5 Best Ways to Get Customers Spending Now

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REPRINTED FROM

DAN S. KENNEDY’S No B.S. Information Marketing Letter

FEBRUARY 2009

Each Special Report brings you an extended length dissertation on one aspect of info-marketing. These Reports alternate every other month with Issues of The No B.S.

INFO-Marketing Letter *; 6 times a year, a new Report, 6 times a year, the newsletter.

The Letter/Reports are included in Information Marketing Association Membership as a

Member Benefit (www.info-marketing.org).

*NOT to be confused with the regular No B.S. Marketing Letter or The No B.S. Marketing To The Affluent

Letter also published by GKIC.)

© 2014/GKIC

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As I’ve said elsewhere, this isn’t my first run around the recession

track. Been here before, done this before.

To my knowledge there are five “best strategies” for these

conditions . Six, if you are sitting on mountains of money, have no

need for more, and don’t mind your business going backwards and

having to later be re-built, then you might choose to just hibernate.

Take vacations, a sabbatical, see the U.S.A., or spend the next 3 to 5

years learning to ski or surf or bend spoons with your mind. It’s NOT

the worst response. For some, it is the best response. It is definitely

the least stressful response. But most of you aren’t going on

extended vacation. So you’re going to need these five strategies.

They are not necessarily strategies you’re going to want . But you’re

going to need them.

Here is the inconvenient truth : in the near term, you will be

required to invest more, think more, create more, do more and work

more to get less than you’ve been accustomed to. It will take more ofeverything just to get mediocre – instead of horrific – results. (And

that should finally put an end to my being incorrectly identified as

a “motivational speaker.”)

You can resent this all you like, and privately, personally, I do. But

there it is. Just like my going bald.

I would make the point, better to be facing this requirement in an

info-marketing business than any other. Others who own stores or

restaurants or chains of them, circuses, factories, sales operations

in home remodeling or office equipment, and on and on – their pain

greater, their agility more hampered, their troubles complicated by

their own overhead and infrastructure and need for capital and

consumer financing. If you need three bottles of Tums lined up on

your desk, each assigned to a unique source of indigestion, they need

thirty. Others’ greater misery is some consolation, although it’s

impolitic to admit it. But, in privacy, go ahead and grin when you

think about your arrogant brother-in-law the car dealer , who has

always sniffed at whatever the hell it is you do. Still, doing so

won’t create a bank deposit. Only digging in and digging hard in hard

to dig in dirt will. So, here are some shovels….

The 5 Shovels

#1: Give ‘em something(s) they cannot get anywhere else or

provide for by themselves

#2: Get them connected to something(s) you can disconnect

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#3: Provide them with antidotes to what ails them most and most

urgently(Re-position and re-package what you offer as such antidote and/or bring them new

ways of making money.)

#1, #2, #3 are best fulfilled if you can “crack the code” of delivering new customers or repeatbusiness to their doorstep, in ways they can’t duplicate easily or affordably on their own, so thatthey rely on you and, as a practical matter, can’t disconnect. Platinum Member Dr. Tom Orent’snewest, area-exclusive business begun last year, doing dentists’ marketing for them has theseelements; the Royalty Rewards program conceived by Rory Fatt and Bill Glazer has theseelements. (By the way, usually, THE best way to crack this code is by going into their owncustomer and prospect lists and doing follow-up, upsells, cross-sells, reactivations, etc. that theywon’t do for themselves). This is probably the most difficult reality to create and it is admittedlyfraught with peril, but it is also the one with the greatest long-term value. Simply, create and controlmedia and implementation that delivers customers – how can they ever leave you? Consider theVal-Pak business, a business of enormous size, longevity, profitability, with excellent retention of

advertiser-clients even though most whine and complain about how few customers itproduces….they keep using it despite complaining because it does produce customers, andbecause they must stay in to protect their category exclusivity.

If you think about #1, #2 and #3 separately, there are many other possibilities. In #1, for example,connection to a national brand, brand name, professional certification, and/or celebrity orcelebrities qualifies – later, I describe Platinum Member Dennis Tubbergen’s supplying of acelebrity to financial advisors in his program. It’s been a major success for him. This is somethingI’ve taught and harped on for years ….a major opportunity for niche info-marketers…..that very,very few have heeded my advice about. The few who have are definitely benefiting now. It, as #1linked to #2, makes the loss emotional as well as practical. There is pride of ownership in

attachment to the celebrity (or brand), embarrassment in having it taken away, and revulsion at thethought of it moving across the street to a competitor.

