Information Marketing Association

The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:21:07 GMT

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Nothing will have a greater impact on your income and lifestyle than embracing systems solutions to problems in your business. Even if you consider yourself to be a creative person, having systems will give you more time to be creative and will make that creative time more productive. While we all have heard this many times, in the heat of the moment, it’s often easier to just take care of it ourselves than to figure out how to delegate something. Plus, there is the expense and time associated with creating and implementing those systems. The real secret, it’s not as difficult as it first appears. And, all it takes are a couple of simple tools and one single decision to unlock the power of systems in your business. This program delivers the essential systems building tools to unlock the promise of “Making More and Working Less.”

Dan Kennedy's January 2012 Info-Marketing Letter

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:15:15 GMT

Resources

Dan-Dennedys-January-2012-Info-Marketing-Letter-as-a-PDF-file.pdf

Dan Kennedy's Dan Kennedy's January Info-Marketing Letter was jammed packed with resources to help you build your information marketing business.

Here is a quick summary of the topics included:

New tele-marketing solution
This might make you feel small
New ‘place strategy’
New risks & hazards
Parasite-ing without permission
Porn for the stupid

As a member of the Information Marketing Association you are welcome to download the attached PDF file. This page is active through March 31, 2012.

January 2012 Jump Start Coaching Call

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:09:29 GMT

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Robert: Welcome to your Jump Start Coaching call. This is all about you. I'm here to help you get your business going, help you get over any obstacles. Give you vendor resources, whatever you need. Just press one on your phone and then that will get you into the queue to ask your question or get help.

I'm Robert Skrob, president of the Information Marketing Association and each month I host one of these Jump Start Coaching calls. Sometimes the calls wrap up within 15, 20 minutes, other times we have to go 90 minutes in order to handle all of your questions and get you the answers that you need. And whether it goes 15 or 90 is completely up to you because I'm here to help you and get your business moving forward, overcome the obstacles you have. So press one on your touch tone phone. I guess if you have rotary phone then you're just out of luck. For everybody that has a rotary phone, which I doubt there are very many out there. So press one on your phone. That gets you into the queue. We'll get your name and you can ask your question. Beyond that I really don't have an agenda.

So I'm going to give you some dates and things as folks jump on the line. What often happens is it takes a couple minutes before we have the first question. And now of all sudden we have a whole flood of questions that are coming in. But don't be shy. Jump right in. You can be first and just jump in by pressing one.

I want to let you know that your Best Practices and Information Marketing call is coming up on February 8th and this will be a neat call because I'm interviewing Craig Valentine who has taken over the Early to Rise Company. And Early to Rise is a huge info marketing business. The real central figure of that company was Michael Masterson and there were hundreds of thousands of folks getting Michael Masterson's emails and they had all kinds of products and seminars that they offered. And over the years team members came and gone and the business sort of contracted a little bit.

Well Craig Valentine took it over about eight months ago and has been rejuvenating it in the months since. So it should be a really neat insight into kind of how to jump in when an info marketing business heading full steam ahead and they'll be a lot of neat lessons for everybody whether your business is just starting out or whether you have quite a large info marketing business. So a neat program coming up on February 8th.

And your next Jump Start Coaching Call is actually on February 21st. Both of those calls are at 3:00pm Eastern or Noon Pacific. So you can jump in the game by pressing one on your phone and that gets you into the queue to ask me a question. It's all about you. We'll either go a few minutes or a lot depending on how many questions I receive. And there's a lot of you on the line so I know there's some questions out there. And I'd love to help you.

Our first comes from Kim in Pennsylvania. Welcome Kim.

Kim: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Robert: No I'm happy to help you. What can I do for you?

Kim: So we've been learning by bits and pieces and have been going along well but then we had an influx of members and realized the structure we had in place was not going to handle it. So we've been manually having to track when they start and finish. So we finally bit the bullet and signed up with InfusionSoft.

Robert: Excellent.

Kim: And we are setting that new website up right now. But obviously has a lot of capabilities to it. So my question was just in your experience with all the folks you've helped out what's the best basic structure to start out with in InfusionSoft as far as how to structure my system and then we can build off of there.

Robert: You know what I would probably recommend is you may want to, and I'll be happy to work through your question. Another resource have you heard of Shieff's Service and Randy Sheiff?

Kim: No.

Robert: They actually help. Randy does all the customer service for about 70 plus info marketers all but one of which work in InfusionSoft. And they are even one of, so you have a tough question I think they're the level, Sheiff's Services is actually the level three support for InfusionSoft. So if the first two people weren't able to help you you'll end up talking to a Sheiff's Services employee. It'll all be transparent. You won't know that they're not an InfusionSoft employee but my point is they know InfusionSoft and work with it every day. And even if you only choose to work with them for a month or two having them set you up it will be a huge shortcut.

Kim: Okay, great.

Robert: So you can explain to them what you're trying to do or give them some of the e-mails and things that you've been using. They can go in there, set up all the action steps, all the fulfillment sequences and they'll probably even have a lot of tips like oh you have folks that are trying to get expired credit cards renewed. Why don't you set up this form so that there's a no money form so that they can go online and do that securely?

Kim: Okay.

Robert: So there's all these little tips and tricks that they'll get set up within the first month or two.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: If you like what they do with your customer service and how that works you keep them on. If you choose that you want to build your own infrastructure and keep that within your office then you keep it within your office. But it's as easy as giving them their own user ID and password and then when you're done you're done with that user ID and password and you move on with your internal team.

Kim: Now can you spell that first word of Services?

Robert: It's Shieff, S-H-I-E-F-F, Services.

Kim: Got you. Okay.

Robert: And I'll give you the phone number.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: It's 512-353-5037.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And the website is www.ShieffServices.com, S-H-I-E-F-F Services dot com.

Kim: That's awesome, thank you.

Robert: They're very reasonable. I haven't priced them in quite a while but for a few hundred bucks or several hundred bucks, it might be several hundred, but they will just do it all for you and hand it over.

Kim: That's great.

Robert: And the challenge when InfusionSoft offered this is the InfusionSoft people are all programmers. They're aren't people who know how to optimize web forms. The Shieff Services employees are doing this for 70 different info marketers day in and day out. And so the little tips and tricks they figured out are the things that they're doing because they've got to do this for a bunch of people.

So it's a very good shortcut of getting up to speed quickly.

Kim: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Robert: Now you've got a web guy though that does the sales pages and things like that, right?

Kim: Right. Yeah. We're a marketing company so I have web and graphic design, which is a great step up in all this. I'm the strategy person. So I was looking for some help with that. So it sounds like this will help me do that.

Robert: Yeah.

Kim: Just to have to start with that structure because I've stopped doing anymore webinars or customer recruitment because we need to get our infrastructure figured out before we grow anymore.

Robert: And if you don't have an in-house customer service they can actually provide that for you.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And they'll grow as you grow. And they've got, it's a team like anything else. They'll have certain ways of doing things but kind of once you get the lingo down, the one thing that I've heard about them is they can be a little intimidating because some of them have all the lingo and language they use. And you'll have to kind of figure out the language and then once you've got, so if you don't understand ask them to explain it to you. Say, "All right wait a minute, I'm getting a lot of customers and I have a successful business I don't understand what you're trying to ask me for. Will you please explain?" And so that way you can get it explained to you in a little different way.

Kim: That's great. And if I may ask a customer service question because it's great that they'll help with that, we have, so we're just going through our cycle of a big influx that we had and then I'm going through their two months free and getting charged now. So we've had an influx of calls and e-mails from people confused and not knowing why they got charged and we have all the records that they signed off on it. But at what point, how do you decide if people get a refund or don't get a refund?

Robert: I'm pretty liberal about it.

Kim: Yeah, so if they ask for one we should be giving them?

Robert: If I have someone, my team has discretion to give a month refund at any time. So if somebody's says, "Oh I thought I'd cancelled and I didn't, or I never knew that I had signed up for this and now I've got a charge." My customer service person is authorized to give them a refund. Anything beyond that she has to ask me and I don't know for sure but I can't recall a time where a one month refund wasn't sufficient in like the last year or more.

Kim: Yeah.

Robert: So typically, what we do in order, I think this is the process we've set up in order to make that sufficient is when they call in the first person is, "Yes I'll be happy to cancel your membership." And they can do it and they will receive an e-mail pretty immediately of the cancellation.

If they ask for any sort of refund the answer is, "Well I can't give that to you. I don't have the authority. But I can request it. Let me request it and you'll hear back from Denise within 24 hours." Then Denise goes back and says, "I've looked at your records and I'm able to refund a month." And that process works. If they were able to call in and talk and ask for a refund and we're told no immediately it's quite possible that an argument might break out. But having it be, "I don't know. Let me request that." And then the request is approved for one month that seems to work it all out.

And I will give them a month's refund really pretty much for asking for it. And I know this is going to all my customers.

Kim: If they're on the call they're probably not going to ask to do that.

Robert: Exactly. But yeah I'm very liberal about it. Quite frankly they probably could charge it back anyway. So I'd prefer to give them the refund. A couple of things about, there's one thing that's not so advanced and another thing I'll give you that is a little bit advanced about that process. I used to be concerned and afraid about telling customers that they were in a trial because it would spur them to drop out. I like letting them know they're in a free trial and promoting their free trial. This is the call you get because you're in the free trial. This is the newsletter you get because you're in the free trial.

Kim: Oh that's good. You're up front about it.

Robert: I don't want there to be any secrets or concerns.

Kim: Okay. Yeah, that's good. So you're coding them that way?

Robert: The whole way.

Kim: Okay, great.

Robert: A little more advanced is that there's a bonus they get once they start paying.

Kim: Okay, okay.

Robert: For Information Marketing Association it's Bill Glazer's A to Z course and I deliver that over six different weeks and you get that when you start paying. So there's this carrot because it always seemed weird that they would start paying for something that they were getting for free for two months. So by having this bonus out there it gives them something. It could be a call. It could be a recording that you've done. I like the six week course because it not only gets me the first payment but it gets me the second payment too because if it's start the day they pay then the month two payment comes in before the course is over.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: Do you see how that works?

Kim: Yeah. And no I love it. That's awesome.

Robert: And then a third advance thing, which I'm the only one I know that does it. But I actually offer the member to buy out of the free trial. So at two weeks, four weeks and six weeks there are e-mails that go that say, "You are in this free trial. It's a great program. You're getting all of these things for free. Isn't it great? I want to let you know when you start paying you're going to be able to get Bill Glazer's A to Z course. It's going to be a great bonus. These are the things you're going to learn. If you would like to receive this now you can opt-out of the free trial and begin paying immediately. And that will get you access to this course right away." And then I explain that it's going to be delivered over six weeks so that they're not confused about right away meaning I get the whole thing.

So by delivering that I have found that I get very few people getting that at two weeks. But I get about three percent who opt-in and start paying immediately after four weeks. And seven percent who start paying at six weeks. So it's speeds up.

Kim: Yeah your payment.

Robert: The payments a little bit but most importantly in the year since I've done that the calls of people who are frustrated about not knowing that they're in a free trial is almost, I can't say it's eliminated them but it's gone from many a month to a very, very small hand full. And actually after their charge I would say it's almost none. I don't take those calls so I can't say it's none but the problems and the things reaching my desk of angry customers is totally gone as far as I can tell. And so folks might call concerned after the first e-mail, "Hey wait a minute I didn't know I was in a free trial. I got this free trial." And that we can explain, "Oh you're getting this. You're two weeks in. You got six weeks more." Sometimes they go, "Oh just cancel me." So there are some folks that buy and don't know but they don't get to where I've charged them and they're really angry. If you catch them two weeks in and, "Oh I've got six weeks left. Oh okay." It's really not as confrontational at that point.

Kim: If I was to do this conversion that they get this gift when they start paying, which I think is brilliant to do the conversions do I just, you would recommend then giving that gift to everybody who is currently paying now at one time so they can all be caught up?

Robert: Yeah I do. And if you have a subscription I like it anyway because it helps get them into the cult so to speak. So it helps engrain them on what's going on but yes I would get it out to everybody as a new bonus. And then I would give it to the new ones as they come in. And that e-mail, a little bit of technical and I have no idea how to make this happen but it's actually a clickable link. So when they click that link it creates an action sequence within Infusion Soft that automatically sends them the first module of the course.

The billing actually happens about three days later, 72 hours. I don't do the billing immediately because there are a hand full of people that say, "Whoa wait a minute I didn't realize I was actually buying right then." So I treat them as if they bought and they get all the confirmations that they bought and they got the course but I allow them, I think it's actually 72. I think we maybe originally set it 48 hours but I give them a couple of days to send back and say, "Oh wait a minute I didn't realize I was really buying when I clicked that."

Kim: So you're not refunding and losing that money, the percentage from the credit card company.

Robert: One less refund to have to process by giving them 72 hours. And somebody, the customer service person goes in and actually moves them, pulls them out. The action sequence creates a to do for somebody to pull them out of the old sequence and put them into the confirmed customer sequence.

Kim: Super, thank you so much.

Robert: Yeah. And if you need help figuring out how all those fulfillment campaigns work let me know because the customer welcome is different from the free trial.

Kim: Right.

