Issue #2232
- WEALTHY: Are you falling into the "wants vs. needs" trap with your gift giving? (Patrick Coffey)
- HEALTHY: An unusual use for a newspaper (Dr. Bill Stillwell)
- WISE: Pamela Glenconner on giving gifts
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- How to survive the Holiday Scheduling Breakdown (Bob Cox)
- 10 little things Sharika loves about the holidays
- It’s Fun to Know… about the Christmas tree’s journey to the U.S.
- Add "flout" to your vocabulary
How Many Automatic Income Streams Can YOU Handle?
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Jim Sheridan’s plan banked him $187,296 in one day. The great news is – you can copy Jim’s plan exactly. The program is called Instant Internet Income and I guarantee it does exactly what it says it does.
Take a look at how Jim brought in over $187,000 in a single day!
- Patrick Coffey
"Giving presents is a talent; to know what a person wants, to know when and how to get it, to give it lovingly and well."
Pamela Glenconner
Giving Gifts and Marketing Success
Are you a good gift giver? Well, if you are, you just might be a great marketer too.
I’ve always enjoyed the holidays. It’s my chance to show the important people in my life how much I care about them. And I take pride in giving good gifts. There’s nothing that feels better than seeing someone’s smile light up the room as they unwrap my present.
Last Christmas, I decided to get my little sister her very first cellphone. (I think she was the last 16-year-old in all of Florida without one.) And it wasn’t just any cellphone. I splurged and bought the hottest Motorola on the market at the time.
I knew the gift was going to be a winner, but I wanted it to be a big surprise. So I also bought her a pair of jeans from her favorite store in the mall and put the cellphone in the pocket.
On Christmas day, I presented her with my gift, and she quickly opened it. She seemed really excited. After all, the box was from her favorite store. But before she could pull out the jeans, I reached into my pocket and called her cellphone. When her jeans started ringing, she grabbed her new phone and gave me the biggest hug imaginable.
Recently, I was on a teleconference call with Bob Cox as part of ETR’s Total Success Achievement program. During the call, we talked about gift giving and the holidays, including what makes someone a good gift giver. And it occurred to me that there are a bunch of similarities between good gift givers and good marketers.
After thinking about it for a while, I came up with two rules that you can follow to not only become a better gift giver, but also sell more products to your customers.
Rule #1: Understand Your Prospect
Making sales and giving gifts that people love both start with the number one rule in marketing: Understand your prospect. So the first question you need to ask yourself – as a gift giver or as a marketer – is: "Who am I buying for / selling to?"
If your little niece Anne is a tomboy, you don’t want to get her a Barbie doll in a pink dress. And your coach potato uncle Tom won’t get much use out of a mountain bike.
This is an important rule that most marketers know but still ignore. They confuse "popular" with "wanted by everyone." That Barbie doll might be the hottest toy of the season, but that won’t make Anne want to play with it. And though that tax preparation guide is your colleague’s best-selling product, it’s not going to interest your e-mail list of dog lovers.
Understanding your prospect is the key to getting her a good gift or offering him a product he’ll jump to buy.
The best way to find out what your prospects want is to ask them. What are their hobbies, interests, likes, and dislikes? It’s easy to get on the phone with your niece… or shoot an e-mail to your customer.
Often, your prospects will tell you exactly what they want. ("I want a new baseball glove." "I want a product that helps me train my new puppy not to bark.") But even if they don’t tell you, you’ll still get an idea of what they might be interested in. You just have to listen to what they say… and maybe do a little reading between the lines. ("I really love baseball, and the Little League season starts in two months." "I got an adorable new dachshund… but his yipping is starting to annoy our neighbors.")
From this information, you can start to understand your prospects’ wants. Then you can put yourself in their shoes. ("If I were an 11-year-old girl who loves to play baseball, what would I want?" "If I had a new puppy that wouldn’t shut up, what would I want?") By doing this, I can guarantee you won’t buy your niece that Barbie doll or offer your dog-loving customer a tax preparation guide.