In #3, it may be something proprietary to you or private labeled for you that your clients becomeexclusive resellers of, that can only be obtained through you, and for which you have a completemarketing system. By giving them a new product(s) or service(s) to sell to their existent customersand that may also be front-end advertised to bring in new customers; you cross into the selling ofopportunity, discussed in greater depth, later in this Report. This links #3 to #2. It also enables youto create new, dynamic income streams from the products being purchased at wholesale for re-sale, and from the sales tools bought with which to sell them. It can be the construction of asecond, good business on the back of the first. For you, this necessity as mother of invention can

lead to ownership of your own niche direct-selling company, a valuable property, so you come outwith equity, not just income. I’d suggest viewing it as an opportunity rather than a band-aid. Thinkof it this way: the stored value in your business you aren’t tapping is: your “followers’” end-usercustomers. If your ‘followers’ are now consumers of your stuff, switched to a salesforce, theybecome conduit to all those customers. If you have 1,000 owners of whatever 's, who each have1,000 customers, you need to net but $1 per customer per year from sell-through to pocket$1-million. And, looping back to #2, if your ‘followers’ are earning commissions or overrides bybeing part of your program, they can’t disconnect.

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Another approach to #3 is providing some way of squeezing more juice out of the shrunken supplyof leads/prospects coming to them through the sources they already employ – Platinum MemberJay Geier fits in that role, with his comprehensive, done for them, fix-the-handling-of-inbound-callsprogram (which EVERY niche marketer should be selling to their herds via JV with Jay.)

AREA EXCLUSIVE PROGRAMS are, incidentally, alive and well, right now, and can be a fine wayof combining #1+#2, or #1+#2+#3. Based on calls with most of my Platinum Members in January,conversations with clients, etc., I’d say that – right now – Platinum Member Ed O’Keefe (in thedental field) is doing the best job and having the greatest success with Area Exclusive. He hasmultiple, different area exclusive “clubs”, is effective at selling them, and has excellent compliance,implementation and retention. This provides a solid revenue base for his business, and acontinuous big-ticket sale occurring with new clients as well. In the same profession, Dr. Orent hasa viable program (delivering marketing services) and the program I helped create, run by Dr.Charley Martin – DentistryForDiabetics® - is in good shape and growing; in January, five newdoctors in new areas. Dean Killingbeck has gone from early struggle to growing success at selling

his area exclusive program via the Discovery-Day model, putting people in the direct-mail businesshelping local merchants. I could go on. I have some direct involvement with, relationship withabout 20 operators of various area exclusive programs. NO ONE SHOULD ASSUME THATCURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS PRECLUDE SELLING $10,000.00 TO $50,000.00PROGRAMS in niches of many different kinds.

#4: Go to greater extremes.

Sorry, but now is not the time to cut back on service, on gifts, on razzamatazz at events, atfrequency, consistency, at the creation of good guilt. In fact, the opposite: identify the customersessential or most valuable to keep and lavish them as never before with attention (and worry about

the precedent set later). I see some info-marketers cutting costs in various ways that negativelyaffect the customer’s experience; it’s false economy.

You might note that, at Glazer-Kennedy, we’ve added to our costs without raising prices – forexample, in February, Gold Members (and above) began receiving an extra “Marketing Sample KitOf The Month”, with an actual, physical sample of a direct-mail piece, other marketing tool, website (sent on DVD), etc. with detailed instructions for its use. This requires staff time to assemble,adds printing, assembly and postage costs. DIAMOND Members also got value increased with amore elaborate online resource center. None of this reflects a desire to reduce profits and incuradded costs. It does reflect a realistic assessment of the heightened competition for availabledollars, for retaining our position on that monthly credit card statement while the customer red lines

someone else.

Be certain to take very good care of your most valuable customers. The day I was finishingthis, I was on the phone with an info-marketer who I’d forced to do in-depth analysis of hiscustomers’ individual contributions to profit. In 2008, the business had net profits just a tick below$630,000.00. That came from a list of 60,000 customers, but only 25,000 of the 60,000 made 3 ormore purchases per year – thus worth, roughly, 300% more than customers in the other 35,000;and – more importantly – only 500 were rabid and reliable buyers of virtually everything offered,

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including high priced products and events. Each one of the 500 is worth as much as 250+ of theother 24,500. He needs to listen real close and if he hears one of those 500 sneeze, fire up the jetand get over there, Kleenex in hand. Better yet, he better prevent any of those 500 getting sick atall. Key word: prevent.