Robert: So that when a free trial customer comes in they get the member welcome sequence and they get the free trial sequence. And then if they opt-out of the free trial and start paying they get removed from the free trial sequence. So they stop getting the e-mails that say, "Wouldn't you like to upgrade?" But they stay in the welcome sequence so that they get all the things, because there's e-mails and things that go out for a year once they become a customer.

Kim: Because I started paying for you from the beginning. So I never got the free trial sequence.

Robert: Okay. There are those.

Kim: I didn't see that. Yeah there are those of us that saw value from the very beginning. Well thank you Robert. I really appreciate it. And I'll keep listening to the rest of the callers.

Robert: All right. Thanks Kim. Appreciate you joining us. We do have a bunch of questions in the queue but if you'd like to get in press one and in the meantime we'll talk with David in Florida. Welcome David.

David: Hi Robert. Thanks for the call today.

Robert: Absolutely. How can I help you?

David: I'm primarily a copywriter but I'm seeking to capitalize on information marketing development opportunities that come my way and I'm looking at an opportunity that has to do with a follow-up package for car dealerships. And most car dealerships really don't follow-up beyond 72 hours. And I'm working with a dealership on that.

And my question really has to do with determining pricing. As I see it right now we're looking at some follow-up e-mails that would include some templates and also some training of their salesman, how to write e-mails, that type of thing. And if it goes well maybe develop it into a product that would go out to other dealerships. So like I said, but my question today really has to do with how do you determine pricing for something new, something that's somewhat evolving?

Robert: The short answer is test. And so you sell at different price points or you start a place where you feel like you'll get them real easy customers and then you can increase as you go. A lot of times one of the things that we're doing with an info marketer that I'm coaching is we are launching his business in a city half across the country from him. And we're doing it in probably about a 250 mile radius of that city. But that way we can test pricing and offers and things and only folks in a 250 mile circle have any idea that this is even happening. And I'll often take four or five, or maybe even eight or 10 cities and it's usually not the first tier cities. You can search and you can do the top 25 media markets in the United States and what I'll do is I'll take the bottom 10 of the 25 and use those as the beginning cities to test market something like this. Because very often those cities are actually better customers anyway. You can kind of test and see how many dealerships you can sell within a marketplace.

Because when you first get this you might do area exclusive, and I'll talk to you about that in just a moment. But you might offer something and one person in L.A. buys it. Well you find out you could've sold 12 in L.A. and been just fine.

David: Okay, because it's a big enough place?

Robert: Better to figure that out in Nashville than go to L.A. to begin with. Better to go, "Oh darn I could've sold two in Nashville." Then to figure out, "Oh darn I should've sold 12 in L.A." Because L.A. is almost equivalent to the whole state of Tennessee.

David: Yeah and is that something you'd organize by zip code?

Robert: Yeah and/or radius or by make. Maybe there's one import and one domestic. As you do this, because you're in auto, maybe you can do one, maybe you figure out well yeah there's only one dealer, only one new dealer I can work with. All right so you work with one new and you work with one used. Or maybe you figure out that it doesn't really matter. Any dealer can use this and even if there are three in the same city we can make it unique enough that it doesn't really matter.

David: Okay.

Robert: A couple of thoughts came to mind as I heard you explaining this. One is area exclusivity. You can bump the price quite a bit by making them the only dealership within their geographic area that has access to this, maybe. And you have to charge probably three times the price but then there are some dealers who would buy this only to prevent other dealers from their community from getting it. So it'd be almost offensive. Awe geez I don't really know about sending follow-ups but I believe in it enough I don't want the other guy to get. He's a real jerk. And I'll do anything to make sure he doesn't get this. So there's that.

David: Okay, okay. Do you have any suggestions as I work with this initial dealer, we're talking quite openly and he's helping me to develop this, very much for his benefit. But how would you work the charging element with someone like him? He's sort of my beta dealership.

Robert: So you're a copywriter?

David: I am. And that's where my emphasis would be.

Robert: My first thought would be, well make sure you own the e-mail that way you can sell. So you're licensing him, the stuff that you're delivering and that way you can sell it to anyone else. But if you're a copywriter then recreating 12 e-mails isn't probably the hardest thing on earth to do.

David: Right.

Robert: The most important thing, I know you want to get paid. You want to do your copywriting services but for launching your business really the most important thing are the testimonials and the case studies. So if you can work a deal that he'll track results or he will give you, and I worked with these follow-up e-mails for 30 days. We sold eight cars we wouldn't have sold otherwise. And this made me $24,000 dollars of net profit I would've never gotten had I not done this program. That is worth $200,000 dollars to you.

David: Okay. So you wouldn't worry at all about even what you're going to get paid on something like this because it's even not that heavy of a copy job really.

Robert: I would get paid for whatever you do for the copy. But the real value, I've worked with info marketers to coach one customer for free to get that testimonial. Maybe they're a plumber and they have this marketing system that's worked for them. Well that's fine. I can see you doing it. Now let's show a prospect, somebody half way across the country can do it. Or even the city next to you or something. Get some other person to implement this as well that way you can…so if you think of it you're delivering your presentation and your voice. Then you can have someone else show up either in writing or on video or in a seminar setting but there's this other person that says, "I didn't believe it. I didn't believe what David had but I tried it and it worked for me too."

David: Okay.

Robert: So that way you have some outside person giving you this testimonial. That's worth everything and it would be worth doing it for free but if he's willing to pay you for it then that's fine.

David: Okay.

Robert: He doesn't have to know there's value for other dealerships and it may even be best that he never knows.

David: Right. Okay. Well and I'll just finish with in general does it sound like a sound idea?

Robert: Yes. The other thing I would like, on the IMA member site, let me find it for you. There's two things that I want to refer you to. If you log into the IMA member site.

David: All right.

Robert: In the upper right hand corner type the word 'spindler' S-P-I-N-D-L-E-R.

David: All right.

Robert: You're going to get three results. The first one is Strike Automated Marketing is the Perfect Game for Bowlers. And then you're going to get the third response, which is Adding Advertising Agency Services to your Information Marketing Business. Darrin did essentially this business for bowling alleys. But the thing that he did is he overlaid the technology. So bowling alley in Topeka wants this follow-up sequence. He gives a form for the bowling alley employee to put in the leads and then his InfusionSoft application sends out all the e-mails. And within InfusionSoft you can program it so the e-mail looks like it's coming from the Topeka bowling lane. It doesn't have to look like it comes from you.

But by adding that piece of technology, one, he's building the customer. He's building a list of people who are interested in bowling that Darrin's own. And it's fed by all these bowling alleys who are subscribing to his system.

And two, you solve this problem for the dealership, which is all right David I like it. Now how I do send these e-mails? Is Janie in the front office? Is some sales guy going to send these e-mails out? How does that work? Oh my gosh I'm going to have to learn how that…no, no, no you buy, fill out this order form and then put in your guest book, traffic log listings into this and we'll take care of the follow-up sequence.

David: Okay. Now of course in that case they are not personalized at all. They're fully automated right?

Robert: It's a hundred percent automated and personalized. So you're writing the e-mails. I mean you're not going to put in, "You came by and looked at the red Chevrolet Malibu." It's going to say, "Hey you were in yesterday. I just want to let you know how important it was." It comes from the general manager or somebody, "Hey I saw you were in the dealership yesterday. I want to tell you I appreciate you coming by. If there's anything we can do for you please let me know. " It'd have to be like that.

David: Right. Okay, okay. And the Spindler articles outline his experience with the bowling alleys in that regard?

Robert: Right.

David: Good.

Robert: And the agency services is an audio program with Darrin Spindler and the other guest were two gentlemen named Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller. And they actually have a business where they provide radio advertising for used car dealers. So that's also kind of, that will be interesting for two years. They got a similar business to this and not only that but they're in a similar business niche.

David: Good. I will definitely look at those.

Robert: All right David. Well I appreciate you joining me today.

David: Thanks for the help.

Robert: All right. We've got Robert in Nevada. Welcome Robert.

Robert: Thanks Robert. I am working in the cosmetic surgery niche, which I'm sure you've had experience with over the years. And a big part of communicating with them, obviously, is getting through the gatekeepers and along with doing some webinars. I'm looking at starting three step [inaudible 34:45] mailing sequence strategy to put in my offer and I specialize in direct response media. Basically I'm a celebrity in their niche. And I wanted to find out from your experience in this niche what you've seen and what you've had feedback on had worked best to communicate and present the offer to the doctors.

Robert: The trick is getting their attention or even getting their focus. I have worked extensively on, I'd have to say probably for almost three years and have seen others work. Now is this cosmetic surgeons, not cosmetic dentists, right, cosmetic surgeon?

Robert: Correct, surgeons. We'll be expanding it to dentists and cosmetic dentists as well but focusing on plastic surgeons right now.

Robert: Okay. So with cosmetic surgeons I worked in the niche for three years and I also have seen others who worked in this niche. And I haven't seen someone that has broken the code yet. And I'll give you some idea, we would go into a market, identify the top prospects by compiling a list generally. And we would look at advertising and really do some thorough research in individual markets. When we were ready we would send them a FedEx box and each FedEx had a hundred dollar bill in it that would say, "I'm paying you to this." And what they were asking for is if they were interested then we would send them a DVD player with a DVD in it so that all they had to do was open the player and press play. Throughout the process we had a sales person that they were calling into that was booking follow-up appointments and even, and this was the culmination after a couple years of other stuff. Not that I'm in any way trying to discourage you but it's my goodness. Do you happen to be a surgeon yourself?

Robert: No.

Robert: Okay. And maybe you know better. But if I were going to try it I think I would have to send people into the office, like a drug rep – short skirts, long legs and have them make the calls just like drug companies do. Because I haven't myself been able, and Yanik Silver also is the other one that I know who worked for probably even longer than I did because he started earlier. I saw what he was doing and worked with this cosmetic surgeon to try to make it happen and kind of similar as Yanik was and neither Yanik or I were able to make it work.

Robert: What did Yanik do? What was his…?

Robert: He was trying to drive them to a teleseminar. I was trying to drive them to a teleshark, somebody that was booking appointments and our goal, what we had I had a cosmetic surgeon that was kind of behind the curtain who was successful, who made all this money, who was revealing his marketing process and really giving it to them almost in a done-for-you type of basis, area exclusive so there'd only be one in your area. You'd want to make sure you're the area. On the cover page we actually put, "This letter is going to," and we listed the other doctors within their area. Whoever is first is the one who's going to get this opportunity. So we were pretty darn emphatic about rubbing it in their face that this is going to happen in your area and you better be the one to get it or you're going to miss out and lose.

We pulled no punches. Smacked them right upside the head with it.

Robert: It's kind of like the idea of, because I am doing an area exclusive, of course, offer.

Robert: We got some interest but the other thing, one of the other things we tried to do was we decided that we may have been too forward. So kind of the analogy was maybe we were too forward on the first date. So we showed up at their door and we were naked. And the date was, "Oh wait a minute this is way too much." It was a total turnoff. So we started quote 'dating'. What we produced we did I think three or four months worth of newsletters and we sent those out in advance. And so for three months they got, well the idea was that they were going to get a pretty good newsletter. It turned out not to be as good as I ever wanted it to be because the doctor I was working for insisted on having his daughter do all the graphic design and he never wanted to write anything. So she had to pull some old articles that he had done three years before, what have you. So it wasn't a particularly good newsletter. But we found that helped a lot.

Robert: Of course to have it in the to do pipeline, which would be the continuity program, ala your style, BK style free two month continuity program like you spoke with, "Lady I wasn't going to lead off with that." But you were just mass mailing your newsletter to a certain number on a two or three month free [inaudible 41:27] give them a taste?

Robert: We just sent it as if they were a subscriber and we even wrote, "Your paid subscription newsletter is enclosed," on outside of the envelope. So we treated them like they were a subscriber and they got this newsletter. And we may have included a letter in the first one that said it was complimentary but there was no…the purpose of it was to build up the doctor so that or build up, I don't want to call it a brand but that's kind of what we were doing was build up a celebrity so they knew who this person was. So then when we showed up oh we're going to have a seminar. Wouldn't you like to come? They were at least somewhat familiar with who this person was.

And so it was helpful, and you don't have to do more than three or four because this is just three or four steps in your sequence to sell your seminar. So it can be the same. When you pick your, I would definitely pick the second tier cities like we were saying before. So city 15 thru 25 should be the ones. You may want to pick some more cosmetic surgery type orientated places. So if St. Louis pops up my guess is St. Louis doesn't have a lot of cosmetic surgeons. You may want to pass on that for maybe a Houston or something else that's where there's more cosmetic surgery going on.

Robert: But there's a lot here in Vegas that's for sure.

Robert: But that's going to be a top 10 city.

Robert: Yeah that would be. It's not second. What were you trying say, you guys were trying to get people into a seminar.

Robert: Yeah, so what we're doing is were selling a 25, we were selling basically a $45,000 dollar system. And so our goal was to get them into a seminar so that then the pitch could be presented to buy the $45,000 dollar program.

Robert: Were you charging for the seminar or was it for free?

Robert: It was a $500 dollar deposit and then it would be refunded.

Robert: If they purchased?

Robert: Yeah. If they showed up.

Robert: And were you going to be having the seminar in their city? Was it a teleseminar or was it a webinar? Where were you trying to get them to?

Robert: We were trying to get them to Chicago for the preview seminar and we picked.

Robert: Oh you were trying to get them into a live event. Okay.

