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Read Alex Mandossian's previous newsletter articles below:

How to Get People to Open Your E-mails

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Picture this: You spend hours writing an article that you KNOW will motivate people to tears/laughter/action. You send it to your e-mail list – a group of people who have specifically asked to hear from you – and no one opens the e-mail. The article ends up unread, deep in your subscribers’ inboxes. Your words aren’t digested, your ideas aren’t discussed, and your suggestions aren’t tested.

Frustrating, no?

It’s even more frustrating if you’re an Internet marketer and your revenue relies on people opening your e-mails, reading your articles or sales letters, and taking the actions you recommend.

In most (if not all) cases, you’ll never have a 100 percent open rate – where every last one of your subscribers opens your e-mail. In fact, according to e-mail marketing company Campaign Monitor, “If you are getting an open rate between 20 percent and 40 percent, you are probably somewhere around average.”

The thing is, the more people who open your e-mails, the more chances you have to make sales.

Let’s say 5 percent of your subscribers open your e-mails (more…)

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Why Multitasking Destroys Your Productivity

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Most entrepreneurs I know are proud of their “multitasking” ability. But maybe they shouldn’t be.

The term was originally applied to computers – to describe the way a CPU solves problems by scheduling tasks and switching back and forth from task to task until each one gets done. Well, that may be an efficient way for a computer to work, but it’s anything but efficient when it comes to your productivity.

Dave Crenshaw wrote my favorite book on the topic, and I recommend it to anyone who still thinks and feels that multitasking is cool. On page 29 in The Myth of Multitasking, he writes:

“Around the end of the twentieth century, some wordsmith saw the connection between our increasingly hectic world and the world of the computer. A catchword was born.

Newspapers began peppering their articles with the word. Talk show hosts began using it with frequency. Magazines began publishing articles about how to multitask more effectively.

Multitasking quickly became as popular and accepted as the automobile and the hamburger.”

Dave Crenshaw has a more accurate word to describe flipping back and forth between two (or more) activities. He calls it “switchtasking.”

Multitasking or switchtasking reduces your efficiency (your ability to do the right things) and your effectiveness (your ability to do things right) because it forces you to keep changing your mental focus. During the switchover time (less than a second, in most cases), your concentration diminishes and the number of mistakes you make dramatically increases.

In fact, many states (including California) have outlawed multitasking on the highway by making it illegal to speak on a handheld mobile phone while driving a car.

“A mere half second of time lost to task switching can mean the difference between life and death for a driver using a cellphone, because during the time that the car is not totally under control, it can travel far enough to crash into obstacles the driver might have otherwise avoided,” reported Dr. David Meyer from the University of Michigan.

Okay, so let me ask you a candid question. How many of the following common multitasking activities do you engage in?

Writing e-mails while speaking on the telephone
Checking voice mail while speaking to your spouse
Reading the newspaper while listening to the news
Watching TV while having a family conversation
Tweeting while instant messaging while…

I’m guessing you’ve done “all of the above” at some point in your adult life. But my point isn’t to nag you about multitasking. It is to make you conscious of how destructive it can be.

It’s not only mentally stressful to splinter your attention (and make mistakes along the way), multitasking sets you up for failure… and the guilt of not completing everything you set out to do.

Stacking vs.Multitasking

Now if you do two things at once but can keep the majority of your attention on only ONE of those things, that’s a whole different animal. I call this stacking. Dave Crenshaw calls it background tasking. (You can call it whatever you wish.)

Stacking helps you get more done, faster and better. It is a productive use of your time because only ONE of the tasks you are doing requires mental effort.

Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:

Eating dinner while watching a video
Jogging while listening to your iPod
Driving while listening to the radio
Writing an e-mail while printing out a document
Munching on a snack while riding a bicycle
Listening to the news while showering
Reading a book while getting a haircut

Stacking doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll become more effective (by doing the right things), but it can practically guarantee more efficiency (doing things right to get maximum results in minimum time).

Stacking & America’s Middle Class

Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, but he did figure out how to produce automobiles that were within the reach of the average American. And I believe he did this by preventing his workers from multitasking.

Prior to his introduction of the assembly line to the manufacturing process, cars were individually crafted by teams of skilled workmen. But instead of having one team work on one car, from start to finish, he created a stacking environment where the cars came to the workers – and each worker performed the same assembly task again and again.

The stacking power of the assembly line reduced the time it took to manufacture a car from 13 hours to less than six. That made it possible for Ford to offer the Model T for $825 when it made its debut in 1908. Four years later, the price dropped to $575. By 1914, Ford claimed a 48 percent share of the world’s automobile market.

What to Do Now

You can stop the insanity of multitasking right now by listing (right here) two or three multitasking activities you commonly engage in at work or at home.

Then, the next time you catch yourself multitasking, stop. Take a moment to think about what you’re doing, and quickly choose one of those tasks to focus on first. Complete that task before you switch to the other one.

I think you’ll find that this automatically makes you more efficient, more effective – and feeling a lot better about yourself for getting multiple jobs done right.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about success. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at www.AlexMandossianToday.com.

Interested in making between $50,000 and $5 million - starting this year? Find out how to do so right here.]

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AIDA: A 100-Year-Old Formula That You Can Use to Make More Money

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

If you’re an entrepreneur, CEO, public speaker, author, or information marketer, you owe it to yourself, your business, and your lifestyle to take a closer look at the revenue-generating potential of teleseminars – even if you’ve never listened to one.

One of the most profitable teleseminars I’ve ever conducted took place on the evening of December 4, 2008. It was a “Preview Call” to help find buyers for my Teleseminar Secrets training series.

More than 255 prospective customers ended up making a $2,500 purchase.

If you’re counting, that’s over $637,500.

How can you achieve results like these with your own teleseminars? (Or with practically any other form of promotional communication?)

One of the best sales-making techniques I’ve found is called the AIDA Formula. It’s been proven to work for over 100 years, and involves only four simple steps.

The four steps are simple to remember: First, you grab your prospect’s Attention (A) about your offer. Second, you elicit their Interest (I) about your offer. Third, you amplify their Desire (D) to purchase your offer. And fourth, you influence them to take Action(A) with their wallet.

Easy, right?

Unfortunately, many marketers don’t understand exactly how to implement this powerful technique.

I’ve observed dozens of veteran marketers make the mistake of moving too fast to the second half of the AIDA Formula – the Desire and Action part. And that often results in losing the sale (and the prospect) for life!

This mistake is easy to avoid. Here’s how…

Picture the AIDA process as an inverted triangle, like the one you see here:

As you can see, the inverted triangle has four sections. Each section (from the top down) becomes smaller, representing the percentage of prospects you’re likely to influence at that point in the AIDA process.