Try to better satisfy your bigger number of good-but-not-great customers. It’s a mistake toever worry much about overall, total retention. That’s going to get worse during times like this nomatter what you do. You want to make sure it worsens within the group of lowest value, leastresponsive customers. If you do too much to try and save them, you may also do things that turnoff the better customers. Pay close attention to what your good customers are hoping for, lookingfor, and excited by and deliver that – even if it is of no use in better satisfying your poor customerswho churn anyway. In other words, don’t dumb down the deliverables for the slowest and lazieststudents – you’ll lose the interest of the smart ones with initiative.

This brings us to ‘segmentation’ – talking to different customers differently, in the same way it’sbest to talk to different prospects differently. In more generous times, the lumping together of

different kinds of people with some commonality but differing prime interests may have beensomething you could “get away with”. Now, maybe you can’t. Think restaurant owners: much incommon, but there are fine dining, casual, and fast food; sit-down dining but carry-out/take-out;pizza, Chinese, steak; single store operators, multiple store operators. They each devoutly believetheir situations different from the others. If they are financially pinched, pressured or anxious, andbecome more discriminatory about spending, they’ll be less willing to be in mixed company andtranslate ideas; more demanding of getting things specifically for them. The same principle appliesto any niche, as well as to all issues of separation; age, gender, geography, income.

Warning: merely piling on “more of the same”, trying to satisfy with bigger portions, will, for themost part, fail to justify its expense in satisfaction measured via retention, repeat purchaseresponsiveness or ascension. It’s a costly mistake often made. Right now, you definitely do NOTwant to take anything away or, in effect, shrink portion size, but you can’t just pile more on the plateeither. These conditions require delivering with more precision. Delivering to each person what thatperson wants and values most. This unfortunately involves more work and, probably, more cost.

As a practical matter, what does delivering with more precision mean? Some examples….it meansmore narrowly-focused, specific break-out sessions at an event, offering more variety and diversity,so people can find something of high personal interest, although of zero interest to others inattendance. It’s harder to put together the event, more space is required and it’s costlier. But that’swhat it takes. It means five tele-seminars a month instead of one for people in a coaching program,so they can pick the one of greatest personal interest. It means online communities organized intoa plethora of small “special interest groups” vs. one big pond. You might think of this as “extremespecificity”.

In front-end marketing, it’s very likely you are going to have to go to extremes, by way ofdoing things you otherwise would be unwilling to do.

As example, My Platinum Member Dennis Tubbergen has taken my “road show model” (datingback to my SuccessTrak business of the 80’s, with an evening seminar traveling in 4 to 6 city tours,

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happening 3 out of 4 weeks every month)…and is making it work beautifully. He has trained up agood presenter, so he is not doing them. The traveling speaker does 5 seminars a week: Mondaynight in 1st city, Tues. A.M. and Tues evening in next locations, Wed A.M. and evening in next, thenflies home Thursday for three days off. He is closing 40% of the room on a $2,000.00+ product; apercentage of those (I won’t cite) quickly attend a training at Dennis’ offices, where a $35,000.00

program is sold to a very respectable percentage (which I won’t cite)….the overall economics havehim going negative by nearly $3,000.00 for each person gotten to that training, but coming out theother side with a total cost-per-sale under $10,000.00 for the $35,000.00 program. You might notrelish the idea of creating, experimenting with and perfecting a presentation, getting a goodpresenter and paying him enough to keep him, scheduling and filling seats for the tours, etc., etc. – when I had mine, I had the speaker plus a full-time exec running the whole thing, plus using partof the hours of a secretary for scheduling, booking travel, and babysitting the speaker. So Iwouldn’t be jumping up and down with joy over this again either. BUT. It can be a solid, steady,successful way of bringing in good, new customers you cannot get at a distance, by any and allother means…and it is particularly useful during difficult selling times like these. You may need toget out and beat the bushes.

LITTLE HINGES… Again, this report is courtesy of Dennis Tubbergen. Sparked by anotherPlatinum Member, Jay Geier’s use of “hot babes in business attire” in his advertising, and at myspecific suggestion, Dennis re-worked a “control” direct-mail piece that brings in his leads, addinga sexy brunette in business suit and mailing this version only to males on the lists….it is out pulling the control to such an extent, lead production costs have been slashed by 30%. Thisrequires list segmentation, and going to the trouble of sending different pieces to differentsegments of the list, and driving different prospects to different entry web sites – something somany info-marketers are understandably loathed to do, preferring a one-message-fits-all approach.But, with response harder than ever to come by, the reality that men respond differently thanwomen to different photos and different language….that owners of the exact same kind of business

in Nebraska respond best to entirely different stimuli than those in Massachusetts….this reality iswhat will kill most – certainly all the lazy marketers.