Robert: Yeah. Because basically Yanik was doing webinars and so we were trying to up the ante and do a different media. And the webinars, he was able to get some people on webinars but his price point was so much lower. As difficult as it is to get through, you've got to spend some money to get them into a seminar, you're going to have to spend some money to get through the gatekeeper and try to get their attention. You might as well be selling them something is high priced to overcome all the work you're going to have to do to get them to pay attention to you.

Robert: Oh yeah, oh yeah. My media package is definitely multiple figures for sure for them, direct response media package, which includes making the a best-selling author, infomercial on a TV commercial and a few other perks that we're doing for them that other doctors are monetized very, very well. So we've got quite a number of testimonies and proof, even though it's a new offer for these plastic surgeons.

Robert: If I were doing it now I'd probably, because a lot of this technology I'm about to say didn't exist just a few years ago. I would probably do FedEx's into the office and drive them to a web video using a Purls link. So I've got a special opportunity for you. Even when we were doing this online video it wasn't anywhere near as common as it is today. But I wouldn't want to send them to a website unless I knew who was watching. So with the Purls link you can track exactly who has asked for the video. And so you have a package that's substantial enough to get their attention. Then you drive them to a link that you can track so you know who is looked at the video and who hasn't. And then I would have, I would be asking them call in to a call center and at the same time I would have outbound calls. Say, "Hey doc I saw that you took a look at the video. I wanted to give you a call. Hey this is John. I'm such and such's assistant. I saw that you had checked out the video I made for you. I just wanted to double check and see if you have any questions or if I could schedule…" I'd have some sort of an evaluation at the end. So there's some diagnostic of market or of story, to see if they're adequate for the program. But I can't promise you this thing but we've got this special diagnostic. Call Joe at XYZ to get the diagnostic to see if your experience and background and market is right for this program.

Robert: Did you ever get a chance to meet a lot of plastic surgeons yourself when you were going through this?

Robert: I hate doctors. I can't tell you how much I loathe doctors.

Robert: I can hear it in your voice Robert. No there was a plastic surgeon convention here in Vegas last week. I had a chance to go for three days and do a lot of meeting of plastic surgeons as well as their nurses and their gatekeepers and kind of get a feel for what works, what doesn't, what they get bombarded with and asking the same question to their office managers and their gatekeepers. And of course they get bombarded [inaudible 47:59] all the time.

Robert: All that. And I worked with OB/GYNs. I've had businesses providing seminars and subscription programs to dermatologist, OB/GYNs and anesthesiologists and I got out of all of those in 2002 and tried very hard not to go back and got sucked in a couple years later with this cosmetic surgeon thing. But no my doctors are not my preferred market. Does that help you though?

Robert: Yeah. It definitely confirms what I knew and what I've been finding out obviously is they get bombarded with a lot of junk and they got a strong gatekeeper. So you gave me a lot of ideas that I'm going to do.

Robert: Yeah.

Robert: And thank God none of your suggestions were on my strategy and strategic plan.

Robert: I've got a long list of things not to do.

Robert: Yeah. A long list of things not to do. There are a couple of people who are in the marketing consulting arena, focusing on them and what they're doing that does work, that doesn't work and they have a number of practices that they've worked with over the years. So I've been seeing what model that works as they say and reject the rest.

Robert: The newsletter was low key enough that it often got past the gatekeeper and it helped build a relationship. And I would probably do a sequence of newsletters that drove them, added some ad in them somewhere or maybe even a sticker on the front that said, "Hey there's a great video that reveals XYZ. Check it out." And use the Purls link, so I knew who did it. And then drive them to that. But the newsletter got past the gatekeeper and allowed us to establish a relationship.

Robert: Yeah I was about incorporate the three letter sequence. But the newsletter could definitely, did you do any three letter sequences with them and test that?

Robert: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Robert: Okay, the newsletter worked better than all those?

Robert: Yeah. Well the newsletter was good for the pre-kind of setting it up, the dating sequence of the sequence and then we'd send in the sales pieces in order to try to convert them into seminar attendees. But the newsletter helped build a relationship the best.

Robert: Definitely kind of preframes and builds credibility of the expert giving information, as well as you were saying it could drive them. Were you trying to drive them to the video or were you trying to drive them to your live events?

Robert: At that point we were trying to drive them to a call, which was getting them in the call was to get them into the seminar. Today I would drive them to online video because back then online, especially with doctors, wasn't going to work for us. We'd send them the DVD player and they couldn't figure out how to open the thing.

Robert: Yeah the newsletter driving them into a webinar video, live or maybe perceived live, pre-recorded was definitely one of my thoughts for strategy. I'd like to [inaudible 51:40] if it worked the best, working that instead of a three letter sequence, putting them into a two or three month free trial.

Robert: I guess I would just be concerned with your price point. I'd want them to spend money. But it's up to you. You could try either way. I would like to get them to spend a little bit of money pretty quick and then give them the free trial afterwards of something else. They get some product that's maybe a thousand bucks and then there's a free trial of a $200 dollar a month program. But either way.

Robert: Well the newsletter, just one last question on that, what you said what worked was your newsletter approach but you didn't sell them anything prior to that. That was your opening relationship builder.

Robert: Correct. Correct.

Robert: Okay, that's what I was thinking about modeling.

Robert: Okay. Yeah it's a free newsletter but in every way it's pretending that it's a paid newsletter.

Robert: Right, right, right. I'd probably initially put that in that introductory letter, your paid subscription enclosed type of a thing.

Robert: Exactly. Well very good Robert. I'd be curious to hear how things work out. Please keep me informed.

Robert: I will. Thank you so much. Take care.

Robert: All right next is Bob in North Carolina. Welcome Bob.

Bob: Hey how are you doing Robert?

Robert: I am fabulous, thank you. How can I help you?

Bob: Well I'm a big believer in creating your own product and being able to market it and being able to be successful at it before I go out into the real world as it may be. So what I've got is I've got a situation where I kind of stumbled on it by accident. I have personal knowledge of it. I have brought experience with it and things. But I'm just trying to figure out how to monetize it in an info marketer type genre.

Now here's the situation. I have an autoimmune disease and through some research my wife had found a product that she said, "Hey why don't you try this because I really think this is an up and coming product. As a matter of fact it's one of the 10 up and coming products for 2012." Now the situation is this, I use this product and it elevated all of my symptoms of this autoimmune disease. Interesting enough though this product is not advertised for that. It's advertised for a lot of different things. It's a natural product. It's made out in Indonesia or whatever but the point this is not being marketed to this very, very large group of people that are inflicted with this autoimmune disease.

Now the thing is, I've done the keyword tool research, lots and lots of hits on both of the autoimmune disease and of this product. There's really no way, nobody's doing any affiliate programs or anything like that. I don't know of any Adsense or anything like that would apply because I'd like to see, if I'm going to write articles and if I'm going to put e-books out there and things I want to be able to obviously, eventually be able to profit from it.

Now the thing is I could go out and I could buy this stuff by the pallet cheaply enough. Bring it to my building, package it and sell it. Not what I want to do.

Robert: Right.

Bob: What I want to do is I want to build it into an info marketing product and be able to monetize it later on.

Robert: Okay.

Bob: My question for you is this, I've read your book. I've got the how to start out. I know it's going to take time and things like that. Maybe this product isn't even fit for info marketing, I don't know, but all I know is there are several people that are buying pay-per-click that are using things like diet, what to eat, what not to eat. There's no known cure for this particular disease like there are normal cures for a whole lot of autoimmune diseases. Where do I look at a product and look at my situation and say, "I just don't think I'm going to be able to do it on the info marketing side right now."

Robert: There's no question that you can sell this product and a lot of folks do or a lot of folks sell herbal remedies or supplements and the supplement business is a little different than info marketing, although it's kind of a close cousin, if you will. There are supplement companies that can private label your product and even ship it out for you so that your cost of set up would just be a few hundred bucks to figure out what your label needs to be. And then after that as you get orders you send the fulfillment company an e-mail with the list of who they need to ship it to and they package and ship it out for you.

So I don't know those companies because I haven't investigated that but if you do private label supplements in Google it won't take a lot of research and you'll come up with a dozen or more companies who will private label and fulfillment for supplements for you.

The other part of this is in terms of the marketing. I think this would be easy enough. I would see you on a video on a landing page talking to the camera, "I've got this disease. I found a way to eliminate my symptoms. I'll be happy to tell you. Enter your name and e-mail address for access and I'll be happy to give you what I've found, what I've discovered." And then on the next page there is another video by you where you get into your story. "I had this. These are my symptoms. This was what I was doing on a daily basis. And this is what I took and now I'm a whole lot better." Think of it kind of as a weight loss ad. You got to show a fat person and then you got to show them when they're skinny. So the same thing with you, you're going to have to explain what your symptoms were like. Give them a mental picture of what life was like and then tell them what it's like after the fact and then give them an order form.

It could be as easy as one of those Flip cameras, just put it on a tripod and you shoot that video. One for the squeeze and the next for the sales page and your off and rolling.

Bob: Okay. Well that's what I wanted something simple and that's why I called you, not that you're simple. But that's what I needed. I needed something to get me over the hump and I knew it was either not going to be possible or there was going to be something that I was missing. So the video is a whole lot bigger. I know it draws a whole lot more people. They'd rather not read, they'd rather watch.

Robert: Well and it's easy to do. So you can do it with a hundred dollar camera and put it up and then if you, "Oh shoot I need to add this." Then you stand in front of the camera again and shoot it again. And then they can see you. They can identify with you a lot easier. And it's a lot faster for you I would guess than trying to write a sales letter.

Bob: Any advice on how to talk to private label companies or anything like that as far as just keep interviewing them and say, "Listen I've got this offer. I want to find out if you guys can match it. Why should I do business with you instead of the other person?"

Robert: All that and ask for references. And talk with folks that are using them. And also while you're talking to folks you might also get ideas for how they're selling different supplements whether it's B12 or Ginkgo, any of those other supplements that they might be taking and using. So getting their references and calling those references may be helpful not only in checking out the company but also getting ideas on how other people are selling their products.

Bob: Okay. Was that easy call?

Robert: Yeah it was. And also one thing is I didn't talk about any of the regulatory stuff and I don't know about supplements. I have not done it before. So you're going to want to have somebody who understands what the FDA requirements and disclosures are, take a look at your site materials.

Bob: Okay.

Robert: And it could be the supplement company might be able to help you with that. They might be able to say, "Hey make sure you have these things on any site that sells these products." Because they don't want to get in trouble either.

Bob: Yeah I know the word pure and heal and things like that are absolutely forbidden. I really appreciate that. It sounds like it's going to be a lot shorter avenue than going through the free e-book and going through series of e-mails and everything else. It sounds like we're getting right to the point.

Robert: You may want to start, this is a great way to start and start making money and then you can start doing e-books later and drive traffic but you want this money machine set up first so you can convert traffic into customers.

Bob: Absolutely.

Robert: Well good luck Bob. I look forward to hearing how things work out for you.

Bob: Okay. Thank you.

Robert: All right and our last call comes from Jay in Massachusetts. Welcome Jay.

Jay: Hey Robert how are you?

Robert: I am fabulous, thank you.

Jay: Great. I've got a question for you. Hopefully it's an easy one, well I'm sure it's easy one for you. So for my core business I'm interested in this concept of wagon wheel marketing. So I've got some domains for my niche and actually for different niche products that I sell and I'd like to build out those domains but it's been a long time since I've done any HTML type stuff. So I'm looking for easy tools to do that. I'm running Infusion on the backend. And I'd like to create some squeeze pages and stuff like that. And I'm wondering what you recommend whether it's Word Press or [inaudible 63:29]. I've heard of these different tools but I've not used them myself. I don't have a lot of time so I'd like something easy.

And I'm also wondering if there's some providers in the network, in the organization that also might be able to do the types of things I'm looking to do for me. That I can outsource the job to them at a reasonable cost. I'm just looking to get your thoughts on that.

Robert: I am not a good person to ask about programming things because I don't do it.

Jay: Okay.

Robert: I kind of figured out that having a developer is a lot less expensive and I can be creating the next site…I write up the content in Word. Here's the squeeze page and then I do the sales page, put this video here. I send that to the web guy. While he's doing that work I can go create the next website or create the follow-up sequence or what have you. So I don't do that. I actually have somebody do that. My web guy is Doug Harrison and he is in the Buyer's Guide under Liqufusion Studio.

Jay: Okay.

Robert: And I can give you his phone number too.

Jay: Yeah, yeah sure definitely.

Robert: 850-583-0880.

Jay: All right, okay.

Robert: And he creates everything from scratch using Cold Fusion as a programming language. And Cold Fusion it has maximum flexibility but it's nothing that you or I would want anything to do with.

Jay: Okay, sure.

Robert: But out there in the computer world a lot of people know how to use it. It's not that big a deal. Word Press is more for rookies like you and me. And I have played around with Word Press enough, I get these things, "Oh yeah I could do this." And it's just a complete waste of time. Anyway I've played around with Word Press enough where you download it, you install, it's not called a template, it's a word that means very similar to template. All your designs, a theme. A theme is basically the template that reveals how the thing is to be structured. The theme dictates the size of the headlines and what color they are and how the banner and the page looks and how the side bar. Whether it has two columns or three columns, that kind of stuff is all determined by your theme. And then you just load up pages of content.