The section at the top (Attention) is the largest, because getting a prospect’s Attention is easier than eliciting his Interest to continue watching, listening, or reading more about your offer.

The second section (Interest) is larger than the third section (Desire), because it is easier to elicit a prospect’s Interest in your offer than to amplify his Desire to buy.

And the third section (Desire) is larger than the fourth and final section (Action), because it’s easier to amplify a Desire to buy than to influence Action.

A problem arises when the marketer makes the mistake of expecting one promotional communication - such as one e-mail message, one teleseminar, or one direct-mail letter – to do all the heavy lifting and capture the sale.

It IS possible to do that. A powerful sales letter, for instance, can grab a prospective customer’s attention and move him through the entire four parts of the triangle to take action. However, it can be easier to convert even your most skeptical prospects into buyers just by splitting the AIDA inverted triangle in two parts instead of four: Attention-Interest and Desire-Action.

Let’s use a teleseminar as our example. (But this technique works with practically any marketing medium.)

Teleseminars work wonders in grabbing Attention and eliciting Interest from prospects to learn more about your offer. But it takes a website to amplify their Desire and influence Action.

Remember the teleseminar I told you about earlier? I was able to get more than 255 people to make a $2,500 purchase. Yet, if you listen to the call, you’ll notice that its purpose was to simply grab Attention and elicit Interest from my listeners.

Where Desire and Action came in is when I referred the 1,600+ listeners to my website TeleseminarSecrets.com. It was at the website that most of the promotional heavy lifting was done. We included video testimonials, frequently asked questions, success stories, irresistible bonus gifts, and a solid money-back guarantee.

The people who visited my site after the teleseminar were already Interested in what I was offering. My site just amplified their Desire and got them to take Action – and become customers.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about marketing. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at http://www.AlexMandossianToday.com

Interested in making between $50,000 and $5 million - starting this year? Find out how to do so right here.]

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Discover the Learning Power of “Content Diving”

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

I often enjoy cold pizza “the morning after” more than the piping hot version the night before.

What does the joy of devouring day-old pizza have to do with your success as an info-marketing entrepreneur?

Two things, actually…

1. Principle centered content never gets stale, it only gets better with age.

You can return to it again and again to see it with new eyes on YouTube, hear it with new ears on a teleseminar, or visualize it with a new mind when reading a blog post or an e-mail message like this one.

2. Deep diving into familiar content doesn’t breed contempt, it breeds more success!

Your one and only path to mastering anything is through the path of familiarity.

If you are an info marketer, the only way your prospects can acknowledge you as a trusted advisor on a topic they are unfamiliar with… is to first acknowledge you as a trusted advisor on a topic they are familiar with.

That makes a lot of sense, right?

As the French novelist Marcel Proust once said: “The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” (That quote will remain framed and hung up on my home-office wall as long as I’m breathing.)

I know you won’t yet find a definition for “content diving” in Wikipedia or any online dictionary. Yet I also know that when your readers, listeners,orviewers decide to dive deep into your info-marketing content, you have already arrived in their minds as their trusted advisor.

How can you use content diving to make yourself more successful? Visit www.EarlytoRise.com right now. See the box on the upper-right of the home page? It says “Search” next to an empty white field.

That’s the content diving tool I want you to utilize more often when you visit Early to Rise (and any other site or blog that can help you achieve success more quickly).

Put your fingers on your keyboard and type a few keyword phrases into that Search box (just like you do at Google) to discover the hidden treasure you’ve been missing.

I can practically guarantee that you’ll accelerate your learning on the topics you’re interested in a lot faster and better, and with less effort.

[Ed. Note: Make sure you apply your new content diving skills to marketing master Alex Mandossian's blog here. And let us know which websites offer you the best and most useful content right here.]

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Does Your E-Mail Inbox Need a 60-Second Cleansing?

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

It was a warm Friday morning in Kona, Hawaii… and there I was eating my breakfast with five of my friends, all members of the Transformation Leadership Council.

Suddenly, that all-important topic of distractions came up. So I seized the opportunity to ask all five thought leaders the single most important entrepreneurial productivity question that I routinely ask my students, friends, colleagues, and even my mentors:

“What’s the number one distraction you inevitably face each day in your personal and professional life?”

All five gave the same answer – the same answer I hear from my students, my friends, my colleagues, and my mentors.

E-mail!

Imagine that. The number one distraction faced by just about everyone today didn’t even exist for them a decade ago.

Most successful businesspeople have come up with ways to reduce the negative impact e-mail has on productivity. For example, Michael Masterson recommends checking e-mail once, maybe twice, a day. But no matter how efficiently they manage their inboxes, it’s surprising to me how many ultra-successful entrepreneurs experience feelings of guilt, shame, and even contempt for the number of e-mails that go unopened and unresponded to.

Guilt? Shame? Contempt? Wow! How can an innocent form of communication originally designed for convenience create so much tension, stress, and worry for so many people?

I have no idea how to answer that question, but I do have a simple three-step process to do something about it.

Your 3-Step E-Mail Elimination Plan

If you have the courage to give this proven method a fair try, you can eliminate those unopened and undeleted e-mails (and the negative feelings attached to them) in less than 60 seconds.

I do this every month, and I encourage you to do it too. It will liberate you and free your mind so you can get it back where it belongs – on revenue generation.

Step 1:Categorize your e-mail messages in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top to the least recent at the bottom).

Step 2: Quickly scan all of your messages and make certain there aren’t any critical ones that you’ve opened but haven’t yet responded to. (You’ll take care of those as soon as you finish this 60-second elimination procedure.) Then highlight all e-mail messages – opened and unopened – that are over 72 hours (three days) old.

It’s as simple as breathing so far, right? Well, Step #3 isn’t as easy for most people

Step 3: After all those old e-mail messages are highlighted, take a 10-second deep breath… and then take five seconds to put your index finger on the DELETE key and press it down firmly.

Uh, yeah… that’s it.

MaryEllen Tribby does something similar. When she returns from vacation or a business trip, she deletes the hundreds of e-mails that have accumulated. (Before she leaves, she sets up an autoresponder message to let people know she’s away and ask them to re-send their e-mails if they still require her attention.)

Any e-mail that’s over three days old is a dinosaur by 2009 standards. People who e-mail you want responses and want them fast. If you can’t satisfy their need for urgency, delete their e-mails so you can remove the guilt, shame, or contempt they make you feel.

Look, if their message is really that important to them, they’ll e-mail you again, right?

As MaryEllen has found, most of them won’t. Urgent problems and “issues” somehow get taken care of. And for those few that still need your attention, you’ll get a second chance to do something about them within 72 hours… and you’ll do it stress-free!