At Early to Rise, we often survey our customers before we begin to create a new product. Our Internet Money Club, for example, came out of a survey we had sent to ETR readers about their interest in Internet marketing. From the survey results, we found that they wanted a comprehensive Internet marketing program that would cover all the details of starting an online business. Many of them told us that though they’d found good ideas in some of our other programs, that didn’t solve their main problem: not knowing how to start an online business from the very beginning.
Because we took the time to listen to our prospective customers and come up with a product that would solve that problem, it’s no surprise that the Internet Money Club sold out in a matter of weeks.
Rule #2: Focus on Wants Instead of Needs
Even if you do a good job of getting to know your prospect, you can fall into a big trap. In fact, it’s one of the biggest mistakes both marketers and gift givers make. And it happens when you focus more on what your prospects need, and not on what they want.
Now, this can seem counterintuitive. You may think that if Jimmy needs new underwear and tube socks, he must surely want them. But I can guarantee that what he wants is that new Xbox game. Likewise, you might think, "If this product is something my customers need, surely they must want it… or at least see the benefit in it."
We’ve fallen into this trap ourselves. Take, for example, the marketing campaign we created for a program called The Instant Entrepreneur. Everyone in the office thought the concept was great – giving start-up entrepreneurs all the forms, tax information, legal requirements, etc. they would need to start a business.
But we released the marketing campaign… and it fell flat on its face. It was probably our single worst product launch EVER in terms of sales.
When we evaluated the campaign, we realized we had made the "wants vs. needs" mistake. What our prospects wanted was a quick and easy way to get a business going so they could supplement their income. Sure, they needed the information in our Instant Entrepreneur program… but it wasn’t what they wanted.
Are you making this mistake in your business? And are you falling into the "wants vs. needs" trap in your gift giving?
Fixing this problem is fairly simple. And it goes back to Rule #1. Understand your prospects. Listen to them. Get to know them. Find out as much as you can about them. And then give them what they want. Don’t presume that you know better. What you think is good for them is not always going to be something they’ll want as a gift… and it’s not always going to be something they’ll pay for.
To have a more profitable business… and to see pure joy on the faces of the people you give gifts to… just follow these two rules:
1. Understand your prospects.
2. Focus on their wants instead of their needs
[Ed. Note: Patrick Coffey is ETR's Director of Internet Marketing. Discover one of the most profitable "hidden" Internet income opportunities around in the Secrets of Easy Internet MoneyCD series.]
The Greatest Medical Discovery of the Century
Scientists have discovered a remarkable substance that has the power to prevent diabetes, stop heart disease before it starts, and kill cancer cells on contact. In fact, this substance has been shown to prevent and treat more than 20 major diseases in all!
However, more than 85% of the population is deficient in this disease-killer at least part of the year. And believe it or not, medical professionals and health authorities actually advise people to avoid the single greatest source of this vital substance.
Click here to learn why you probably haven’t heard about this revolutionary discovery.
How Your Daily Newspaper Can Help You "Grasp" the World
As more and more people depend on the Internet as their primary news source, newspapers become less and less influential. Still, you probably have one delivered every day… and at least scan the headlines.
Well, here’s a way to get a little something extra out of your subscription: Use it to improve your "grasp" on the world at large.
I discovered this technique during my medical school years. After fracturing my hand (during my Surgery rotation, of course), I had to get back function in my hand quickly. This method allowed me to regain my grip strength and finger flexibility in one-third the normal time.
It will help you not only if you have an injured hand, but also if you have general weakness due to aging or arthritis. Here’s what to do:
- Sit at a table with a newspaper in front of you, opened to the middle spread.
- Slap your opened palm into the middle of the open page.
- Keeping your hand firmly on the page, slowly crumple it into your fist, using finger power alone.
- When the page is crumpled into a ball in your fist, squeeze it as tightly as you can. Then throw the crumpled page into an open bag.
- Now, do the same thing with the opposite hand.
- Repeat steps 2 through 4, alternating hands, until you have crumpled up the entire paper.
- Wash the newsprint off your hands.
Begin with a small tabloid, like the National Enquirer. (Sneak one into your supermarket cart when nobody’s looking.) After a week, you can move up to larger tabloids. When you’ve mastered those, try full-format papers, like USA Today, your hometown paper, and, eventually, the daily New York Times. After about a month of that, you may be able to make it through the entire Sunday edition of The New York Times, including all the ads and supplements.