But even getting the content right you got to put it in there and then you click and then oh my gosh it inserted a double paragraph return. And then you go back and fix that and then oh my gosh now I have no paragraph return. Getting with somebody who knows what they're doing and can just stick the thing up there I've found is well worth the money.

Jay: Yeah I agree. So that's a great reference. I appreciate that. I need someone who can just kind of take the ball and run with it so I can spend time on the marketing.

Robert: Right.

Jay: Okay, fantastic.

Robert: Well Jay it's a pleasure.

Jay: Yeah I appreciate it.

Robert: No problem. All right well thank you.

Jay: Take care.

Robert: And that wraps up our call for today. Thank you everybody for joining me and joining us. Again we have our Best Practices and Information Marketing call coming up on February 8th and that's going to be a real neat one because you're going to get an inside peak at the Early to Rise Program and what they have done to rejuvenate that business. I'm looking forward to it as well and that's 3:00pm Eastern, noon Pacific on February 8th. And then if you have any other questions write them down and maybe put a note on your calendar for February 21st at 3:00pm Eastern, noon Pacific. That is your next Jump Start call. I look forward to speaking with you then and answering your questions and working with you on your business.

Thanks a lot for joining me. Look forward to talking with you soon.

Business Insights Teleseminar - February 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:57:03 GMT

Essential Steps to Revitalize an Info-Marketing Business

Early to Rise is rising again. Once one of the largest online info-marketing businesses on the planet, changes in the team slowed its rate of growth. A new team took over Early to Rise this summer, they’ve revitalized the businesses, grown the list and increased sales. During this Best Practices in Information Marketing Program we’ll dissect the steps to revitalize the business, what worked and what didn’t work. You are sure to learn a lot you can use as you build and revitalize your info-marketing business. Send any questions or comments you have to Robert Skrob at RS@Info-Marketing.org to be included in the discussion. Plus, you are welcome to call in to the call to pose your question or comment live during the call.

Call Date	Call Time	Phone Information	Listen Online
February 8, 2012 (Future IMA call dates, mark your calendar now.) March 8, 2012 April 10, 2012	3:00 p.m., Eastern 2:00 p.m., Central 1:00 p.m., Mountain 12:00 noon, Pacific	At 3:00 p.m. Eastern, dial 512/597-6012, Enter pass code 726012# (Music plays until the call begins.)	Instead of using your phone, listen live over the Internet at: http://bit.ly/IMAonline

Open Coaching Call for IMA Members - February 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:53:56 GMT

To help info-marketers grow their businesses, avoid obstacles and get questions answered, Robert Skrob is hosting a special tele-coaching call for all IMA members. This call is an open question and answer format. In this format Robert is able to provide detailed answers to ensure members have everything they need to succeed. This is your time, dedicated to helping you make money within the information marketing business fast.

Call Dates	Call Time	Phone Information	Listen Online
February 21, 2012 (Future IMA call dates, mark your calendar now.) March 15, 2012 April 24, 2012	3:00 p.m., Eastern 2:00 p.m., Central 1:00 p.m., Mountain 12:00 noon, Pacific	At 3:00 p.m. Eastern, dial 512/597-6012, Enter pass code 726012# (Music plays until the call begins.)	Instead of using your phone, listen live over the Internet at: http://bit.ly/IMAonline

Bouncebacks. How to add extra income to your info-business instantly and easily.

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

For 6 years, select information marketers have been “by-invitation-only” subscribers to Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Special Reports and Info-Marketing Letters. Now, for a limited time, Dan has opened his vault to make these available to you.

If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Special Report #16 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.

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MONEYMAKING TIP: Anything being delivered ought to be viewed as media, to use yourself and/or charge others to use or swap with others for reciprocity.

Those of you putting on seminars, for example, have many such opportunities: your confirmation letters, pre-seminar packets, on-site manuals, packets or bags, meal functions … these all present separate media, to be used by you, sold by you or traded to others for your use of their media. It is actually my belief (although I’ve yet to fully implement it) that most seminars and boot camps should be 100% cost-free to their owners/promoters. You should pay only for marketing; preferably a single sponsor or some combination of sponsors, exhibitors, meal sponsors, people paying to put stuff in goodie bags and manuals, etc., should pay all the costs of putting on the event. Why? Because the boot camp as media, 2 or 3 days of concentrated, favorable exposure to 500 motivated buyers is worth more than a full page ad in the trade journal that reaches that entire industry every month for a few years. A few companies, like Dr. Ben Altadonna’s client, Axiom, the equipment manufacturer, find this out.

On the “small side,” you have many, many opportunities to offset costs, get goodies for your customers at zero cost to you, make extra “no work” money or (best, in some cases) get into somebody else’s lists and media by exchanging access to your media. Just as example, at this year’s Renegade Millionaire Retreat, I have two sponsors each paying all the costs of two meal functions, about $15,000.00 each; people paying to give things away in goodie bags; people paying for ‘stealth exposure’ during the event, and I didn’t really exert any effort—had I made this a priority, I am certain I could have covered 100% of the event cost and pocketed an easy, extra $100,000.00.

On the “big side,” thinking of yourself as a media company rather than (just) a seller of things can be a big leap up the financial food chain. It is a sophisticated application of my Renegade Millionaire principle: others get customers to make sales; we make sales to get customers. The “herd” of customers provides basis for being a media company.

OWNING MEDIA gives you a great deal of power and opportunity. Stop and think about the biggest companies there are. They include oil and gas, utilities, insurance, auto manufacturing and media. In the media category, Time Warner/AOL, Viacom, Disney, Google. Their fortunes begin with creating and controlling media, then leveraging media, then acquisitions. Recognize that Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Martha Stewart and many other “name” multimillionaires and billionaires grew rich as media moguls. Bezos at amazon began fooling around with transition from a merchant of books and other goods to being a media company, with experience in online seminars and ‘villages,’ courses, even tele-seminars. If he knew what we know about information marketing, he would have a viable bridge from merchant to media magnate. I own stock in amazon, and I am hopeful. I am currently involved in major consulting projects with two companies beginning to transition from merchants to media companies.

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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may want to review the entire Dan Kennedy archive. It is available for a limited time at www.DKArchive.com. Every one of the 72 issues is packed with advanced, specialized, experience-tested insights into what it takes to succeed within the info-marketing business. Visit www.DKArchive.com to reserve your copy.

If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Special Report #16 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.

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MONEYMAKING TIP: Anything being delivered ought to be viewed as media, to use yourself and/or charge others to use or swap with others for reciprocity.

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Weekly IMA Ezine: Power of the Con Artist

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

January 31, 2012 | Week 5 of 2012

It’s the power of the con artist. When a con artist is working a con, he fervently believes in himself. This belief attracts customers to the con artist and compels them to believe what he says.

Take Kevin Trudeau. I’m sure you’ve seen his infomercials for weight loss books and debt cure books, and now he’s selling power of attraction courses.

Kevin’s weight loss book is based on a 1950s diet developed by a British doctor who opened weight loss clinics around the world. The diet was well known, but several academic studies proved it was ineffective. Yet, Kevin still sells the program as a new breakthrough. It’s no secret this diet has been proven ineffective. It’s kind of like selling a 1953 Triumph Mayflower (an unreliable British automobile) as new 2012 technology “they” don’t want you to know about!

Then there’s Kevin’s debt book. Want to know the “magic cure” revealed in the book to boost your credit rating? I’ll reveal it to you right here for free. Simply dispute the negative items on your credit report as identity theft. Any reader who disputes legitimate items on his or her credit report as identity theft could be prosecuted for fraud. How’s a fraud conviction going to help your credit rating?

So, why is Kevin so successful? You can see it in everything he does. He fervently believes in himself. Even though I know better, when I watch him, I catch myself wanting to believe what he says is true.

It’s like when my children were younger. They used to expect and demand the craziest things. And I’d strive to give them those things.

Something happens when we experience disappointment. We often reset our expectations lower so we don’t suffer disappointment again. I clearly remember making that choice many years ago, saying to myself, “I won’t expect much so when I don’t get much, I won’t be disappointed. ”

But when you expect little, you receive little. When you expect everything and believe in yourself, you attract customers. They are attracted to your belief like a honey badger is attracted to a bee hive. The honey badger doesn’t care if it gets stung; it wants to eat. Similarly, customers have little fear of getting ripped off; they want to share that self-belief you are selling.

Return to your childlike expectations. Write down what you want as if you are writing a letter to Santa Claus. Expect it to happen and believe it already has happened. Your belief is contagious and attractive. While you’ll still need skillful work to make your expectations happen, no amount of work will overcome a lack of belief. So, start believing, and then make it happen!

You’ve got what it takes. You can do it! Believe in yourself and apply the work. But remember, you must really believe. You are selling something that can transform lives. Your belief coupled with your work will allow you to reach more people.

What do you think? Am I wrong about Kevin Trudeau? Or have you experienced the power of belief in your own business? Scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.

Best wishes,

Robert Skrob

The Insiders’ Update periodically spotlights a member’s blog post from the IMA Members’ Blog Feeds. Check out all of the feeds at www.MyInfoMarketingForum.com. Add your blog to the feed by updating your profile with the feed link for your blog.

I came across Sean Greeley’s post from the IMA Member Blog feed.I enjoyed it so much I decided to share it with you.

Jack LaLanne passed away last January at the age of 96 vibrant years.

This is a clip from his fitness television show in the 1950s. He’s a great historical figure to watch because he was actively selling dietary restraint and vigorous exercise. Not the easiest things to sell when everyone else is selling magic pills and machines.

Yet, as you’ll see, Mr. LaLanne’s self-confidence and vitality is addictive to watch on this video. Plus, his advice is well worth the 3 minutes.

Worry? Take this great advice from Jack LaLanne…

Sean Greeley

"Is he the world's best kept secret?"

“I recently booked a consultation with Robert Skrob, and in the many years of hiring consultants and coaches, I have never, ever received such valuable and specific advice as I did during that call. And as a result of Robert’s laser-like answers to my questions, I have since completely changed my business model, and I suspect very strongly that the time with Robert not only saved me years of potential heartache, but that the changes will deliver a lot more money into my bank account with a lot less stress.

When it comes to Information Marketing, I doubt there is anyone on the planet who is more of an ‘accessible expert.’ Robert is not only extraordinarily experienced, he is also a realist and is without doubt, the world’s best kept Information Marketing secret. I would recommend him to anyone who wants to accelerate their information marketing success.”

- Tom Poland

Many members face “information overload.” All of the information and choices overwhelm them, and they don’t know how to begin. They need someone to talk them through their experiences and their interests and to give them a step-by-step plan for building their information marketing businesses. Or they have a plan but need help finding resources and vendors. The help you need is available to you as a member of the Information Marketing Association.

Robert Skrob, IMA president, is hosting 45-minute private one-on-one telephone consultations to give members an outline for growing their information marketing businesses. Robert regularly charges $1,200.00 for a two-hour consulting and coaching call. As an IMA member, your investment for your 45-Minute Private One-on-One Info-Marketing Success Consultation is only $247. 00. Call Suzanne at 850/222-6000 or email her at to schedule your call. Get help to replace your frustration with success. Contact Suzanne to book today.

IMA Easy Content Library

Are you looking for one last article for your newsletter? Would you like to have a guest column every month? Would you like to add a bunch of additional content to your website?

As an IMA member, you have access to the Easy Content Library. This is a resource library of articles contributed by other IMA members that you can use in your own publications.

You can insert these articles into newsletters, products or even books as content. As long as you maintain the author’s attribution at the bottom of each article, you are welcome to use them.

Check out the Easy Content Library today. It’s filled with a lot of great articles to read, and they may spark ideas for blog posts or other content.

Weekly IMA Ezine: Making It Look Effortless

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

January 24, 2012 | Week 4 of 2012

“I’m amazed at how much you get done. ”

I hear this all the time from clients and friends. Actually, I’m the one who’s amazed. Not because of how much I accomplish, but because they are impressed. It doesn’t seem like I’m accomplishing that much to me. All I see is the long list of unfinished projects left to do.

Still, I’ve picked up a few insights I can share about getting things done.

“The do-it-yourself movement ruined America. ” My friend Rob Berkley said this at a recent mastermind meeting. His comment really struck me. In the drive for independence, costs savings and the feeling of accomplishment, we strive to complete projects by ourselves.

Years ago my wife and I tiled our bathroom and kitchen floors. We rented the expensive masonry saw, but we had to buy several other tools. Plus, we had to learn a lot of new skills. I was the one who had to learn how to cut tile with a saw. The results were fine, but it took us days to complete the project as well as several (inevitable) trips to the home improvement store to ask questions and to pick up items we needed but had no idea we were going to need when we got started.

I see this all the time in business. I’ll get a question about some tool, a WordPress plugin or something. It will be from a “do it yourselfer” who is trying to figure out info-marketing while also learning how to build websites. My advice? Don’t learn how to build websites! (Or at least wait until you have your business well established.) All of the money in info-marketing is made by identifying what a market wants and giving it to them. It’s easy to find dozens of people who can do the web work for you. Let them figure out the website; this will give you time to focus on what’s really important.

To accomplish what I do, I have an entire team around me who helps me be more productive.