I know this sounds a little harsh if you’re used to being responsive to everyone who e-mails you. But keep in mind that the more successful you become, the more e-mails you’re likely to get… and the less likely it will be that you’ll have time to respond to all of them.

Bottom Line: This simple three-step method puts you in control of your time. And that’s what it is – YOUR TIME.

I even take it a step further. Not only do I do this 60-second cleansing every 30 days or so, I actually change my private e-mail address every year.

Working from a “zero base” e-mail inbox means no leftover e-mails that cause me stress and worry. I typically read and respond, read and ignore, or read and delete.

Try it.

Permanently regain control of your time by following our step-by-step goal-setting system. It will help you de-stress your life and accomplish far more than you ever thought possible. Learn more here.]

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The Decoy Effect – and How It Can Help You Make More Sales

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Let’s say you’re trying to decide where to dine tonight – and you’re in the mood for Mexican food.

Your spouse says, “I heard about a new place the other day. Supposedly, it has handmade tortillas and chiles rellenos that are to die for. The only problem is, it’s about a 30-minute drive from here.”

You’re hungry right now. So your spouse offers another option: “There’s our old standby, Don’s Tex Mex. It’s right down the street. But, as you know, the food’s only average.”

You’re torn between your growling belly… and a desire for those handmade tortillas.

And then your spouse pipes up again, “I just remembered that restaurant we went to last month. Remember how good the salsa was? But… it’s about 45 minutes away.”

Suddenly, the 30-minute drive to the new place with the handmade tortillas doesn’t seem so bad.

It happens all the time – where the introduction of a third option suddenly makes one of your earlier options look better. It sounds irrational. And it is. But it’s such a common phenomenon, it even has a name. It’s called the “decoy effect.”

Marketers often take advantage of the decoy effect. Consider the following scenario…

You’re at the movies, and you’re thirsty. So you go to the concession counter to get a soda. The small size is $3.00. The large size is an outrageous $5.00. But then the person behind the counter points out that it is only 50 cents more than the medium size. Suddenly, the large size seems like a better deal.

That’s the decoy effect.

In his New York Times best-seller, Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely describes an interesting study he conducted with students at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The study was based on a clever bit of “decoy-effect” pricing in an ad he found for a subscription to Economist magazine:

Offer A: Internet-only subscription for $59

Offer B: Print-only subscription for $125

Offer C: Print-and-Internet subscription for $125

“I read these offers one at a time,” writes Ariely. “The first offer seemed reasonable. The second option seemed a bit expensive, but still reasonable. But then I read the third option: a print and Internet subscription for $125. I read it twice before my eye ran back to the previous options.”

At this point, Ariely asked himself the same question you may have asked yourself when presented with a similar Good-Better-Best pricing model: “Who would want to choose the ‘Better’ option [print delivery only - Offer B] when both the ‘Good’ [Internet delivery only - Offer A] and ‘Better’ options could be purchased at the same $125 price [Offer C]?”

Good question.

In my own marketing experience, I’ve found that the decoy offer – Offer B in this Good-Better-Best pricing model – influences my prospects to have a strong bias toward Offer C (the “Best” option).

When Ariely presented a group of 100 MIT students with the three subscription options from the Economist ad, the same thing happened. Though some selected Offer A, most went with Offer C. None of them selected Offer B, the decoy.

So he wondered what would happen if he removed Offer B. After all, since no one had selected it, it shouldn’t make any difference, right?

Not exactly…

When he presented another group of 100 MIT students with just two options – Offer A [Internet-only for $59] and Offer C [the Internet-print combo for $125], 68 of them chose Offer A and only 32 chose Offer C. Which makes the “decoy-removed” version of the ad far less profitable than the one the Economist actually ran.

I’ve split-tested the traditional “Good-Better-Best” model against the decoy model myself.

In the traditional model, Good = $X, Better = $Y, Best [Good + Better] = $Z.

But over and over again, the winning model looked like this: Good = $X, Better = $Y, Best [Good + Better] = $Y.

How can you use the decoy effect to make your offers stronger, more appealing, and more profitable? Start testing today.

There's no better time than now to start your own Internet business. And ETR can help. As a member of our elite Internet Money Club, you'll get a proven roadmap for building and growing a profitable business online. Are you ready to create a business that could potentially make $100,000 to $25 million a year? Space is limited, so find out now if you can still enroll in the "Class" of 2009.]

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The Magic Formula

Monday, December 8th, 2008

To improve your marketing communications, organize your words with the Magic Formula. It is the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way I know of to get (and hold) the attention of your prospects and customers.

The Magic Formula was first developed by Dale Carnegie – and in three basic steps, it’s everything you need to know to become an incredibly poised, polished, and masterful communicator.

Here’s the formula in its simplest form:

Step 1. Incident – Tell an engaging story that relates to the main point you want to make (i.e., the action you want your readers/listeners to take).

Step 2. Point/Action – Recommend (briefly and clearly) the one specific action you want them to take.

Step 3. Benefit – Explain exactly what benefits they will gain as a result of taking that action.

The formula is a time-tested tool that is guaranteed to dramatically improve the pulling power of all your marketing efforts as soon as you start to utilize it.

[Ed. Note: Marketing expert Alex Mandossian has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients. You can get his advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free right here.

For 12 profit-acceleration secrets that can help increase your company's sales, check out the Amazon.com best-seller Changing the Channel by Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby.]

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What Are We Split-Testing Today?

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

I ask myself the same five-word question at the beginning of each day… and I’ve asked it repeatedly ever since December 2004: “What are we ’split-testing’ today?” One of the things I’m certain of is that this has unlocked the secret passageway to accelerated business growth, wealth, and success.

I encourage you to ask yourself (and your team) the same question. Ask it at the beginning of each day, and then sit back, relax, and watch what happens.

Magically, this powerful declaration almost instantly puts you (and your team members) into a market-centered mindset. It puts you in the marketing driver’s seat to capture more profits – faster, better, and easier.

In my own business, this question has helped me achieve accelerated growth month after month, without the stress and worry that accompanies marketing guesswork.

What can split-testing do for you?

Split-testing is the best way to find out which marketing efforts are working best… and which aren’t working at all. You merely choose an element you want to test – a headline, for instance – and test one version against another. Whichever version best helps you achieve your marketing goals – collecting names for your e-mail list, making sales, etc. – is the winner, the one you run with. (Of course, we are always testing new variables against the original winners.)

The more split-tests you do, the more chances you have to increase your profits.