I do a lot of copywriting, but I know some of it is doomed when handed off, because the clientssimply will not do what is necessary to deliver it to prospects in a way that gives it a fightingchance. Consider the state of Ohio, where I live, and assume we are sending a direct-mail piece ina #10 envelope with a photo on it, to insurance agency owners throughout the state. Based onDennis’ experience, we might split them male from female from husband-wife couple owners. But ifwe look at the map and know the state, there are a lot of geo-demo-psychographic realities thatwarrant a different photo on envelopes going to Columbus and Cincinnati than to Cleveland, tosmall towns; different for small towns north of Columbus than small towns south of Columbus, anddifferent for small towns surrounding Cleveland than those in the mid-section between Clevelandand Columbus. Etc. Etc. And most of those changes would affect percentage opened thusresponse. And that’s just one adjustment, the photo on the envelope. I can think of 20 more. If youwant to be successful in direct-mail, in most cases, going to these kinds of extremes is going to benecessary for some time to come.

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A brief consideration of manual labor vs. media….

A Platinum Member told me of a conversation he had with a big-name, famous speaker you wouldall know, after having him in as a guest speaker. The speaker “advised” my Platinum Member thathe couldn’t imagine there being anything the Platinum Member could spend his time doing that

would be of greater value or produce more income than being “one to many”, face to face, sellingto his customers. My Platinum Member wanted to know what I thought about that.

I told him that the speaker saw the business through a narrow viewpoint based on his own verynarrow and limited skill-set and experience, thus with a bias toward manual labor. This speaker, forexample, could not – and could not even imagine – spending a week at the keyboard developing asales letter that would bring in a million or two million dollars, a sum he would get, net, only byhauling his hiney around the globe, probably speaking for ten days and traveling for twenty more.The speaker also thinks purely in terms of income, not equity; his business has none, and he isclueless about developing any. Truth is, he does not have a business; he has a job. However, withthat said, he’s not ENTIRELY wrong. It is, and has long been, my observation that too many info-

marketers take distancing themselves from face-to-face with their customers and avoidance ofpersonal selling to a harmful and unreasonable extreme, creating severe weaknesses in theirbusinesses (that are exposed at times like these), and ignoring and neglecting very significantopportunities. It is for this reason that I encourage clients like this Platinum Member to holdfrequent new-member seminars at his home office…encourage others to get out on the road andrun tours….encourage others to, in many other ways, create one-to-many (and in some cases one-to-one) personal selling opportunities with their customers.

At Glazer-Kennedy, we created our IBA Program with the local Chapters to provide this kind of ‘inthe room’/human touch experience for newbies, and Bill speaks at several chapters a year, and Isome as well. We have also, in each of the past 3 years, held one event with Bill and I presenting

and accessible aimed at new folks – one in L.A., the next in Baltimore, and most recently ThePhenomenon Event in Orlando. It would be valuable, profitable, and a justifiable use of my time orhis to do some smaller-scale new member training every month – although neither of us is willingto do it, and there is positioning to consider. But were we in a niche, with multiple high-dollarprograms and services to sell, I would insist on doing it and do it myself if need be. Or, were I you,and incurring tougher sledding getting, keeping and ascending new customers, I’d not only bewilling to do it, I’d be eager to do it.

The attempt to grow and to sustain a complex info business entirely at a distance and entirelythrough media, with little or no direct access to you and communing with you for a broad base ofthe customer is, frankly, misguided. I know people sell this idea, and some buy into it, but it’s

fools’ gold. A vitally important element is the customer’s opportunity to see you, hear from you,touch you, tell you their story, in person. Further, the famous speaker is right about the best skillsand abilities of many (not all) info-marketers; that one of the top three is selling and/or speaking,and it is foolish to shelve that, especially if setting it aside in favor of doing things you’re much lessskilled and effective at. As one client recently said to me, “If you’re gonna make $9-million a year,you’re gonna git your hands dirty.”

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#5: Create “value menu” items.

Recessions require price variety. Make a note.