I’m a bad speller. Even with spell check I often make mistakes. Therefore, I have an editor read everything I produce. This allows me to write quickly, without worrying too much about grammar and spelling. The editor reviews what I write before it goes out to ensure everything reads well. Thus, I do what I’m good at, and where I’m not as skilled, the detailed editing, a member of my team steps in.

I have team members handle other day-to-day tasks for me as well.

Denise answers the bulk of my email. She’s able to answer all but two or three questions each day. In the beginning we built a question and answer reference document. She keeps that document handy to answer the questions she receives from members. When we come across a new question, she adds it to her guide. Each day she takes the questions she cannot answer and emails them to me. This way I can answer the two or three messages in one sitting and move on with the rest of my day.

Suzanne does a great job handling my phone calls. She, too, has a question and answer document. Plus, she also schedules telephone appointments. She takes care of all of the telephone tag, saving me a lot of time and aggravation.

For years I haven’t posted anything on my own websites. I know how to do it, so I could do it myself. I choose not to. Denise posts on my blog. Doug handles the IMA website. Rather than fussing with the editors to get the posts just right, I let Denise and Doug take care of it.

My team allows me to accomplish a lot more than I could possibly do by myself. There is no disadvantage to relying on others to do some of the day-to-day work in my business. I am still supplying all of the creative ideas, the writing and the marketing. Those are the things that attract customers and keep them coming back. I focus as much time as possible on those profit-producing activities.

Whether you are doing a job yourself or using team members to do some of the work, you always want to make it appear easy.

I attended an info-marketer’s conference, and he did a good job in his presentation. The only problem was he and his staff were frantic at the back of the room. They weren’t organized and had to improvise. A lot of emergencies came up as members of his team tried to figure out what they were supposed to be doing.

It’s important to invest the time to choreograph everything that needs to happen throughout your events. It’s not only more efficient and effective, but you always want to portray that you are in complete control of the situation. If your staff is frantic, your attendees will notice. Even if your content is the best, a lack of preparation will create doubt, undermining your attendees’ confidence in you.

You always want to make what you do appear effortless. Make it look easy.

It’s important to me that the Insiders’ Update always get delivered at 3 p. m. Eastern on Tuesdays. (The Dan Kennedy emails get sent at 3 pm Eastern on Thursdays. It happens every week at the same time, like clockwork.) To make sure my messages always go out on time, I write them several days in advance. This gives me plenty of time to get them edited, loaded into an email and sent by the deadline. Although a lot of work goes into writing, editing, designing, proofing, list selection and posting, it looks effortless.

Planning ahead and using systems will allow you to do more—and make it look easy. This will increase your efficacy and effectiveness while amazing your customers at how much you are able to accomplish.

What do you think? Are you a recovering do-it-yourselfer? Or are there good reasons why you and I should be doing more ourselves? Scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.

Best wishes,

Robert Skrob

Capture Readers Attention in 2012 Using My “Little Hinge” Marketing Template

by Mike Capuzzi
www. MikeCapuzzi. com

If you’re looking for a fun and unique way to get attention and increase the results of your marketing in 2012, consider using the CopyDoodles Access Club’s brand new “little hinge” marketing template!

You may have heard the quote “Big doors swing on little hinges” from successful business owner and author W. Clement Stone in the book The Success System That Never Fails.

It’s a great quote because it really paints the picture of what any business can do for its customers, clients and patients. One little tweak (from your business) to someone’s life can make a world of a difference.

I love this quote so much I built a marketing campaign around it several years ago, and I still use it today. I call it my “little hinge” marketing template.

The original marketing piece I created had an actual brass hinge attached to it, which I ordered online. The hinge helped the piece get the reader’s attention, and it also made the letter a lumpy mailing piece so when people received it in the mail, they would open it immediately.

The letter went out to people who were attending a workshop I was running. I used the letter to remind them to be diligent in looking for all the tips and tricks and strategies I was going to share with them because I knew it could have a huge impact on their business.

Next was a Thank You Card that went out to people who were attending a workshop I ran. It also had the little hinge on the bottom right hand side of the card.

Again, I was reminding them to be on the lookout for key ideas attendees could pick up while at the workshop.

Recently, I attended an event where there were going to be a number of publishing agents in attendance. I wanted to make an impact, so I created a business card and used a little Elmer’s Rubber Cement to attach an actual brass hinge on the back.

Check out images of each of these mailings along with the rest of this featured member’s blog post by visiting MyInfoMarketingForum. com.

All credit card processors are NOT created equal! The moment our relationship begins, we fully dedicate ourselves to the success of your enterprise so you have time to develop the real art of your business. PPS will set you up with a customized merchant account so your clients can purchase your products and services more conveniently. With our real-time processing, the funds will seamlessly be deposited into your account. You can offer your clients more payment methods, automate transactions and much more!

Practice Pay Solutions and IMA have teamed up for this superior offering. For more information, please visit Payment Processing With DirectPay.

News to Share with IMA Members?

Robert is happen to share your news with other members. Do you have any successful product launches, seminars or first tele-seminar series that you’d like to share? Let Robert know at RS@Info-Marketing.org.

From Foggy to Clear and Inspired

“I went into the call feeling foggy, confused and uncertain. I left the call feeling clear, inspired and very certain on what steps I need to take to move my business forward. Not bad for a 45 minute session. You have saved me at least 2 - 3 weeks of time, and removed a lot of anxiety and frustration around feeling unproductive.

Thanks Robert. I highly recommended the investment in a coaching session with you.”

- Andrew Roberts

Faster Implementation =
Faster Profits for You

One of the toughest challenges can be finding vendors who "get it." It is difficult because oftentimes you must first educate vendors about your info-marketing business and its needs before you can outline your project for them.

For the last three years, members of the IMA have nominated their vendors for the IMA Buyer's Guide. This is a quick reference directory to help you find the best vendors in the info-marketing industry.

You should always do your due diligence before hiring any vendor, but this list will give you a head start toward finding one that will meet your needs, help you implement faster and get you from the project planning stage to the profit stage as quickly as possible.

Check out the IMA Buyer's Guide today.

One of the largest barriers for small business owners and their employees is the rising cost and burden of health care, which is why the Information Marketing Association is proud to offer its members the opportunity to take advantage of IMA Health Plans. We offer you comprehensive, affordable health insurance coverage for individuals and companies, with as much as 42% savings over other insurance plans.

The Information Marketing Association is pleased to provide our members with a national group and individual health insurance program with average health insurance savings of 42%. The IMA Health Plans’ Benefits Program is issued and underwritten by JLBG Health, one of the largest health insurance carriers in the nation.

Please visit Affordable Health Insurance for more information about this IMA members’ only benefit.

Weekly IMA Ezine: Caught in the Swirl

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

January 17, 2012 | Week 3 of 2012

“The swirl” is one of the things we talk about with Harley-Davidson dealers when we are coaching them to improve the profitability of their dealerships.

At any given time in a dealership, there are customers considering buying motorcycles, trying on clothes or waiting for their motorcycles to be serviced; service techs working on motorcycles; parts orders arriving via UPS; and a parade of salespeople walking through the showroom. There are a hundred things the dealer would like to pay attention to, and at the end of the day, he’s exhausted. He works hard every day, but he can’t find time for the things that are most important because he is too busy.

That’s the swirl. Perhaps you have it in your own business. So many different urgencies crop up that you aren’t able to work on what’s most important. It’s like one of those shooting galleries at the fair. Targets pop up and you have to shoot them quickly before they disappear again. At the carnival you’ve got concentrate on the gallery to score maximum points and get the biggest prize. It feels great when you hit all the targets, both at the carnival and in your business. When I get into the swirl in my own business, it actually feels good. It’s like I’m the head of an army that’s under attack. I’ve got projects and problems coming at me from all sides, and I’ve got to keep them all under control. While being in the swirl can feel invigorating, staying in the swirl is the wrong approach for a business owner.

Going back to my example about Harley-Davidson dealers, we taught them to create trackable goals for each department. Here is what we coached them to do:

Set your goals by first determining the total amount of money you want to make at the end of the year. Then assign a net profit contribution from each department. Based on that expectation, set goals for each month and what must be done within each department to achieve those goals. For instance, for motorcycle sales to generate the desired amount of profit, determine how many motorcycles the sales department needs to sell as a department. This will allow you to estimate the number of motorcycles each salesperson must sell each week to meet your goal.

Managing this way is like having a pause button for the swirl. You see that it exists, but it’s happening to everyone else, not you. That’s because your attention isn’t focused inside the swirl; instead you can see all the way through it, straight to your goal. You are able to keep your attention on what’s really important, driving your business toward your real business goals.

Info-marketers often get caught up in the swirl. Within the swirl we jump from one emergency to the next. Our goal is to keep everything running so we can quickly move on to the next crisis. We lose sight of where we are really trying to go. And it’s easy to find ourselves working and working and never seeming to make any progress.

It’s important to create a careful plan for the business you want to create. Outline the types of programs you want to offer, and create a timeline for when you’ll implement those programs. What will each of those programs contribute to your company’s profit? Who is responsible for getting them implemented? And for each person with responsibilities, what’s his or her schedule for getting the work done? These basic goal-setting and project management plans can mean the difference between getting caught in the swirl and reaching your business goals.

Just a few weeks ago, you probably made some resolutions. You may have set some goals for yourself to achieve. How much progress have you made? If you’ve made progress, it’s probably because you set out monthly, weekly and daily goals in addition to just making a resolution.

If you haven’t made progress, make an appointment with yourself—an appointment you refuse to break. Outline what you need to accomplish each month to make your goals a reality. Consider what has to be done each week. And then put each week’s goals into your calendar so you’ll take a break from the swirl to get the important projects done. In the same way you’d step away from your business to go to a doctor’s appointment, step away to improve the health of your business by focusing your attention on your most important goals.

While the swirl feels good in the moment, working on your goals gives you a great feeling that lasts. It’s actually a feeling of superiority. You can hold yourself above other business owners when you see them battling within the swirl.

What do you think? Are you caught in the swirl? Or do you have a great way of setting and achieving your goals? Scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave me a comment. I read every comment and reply when appropriate.

Best wishes,

Robert Skrob

Dan Kennedy’s December 2011 Information Marketing Special Report

Dan Kennedy’s December Information Marketing Special Report was jam-packed with resources to help you build your information marketing business.

Here is a quick summary of the topics included:

How to legally print your own money
Liberating stored value
Free customer acquisition
What network marketing really was
Sell it by zealot

As a member of the Information Marketing Association, in addition to receiving the report in the mail, you are welcome to download a PDF version to archive or use with your favorite electronic reader. Grab a copy by visiting the page Odd and Unusual Business Strategies. Feel free to add comments and your own experience within the comments box at the bottom of the page.

From Foggy to Clear and Inspired

“I went into the call feeling foggy, confused and uncertain. I left the call feeling clear, inspired and very certain on what steps I need to take to move my business forward. Not bad for a 45 minute session. You have saved me at least 2 - 3 weeks of time, and removed a lot of anxiety and frustration around feeling unproductive.

Thanks Robert. I highly recommended the investment in a coaching session with you.”

- Andrew Roberts

Faster Implementation =
Faster Profits for You

Check out the IMA Buyer's Guide today.

News to Share with IMA Members?

December 2011 Jump Start Coaching Call

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:13:43 GMT

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Robert: Hey welcome to your Jump Start Coaching Call. I'm Robert Skrob and you're a couple minutes early and I was ready so I figured we'd go ahead and start the call and reward you for being here early. You could be the first to jump in to the queue to ask your question.

Press one on your touch tone phone or rotary if you got one but touch one and that will get you in the queue. Jason will take your name and city and then put you into the queue in the order that you are received.

Your Jump Start Coaching Call is an opportunity every month to ask me your questions. You and I can talk one-on-one and I can help you with anything that's going on in your business. Sometimes these calls go for a long time. We're on the phone for 60 or even 90 minutes many times. Other times the calls are wrapped up within 15 if folks don't have a lot of questions to ask.

So I'm happy to help you. Looking forward to it. And really ready to Jump Start your business into 2012 in this year right and really set the best trajectory for the coming New Year. So ask your question. Press one on your phone. That gets you into the queue to ask your question.

Coming up next month your Best Practices and Information Marketing call is scheduled for January 11th. And it's at 3:00pm Eastern, Noon Pacific and the entire program is about building business systems with a great guy. I just recently read his book. His book is called Work the System. And his name is Sam Carpenter and we're going to be interviewing Sam. The thing I liked about his book is it was really one of the best primers on creating business systems that I've read and I've certainly read Michael Gerber's books and attended lots of programs and information about it and really have interviewed and read dozens of different programs including different Six Sigma and everything else but I haven't seen anything as complete as what Sam Carpenter wrote. So I really welcome the opportunity to bring Sam on and to share his insights on creating businesses that really work for you rather than the business owner constantly having to work for the business.

And I know a lot of business owners it's kind of like, "Oh my gosh I'm working harder than ever worked when I was an employee." And maybe sometimes you're even make less money. And we certainly don't want that to happen. So that program is going to be a great program for you both within your normal business, to help you systematize it as well as your information marketing business.

Also if you want to put your calendar the next Jump Start Coaching Call is January 24th at 3:00pm Eastern, Noon Pacific. Happy to speak with you then, answer any questions that I can at that time.