Below are eight single-variable split-tests I’ve conducted during the past few years – and the results of each test. You should consider trying these split-tests for your own business. The results you get could accelerate your sales and profits for the rest of your professional life!

• Split-Test #1: Inbound Phone Order Script

“Call now. Operators are standing by…” (Loser)

“Call now. If the line is busy, keep calling…” (WINNER)

• Split-Test #2: Online Order Button Copy

“Add To Cart >>” (WINNER)

“Buy Now!” or “Order Now>>” (Losers)

• Split-Test #3: Free Shipping & Handling Pitch

“Free shipping and handling…” (Loser)

“We pay for your shipping and handling charges…” (WINNER)

• Split-Test #4: 2nd Product Free

“Get 2 for the price of 1…” (Loser)

“Buy 1 and your 2nd one is free…” (WINNER)

• Split-Test #5: Online Audio & Video Testimonials

Testimonials WITHOUT “Case Study” story (Loser)

Testimonials WITH “Case Study” story (WINNER)

• Split-Test #6: Auto-Responder Follow-Up E-Mails

7 daily e-mail reminders in 7 days (WINNER)

7 weekly e-mail reminders in 7 weeks (Loser)

• Split-Test #7: Special Existing Customer Offer

One-Time Buyer Sublist – sending the offer to subscribers who have made only one purchase from us (Loser)

Multi-Buyer Sublist – sending the offer to subscribers who have made at least two purchases from us (WINNER)

• Split-Test #8: “Good-Better-Best” Price Test

The traditional pricing method:

Good = $X, Better = $Y, Best (Good+Better) = $Z (Loser)

The decoy pricing method:

Good = $X, Better = $Y, Best (Good+Better) = $Y (WINNER)

Try some of the split-tests I revealed above. Or create your own single-variable tests. They will teach you a LOT about your marketing. And the results can ensure that you will maximize your marketing efforts and make the biggest possible profits.

Keep in mind that outside variables can significantly impact your split-test results. When I say “outside variables,” I’m talking about things like business-to-business lists vs. business-to-consumer lists… the time of year (not to mention the state of the economy!)… whether your sales package is conveyed through audio or video… and many others.

You can have the same offer, product, and price and your split-tests may differ when these outside variables come into play.

Remember This: For each split-test you do, your decisions should always be governed by your results.

If you decide not to put split-testing into your daily marketing ritual, here’s the typical downward spiral you can expect just before your business goes on life support…

No split-tests leads to no results. No results leads to no growth. No growth leads to no innovation. No innovation leads to no market relevance. No market relevance leads to no business.

Game over. Thanks for playing

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” said Desiderius Erasmus. No truer words have ever been spoken in the context of marketing today. Each of your split-tests gives you 20/20 vision with both eyes wide open.

What NOT to Split-Test: Split-testing, like any other important marketing activity, will cost you some time and money. Duh! So it doesn’t make sense to test whispers. In other words, split-test “screaming” variables. It’s not worth split-testing price points of $199.95 vs. $199.98, for example, or font formats of Garamond vs. Times Roman.

To paraphrase marketing legend Ted Nicholas, “The Holy Grail of direct marketing is the single-variable split-test.” By split-testing, you’ll never again have to chase down winning offers… winning offers will chase you down!

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about building profitable relationships with customers. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. At ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp, Alex will reveal a strategy that could ensure you marketing success like no other method you have ever seen. Reserve your spot at Bootcamp today.

You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at AlexMandossianToday.com.]

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Are You Open With Your Marketing Interactions?

Friday, September 26th, 2008

The Johari Window is a cognitive psychology tool that was named after its two creators, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham (”Jo + Hari”). It is used to help people understand their interpersonal relationships. But I’ve found this model to be especially useful for analyzing business interactions between entrepreneurs and their prospects or customers.

Let me show you what I mean…

The Window has four panes (quadrants) that divide your “personal awareness” characteristics into Open, Hidden, Blind, and Unknown. The lines dividing the four panes are like window shades that can move up and down or left and right as an interaction progresses.

The “Open” Quadrant (upper-left)

In the Open quadrant of the Window go things that both you and your customer/prospect know about you.

In an online marketing context, when a new prospect “opts in” to your list, the window shade in this quadrant is practically closed, since there has been little information exchanged between the two of you. But as you build rapport with that prospect by utilizing autoresponder sequences, blog posts, e-letter articles, teleseminars, and other marketing communications, the window shade starts opening and the Open quadrant gets bigger.

The “Blind” Quadrant (upper-right)

In the Blind quadrant go things that your prospect/customer knows about you (on a personal or professional level) that you are unaware of.

Let’s say you’re conducting a teleseminar and one of your callers hangs up in the middle because she has to pick up her kids from school. This information is in your Blind quadrant because she knows she’s hanging up the phone but you don’t.

If that same person calls you after the teleseminar and tells you she had to hang up before the call was over, the window shade in the Blind quadrant starts closing by moving to the right, which enlarges the Open quadrant.

The “Hidden” Quadrant (lower-left)

In the Hidden quadrant go things that you know about yourself or your marketing campaigns (in a business context) that your prospect/customer doesn’t know.

If, for example, you’ve intentionally withheld information about an upcoming marketing launch, this information is in the Hidden quadrant. But as soon as you inform your list about the details of that launch, you pull the window shade down, narrowing the Hidden quadrant and enlarging the Open quadrant.

Here’s the interesting part: As you get to know your prospects and customers better, it’s only natural for you to feel more comfortable about disclosing more intimate details about yourself, right? Well, in a Johari Window context, this process is called: “self-disclosure.” In a marketing context, I call it “transparency.”

Granted, it’s a little scary to be transparent with your prospects and customers the first time. But when you make a habit of it, you’ll discover that it’s the highest impact rapport “accelerator” of all marketing communication methods.

The “Unknown” Quadrant (lower-right)

In the Unknown quadrant are things that neither you nor your prospects/customers know about you or your business.

If you’ve ever done any public speaking, you know how much new information can be revealed to both you and your audience during the course of a typical Q&A session. An interactive situation like this almost always triggers personal growth.

In a Johari Window context, this process moves even more information into the Open quadrant, shrinking the Unknown quadrant. In a marketing context, interacting with your prospects/customers is a “win-win” situation.

So What’s Your Next Step?

Building rapport with your customers/prospects – expanding the Open quadrant of your relationship – is like the game of chess: It’s easy to learn the basics, but it takes a lifetime to master.

But understand this: Once you start communicating with your prospects/customers – especially when you muster up the courage to be increasingly transparent with them – you’ll find that the majority of those relationships will become long-lasting and profitable.

You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at alexmandossian.com.]

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What’s Better Than Being a Top-Notch Inventor?

