Dear Marketing Top Gun:
I am looking for an elite group of men and women determined to be among the most successful and highest-earning copywriters and marketers in the world.
I am retiring now and want to share with this select group of stars and future stars what I believe is a priceless legacy—my seven master secrets of wealth creation for copywriters and marketers.
The truth is, I can never reveal these seven master secrets in the Bullets.
Why not?
From the start, I promised to keep the Bullets short and fast, like bullets.
But teaching these seven master secrets takes more time.
For example, my #1 master strategy, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, has eight parts. It takes about two hours to teach and another two hours to bring you to mastery.
Anyone can master this, and once you do, your ability to boost response on demand soars. You immediately take a giant leap forward in your ability to write copy with the hand of a master ... and evaluate it with the eye of a jeweler.
But the unavoidable problem is, it does take four hours to acquire mastery of the eight steps and how to string them together, mainly because you must first unlearn several things you've been taught as gospel about how to generate maximum response.
You see, almost all copywriters and marketers today are using the same old-fashioned techniques. But the world has changed, and the consumers you're trying to influence have grown increasingly immune to these conventional headlines and approaches. In today's overmarketed, overhyped world, the "same old" techniques for generating response may occasionally work, but not nearly as well as they used to. This is why most direct marketers are seeing their response rates decline every year. And this will inevitably continue, as consumers grow increasingly immune to an ever-rising flood of these same tired, overworked approaches. You need something new that works better.
And that is why the advanced secrets I teach are so much more effective. They show you how to clearly and dramatically stand out from the clutter and trigger maximum response in any medium, for any product or service.
Record-Shattering Ads
to Serve as Your Examples
The other reason I'll never teach these secrets in the Bullets is because they require lots of real-life examples of the advertisements that are shattering response records in every field in which they've been applied.
All this takes a seminar to deliver ... the very seminar that I have called my one-time-only, "Reveal-Everything-at-Once Retirement Seminar," which I gave recently to 100 of the world's top copywriters and marketers.
This treasure trove of knowledge is based on more than $1 billion and 40 years' worth of scientific advertising tests. It's nothing less than my legacy to the most ambitious and dedicated men and women in direct marketing today.
When I gave this seminar training live, I promised the 100 attendees that I'd create a free set of DVDs for them. To my embarrassment, it
took me many more months than I ever imagined to produce them, mainly because I wanted to enhance the program by including a deluxe illustrated transcript featuring scores of ads and visuals as well as additional response-boosting information—everything I could possibly teach about how to improve your advertising results.
Finally it's all done. And, in addition to the 100 sets I've produced for the seminar attendees, I've
run off an additional 2,000 sets of both the DVDs and illustrated transcript. These are the only 2,000 sets that will ever be available anywhere at any price, and after these 2,000 sets are gone, they will be gone forever.
But please don't feel pressured into buying immediately just because only 2,000 sets will ever be made available. Candidly, this supply will last for at least several years. That's because I am not looking to
trigger a fast wave of mass "panic buying" from lots of people, which would inevitably include many less-than-qualified candidates.
My aim—expressed in the value, scope, and extraordinary content
of this DVD course—is just the reverse. And that is to restrict
distribution to a tiny slice of the copywriting and direct marketing
community—exclusively the most ambitious stars and future stars who
are hell-bent on being among the richest, most in-demand, most
consistently successful Top-Guns on the planet. And that, by
definition, is a very small, elite universe.
The only reason to act now—and this is important—is so
that you can start putting these breakthrough wealth-building,
career-advancing copywriting and marketing techniques to work
immediately, allowing you to experience complete financial security
and independence much sooner than you could ever achieve otherwise.
No matter what, you must meet four rigorous criteria to
qualify—no exceptions.
More about that later. First let me tell you about the
DVD course itself…
"Always Be Thorough"
One of the principles I teach is that champions are always thorough in their preparations, and this certainly holds true for copywriters and marketers.
In that spirit, and because this course represents a significant investment, I'm going to be quite thorough here and give you a complete description of everything this training will teach you. Let's start with ...