Also a neat program for February 8th the Best Practices call. The company Early to Rise is an information marketing business that recently sold and the new owners took it over this summer and have ramped it up and completely revamped the business. And it's going to be a neat, insightful interview on how to bring an old business to life, re-engineer, re-launch your business with your customers and so I really want to encourage you to check that out because you're going to really enjoy that program. That's on February 8th at 3:00pm Eastern, Noon Pacific. So that's your Best Practices and Information Marketing call.

So to get in the game press one on your phone. That gets you in the queue. I know a lot of times folks are reluctant to jump in but press one on your phone. That gets you into the queue. And our first question comes from Nick. Welcome Nick. Good to speak with you.

Nick: How you doing Robert?

Robert: I'm doing well. So how'd your big launch with the breast enlargement contest go?

Nick: It actually went pretty well for the amount of postcards and everything that we sent out. We ended up selling about five of them on the first day. We had a lot of follow-ups and other people in the coaching programs. So now we're just sending out more direct mail.

Robert: Good. Now so that was a program that you did for your own bar. And then now you are launching it to other bars. So you've gotten some folks that have taken you up on the program itself as well as upgraded into coaching.

Nick: Yeah, yeah. It'll sell a lot better once I have testimonials and stuff from these bar owners, once they do it because all I had was my story at first. Once I get those testimonials out there from these other bar owners, how it worked so well for them it'll be much easier to sell and I'll get that going.

Robert: And from the last time we spoke those stories, those success stories are really the most important thing for you and your business right now, working to generate…certainly we want you to get paid for everything that you do. But a couple of those success stories would change everything that you're doing.

Nick: Yeah. Yeah definitely. My question for you today was right after the, actually in the middle of January, getting ready to launch my coaching program and I just had a quick question for you. I'm wondering, and I'm wondering what you've seen in other industries but would I be better off not doing a free report or anything like that but just sending them a letter in the mail handwritten, white envelope, stamp, pretty much introducing who I am, what I can do for them, giving them a 60-day risk free guarantee and just mainly get them to try to call me and then sell them over the phone rather than sending them a postcard or a letter to get this free report as a sales letter and then sell them into the coaching program. It gives them more details.

My goal is to get 10 people right away. And I'm just wondering if I'm better off just sending these letters out and get them to call me directly, people who are interested. Tell them a little bit about what it's about, what I can do for them but then once I get them on the phone explain everything to them instead of having the sales letter do that.

Robert: Do you have the letter already?

Nick: Yeah. I've created a letter/free report. I've created three different letters. One letter that's going to be a follow-up is actually a letter I wrote coming from one of my clients, a successful client that I've done a lot of work with. I wrote the letter. He approved it and then that was going to be a third follow-up saying, "Hey I was skeptical at first working with Nick but one phone call did it. We've been working together. These are my results," and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

So I'm just wondering if instead of doing this whole free report just try and get them to call and sell them over the phone would be a better, faster, maybe more affordable way rather than here's a free report and then chase these people down with more mail.

Robert: We can tweak the offer a little bit. So instead of being a free report or what have you if we want to try to make it more direct about getting on the phone the purpose of the free report is to help you identify who on the big list really is interested. And I'm perfectly fine even if you do outbound telemarketing to the people who request the free report in order to convert them into customers. The frustration is we've got these people who've asked for the report. We send them a whole bunch of stuff and then nothing happens.

Nick: Right. Yeah that's what happened in the past about six months ago. Remember I took a little bit of break with me getting married, summer time, everything coming up. So now revamping this back up and I'm just wondering if I better say, "Hey give me a call. Free 15 minute consultation. This is what I have to offer. I can't help everybody but once we talk I'll be able to let you know if I can help you and give you free 60 days to test this out." Rather than doing a free report but then I start thinking if I send out that free report, like you said, that shows me who is interested out of a list that I'm selling it to and then those are the people to target. But like I said my main goal right now is get 10 people in within two months if possible and just wondering what strategy might be the best way to go, smarter way for me to go.

Robert: I would still do, the free report or some sort of offer to get them to respond. And whether that's a free report or you got the free report so that's what I would do right now. Maybe in two months the offer is to come on for a webinar or something like that so you could change what it is that they're getting. But you want them to take some action and also you don't want them to be intimidated out of asking because they'll be some number of people that are like, "Oh bull crap I don't want to talk to any kind of sales person. I just want the information."

Nick: That's what my thought was too on that was people not wanting to call. Now we both, obviously, follow Dan Kennedy and he's also said you don't want to put multiple fittings on a direct mail piece giving them options on what to do or where to go. With this particular instance would it be okay to say either go here for a free report or you can also call this number for a free consultation. So you're kind of giving them two things. They could either call or they can get free information.

Robert: You can try it. I don't like the positioning. You are running your bar and the positioning has to be such that you're the…

Nick: I don't have time?

Robert: Yeah you don't have time. So if I was going to do, this is what I was going to suggest, I don't know that I would send this to the whole list of prospects but you might want to. I would certainly send this to your unconverted leads is to say come up with some reason. You are making yourself available from 1:00pm to 4:00pm Central Time on January X and it's the tavern owner extravaganza. It's never happened before but for this one time only I'm going to take questions and help people. You got your free 15 minute consultation. You can talk to 'the guy' and so that way you can get some of that positioning back and yet still have that sort of fervor over having them call you. Go ahead.

Nick: Okay, so you're saying definitely do a free report where they're not obligated to call to get the response, find out who's interested. So once they do that maybe I could do a three step sequence, a couple postcards, a letter to people who haven't responded to the free report. Just try to get them to do that if they haven't set up this call so that they can call in for it. Maybe the fourth direct mail piece but then say for the people who have gotten the free report, the free report's going to pretty much sell them on the coaching program what I've done, giving them some testimonials from other people. If they haven't responded back to that within say a week what would you say a good follow-up step would be with those people? To send out another letter?

Robert: You can.

Nick: Hey I know you've got the free report. Wondering what's going on.

Robert: Feel free to call.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: I prefer if later on it's a sales person that's calling and not you personally because it's very easy.

Nick: I want to do it at first just so I can get the most information out of it, figure out what's working, what's not and then hire that stuff out. After I talk to say a hundred people then maybe hire that out once…

Robert: I would call them. I would call them because like you said you're going to get a lot of information and you're going to learn a whole lot more than you ever thought possible about it.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: I wouldn't hesitate to call.

Nick: Okay and one quick question about that, would you just say, when they go get the free report they just put in a name and e-mail for me to rush ship it. They go to a thank you page. I need their full contact information. So I should obviously 'A' get their phone number from there or are you saying buy a mailing list with the phone number and then just follow up with them that way?

Robert: I would get the phone numbers from your opt-in.

Nick: From the mailing list? Okay. Oh from the opt-in. Okay.

Robert: Because you don't have a relationship. I know it's a business-to-business and so the do not call stuff isn't necessarily legal discussion. So any time you're doing any of this you still got to check the law but when they opt-in and ask you for the information then you should be able to call them as much as you want because they've asked you for it.

Nick: Right.

Robert: And those are the folks that I would call.

Nick: Okay. The people who leave it on the opt-in form?

Robert: Yeah. Or even opt-in. Because they've opted in and asked you for information you can call them even if they didn't give you their number. So if you got a tavern name or address or anything like that you can look it up and call them.

Nick: Right. And the other thing that I was going to do if they need to call a 24 hour recorded message to leave their information, because what I've seen there are a lot of bar owners who don't even know how to use a computer and hate to enter that. So I'm going to leave an 800 number that they can call, leave their info, which my phone service gives me the phone number of who called and then I get to hear the message.

I guess a good thing with that maybe I could say, "Hey you called in but I didn't get your full address. Can you give that to me again? Why again was it that you wanted this report?" And maybe I can just get them on the phone that way.

Robert: I would probably even start even more general. So, "How are things going in your bar? What are the ways that you're using to get new customers now?"

Nick: Okay.

Robert: How many customers do you want to get in 2012?

Nick: Right.

Robert: What are the promotions you have to get them there? And kind of ask them questions about that are general enough because most of the time the customer will hang themselves pretty darn quick by asking them those types of questions.

Nick: Right.

Robert: They're going to give you an answer pretty darn quick of well it's not what I wanted to be or I don't know. So that will help you then set up and go, "Well it just so happens it's lucky that you ask for this report." And I would even make some excuse as to why you're calling such as it just crossed the fax or your assistant is out but you wanted to make sure this person got it, some sort of reason other than this is your job and you're doing it.

Nick: Right.

Robert: But it's just very lucky that we happen to be on the phone because that's exactly what this program is all about is to help you establish those goals then show you how to quickly implement those promotions that are going to help you reach those goals and track that on an ongoing basis. And it's not unusual at all for the tavern owners that we work with to increase their revenue by X and their profit by Y. Is that something that would really interest you? So you kind of segway from there into now all of a sudden you got them saying, "Yeah."

Nick: Yeah, yeah I like that approach.

Robert: But I'm okay with doing the promotion of the call availability window to people who've never requested your information. But whether you send the promotion to the people who've never requested or to leads, you're probably going to need to tell them two or three times in order to have any sense of…even the folks that go, "Yeah I really want to do this." They're going to have to hear it two or three times before they go, "Oh yeah I can't forget that."

Nick: Okay. Then you're saying just put them on a group coaching call?

Robert: No. I would do 15-minute calls one after another with them.

Nick: Okay. So they schedule something?

Robert: No. It's open dial in. So from 1:00 to 4:00 you're going to be sitting by the phone and whoever calls and if they call they get a free 15-minute consult with you.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: And that 15-minute consult goes the same way I just described as that outbound call of well tell me about your tavern. How many ways do you have to get a customer? What are your goals for 2012? What are the ways that you have to reach those goals? Well it's lucky you called in today.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: So you kind of see the Dan Kennedy, he used to do it a lot more frequently, but he'd have those call in days where you could call in and speak with him for 15. Well just like this call where this is basically that but only for an hour.

Nick: Right.

Robert: And also I'm not selling anything here. Although it would be simple if I were. But that's what this is. You just call in. You get 15 minutes and then when your 15 minutes is up you hang up the phone and you wait for the next one to ring. That way no one else knows if they're the only person who calls for that four period or if you are so slammed that it was one call after another.

Nick: Right. And would I set these up to my cell phone number? Just have them call my cell phone or say what if two people call. One guy's call is five minutes while I'm talking to another and they're on hold for 10 minutes. Or do you do it through a phone service?

Robert: I actually have a separate line. I use it as my back door line but it doesn't have any voicemail and it rings busy when it's busy. But if you want to cheat it you could actually just have it go to your answering service and have them say, "Hey you know what? Nick's already on the phone with another person. Let me get your name, address, phone number. Nick wants to make sure he's able to help you. And so even if he has to call you after 5:00 he's going to call you." Or have them set up a call or something with you.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: A schedule, schedule something for the next day. The demand was far more than he anticipated. Is there a way that he could schedule a time to make he answers your questions?

Nick: Okay.

Robert: And you may want to make all the calls do that during that time regardless. Maybe not make yourself available at all. That's fine too. So when Dan did it he had so much demand for him that he knew he was going to be busy the whole four hours. And he knew he was going to be able to get the clients he wanted to get during the four hour time. So it wasn't a big deal.

Nick: Right.

Robert: But for you just starting out maybe that promotion is you've sent them all to the person who says, "Nick is so busy he can't take your call. Let's schedule a telephone appointment for the next two or three days. Is Tuesday at 4:00 or Monday at 3:00 better for you?"

Nick: Okay, okay. And Robert, again, what were those four questions that you told me that I should add. What are your goals? What do you have to reach your goals? But I think I missed the first two. I was trying to write them down.

Robert: Yeah let me look. How many ways do you have to get new customers into your tavern? What are you goals for the next year in terms of revenue and revenue increase? And what ways do you have in order to reach those goals?

Nick: Okay. So pretty much three questions. Okay. And I'm sure I can come up with some other ones would be beneficial to me to ask and kind of hit their pain, hit their emotional spot.

Robert: Certainly. But I think there are plenty of questions. Is your tavern a lot better than the other ones around you? Are you in a place where there's a lot of competition? Let me see here, how many hours do you work a week? Are you working more this year than you were last year? What's the percentage of time that you would rank as productive?

Nick: Okay. I'm sure I can come up with a nice little list and then kind of once I do all that just tell them, "Good thing you called today. This is what I can do for you." And then give them a risk free offer. And then explain the programs to them.

Robert: So if you want to try to get them on the phone quickly even to those raw leads I don't mind you, I don't like the positioning of saying, "Hey just call me." But I don't mind the positioning of Nick is having this special promotion to help the business. Here's this speaker. He's on this circuit. He's on that circuit and he's going to be available four hours only. Call in. If you get me you get me. If you don't you don't but you better call in between these times and then during those times it turns out you're not available because the volume was such that weren't able to handle all the calls. But good news you're going through the answering service and I'll be happy to set up a telephone appointment with Nick where you two can speak. Because Nick's just not able to handle all the calls that are coming in today.

Nick: Okay.

Robert: The demand has been so high that…that way then you can set your dial in thing for any day. You don't have to be available at all and you can take all the calls on an appointment basis.

Nick: Yeah. I like that idea.

Robert: And I would have them call you at the designated appointment time.

Nick: Okay. So you're saying my first step could just be this if I wanted to instead of doing a free report just do this or are you still saying do the free report? If I don't get a response then do that?