The restaurant industry is visibly scurrying to create “value items” – and you should too. I’ve written

about this before, in the contexts of building a large catalog, and of re-cycling and re-purposingmaterial; one path is to bust apart high-priced packages to create lower and varied price, smallerproducts. For example, you might take a prior year’s boot camp package, pull three or fourrecordings from it, and make individual items from them, or pair them with other tele-seminar CD’sby topic. If, for example, you had a boot camp speaker on referrals, and in the past few years, haddone three different coaching calls on referrals, you could put those together on four CD’s or,edited, on two CD’s, piece together a “new” workbook, and bingo, you’ve got a $39 to $69 item.This may be the right time to turn archived and old hard product into “new” online deliverables,eliminating manufacture and shipping costs, thus selling at reduced prices.

You need to keep your customers buying. Not just for the immediate revenue, but because the

habit is important. If they stop, getting them started again later will be difficult. To keep customersbuying in times like these, you need to give them more price choices across a broader spectrum. Ifyou are used to selling from $300 to $3,000; you may need some choices at $100, even at $10.With prospects, you may need to add lower, even ridiculously low first-transaction choices into yoursequence, and rely more on patient, persistent, gradual ascension. People forget that I built muchof my business with $1.00 audio-tape offers (modeled after Gerardo Joffee’s approach to list-building; get and read his book about mail-order), $10 books, and later, at the Success events, not just the $278 product, but a $99 product as well.

Glazer-Kennedy Membership can be viewed as a value-menu item. If you are smart, and area GKIC affiliate, you’ll more aggressively promote it during these times – by plugging it in

as a step or steps late in your entire sequence with new leads; periodically, offered toaccumulated, unconverted leads. Sure, it’s self-serving for me to push this, but it’s also importantto you because…. (a) it is a zero-effort way for you to extract more return on your investments ingenerating leads, and to continue generating and working leads in an environment of risingacquisition costs, lower conversion, slower ascension, you need every dime you can extract fromevery lead. Some who simply will not buy from you, and evidence it by stubborn non-responsiveness to your sequenced efforts, will buy from us. (b) Ours is a “free gift offer”; if youaren’t leading with a similar offer, this gives you the ultimate down-sell; free. (c) Anything you cando to “stir the pot” with accumulated, unconverted leads is worth doing, especially if done via e-mailat negligible cost. (That’s why it’s brain-dead stupid not to participate when GKIC puts together aspecial promotion, like the one just conducted around the Uncensored Sales Strategies tele-

seminar.) (d) If we get them, we “turn them on”, we train them, and they inevitably seek out GKIC-derivative providers in their niches, leading them back to you. If some go to a competitor, so what? – they were of zero value to you before, and a buyer’s a buyer, so most buy from multipleproviders.

As an aside, this is also a time to expand your back-end ‘catalog” of info-products, by bringing inother authors’, experts’ and publishers’ products all across the price spectrum, so that you fullycapitalize on the small percentage of your customers who buy everything, who buy constantly, who

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own everything you’ve got. To that end, we have a whole new collection of Kennedy productsspecifically for re-sellers, about which you can get info by returning the Form attached to thisReport, with the big, hand-written “A” on it.

This is also an ideal time to create a new highest-price package of products, coaching,

services, and whatever-else, for your top customers to ascend to and/or to sell as a front-end. Thatmay seem counter-intuitive, but you must remember that there are still and always 1%’ers, and5%’ers aspiring to be 1%’ers. There are people ready and eager to step up to the most elite leveland the most complete program.

Other recession strategies to consider

1. Buy something. If you have cash and financial strength, as well as customers for an “x” youdon’t currently offer, there’s probably somebody with a perfectly good “x” who has no cash, isfinancially weak, and can be acquired now much cheaper and on much better terms than before or

after the current trauma. You might buy horizontally, as I just said; acquiring an “x” you can sell toyour customers and customers you can sell your “y” and “z” to as well. You might buy a businessor buy intellectual property or even “buy” a person suddenly wandering loose or in trouble. Or youmight buy vertically, acquiring a vendor who sells to you. The selling prices of businesses aresuppressed by the economy, the difficulty of getting financing for deals, and the risk of loss of valueover the next 2 to 3 years, so bargains exist now.