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

"Never invent, always improve."

This four-word sentence is indelibly etched in my mind. I also have it framed and hanging on the wall of my home office.

The marketing philosophy of choosing improvement over invention has generated millions of dollars for my info-publishing business, as well as those of my students.

Although the idea of becoming an "Improver" is not as sexy as being known as an "Inventor," it is improvement, not invention, that has generated billions for some of the most renowned people in history. Ironically, many of those folks have been inaccurately dubbed as "Inventors."

Here’s one example: Nikola Tesla invented the modern alternating current (AC) electric power system. Thomas Edison improved it. Tesla died broke. Edison died a millionaire.

Here’s another: Charles Haanel invented The Master Key System, the first self-help program for achievement and success. He died in obscurity, acknowledged by only a few loyal followers. Napoleon Hill improved Haanel’s system and commercialized it with his book Think and Grow Rich. And today Hill, not Haanel, is publicly acknowledged as the "father of personal development."

Here’s another example to drill my point deep…

The "assembly line" was invented long before Henry Ford walked through a meat-packing house in Chicago on one fateful afternoon. He observed that each butcher had a single, specialized task. This was nothing new to the meat-packing industry, but it was revolutionary and a brand-new innovation for automaking.

Henry Ford was NOT the Inventor of the assembly line. He was the Improver. Yet, it was this single improvement that gave Ford a definitive competitive advantage over his 2,000+ auto manufacturing rivals at the time. As a result, Henry Ford became one of the wealthiest human beings of his era.

What does improvement have to do with you?

If you’re an author, info-marketer (infopreneur), or the owner of a small business specializing in information products, the single most powerful "improvement" you can make to your bottom line is utilizing the power of "repurposing."

I didn’t coin the term, but I’m doing whatever it takes to make it common among my students and infopreneurs throughout the world.

Because you’ve read this far, my sense is you’re wondering how "improvement" can add a few zeros to your profit margins. If you’re nodding your head "yes" right now, then I encourage you to start repurposing your existing info products, rather than inventing new ones from a standing start.

A Primer on Repurposing

Repurposing means taking information you already have and repackaging it in different forms.

Let’s say you’ve written a book.

You could offer a teleseminar that covers the main concepts in your favorite chapter. The teleseminar could be free to buyers of your book and cost $19 for everyone else.

You could have a question and answer session during that teleseminar, and publish the Q&A in an e-book you sell for $29.95.

You could record the teleseminar on CD, then sell the recording.

You could transcribe the audio and sell transcripts.

You could sell MP3 downloads of the teleseminar that people can listen to on their iPods.

You could break the teleseminar transcript into small "chapters," and offer them as bonuses with your other products.

You could package the transcripts and the CD in a three-ring binder and sell them together.

There’s almost no end to what you could do with your existing information. You do the hard work of writing the book… then you repurpose the material almost endlessly without a lot of extra effort.

And this is not only easy – it can mean monster profits. One teleseminar I gave ended up generating a whopping $13,081.50 in revenue for me.

With repurposing, you avoid the trouble and struggle of creating or "inventing" new info products from scratch. There’s nothing "sexy" about that.

All I’m encouraging you to do, then, is to simply repurpose what you already have (creating new "product species," as I call them), and automatically fatten your bottom line faster, better, and a lot easier.

End of story.

[Ed. Note: Repurposing your existing information products is only one way to make a killing on the Internet. With a few simple but powerful tools, you can catapult yourself to success almost immediately with an online business. Discover the only valid shortcut to online riches here.

Marketing expert Alex Mandossian has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients. You can get his advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free right here. And to learn - step by step - how affiliate marketing with teleseminars has helped Alex make $25,000 an hour, go to www.TeleseminarSecretsProfile.com.]

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How to Get Other People to Make Sales for You and Boost Your Bottom Line

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Teleseminars have helped me make up to $25,000 an hour. They’re my bread and butter.

The most common way to make money with teleseminars is to use them to sell products or services to your existing or prospective customers. But there’s another way.

You can offer special teleseminars specifically for your affiliates.

What are affiliates? They are people who promote your products and services to their customers and prospects. If their prospects buy, you pay them a percentage of the sale. They’re like a sales force you pay only when they produce results.

You can build your business just by teaching your affiliates how to become better marketers. This helps them sell their own products… and it also helps them sell your products.

Your affiliates are essentially treasure maps that lead to treasure chests full of other treasure maps. You can find all those other treasure maps by hosting teleseminars for your affiliates on a regular basis.

These teleseminars are valuable marketing tools in part because they create intimacy. They allow you to talk directly to your affiliates, which makes them feel like part of your exclusive group. They get your affiliates excited about your products and ready to promote them.

Another big benefit of teleseminars is they establish a win-win-win situation. You’ll make more money because you’ll sell more. Your affiliates will make more money because they’ll earn commissions. And – through your affiliates – you’ll be able to give useful, valuable products to many more customers than you could reach on your own.

Giving away useful information for free is a great way to get your affiliates pumped up about selling your products. I’ve done this with TeleseminarSecrets.com, VirtualBookTourSecrets.com, and PodcastSecrets.com – with every program I have to offer.

In my affiliate teleseminars, I talk about all the details of the program I want them to sell. And I tell them all the reasons that a customer would want to buy that program. What makes it superior to other programs. How it can help the customer make money. I also suggest ways for my affiliates to promote the program to their customers. This gets them charged up and champing at the bit to get out there and sell.

When I hosted a teleseminar like this for my 1Shopping Cart affiliates, I got them so pumped up that we saw a nice bump in sales within 24 hours.

The key is to make each teleseminar simple and exciting. And keep it to less than an hour. I’ve found that 45 minutes is the sweet spot.

But it doesn’t end there. I offer a contest for the affiliates who sell the most, plus additional bonuses depending on how many sales they make. I send out e-mails and use additional teleseminars to let all my affiliates know who the top affiliates are, as well as to answer questions and give them more ideas on how they can make more money.

Here’s how you can set up your own affiliate teleseminars:

First, of course, you need to set up an affiliate program. Don’t worry – it’s pretty easy to do.

Make sure your shopping cart can handle affiliates. (Some can’t.)
Put up a Web page with the affiliate sign-up form from your shopping cart.
Your shopping cart will give each affiliate a special link to your products – one created just for that person. This way, you can track which affiliates are bringing in the most customers and pay them accordingly.