Robert: You can do this as the promotion if you like. You're going to need to sell you pretty hard because they have no relationship, they haven't seen anything from you, they don't know who you are, what you offer. So you're going to have to sell you pretty hard but I'm okay with you doing this to a raw list.

Nick: Okay, okay. And then people who have requested it I could still do this same thing after they got the report if they haven't called to set up a free consultation. I could still send them something like this and, "Hey demand's been so high I'm going to set up one day." Exactly what you just said but I could do it for both groups.

Robert: Correct.

Nick: Okay. Yeah that helps out a lot and I like that strategy. I'm definitely going to try that.

Robert: Well looking forward to hearing the results Nick.

Nick: Yeah, yeah I'll definitely shoot those over to you.

Robert: Well Merry Christmas and look forward to talking with you next year.

Nick: Okay sounds good. You too.

Robert: All right our next question comes from, oh if you want to get into the queue press one on your phone and that will get you into the queue in the order received. Our next question comes from David in Florida. Welcome David.

David: Hi Robert. Good to talk with you today.

Robert: Great to speak with you. Welcome.

David: Thank you very much. My question has to do with an acquaintance that I have, let's say a physician's assistant and an MD, friends of mine. And they've started physician house call business. In order to do it they've gone through a whole lot of red tape and bureaucracy establish this. And now there are other PAs and doctors that want to do a similar thing. So I've spoken to my PA friend about starting some kind of an information business and he's very interested. He's completely new to this and I'm fairly new myself. So I'm wondering what are some of the early steps that we should take, that I should have as objectives for him as we talk about this?

Robert: I am partial to the book, The Official Get Rich Guide to Information Marketing, 2nd Edition.

David: Sure.

Robert: Has he been able to read that yet?

David: No. I have but he has not.

Robert: That would be a good place to start just to give him an understanding so that when you are talking with him you know that he's got head kind of wrapped around what this is all about.

David: All right.

Robert: And then the first thing I would do would be to dive into the chapter about market research and let's try to figure out who the animal is that would be this customer, who is it that's so interested in getting this information. That would be chapter six, beginning on page 45. Are there lists of these types of customers? Do they read a particular type of magazine? How are we going to reach them? Can we talk to a few of them and see what type of information they're looking for, what kind of time table they're on, how much money they…try to get a sense of what they have to invest. Are they boomers who are leaving the corporate world and see this as kind of a semi-retirement opportunity? Are they 40 year old guys that are trying to put away money for their kids' college? Are they moms that are looking for a second income or want to do something that balances kids?

Try to figure out kind of who these type of customers are so that you can get a lot better understanding of. That's really the very first step and the most important thing to do.

David: Okay. Now related to that he already established associations that can provide him with some good information. For example, in a few weeks he has a meeting with a home health agency where they director's invited, I don't know, 12 or 15 doctors to come because they're interested in starting a house call business. So I'm assuming he should use that opportunity to really gather information from them about what they want.

Robert: Certainly. Now do you primarily sell to this docs as an income stream or who do you think you're selling this to?

David: Probably two different groups that we can see right now. One would be doctors who want to increase their income stream by maybe hiring a physician assistant that would do house calls for the practice. The other opportunity would be with PAs who are more entrepreneurial who want to be out there on their own a little bit more who could start a business like this them self, and that's what my friend did actually.

Robert: Now are they getting medical reimbursement or the patient's paying them?

David: They get all the kinds of forms of payment, reimbursement or direct payment that would you get in a traditional fee for service office.

Robert: Okay. Okay. So it's just how to create your own job?

David: Right. Right. And there's a rising interest in this from the consumer standpoint, the patient standpoint as well. The like the idea of the doctor coming to their house.

Robert: Yeah I'm with you. And I imagine the business side of it, the marketing side of it, the scheduling, pricing, all these things would be questions that would need to be answered before somebody could get in there. It certainly sounds right. It's just figuring out who in these universes are going to step up and say, "Yeah I want to pay for it." The doctors are particularly difficult to reach. They are some of the hardest because the mail that goes to the house their wife sorts through. And the mail that goes to their office two or three people are sorting through before they get it. And the docs are generally very well insulated and I've got all kinds of stories about sending things to docs. It doesn't mean you don't do it, it just means they're going to be more expensive to get at than someone else.

David: Okay. And that's what I'm wondering, how does he make the most of meeting times, association time for the already have, like this meeting coming up in a few weeks. Does he present a survey to them or how can he maximize that opportunity?

Robert: What would we need to say to you, here's the program, what we need to say to a typical doctor or to you to make you, instead of sorting this in the trash as unimportant to go, "Wow this is a great opportunity for us." What do you need to hear for you to understand that this would be a good and important opportunity?

David: Okay.

Robert: Why would you be interested in doing this? What is it about your practice that isn't panacea that would make you want to be interested in doing house calls?

David: Okay.

Robert: The fact is it all used to be house calls and somebody 60 years ago sold an info product teaching doctors how to have all the patients come to them instead of them having to go to the patient. And it's been on that basis ever since. So why is it they'd be want to be going out and doing this? What about that practice? Is it confining? Is it too limiting? Why would they want to do this?

David: Right. Yeah I my PA friend has some good ideas about that already but you're saying you want to confirm that out of their mouths.

Robert: Well and I want to hear what they say. And maybe if it's possible to even record it because those are the words, I want somebody who's green and doesn't know anything about info marketing to be the one telling me why he wants to buy this thing. And somebody's who's not sold on it telling me why they want to buy it. Because your friend already, he's so close to it he doesn't have, he thinks he has the perspective but he doesn't really. And to hear their words and to even have the words recorded that's exactly the kind of thing you're going to want to have as headlines and as sales material for your promotion.

David: Okay. Makes good sense.

Robert: Those words are gold. And also what's the best way to reach you? How would a guy who's got some program like this that has the opportunity of really transforming a physician's practice be able to reach the physician in any kind of meaningful way? Do they have to call? Do they have to show up like a drug rep? Do they send a letter FedEx? Does it have to come as a singing telegram? What is it that has to show up in order for the doc to go, "This might be important." That would also be good.

And then otherwise what are some of the ongoing frustrations that you have in your practice? What are some of the things that you're worried about in the future? You could speculate on a lot of that but hearing their exact words and then repeating their words back to them in your sales letter would be very strong.

David: Okay. Good.

Robert: I know what the sentiments are. They're all scared to death of what health care reform's going to bring. I guess they're taking a cut on their reimbursement rate. Part of what isn't being negotiated in Congress right now is reversing the cut to docs that they made. And so they're all going to take a haircut next year. And that's a much bigger dollar amount to the docs, much bigger dollar amount to the budget than it is this payroll tax discount deal. And so per doc that's got to be darn significant if it's $40 dollars per person per month that the payroll tax cut is if the overall…it's got to be a whole lot more the doctor's are getting cut. So they're scared to death about that.

They got to see more patients to get the same money they did 10 years ago. So some of this stuff is easy but I still want to hear it in their words.

David: Okay. That's good advice.

Robert: And then other than that maybe how they would want it packaged. Would you prefer it as a seminar? Would you prefer this as a home study course that you could give to a PA? Would you want to train the trainer? Would you want something that your office manager could implement? How would you want this delivered?

David: Okay.

Robert: Because it might be interesting. I guess one of my thoughts would be that the doc would buy it but then the office manager would be responsible for doing it. Some docs might love it. Some might go, "Man I can't give that to her." Because the doc doing it I don't think is going to be interesting. We can't tell the doc that we're going to put him into that business. He wants only to be looking at patients.

David: Right. Right. Okay. Good. So really you would suggest overall for my friend to use this opportunity to really gather a lot of information instead of being up on the podium telling everybody what he thinks already.

Robert: Most definitely.

David: Yeah.

Robert: Yeah as much as possible. Now you might have to keep me on the podium to tell them so that they have enough context to know what he's asking them about. And maybe he does it as a dialogue, makes it kind of an open, what would be the political term for it? A town hall meeting sort of format.

David: Sure.

Robert: So he gets up there, "This is something I'm doing. I'm doing house calls. I got the PAs and we go out, we do these things, we do that. This is kind of how we see our patients. I could talk about reimbursement. I could talk about billing. I could talk about scheduling. I could talk about this. I could talk about that. What are some of the questions that you have hearing this? Why don't I talk about what you're particularly interested in? Now you understand what I do and how I make my money and how I serve my patients. What are you most interested in?"

David: Okay.

Robert: And then start getting them asking questions. So it's 10 minutes worth of explaining what you're doing and what it's all about. 15 minutes worth of taking the first one or two questions and then after that slip it into, "So why would you doctors be interested? Tell me, this might sound crazy to you but I'm just a PA so what do I know. But why would a doctor be interested in this at all?" And let them tell you. But see doctors are so hard to reach you guys want something of anybody pestering you that they might actually sell you something. So if somebody has something like this to offer how would they even get it to your attention? What would be the best way? And let them see where. But you get them dialoguing and then once they're talking and engaged you could then ask them anything you want.

David: Okay. Excellent advice.

Robert: All right?

David: Good. Thank you. I'll have a good next conversation with my friend based on what you've told me. That's been very helpful.

Robert: And we'll probably have the recording of this certainly, I don't know when that meeting is but we'll have this up before the end of the month so you can actually share it with him if you like.

David: Oh good. Thank you very much Robert. I really appreciate it.

Robert: All right. Good luck David. Merry Christmas.

David: Yep. Take care. Merry Christmas to you.

Robert: All right. If you'd like to get into the game press one on your phone. And then you can ask your question. In the meantime we have Kim from Pennsylvania. Welcome Kim.

Kim: Hi thank you for having me. So I'm calling to chat about the advice I had gotten last time, which worked out great. I was selling a $29 dollar webinar when I was speaking and then trying to up sell and you had suggested to create a module that I could sell instead of a more expensive course, which I did. And we now sell a $500 dollar six week training course.

Robert: Awesome.

Kim: And I've done well with my closing when I'm in front of the group, when I'm presenting in person and when I do a live webinar I'm at about 20%. So obviously I have room for improvement but I've only done this twice so far and I've hit 20% both times.

Robert: I think it's pretty good.

Kim: I have zero percent when they're watching it as a recorded webinar right now and I just wanted some suggestions of what I could do to increase that number.

Robert: How many are watching it as a recorded webinar?

Kim: It's low numbers. I just had 20 people this last time through.

Robert: And are you on the webinar? Do you know that they heard the pitch or do you just know that 20 people started watching?

Kim: I just know 20 people started watching. I don't know if they got all the way through it. They paid to do the webinar. They did have to pay. It's a very small fee and we donate it to charity because we then also put them in our information marketing club. But I don't know if they watch the whole thing. Do you have a suggested format, something else I should use to make sure I can track that?

Robert: Now how are you broadcasting it the replay?

Kim: Oh they're receiving a private You Tube link.

Robert: Okay, so it's on You Tube?

Kim: Yes.

Robert: Yeah. See my role is I say to my web guy, "Hey I need to know who watched the end. You got to get me a viewer, a video viewer that keeps the stats to the extent that we can be able to track that sort of thing." And then he goes out and figures out which one it is. I'm trying to look. I had a video on the IMA site to see if it would tell me what its video player is. But I think that, it's been a while, but I think our video player will tell you if they've stayed till the end or bailed out. That way you'll have some idea if the problem…the thing is about the procrastinator, the person who has some reason that they weren't on the webinar probably has some reason why they can't watch the replay.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And they're getting around to watching it but it may be never.

Kim: Okay. So I should stick to a scheduled time to have that higher close rate.

Robert: It's going to be darn difficult to ask people to pay for something and then them lose out. But I would want to do everything possible, you got to do everything possible to get them to watch it live. Because what they've done is, even if they cheated by doing e-mail or something with multi-tasking while the webinar's playing, they made an appointment to be there.

Kim: Right.

Robert: And it's some number of them have made that commitment. The thing is proven. It closes at a rate of 20%. There's no reason to believe it's all of sudden broken to the people who watch it and that's not live. Can we give them a bonus for being on and staying till the end? Is there that sort of thing?

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And now is the same audience that you're trying to deal with every time or are you changing audiences as you go?

Kim: Changing from I have some joint venture things. I'll do it for a different group but most of the ones that we've done lately because we wanted to test this first have been us presenting it to those that are on our list.

Robert: Okay. Yes. So as your rotating the groups through, I didn't know if you're doing kind of a promotion of the month to the same list and you might have to have different bonuses or what have you. But I would have some sort of really sexy bonus that they get if they stay through the end and it could be an info product. It could be a little thatch key kind of thing, which helps you because you get their address at the same time.

But you want some sort of thing. If you're on it live and you stay through to the end then you get this and it's only $19 dollars or whatever you're charging for charity. But if you charge and tell them there is no way they can get it if they don't show up it's going to suppress the number of people who buy. They'll go, "Oh I'm not really sure." If they buy it and go, "I don't know if I can attend live or not but I'll try. But I know at least if something happens I can watch it." You're not going to get a suppressed response. But you are going to get some who don't show.

Kim: Okay. That's great advice.