When you get to that point, I promise you, you’ll have a grip of steel.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Bill is William Thomas Stillwell, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery at SUNY, Stony Brook. He is CEO of Dr. Bill's Clinic Inc.,and author of How to Eliminiate Knee Pain - Once & for All! ]
Holiday Stress De-Activator: Relax Your Expectations
By Bob Cox
One thing that used to aggravate me about the holidays is what I call the Holiday Scheduling Breakdown. My co-workers would go on vacation, my bosses or partners would take days off, and my vendors and associates would take longer than normal to fulfill requests. It seemed that no one was around! It was practically impossible to find people who were available for a meeting, to discuss a joint venture, or to complete a project.
One day, I realized that I was fighting a losing battle, and decided to adjust my thinking and planning to keep my business goals on track.
It is super-easy to allow the Holiday Scheduling Breakdown to get to you. When your colleague cancels a meeting because she’s decided to visit her family in Wisconsin, you feel frustrated and panicked. If you get held up at work and have to miss your brother’s annual New Year’s Eve party, you feel guilty and depressed.
Instead of getting wound up, simply relax your expectations of your family, friends, business associates… and yourself.
You should also relax your expectations of the holidays in general. It is hard to recreate the idyllic joys of childhood. In fact, what you remember as the "perfect" holiday has almost certainly been embellished by time and nostalgia. Don’t let yourself compare this year’s holiday to "what once was." It can’t possibly measure up to your memory. Loosen up. Roll with the punches. You and the people around you will enjoy the holidays much more if you do.
[Ed. Note: Bob Cox is the creator of The Billionaire Way and the voice of ETR's Total Success Achievement Program. Members get weekly motivational Power Surge Messages packed with advice on how to accomplish their goals... twice-monthly teleseminars with Bob and Patrick Coffey... and personal coaching calls. Click here to learn how you can achieve all your goals in 2008.
For a FREE special report filled with 9 more ways to reduce your holiday stress, click here.]
10 Little Things I Love About the Holidays
By Sharika Kellogg, ETR’s Customer Service Manager
1. Christmas in Jersey (especially if it snows), and then escaping the cold weather to come back home to Florida.
2. My mother stating every year that we are not doing Christmas… and then decorating the house like Martha Stewart.
3. The fact that I am reduced to being a child again, and have to think about and write a Christmas List to "Santa" (my parents).
4. The "Bah humbug" and "The Dallas Cowboys STINK" T-shirts that my father wears during the holidays.
5. The smell of turkey and sweet potatoes baking in the oven.
6. Knowing that I don’t have to make my bed or clean my room for at least one day before my mother starts complaining.
7. The smiles on my twin goddaughters’ gooey faces as they get really sticky eating huge fat candy canes… that I gave them.
8. Hot toddies and my fireplace.
9. New slippers that I only use for that week and abandon when I get home.
10. Seeing my whole family.
It’s Fun to Know: The Christmas Tree’s Journey to the U.S.
The custom of putting up a Christmas tree can be traced back to 16th century Germany. As early as 1570, people in Germany decorated small trees with fruit, nuts, and paper flowers during the winter holiday. The practice spread throughout Europe, and was introduced to the American colonies by German settlers.
(Source: University of Illinois Extension)
Put Thousands of Extra Dollars Into Your Bank Account Every Month
21 percent of adults surveyed said a lottery would be the most practical strategy for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars, according to a recent survey of about 1,000 Americans by Opinion Research Corporation.
Don’t fritter away your life away waiting to win the lottery. It ain’t gonna happen.
If you’d like a much more reliable new source of income – a way to put thousands or even tens of thousands of extra dollars into your bank account every month, we’ve found a formula that has worked over and over again.
If you’d like to spend the rest of your life the way you deserve to, you owe it to yourself to look into this opportunity.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Flout
To "flout" (FLOWT) is to treat with contempt. The word is derived from the Middle English for "to play the flute."
Example (as used in The New York Times): "The thorough training in the fine points of lyric writing that he has received from Hammerstein has made [Stephen] Sondheim highly critical of those lyricists who flout the basic techniques of the craft."
[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
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