Once you’ve got your affiliate program up and running, start coming up with ideas for teleseminars you can offer. For instance, you could hold a teleseminar where you:

… reveal how your best affiliates are marketing your products. Interview your top affiliates and have them share their secrets for making money.
… recognize best practices and outstanding efforts. Do this by not only teaching your own proven marketing strategies but also by having the affiliates teach what they do – and then openly acknowledging their efforts.
… give monetary awards to the "Affiliate of the Month." Feature the Affiliate of the Month on the call and let them share what they do, then mail them a check.
… introduce new products and discuss what makes them valuable to your affiliates’ customers. Use the call to teach your affiliates how to sell your new products to their lists.
… talk about upcoming events. If you’re doing a promotion of an existing product or a new product launch, this is the time to let your affiliates know about it so they can get it in their calendars.
… answer questions from individual affiliates

There’s another way you can use teleseminars to make money with your affiliates. Instead of offering a call for the affiliates, offer a call for the affiliates to promote. They make money on every person who signs up for the call. PLUS, they make money when the people they signed up buy something during or after the call.

Here’s how I did it with my TeleseminarSecrets.com affiliate program. First, I offered a preview call. I charged $20 for the preview call, and I paid my affiliates $18 for every customer they got to sign up for it. Plus, I paid them an additional $900 for each of their customers who signed up for TeleseminarSecrets.com.

Whichever method you choose to use, hosting teleseminars for your affiliates can skyrocket your affiliate marketing campaigns. But as simple as this technique is, it is oftentimes overlooked. Don’t make that mistake. It is a win-win-win situation that can make you lots of money.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian is the CEO of Heritage House Publishing Inc. Affiliate marketing with teleseminars has helped Alex make $25,000 an hour. If you want to learn exactly how he did it, step by step, go to www.TeleseminarSecretsProfile.com, where you'll also be able to get a free custom marketing electronic analysis.

You can get face time with Alex and other Internet marketing experts at ETR's 5 Days in July Internet Business Building Conference. We can accept only 75 attendees at this exclusive conference, so if you're interested, act soon. Update: As of this morning, fewer than SEVEN seats remain for this 75-person elite event. So get the details right now before every spot disappears.]

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How Building Business Relationships will Build Your Business

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

One of my biggest business assets has been the "big-name" relationships I’ve created and nurtured over the years. In fact, I consider this to be so important that I’ve created a business-building strategy around it.

Here’s how I did it…

About four years ago, I decided I wanted to do a joint venture with Jack Canfield. So I started building a foundation for that relationship. One of the first things I did was buy a domain name – AskJackCanfield.com – to give me a way to approach Jack to do teleseminars. (I’ll explain this in more detail in a few minutes.)

Fast-forward four years. In that time, I had done a few teleseminars with Jack. Meanwhile, the movie The Secret, which includes extensive interviews with Jack, had just come out. And that gave me an idea.

I went to Jack’s estate in Santa Barbara and said, "You know, because of The Secret , people want access to you. Let’s give them access for free – via teleseminars." Then I explained how we would make money by doing it.

Let’s say you’re one of those people who would like access to Jack Canfield. You just go to AskJackCanfield.com. This is a one-page website with a space for people to submit questions. Jack Canfield answers those questions during a free teleseminar the first Wednesday of every month. (I pose the questions to Jack myself.)

Even though the teleseminars aren’t directly making money for Jack and me, they are still good for us. They’re great for me, because I’m interviewing Jack and getting exposure. They’re good for Jack, because the questions people submit are generating more fodder, more information for his future books. Plus, each call can be repurposed into products we can sell.

For instance, we record each teleseminar and have someone transcribe it. Jack uses the transcripts to put together little "simple truths" books. These little books are about 50 pages each and have a CD inside – and there are 12 of them throughout the year. You get to hear Jack, who is fun to listen to, and you get to read him, as well.

Let’s go back to what happens when you go to AskJackCanfield.com. You ask your question. Then you are immediately redirected to a new page on the website – the Intermediary Paid Page (IPP). The IPP is between the page where you ask your question and the "Thank You" page, which has the call-in number for the teleseminar.

On the IPP page, you see me pointing down to a big, juicy $10 button that says something like this: "Look, we have four times as many people who have registered for the call as we can handle, and that is the absolute truth. But if you can’t get in, that’s okay… because you can listen to this call for life for $10."

But there’s more. If you decide not to pay $10 to get unlimited access to a recording of the teleseminar (a downloadable version), you have to click on a little tiny button that says "No thanks." You see, people don’t like to say "no." But we’re forcing them to say "no" if they want to get the call-in information without paying. So we get people who pay $10 for unlimited access to the teleseminar… just because it’s psychologically easier for them to say "yes."

Let’s say we get 4,000 people to attend the teleseminar, and 1,000 people to pay the $10. Not bad. $10,000 for a 70-minute session.

How much of that $10,000 do I get? Zero.

Why? Because this is my opportunity to pay Jack Canfield for promoting my products to the people on his customer list. Remember, my goal was to get Jack Canfield to be one of my joint-venture partners. So, four years ago, I started to plant the seeds of such a relationship – with the domain name, the free teleseminars, the $10 charge for unlimited access to the teleseminars. And now I can give him a big reason – the $10,000 – to be my partner.

If you were Jack Canfield, wouldn’t you be thinking, "Hey, this is a relationship I can’t afford to miss out on?"

But that $10,000 isn’t the only thing I do to make sure Jack wants to have a relationship with me. He can keep track of all the money he’s making from customers who come to him via his partnership with me.

For one thing, Jack can start selling back-end products he’s created based on ideas he’s gotten from the questions people ask. And he can repurpose the teleseminars into other products (like I mentioned above). He sells those products through a special link that he gives out during the teleseminars. And when teleseminar attendees use that link to buy Jack’s products, he knows where the orders came from. He can say, "Hey, I just made $5,000 in back-end sales. And $4,500 of those sales came from customers who attended the Alex Mandossian teleseminar."

Plus, the morning after each teleseminar we send a "Wow" e-mail to the people who did not buy the $10 unlimited access offer, and we give them another chance. ("Wow, what a call. If you decided you didn’t want unlimited access to it for $10 then, now is your chance.") Then, six days later, we send out a "Last Chance" e-mail. ("This is your last chance to get unlimited lifetime access to the teleseminar for $10.")

You can use a similar step-by-step strategy to show a "celebrity" that you want a joint-venture relationship with just how valuable you can be to him. Then, once you’ve proven you can make him money, you can ask your celebrity to market your products to his list. It’s likely that his list is much bigger than yours – which means it has the potential to make you a boatload of clams. For instance, Jack has become one of my super-affiliates for my Teleseminar Secrets and has sold many of my training programs to his list.

This is a "free-to-fee" strategy. And it takes guts, because you won’t be making money right away. You need to be able to hold out for the big payoff down the road.

