Internet? Or maybe even from your living-room table?
But you don’t have too much money, you don’t have too much time, and you’re not exactly Bill Gates when it comes to technology. Sound familiar?
A lot of people are in the same boat. The good news is that ETR has heard you. And now we’ve done something about it…
We’ve asked our colleague Marc Charles to be on the lookout for profit opportunities that can be run from a kitchen table, your desktop or out on the road.
Criteria? They’ve got to be inexpensive, easy to start, and still have great income potential, but without a lot of red tape.
They say when you’re first getting your feet wet with a side-business, the most important dollar to make is the first one. Well, Marc is an expert at taking beginning entrepreneurs and showing you how to make that first buck. He knows, because he’s done it dozens of times for himself, his family and his friends.
If you’ve been dreaming about starting your own business… now you can get started for about the price of 2 lattes.
And get this - you could be making money literally just hours from now. Imagine the feeling of finally getting a side business launched - TODAY!
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Epicine
"Epicine" (EP-uh-seen) means weak/effeminate/unmanly. The word is derived from the Greek for "common to," and was originally a grammatical term for nouns that may denote either gender.
Example (as used by Ronald Bergan in Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict): "She smothers (almost literally at times) her weak, epicene son Vladimir, and is prepared to commit any crime to see him become Tsar, despite his reluctance."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007