Along these lines, you might re-visit the career of the late Joe Cossman, described in his book‘How I Made $1-Million In Mail-Order.’ Joe went looking for products sold only a few ways ordormant altogether, that he could secure exclusive rights to (just) for different, specific means ofdistribution, in any category he felt he could apply his know-how to (i.e. getting products placed

and sold through catalogs, selling via mail-order, and fueling sales with publicity). The sameapproach can be more pointed; looking only for such products that might be sold to, or better yet,through your existent clientele. As I already mentioned, the conversion of your herd of consumers(of info-products, training, coaching, etc.) to a dealer, distributor or direct sales network can be avery big win. It automatically creates pain of disconnect, as the access to the items being profitablysold can be taken away. It changes the dynamic from them paying you to you (also) paying them. And it can build a good business. At other times, you might find more resistance to such overturesthan currently; now, your folks ARE already looking for additional ways to make money.

2. Start something. Competition’s very thin. Hardly anybody’s starting new things. So, in everycategory, consumers aren’t seeing much of anything that’s new – and people are always interested

in the new shiny object, but doubly so when it’s been a while since they’ve seen any. And if youhave the financial wherewithal and emotional strength to be inordinately patient about profitability,there’s no better time to buy market share than when nobody else is bidding on it. To be fair,starting something new and going to “cold” prospects is more expensive now. I just went throughan experiment of my own, that I chose to kill and bury quickly, where new customer acquisitioncost, based on initial testing, promised to be between $1,000.00 and $1,500.00 --- my best guessis, the very same campaign would have acquired those same customers at under $700.00 in 2006.But were I willing to endure and do many complex things to mitigate the negative in this case, I

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could, during this down-time, put a brand new herd in place to cash in on when the nuclear cloudclears. The better position, though, is to figure out how to start something entirely new with yourexistent, unconverted leads, so that the lead generation costs already borne by Business #1 giftand fuel Business #2.

Incidentally, an info-category or market that is “toxic” to its mature participants can be surprisinglyfertile ground for the newcomer appearing for the first time. The day I finished this Report, I had aphone call with a copywriting client who, in May of 08, entered the real estate investor arena,marketing systems for buying, flipping and investing in residential properties. While most that've been selling such information to lists of actual and want-to-be investors for some time have seentheir sales evaporate, his new business has thrived. As recently as last week, he put about 600people on a tele-seminar and sold 70 one thousand dollar packages, to customers who hadrecently purchased their first program from him. His prospects are converting, his customers arebuying on the back-end.

3. Bring an entirely different opportunity to your customers or to your entire niche. For

example, several niche “gurus” are quietly offering the Kennedy’s All-American Barber Clubsfranchise to their clients. We have designed it and positioned it as the ideal 2nd business, so it isnot a suggestion to exit the person’s present business/industry/profession or the guru, at least notin the short-term, and the savviest niche info-marketers recognize it is not competing with them fordollars either; it is bought with different dollars, typically secured from different sources than arebeing used to pay the guru. The commissions available merely for being an “introducer” aresignificant. If even a small number of your customers might be receptive to owning an ideal 2nd business – and having area exclusivity for it, you might want to consider working with us on this.

But whether you find this particular situation appropriate or not; whether you utilize strategicalliances with others or develop something from scratch on your own; what you do have – as asset

or liability depending on your response – is a restless herd; business owners actively looking forand at alternative and additional opportunities beyond the four walls of their present business.During economic times like these, newsstand purchasing and readership of magazines likeEntrepreneur soars, attendance at franchise and opportunity expos as much as quadruples, leadflow to franchise and opportunity marketers jumps, all from two main sources: displaced or fearfulof displacement executives, managers and workers; and frustrated small business owners, self-employed professionals and salespeople. “The Desire For Different” is multiplied and magnifiedduring difficult recessions with no end in sight. This changes the nature of your asset of yourherd(s), creates new value in it that will be accessed by somebody, and temporarily suppresses oreven erases value in it which you have been steadily mining and relying on. You can react bybeing opportunistic, by being resistant and in denial, by being fearful, or by waiting and hoping for aspeedy return to what was.

4. Go from niche to generic. While most magazines are shrinking as advertisers exit, Small Business Opportunities Magazine’s January issue was its thickest ever. This is a mainstreammagazine not just mailed to opportunity seeker lists, but on newsstands from Wal-Mart andsupermarkets to Barnes & Noble. It is thriving as representative of the boom-time for opportunitymarketers that occurs during each recession, the deeper and more prolonged the better.

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There are two kinds of opportunity offers that always do well: one, the heavy-hype, and get richovernight with this ‘secret’ pitch; the other, the legitimate, easy and cheap to start, home-basedbusiness, often some sort of service – from the mundane, like carpet cleaning, to something newand clever, like Example#1.