Think of yourself as a stalk of bamboo. When bamboo is first planted, you don’t see anything above the ground for three years. After three years underground, a bamboo shoot germinates. Then, from the moment it sees sunlight, it’s full-grown in 60 days.

That’s what happens with this strategy. You’re planting little seeds along the way, building the relationship, building your value. And then, bam! You’ve created a strong bond with someone who can help you earn money for life.

[Alex Mandossian, CEO of Heritage House Publishing Inc., has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients and partners since 1991. To learn more about Alex’s teleseminar marketing strategies please click here.]

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$25,000 Per Hour Working From Home

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

How would you like to make more money in an hour than professional basketball and baseball players, not to mention Fortune 500 CEOs?

It’s possible. I’ve done it. I’ve done it without cold calling or working 18-hour days, seven days a week. And now I’m going to show you how you can do it too.

Last year, I sold $1 million in training in 27 days for my Teleseminar Secrets program. I did it from a home-based office in Northern California with just one part-time employee. After spending a few hours selling "seats," I discovered that I was making $25,000 an hour for about 41 hours of work.

Do the math and you’ll discover that this dollar-per-hour figure outranks that of many elite athletes, not to mention that it puts me on the top-10 list of the highest income CEOs of multi-billion-dollar companies.

So how did I do it?

I chose to do the training via a teleseminar or teleconference – which would allow me to reach many people at once, rather than trying to train them one-on-one. (There aren’t enough hours in a day for me to make big money by training people individually.)

A teleseminar is basically a phone call where hundreds of people can listen to the training and interact with the instructor. With the teleseminar, not only can I reach all of these people at one time, I can still give them a taste of "me" while I’m doing it. They feel like they’re getting a personalized training approach, and it doesn’t take me thousands of hours to accomplish it. That’s the real power of the teleseminar – achieving maximum productivity with minimum effort.

I’ve been doing teleseminars since 1999, which has allowed me to perfect the technique. The "one-on-many" approach is what makes this the fastest, easiest, and most economical of all the communication media on earth. Case closed.

Putting on your own teleseminar is easy. All you need is a bridge line (a telephone system that can connect hundreds of callers at once), a good marketing plan, and something useful and worthwhile to discuss during the call.

1. Setting Up a Bridge Line

One of the bridge lines I use is InstantTeleWebcast.com, which gives you unlimited use for $47 a month. You can also look into Voicetext.com, a service I’ve used on many occasions.

2. Filling Your Tele-Seats

In order to fill the seats for my Teleseminar Secrets program, I used direct-response marketing methods. One direct-response sales letter can sell hundreds or thousands of people at the same time. It doesn’t require a salesperson. The marketing materials do the selling for you. And if you put your promotional material on a website, the marketing materials are doing the selling 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, again, you are reaching many people as efficiently as possible.

How, exactly, did I fill the seats?

I put together a $20 content-rich preview teleseminar. I paid my affiliates $18 of that $20 for every sale of the preview teleseminar that was made through them, plus a percentage if the buyer purchased the complete program. That way, they were motivated to promote my call.

During the preview teleseminar, I explained the offer, then sent the participants to my website, where they could read my sales letter and make the purchase.

3. Coming Up With Teleseminar-Worthy Topics

You can talk about almost anything in a teleseminar. Just make sure it’s a topic that will be useful for your audience. Here are four ideas to get you started:

Customer-Appreciation Calls: In this type of teleseminar, you give online tutorials or new information about your products to your existing customers.

Here’s how it works: Contact people who have already purchased a product from you and offer them a free follow-up where they can ask questions for an hour. It’s basically a personal consultation on a one-on-many basis. It doesn’t make you money instantly – but it does create extremely loyal, appreciative customers who will turn around and tell their friends, colleagues, blog readers, etc., all about your products and customer devotion. Plus, customers who are happy with your service are more likely to buy more from you.

Public Tele-Critiques: In these teleseminars, one or two participants get to carry on a dialog with experts.

Here’s how it works: One of the participants puts her website or marketing plan up on the "chopping block," and the experts explain what she is doing right, what she is doing wrong, and what improvements she can make. The rest of the participants learn through listening to the critique. (You can charge extra for people to get the chance to get advice from you or an expert, or you can offer critiques to valued customers as a gift.)

Prospecting Calls: These (recorded or live) teleseminars offer useful information meant to inspire prospects to buy your products.

Here’s how it works: Each week or month, you conduct an "ask campaign," where you ask your prospects what they want to learn about a specific topic that is somehow related to your product line. You answer their questions in the teleseminar … and if you do it right, you convert them into customers. At the same time, their questions give you ideas for new products and new marketing approaches.

Another form of the prospecting call is to present an abbreviated form of an expensive program that you’re selling… with the intention of enticing them into buying the full program. That’s what I do with my Teleseminar Secrets program. I invite prospects to a free or low-cost preview. During the preview, I give an hour-long overview of the eight-week program, including plenty of useful, actionable advice that people can put to work without buying anything extra – though it’s also beneficial for people who go on to buy the entire program. Since the people who buy the entire program will have had an overview of what it covers, they are actually learning some of the material twice and, therefore, end up getting more out of it.

Expert-Interview Calls: In this type of teleseminar, you pay a well-known expert in your field to take part in the call. Then you sell tickets to people who would be interested in hearing what your expert has to say.

Here’s how it works: During the call, you ask the expert questions that will be useful to your callers. And you pocket the difference between what you pay him and what you bring in through ticket sales.

I’ve done money-making interviews with some of today’s most influential entrepreneurs, authors, direct marketers, and professional speakers, including Steven Covey, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy, Harvey Mackay, Les Brown, Robert Allen, Michael Gerber, James Ray, Jay Conrad Levinson, Joe Sugarman, T. Harv Eker, Joe Polish, Vic Conant, David Bach, Jay Abraham, Jack Canfield, and many others.

People like this usually charge hundreds – if not thousands – of dollars for an hour of their time. Which means that my teleseminar attendees get a huge deal by only paying $47 or so to hear me pick their brains. The expert provides the content for the call – and I look like a hero for giving my attendees the information.

That’s all there is to it.

Set up a bridge line… fill your tele-seats… and come up with an audience-pleasing topic. Put these three steps to work, and you’ll have the beginnings of a successful, profitable teleseminar business. This is the model I’ve used to make $25,000 an hour… and now you can do it too.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian, CEO of Heritage House Publishing Inc., has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients and partners via "electronic marketing" media such as TV infomercials, online catalogs, 24-hour recorded messages, voice/fax broadcasting, teleseminars, webinars, podcasts, and Internet marketing since 1991. You can get Alex’s insights into information marketing this fall at ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp. To get free instant access to Alex Mandossian’s blog on Electronic Marketing, please visit AlexMandossian.com.]