Robert: Typically the no show rate of the people who opt-in to a free webinar and don't show up is about 50%. So you want to give them something, you want to do what you can but in the end I've always considered the replay, well either the replay…I have gotten customers on a replay where it's prescheduled and okay well the webinar was at 3:00 but if you couldn't show up we've got a replay tomorrow at 10:00am, something like that. I've done pretty well on those.

On the where you go listen to it at any time I've always, I don't know that anybody sells on those.

Kim: And another question, we've had issues every single time I've ever used Go To Webinar that I go test it it'll be great and then when we go to go live there's some issue. Is there any other webinar software that you recommend or that you've heard of that you would suggest?

Robert: What are you using for your CRM?

Kim: That's a whole other name there.

Robert: Okay.

Kim: We need help in that too, with 12,000 different things right now. Yeah.

Robert: Okay. It's not an affiliate at all. The EvergreenBusinessSystem.com.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: Well actually no that's not correct. Actually that's someone else's affiliate link. They set up a website for it. Evergreen. I've got it right here. I can just log in. But this is a platform what you would do is you just create a video file, an MP4. You post the video file to some sort of online server. I use the Amazon S3 server to post, to keep all kinds of videos on.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: I've never had a crash. It's always been every bit as fast as I've ever needed to it to be. Okay it's EvergreenBusinessSystem.com.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And then what the Evergreen Business System does is it generates a webinar at a time certain or based on when somebody visited a page or on a various…so somebody could show up to your website today and it could be programmed so, "Oh welcome. Would you like to show up to tomorrow's webinar or Fridays?" And all it is a video file and you create an MP4. You post the MP4 and then it just goes and plays at the time certain.

Now I think you need to connect this with InfusionSoft in order to make it work.

Kim: Yeah we're not using that because it doesn't link with QuickBooks.

Robert: Okay. So you're using QuickBooks as your shopping cart?

Kim: No. Ultra Cart's my shopping cart but with my accounting system I need to have every transaction link in Ultra Cart links with QuickBooks but InfusionSoft does not.

Robert: Well why don't you use Ultra Cart as the cart and InfusionSoft as a CRM.

Kim: Okay. That's a good recommend.

Robert: Maybe. Does Ultra Cart allow you to talk external? Does it have API?

Kim: They are third party. Yeah you can work with third party.

Robert: Okay. So yeah so you just connect InfusionSoft through the APIs.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And I get what you're saying about the whole QuickBooks. My InfusionSoft person gives us a spreadsheet of every single transaction through the month and then that's how everything gets entered into QuickBooks. So I understand completely what you're talking about with that integration not being right. I've made it a manual reconciliation process where we verify that every transaction within InfusionSoft actually got deposited into the checkbook and it gets cross referenced and then it gets inputted into the accounting system. So I understand that that's pretty frustrating. So I'm not going to try to take that away from you.

Kim: Okay so that's great. So then use InfusionSoft as the CRM.

Robert: If you need to.

Kim: And Evergreen I can have a file that they can see at any time.

Robert: Yeah. Certainly check out that because that way it schedules the webinars. It delivers them reliably. You've recorded it in advance. So you're never giving it live. Even if you decided okay I'm going to have a webinar next week, I'm going to have it next Tuesday, well then Monday you record the thing, you post it to where it needs to be posted and then Tuesday it gets played.

Kim: Okay.

Robert: And the software it's $500 bucks for this particular thing and its onetime payment of $500. But then you need the S3 server to host the file. Do you know what that is?

Kim: No.

Robert: Amazon Cloud server is a place that you can post files so that customers or anybody can download them or access them. And so, for instance, you go to the IMA website and you click to download a file that file is actually hosted on the Amazon server.

Kim: Oh okay.

Robert: You never know that but you just click and download it. What do you care where it's hosted? If you're showing videos or something like that on your website you could have the viewer on your site but the video can actually sit on the Amazon server. And Amazon.com server's are pretty darn fast. So if for whatever reason all of a sudden you had a thousand or 8,000 people on your website and they all wanted to watch your video, if it's on the Amazon server they can. It's just not going to be slow.

And there's a monthly fee. I don't offhand know how much it is. It's not very much. And then there's a little overage. So if you have a whole lot of people watching or downloading or you store a whole bunch of stuff then you're going to have a little bit of overage free. But it still isn't that very much money compared to the amount of storage you've got there.

And I keep all my stuff there. So all the video, everything is on that server. That way it's all in one kind of central place.

Kim: Okay. This is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much.

Robert: Okay. And if you need more let me know. We got a little more technical detail then maybe I'm even qualified to do. Send me a quick e-mail. I can put you in touch with my web guy or something like that.

Kim: Oh that'd be great.

Robert: And then on the Evergreen Business System I think I needed InfusionSoft but that may be wrong. It may work perfectly fine without it and it may even integrate with whatever you're using as a CRM instead. So I know it's going to integrate with what I got. And I thought that was required but it may be that it's not. Okay?

Kim: Yep.

Robert: Well great to speak with you Kim.

Kim: Thank you so much Robert. I appreciate you helping my business thrive.

Robert: Oh my goodness it's my mission. What I love more than anything else is to do that, to help you.

Kim: Thank you. Have a Merry Christmas.

Robert: Happy New Year. All right we have Zubere from the U.K. Welcome Zubere. How may I help you today?

Zubere: Yeah. I'm good Robert. Yeah I'm completely new to this information marketing. So my apology if my question sounds a bit odd. Here in the U.K. we don't have a lot of resources on the kind of stuff that you do to establish your info marketing business like you talk about in your book, your webinars, your teleseminars and everything else. And if there is I probably need a bit more research finding them.

What I was thinking was is it possible for me to launch an info marketing business without my own product? Having read your book, not all of it yet. I've read about half the book you go on about creating your own product even if it's off a, I think it was a teleseminar you say. Create a batch of CDs or something. I was just wondering is it possible to launch something without having your own product? Maybe becoming an affiliate, linking up with some products from Click Bank. Is that not really realistic?

Robert: No. I like selling products on Click Bank very much. And I do think it's a very good way to learn and learn how to market and make a little bit of money while you do it. I think when you have skills then you're going to quickly want to create your own product so that you can have a much higher margin in them. For two reasons, one so you have higher margin and two you can have a higher customer value. So once customer buys product A you can then immediately offer them product B-C and D now that you know that they're interested in it. So you could do up sells.

The business model with a Click Bank type of affiliate business is to accumulate an e-mail list and then send them different offers over time. And there's nothing wrong with that and that works okay. I don't think it's a scalable. So now when you try to take that income, let's say you get to 50,000 pounds doing that and that's not bad right? Wouldn't be too shabby. Then try to take that to half a million pounds is extremely difficult. And certainly half a million a month I don't know anybody that does that.

So I think that Click Bank could get you to 50,000 pounds without any problem. And starting from zero it may very well be a very easy way to go from zero to learning the business, making some money and knowing how to market products. But some time, I think even before you get to 50,000 pounds you're going to go, "I'm doing all this work to sell their product. It's really not that much harder to offer those webinars similar to Kim and sell my own."

Zubere: Yeah.

Robert: So if you want to get started with Click Bank I welcome you, I encourage you to do it. And the nice thing about Click Bank is you know that you can see off hand how well the products sell. You know someone else has already done the sales letter. They've already created it and all you got to do is take what they've done, drive traffic to it and spend the money. So there's a lot done for you and that helps speed up the implementation.

Zubere: Yeah sure. That's one of the other things that attracted me to Click Bank because I can't see myself doing them as good as they look, the detailed website, the sales letter and everything else. It's also done for you. I've got [inaudible 65:28] info marketing. I'm a member of the Glazer-Kennedy Insider Circle and he mentions you a lot on there. So yeah I've got a couple of businesses here in the U.K., which are fine and I use the marketing stuff that I get from the Insider Circle, which is brilliant. But I think my next business, which I definitely want to launch in info marketing.

The other thing I noticed at Glazer-Kennedy is they also have an affiliate program. So would you recommend them or any other affiliate programs other than Click Bank or do you think Click Bank is the one?

Robert: I do like Click Bank. Also coming up in January I am going to be working with Glazer-Kennedy on promoting a licensing opportunity where you can license their products and sell them within your own business.

Zubere: Oh excellent.

Robert: And it will probably be, actually you know what? I know exactly what day we're going to have that webinar. It's going to be February 2nd at 3:00 Eastern. So that's what? 8:00pm your time?

Zubere: 8:00pm yeah.

Robert: So February 2nd at 8:00pm we're going to have that program promoting that.

Zubere: Okay.

Robert: But that will be offering the GKIC type products and that way you can private label them and sell them within your own circle. They do have all the sales letters and those types of tools that you can use. And actually I even know that somebody who bought that, I know several people who bought that and the precursor of that Dan Kennedy thing when it was offered back in 2002 and created a whole, they launched their whole businesses out of those. There's at least a dozen people that are around today that started by selling Dan Kennedy product. Dave Dee is one of them.

Zubere: Okay.

Robert: So that's going to be out there. The reason why I like Click Bank for a guy starting like you is they handle all the merchant services, they handle all the payments. So if you sell something for somebody you know you're going to get paid. There's no question about it. And I would just hate to see you spend any time trying to sell for any other affiliates and not get paid.

Zubere: Yep, fair enough.

Robert: And really they got plenty to get you started. Between Click Bank they certainly could keep you busy the next couple weeks at least.

Zubere: Yeah what I was thinking, long term I have a pizzeria here in the U.K. Long term what I want to do is yeah create sort of a marketing program or basically feature other pizzerias or other take aways or restaurants how to get more customers through their restaurant or their take away. I think that's probably my long term ambition to launch an info marketing product.

Robert: In the USA the pizzerias are some of the most responsive of the restaurants in terms of buying these types of products. I would think it could have a lot of success.

Zubere: Yeah. But also I have learned a lot with a few products on Click Bank and see how it go. And like I said, I have nothing at the moment. I don't have an e-mail list or nothing. So I don't have any list of clients. I'm starting right at the bottom but I'm pretty confident about it with the stuff I've learned over the last year with the [inaudible 69:25] and reading your book as well. So hopefully it goes on. But yeah thanks for the tip.

Robert: Click Bank is a great place to start for you. I wholeheartedly recommend that as a great jumping off point.

Zubere: Excellent. Okay. And getting an e-mail list together and stuff it's as simple as getting these websites with opt-in for e-mail, free reports and stuff like that?

Robert: Yeah.

Zubere: Yeah?

Robert: Yes. A lot of, and I think they've got training on Click Bank of how to do a lot of these things but yes I would use an e-mail system. You could either use Aweber or One Shopping Cart, something like that so you could have a place to collect e-mail addresses and a form and system to send them out. And those software systems will help you create forms that you can post on websites and capture opt-ins. And you'll want to capture opt-ins so that then you can once they buy something or once they even express interest you can then follow up with them to convert them into a customer.

Zubere: Yeah. Great. Okay. All right I think that's about it for now. No doubt. I'll be calling you again.

Robert: Great. Great evening. I appreciate you staying up because this would be late for me. 9:10pm I'm ready to go to bed.

Zubere: I'm just checking out from the pizza place so I'm all right now for now but thanks. Merry Christmas to you Robert and the rest of the team.

Robert: Thank you. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Zubere: Cheers. Thank you.

Robert: All right we got a couple more folks in the queue. Don't worry I'm going to stick with you. We have Robert in Nevada next. How may I help you?

Robert: Hi Robert thanks. I have a question. I've been following a lot of your work as well Dan's for quite a number of years. I'm about to actually join the Platinum group in January and came across some information in regarding chiropractors and what I call the big ticket packages. And went recently through Kevin Nation's One Man Millions Program with Frank Kern and just spent three days with Frank Kern this past weekend really focusing on more big ticket packages opposed to small info products and using the traditional ascension model.

And my question is have you seen, are you familiar with a model that Dan uses or some of the other members that you've seen, for example, in the chiropractic niche there's a very new chiropractic niche that I'm looking to jump into, which is called Alpha Biotics where the average patient lifetime value's between eight and $15,000 dollars to the doctor. And I want to do a do-it-for-you program and I was curious are you familiar with the way that Dan or any of his chiropractors are marketing, I believe it's like a $35,000 dollar consulting package and how they approach that sale as well as what they're actually general offer in that package at that high ticket type of a program?

Robert: The typical approach is to have some sort of preview seminar. And so you promote the preview seminar and you can either charge folks to be in the seminar or make it free. The preview seminar is either a day or two days long and then depending on how long it is somewhere towards the middle you start offering them to be in this program.

Robert: Have you seen it done yet with the webinar approach, like an hour to an hour and a half webinar approach where they get really pre-indoctrinated into your expertise. Say you're a best-selling author and have been on NBC and really build your credibility right from the webinar going into a one hour strategy session and consult where you actually close them on the package.

Robert: I haven't done that.

Robert: Got you. You typically do a live one to two day event where you're kind of pre-indoctrinating them and selling and seating and selling and seating?

Robert: The reason is, now I don't doubt, I have no doubt that you can sell that way. No question in my mind that it would work. What

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Resources

January 2012 Jump Start Coaching Call

Business Insights Teleseminar - February 2012

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Open Coaching Call for IMA Members - February 2012

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Dan Kennedy’s December 2011 Information Marketing Special Report

Faster Implementation = Faster Profits for You

News to Share with IMA Members?

December 2011 Jump Start Coaching Call

Faster Implementation =
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Faster Implementation =
Faster Profits for You