This Example was fun to find, because it takes something mundane, that few people would ever think ofdoing on their own, and turns it into a ‘packaged’ business opportunity anybody could do. This follows onemodel from which many business opportunities have been created – the renting and installing of Christmastree decorations in homeowners’ front yards, as one example. That one has been sold to John and MaryConsumer, but migrated backwards into niches and has been sold to lawn care business owners. It seemsto me the business in this ad might be tweaked and sold to flower shop owners, lawn care operators, maybeothers.

Reasonable people look for ways to make extra money, and people already in direct selling, sellingsome product line, look for things to add and also sell; desperate and less reasonable people lookfor the magic, instant means of making money. Both groups offer opportunity for different types ofopportunity marketers. Both groups multiply in size and receptivity during recession.

Direct sales and even MLM will have a resurgence, with established, reputable companies onceagain able to recruit and grow here in the United States – which, during the recent boom, has beendifficult due to zero work ethic. Party-plan selling companies do particularly well in an economy likethis, because it gives stay-at-home moms a way to make a few hundred dollars a month from just acouple evenings with husband as babysitter, and it gives a “girl’s night out” at very low expense toeverybody. (For that reason, I upped my holding of Tupperware a little, and bought a modestamount of stock in Herbalife. And I am currently consulting with a client on a start-up in the homeparty field.)

Many niche info-marketers have a way to play, if they choose….and to use the story, reputation,

credibility, testimonials, etc. they’ve developed for their niche in this different space. For example, ifyou now work with people in established carpet cleaning businesses, you can start putting newpeople in the carpet cleaning business. If you now work with people in the restaurant industry, youcan create programs for people to start catering, meal preparation and delivery,and baking businesses from home. If you sell software, you can put people in business of using thesoftware to assist businesses too small to buy it. The question is: what can be lifted from yourpresent know-how, background, story, current info-business, current materials and re-configuredas a home-based business or direct selling opportunity?

A bit of background…..“Opportunity” is as evergreen as it gets. I have opportunity ads in my fi les datingback to the Civil War, from Harpers Weekly, then the first national newspaper, obviously long before USA

TODAY. Included here, an ad from the 1950’s, and a current example; Platinum Member Michael Gravette’sfull-page ad. For 8 consecutive years, the TV infomercial I created for the Gold By The Inch distributor-opportunity ran multiple times, in multiple markets every day and every night, and still holds the record forlongest airing lead generation show in the opportunity category. Over 30 years, I’ve written eight differentfull-page opportunity ads that have run for no less than 3 to as many as 10 years, each producing millions ofdollars; developed about the same number of direct-mail lead generation packages and twice asmany lead fulfillment packages….one of those responsible for more than $35-million. When you click on thecurrent Jeff Paul infomercial, remember it is derivative of the original “$4,000.00 A Day At Kitchen Table” adand booklet I created. My clients in the opportunity field over the years have included some of the biggest –

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including Don Dwyer, of the Dwyer Group, a very successful marketer of low-fee franchises in serviceindustries, notably including Rainbow Carpet Cleaning; De-Tech, a home fire alarm system direct-sellingcompany; former Platinum Member T. J. Rohleder. My work “selling opportunity” began, literally, while stillin my teens. Later, when I took over a production company manufacturing audio cassette programs forspeakers, I quickly re-birthed its distributor program, ran 2-page ad spreads in Success Magazine andsmaller ads elsewhere, and had it producing over $100,000.00 a month within 6 months. The present

Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle network of Independent Business Advisors, local Chapters and localmastermind groups, now a multi-million dollar “business unit” within the company, is thanks to my know-howin crafting and selling opportunity. It is a model, incidentally, that I’m surprised a number of niche info-marketers haven’t borrowed, tweaked and used. I mention all this, so you know there is a lot of depth to myunderstanding of this category of info-marketing.

I introduced the “greener pastures/irrelevant speakers” into niche-industry boot camps (egs. Ron LeGrandselling get-rich-in-real-estate at an auto repair owners’ conference) based on my many years’ of experiencewith the selling of opportunity, in one form or another. With few exceptions, the speakers selling opportunity,and usually those selling unrelated opportunity out-sell all others. I also used my background in opportunitymarketing as basis for the “area exclusive concept” I brought to coaching, coaching-plus and do-it-for-them-services programs sold by info-marketers – of which there are now over a hundred that I know of in a

variety of niches, from dentistry to financial services to real estate, and you-name-it... (All of the foundationalinformation about the structure and marketing of these kinds of programs, the Discovery Day model, etc. isin a resources package on Area Exclusive/Big Ticket Coaching, now available from Glazer-Kennedy,although not yet in catalog or web-store; you need to call the office.) I have also led info-marketers all theway to full-fledged franchising; both conversion franchising in their niche, and new franchising.