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How to Make $186.89 (or More!) a Minute

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

I was so excited my hands were shaking.

It was 7:13 p.m. on August 25, 2004, and I had just completed a content-rich, 70-minute teleseminar interview with personal-development and goal-achievement guru Brian Tracy.

Three hundred forty-two participants paid the $29.95 tuition without raising an eyebrow, and 83 percent of them opted to pay $10 more (the "upsell") to get unlimited download (and replay) access to our online release of the audio files and enhanced transcripts of the interview.

If you do the math, you’ll discover that the 70-minute teleseminar generated $13,081.50 in revenue, or $186.89 a minute. But the story doesn’t end there. Fifty-eight of the tele-participants decided to pay $30 more to acquire our "offline" release of a three-ring binder with the enhanced transcripts and an audio CD of the interview – to chalk up another $1,740. All told, we racked up nearly $15K in income for just a few hours of work!

Since 2001, I’ve trained entrepreneurs, independent professionals, and small-business owners to utilize teleseminars in combination with the Internet to boost and accelerate their business profits. Teleseminars have changed my life. Their leveraging power made it possible to turn my 2001 annual income into an hourly income in 2006… 16 times.

If you’re an entrepreneurial CEO, public speaker, author, or information marketer, you owe it to yourself, your business, and your lifestyle to take a closer look at the revenue-generating potential of teleseminars – even if you’ve never listened to one.

In my experience, teleseminars are the fastest, easiest, most economical way to increase your sales and profits without spending a single penny more on marketing or advertising costs. Best of all, you can conduct them from the comfort of your home, your office, a hotel room, or virtually anywhere else in the world. All you need is a bridge line and a telephone, and you’re good to go. (For unlimited usage of a bridge line at just $47 per month, visit InstantTeleWebcast.com.)

I should know – because, as I write this, I have over 14,100 teleseminar students from every inhabited continent on Earth. I even teach entrepreneurial CEOs an eight-module tele-training program on the subject called Teleseminar Secrets (TeleseminarSecrets.com), which commands $2K and starts on the second Monday of every December.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back-pedal a bit and analyze why the Brian Tracy teleseminar was so successful.

If you visit Brian’s website (BrianTracy.com), you’ll find that his typical audio program is available for $20. Why, then, can he and I command twice as much for a teleseminar? The answer is: greater "marketing intimacy" (in other words, live access), coupled with a 2,437-year-old technology championed by Socrates.

Secret of Socrates Rediscovered

If you follow this time-proven three-step "Socratic" method of inquiry, you too can capture more profits faster, better, and with less effort, even if you’re on a bootstrapped marketing budget.

Step 1: Ask Your Market. Most marketers create their message and then find their market to "monetize" the message. I do the opposite. I first "ask" members of my market what they want, and then ask them to pay for it.

For instance, the Brian Tracy teleseminar didn’t start on the evening of August 25, 2004. It started three weeks prior, with a worldwide survey posted online. After capturing over 860 questions that went into a special database I’ve developed, I chose the 12 most popular topics.

Step 2: Promote to Your Market. You’re not the "marketing genius" – nor am I. Your "market," collectively, is the marketing genius. Once you adopt this mindset, you’ll never engage in marketing guesswork again. That’s why, after two weeks of getting survey responses (and "opt-ins") for Brian’s teleseminar, I was ready to post an online sales letter – one that was ostensibly written not by me but by my "market."

If you visit JustAskBrian.com/teleseminar, you’ll see the actual sales letter that had a conversion rate of over 22 percent and generated over $13,000 in teleseminar tuition fees. How did I come up with a sales letter that was ostensibly written by my "market"? Simply by writing out the survey results.

I happen to know dozens of world-class copywriters who wrack their brains for days trying to come up with a winning "appeal" or "hook" to reel in more sales. I don’t do that, because it’s too stressful for me. And, frankly, I don’t like to work that hard.

Instead, I just ask the people in my market what they want most, and then I give it to them. Follow this process, and you’ll soon realize you no longer need to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with your marketing dollars, because this system eliminates guesswork.

If you’re starting to smile because you’re beginning to realize how easy teleseminar marketing can be with my no-nonsense "Socratic" selling strategy, I want you to know that Step 3 gives you an even greater advantage to almost effortlessly crush your competitors.

Step 3. Repurpose Your Content. Because teleseminars produce audio content, it makes sense to "repurpose" that content and monetize it beyond the money you make from your live event. Put the recording on a CD and sell it. Transcribe the audio and sell the transcripts. Make MP3 downloads available online so your listeners can more "intimately" listen to you on their iPods or MP3 players.

For entrepreneurial CEOs like me, repurposing is the most powerful moneymaking force in the information-publishing world.

Although the repurposing possibilities are almost endless, the single most important thing you must do to monetize your repurposed teleseminar content is make it available for purchase before it’s even published. (Or, in this instance, recorded.) In info-marketing circles, we call this the "pre-publication" release, and it’s mind-boggling how many marketers leave thousands of dollars on the table by completely ignoring this strategy.

This is what I was doing when I first sold the $29.95 "admission" fee to the Brian Tracy teleseminar and then offered the $10 "upsell" for the unlimited download "recordings." (In my experience, this upsell strategy outperforms selling the teleseminar for $39.95 with no upsell.)

Repurposed Teleseminars Make More Profits

Simply ask your market what it wants, promote to your market based on those results, and repurpose your teleseminar content to scoop up more profits with almost no effort.

It’s that easy. And besides Brian Tracy, I’ve done this with other "thought leaders," such as Jack Canfield, Les Brown, Mark Victor Hansen, Vic Conant, Joe Polish, Michael Masterson, Joe Vitale, Janet Attwood, Jay Abraham, Stephen Covey, Michael Gerber, Zig Ziglar, Gay and Katie Hendricks, Harv Eker, Barbara DeAngelis, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Ken Blanchard … just to name a few.

Best of all, you don’t have to be famous to become a seven-figure teleseminar marketer. Like me, you can interview famous people in your business niche and share the profits – and create many ultra-fruitful strategic alliances along the way – all from the comfort of your home office.

[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian, CEO of Heritage House Publishing Inc., has generated over $233 million in sales and profits for his clients and partners via "electronic marketing" media, such as TV infomercials, online catalogs, 24-hour recorded messages, voice/fax broadcasting, teleseminars, webinars, podcasts, and Internet marketing since 1991. You can get Alex’s insights into information marketing this fall at ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp. To get free instant access to Alex Mandossian’s blog on Electronic Marketing, please visit AlexMandossian.com.]

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