How to create a new product in 24 hours and make a profit in 5 days.
 

I've just learn't a lesson.

Here's a short experience I must share with you.

2 Weeks ago one of my most valued clients rang me and invited me out to lunch. He wanted to pick my brain and run a new venture by me for some non biased opinions.

One thing the became evidently clear in the conversation was the only thing that was stopping him from rolling out this new project was that he couldn't work out how to generate leads to sell his product too.

At first I was quite offended - you see this person has been doing business with me for nearly 4 years, he's attended my seminars, read all my books, even paid for one to one consulting time, but after all that he still could not come up with some simple methods for generating leads.

Then after the lunch I got to thinking, how many people who read my newsletters, buy my books, come to my seminars still struggle with generating leads for their businesses?

I decided to find out by faxing around 100 of my clients a shorth sales flyer offering my new 1 hour cassette "24 Ways to Generate Leads For Your Business" for just $39.

Now lets get one thing straight, I didnt have any cassette, I was doing the excersise as a survey to find out how many of my clients still needed help in generating leads.

Out of the 100 people I surveyed, 87 ordered my cassette within 48 hours.

I was shocked that these people, although paying $thousands a year to be in my diamond members program, still were willing to part with more money to find out the secrets to generating business.

The Point of this story ....

It's funny how we get caught up in marketing our products and sometimes forget to simply ask the market what it wants.

If you have a customer base, make sure you regularly survey, find out what they want, and then give it to them - at a price of course.

OH, by the way I decided to put together the casette, it took me about 4 hours in the office in front of my dat recorder. I ran the master down to the duplicator and ran off 500 copies. 5 days ago I mailed 2000 of my clients a one page advert for the cassette and as I'm typing this, the 273rd order is coming through the fax.

If you dont ask, you dont get!

Have a great day...
Jason van Hooft

P.S. What is the number one question your customers ask you - and can you sell them a product that answers that question?




Go on, take a risk, drop by and say hi!

The Customers are Kings and Queens.... :)
 

Hi Jason,

Thanks for sharing your experiences.... :)

It arrived in the mail today.... I finally got in my hot little hands my copy of Joe Sugarman's "Marketing Secrets of a Mail Order Maverick"....

(I've already got the first book, "Advertising Secrets of the Written Word" -- his book about advertising.... It's a good companion to "Remote Hypnosis".... :)

And I've been reading through "Marketing Secrets" feverishly, like someone possessed!

One of the lessons in the book is that the customer is the boss! It's about giving the customer what he or she wants.... not about telling the customer what's good for him or her.... That approach can backfire!

He tells a great story about this....

I've got to do something right now so I'll post this now and continue in the next message....

Dien Rice

The rest of the story....
 

This is the story Joe Sugarman tells....

He was talking to the head of a publicly listed catalog company, who told him about this crushing experience....

They had a very successful product, a set of pots and pans which sold for only $19.95. This set sold very well, often in millions of units. But the executive was embarassed over the quality of the pots and pans....

The pots and pans were incredibly thin, and probably warped after only a few months of use, then they had to be thrown out. But they sold year after year after year....

Then he discovered he could create strong copper-bottom pots and pans, which he could sell for $69.95, which were very close in quality to brand-name high-end pots and pans being sold for $269.95....

To offer this kind of value, though, he had to order a HUGE number.... over a million sets! But he was convinced that the consumers would buy it, due to the incredible value they were offering....

But when they offered them in the catalog.... their offer bombed. It took them several years to get rid of their inventory. During this time, the $19.95 cheap pots and pans were still selling like crazy....

Joe Sugarman then says that this executive had fallen for the biggest fallacy in marketing, which is.... It is NEVER the marketer which dictates what is the best product for the market place, but the public. They'll tell you with their hard-earned cash what the best product is, no matter what YOU may think it is.

And you can't second-guess them.... You have to do some tests and see....

I believe you should try to do your best to make sure everything is WIN/WIN/WIN.... But remember that the public is boss, and they determine what they want, you don't!

Great book.... Can't wait to read the rest of it.... :)

Dien Rice

Re: How to create a new product in 24 hours and make a profit in 5 days.
 

Jason,

Good story and good reminder!

Thanks,

Ron

Re: How to create a new product in 24 hours and make a profit in 5 days.
 

> I decided to find out by faxing around 100
> of my clients a shorth sales flyer offering
> my new 1 hour cassette "24 Ways to
> Generate Leads For Your Business" for
> just $39.

> Now lets get one thing straight, I didnt
> have any cassette, I was doing the excersise
> as a survey to find out how many of my
> clients still needed help in generating
> leads.

****Hey Jason!

This is one of my favorite games to play with myself! One of my delightful ways of "Creating Vacuums" for myself...at least thats what I call it! What a hoot to hear that YOU have done it successfully as well!

> Out of the 100 people I surveyed, 87 ordered
> my cassette within 48 hours.

****And then translated the vacuum creation into Money Creation! Gotta love that!

Thanks for the reminder Jason! Right on!

> If you have a customer base, make sure you
> regularly survey, find out what they want,
> and then give it to them - at a price of
> course.

****And it helps to take clients out to lunch one in a while for a friendly bit of banter, eh?

With Purpose and Passion,

JULIE


5passions.......

Jason.... About your October newsletter....
 

Thank you.... :)

Your original, successful mail order business plan is quite valuable information....

I know that many people have different views on business plans, and many have been successful both with and also without business plans.... (How important it is might depend on the type of business....)

I've been looking at business plans recently, because I *might* be interested in looking for Venture Capital funding for something I'm working on.... And of course, those guys expect a business plan....

Thanks Jason!

To read Jason's newsletter, go to Jason's web site (link below) and subscribe.... It will become a pay-site soon, but right now you can get free membership, so I recommend to grab it while you can.... :) Jason gives very valuable information about making profits through mail order....

Dien Rice




The Mail Order Business Centre

Thanks for the FREE plug Dien!
 

Thanks Dien.

I have really appreciated both yourself and Gordon's kind words of support, it makes me feel like I'm heading in the right direction.

Yes, my site will be changing to a Pay for Membership site very shortly, and it wont be cheap either. I'm inviting all the friends of sowpub along for a FREE ride.

Over the next month I will be lanuching 3 new ebooks, a new newsletter, and a new discussion board, plus a series of seminars both in Australia and in the USA (I've got a big surprise in store at these seminars as Ive convinced a really big name mail order marketer to come out of retirement and speak at 3 seminar bootcamps - more on this later) lots of exciting things happening.

Already I am getting about 200 emails a day (not spam but people with mail order questions and wanting more info about my site).

Who said mail order was dead? Not me!

It just futher proves the point - ask people what they want, then give it to them at a price they are willing to pay.

Anyway, I enjoy sharing my experiences and hope I can sometimes inspre others so move out of their comfort zones and as the say here in OZland - "Have A Go".

As I mentioned at the start of this message, I really do appreciate your support, and since returning to the net after a few years away in the jungle that is direct response TV, I've been really impressed with the amount of quality information now being put out by many of the people who partake in this forum.

Keep up the great work...
Jason van Hooft

Jason....
 

Jason, you have a great site! :) I've found it very useful myself....

It would be greedy of me to keep my enthusiasm to myself! :)

Dien Rice