In most niches, now is a tough time to be presenting your goods, services and expertise as a meansof improving and growing their businesses; it is a premise they lack confidence in and are reluctantto spend money on. So, at bare minimum, you need to think in terms of “re-casting” what youprovide as a new, better replacement for their present business, so that you move from selling

advertising-marketing-sales or business improvement to selling opportunity. Those two sentencesare million dollar sentences, so you might want to stop for a few minutes, re-read them, and think about how

they may relate to your business. (Don’t just race on by. The conditions they refer to are NOT going to raceby.) Beyond that, it is quite possible you should be getting into the opportunity business in another,additional way. In either case, I can’t imagine you finding anyone with as much relevant experience as I,who can provide both strategy and, as needed, copywriting – and yes, that’s a commercial.

5. Sell All And Exit, Sell Some To A Partner . Selling in a down market usually means selling at adepressed price, which is generally ill-advised IF you are confident, for good reason, of an upmarket presenting itself in the short term; at least before you run out of customers, cash or sanity.Generally speaking, this is a good time to buy things and a bad time to sell them. However. Thereis more cash parked with no place to go than I’ve ever seen in my career; there are people eagerto be in our businesses – in your business, and/or to gain entry to your niche or to better their

other, existent business in your niche; and info-businesses of the ‘Kennedy type’ are uniqueanimals never bound by standard formulas for selling prices. And somebody may be motivated tobuy your business as a bargain now, who wouldn’t buy it at a premium otherwise. If you werecontemplating exit from 3 to 7 years from now, you might want to attempt accelerating yourtimetable and engineering exit now – saving yourself a few years of running faster to stay even.

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Somewhere in them, there’s probably a big opportunity for

you. Not just treatments, band-aids and balm, but a big

opportunity. Hill was right about this; inside every

adversity is hidden the starting point of a great

opportunity. Finding it will require thinking differentlyabout both your business and the conditions of this time.

Hopefully, this Report, and re-reading this Report help

with that. Exploiting the opportunity once found will

probably require doing things you hadn’t planned on

doing, might not want to do, might not want to do forever,

more complicated than you’d prefer, inconvenient . That I

can’t help you with. That is the stubborn, unpleasant

nature of great opportunity. It’s rarely found at the

convenience store.

Examples that follow….

Example#1: from current issue of Small Business Opportunities – typical of the kind of low barrier to entryopportunities that “come out of the woodwork” during recessions….and a ‘full-disclosure ad’, just like the adI wrote for Louise Nielsen about starting a home cleaning business. Odds are, this fellow’s an info-marketingnovice who will fail; his ad dollars would be better spent offering a free or $10 book purporting to teach thebusiness but actually, then selling the $249 package or it plus a higher priced option; and, on the back end,live training and/or coaching and/or do it for them marketing. However, despite the flawed approach, thecopy’s good, the story has the necessary ring of authenticity, and the opportunity is believable.

Example#2: is a combo correspondence school course/moneymaking opportunity ad. These kinds of companies thrive in recessions – did in the Great Depression. Napoleon Hill wrote ad copy and sales lettersfor one such school for several years. I wrote a booklet for International Correspondence Schools that wasmailed more than 1-million times. The elements that make this work are: learn at home; acquire a new skill;earn a promised amount of income per week. I thought you’d find the learn-from-film angle interesting (thena revolutionary technology, akin today to online courses or video-conferenced live classes.) In a niche, youcan present a break-out aspect of what you teach in this way. Example idea: offering to teach restaurantowners and chefs how to sell and deliver one in-home gourmet cooking demonstration and dinner for 8 perweek and make an extra $1,000.00 a week.

Example#3: a current opportunity ad I wrote (re-wrote from his control) for Platinum Member MichaelGravette. It, like #1, is a full disclosure ad. This ad is either 2 or 3 years old, and can be freshened with

some reference to current economic pressures fueling rising crime and peoples’ anxiety about it – which heand I have recently discussed. Note that this ad actually presents two opportunities; the traditional directselling opportunity; and the make-money-via-internet-marketing story.

Well, there you have it. My five shovels. And five other difficult economy responses.

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