Four Words to Live By
The seminar that is the basis of this course was held in what is probably the most elegant meeting room in New York City, the glittering penthouse of the St. Regis Hotel.
Why did I hold it there, when I could have hosted it anywhere and saved considerable expense?
The reason relates to my four-word approach to everything I teach about life, about marketing, copywriting, and acquiring whatever you want in life.
Those four words I urge you to live by are, Why not the best?
Why not the best—in the copy you write, the products you market, the results you trigger, the reputation you build, the fees and royalties you command, the wealth you accumulate, and all the perks you'll get to enjoy? After all, why should the best in life be reserved for others and not you? Why should you ever settle for anything less than a big life, a life full of major achievements, exceptional wealth and income, and a reputation as one of the most respected stars in your chosen line of work?
The truth is, there are only two things you need to experience such success.
The first is knowledge of how to achieve it, and the second is the dedication to acquire and apply that knowledge.
And that is the opportunity represented by this
DVD course. If you supply the dedication, I will give you the knowledge.
As you can read in the beige boxes sprinkled throughout this piece, the secrets I reveal in this
DVD course have created so many blockbuster campaigns and breakthrough products for so many clients that I truly believe that these clients have gone overboard in their praise about what I've done for them.
I honestly don't believe there's a "world's best copywriter," any more than there is a "world's best actor" or "world's best centerfielder." In each case, you can make a good argument for any of several outstanding practitioners. But I do confess to being enough of a copywriter to gratefully accept (and run like a burglar with!) their over-the-top praise.
The truth is, it's really not me they're praising, but the creative techniques I've developed for triggering extraordinary results. That's what they love, the results, especially the consistency of breakthrough results I've always been able to give them.
And anyone who uses the same techniques can achieve the same results. This is why, before the seminar, the legendary Prince of Print, Gary Halbert, wrote in his newsletter ...
"There is no seminar on earth I can think of that would be more worth attending than the one going to be given by Gary Bencivenga. You can be certain, barring some sort of tragedy, every sane marketing genius in the world will be there to sit at his feet and learn from him ... We'll all be busy taking notes and learning from one of the handful of true living legends of copywriting and marketing ...
"You know, as you walk through life, you cannot help but be aware of all the corrupt businessmen, thieves, sex offenders, crooked politicians, warlords, murderers, greedy religious leaders, lying CEOs, and just plain jerks. But, every once in a while on this path through life, you come across 'a Gary Bencivenga,' A Person Who Restores Your Faith In The Decency Of Mankind!"
A much faster way to become "a serious, big-money copywriter..."
—Gary Halbert
As you'll see on the DVDs, on the second day, toward the end of the seminar, Gary Halbert took the mike and told the audience how appreciative all in attendance should be for the astonishing amount and quality of the information that had been presented. He said that it amazed and inspired even him.
Later he summed up in an unsolicited written testimonial the impact this seminar could have on your own life—and the speed of your success—in this way...
"You can get along very nicely by just learning to be an average copywriter. However, if you want to be a serious big-money copywriter, the info given in Gary Bencivenga's seminar will take 15 to 25 years off your learning curve."
Indeed, afterward, the seminar was immediately hailed as "historic" ... "phenomenal" ... "life-changing" ... and a host of other superlatives by these very superstars who attended, including Ken McCarthy, Brian Kurtz, John Carlton, Richard Stanton-Jones, Peter Stone, David Deutsch, and other top marketers and copywriters.
You can read their comments about me and these secrets here, as well as on the Internet. But you will not find anything on the Internet revealing the techniques themselves, as all who attended were sworn to secrecy at the seminar ... just as you will be if you order the DVDs and illustrated transcript.
Again, more about this later. What I want to emphasize here is this—with these techniques, I guarantee that you will achieve unprecedented consistency in your ability to produce breakthrough copy, generate record-setting response, chalk up an impressive array of control ads and direct mail packages, be in hotter demand than you've ever enjoyed, and launch blockbuster new products at a success rate you've never experienced. And that's true whether you write the copy yourself or retain others to do it for you.
But You Must First Qualify . . . .
If you qualify to receive this training and agree not to share it, as I'll explain below, I will guarantee you an effortless learning experience that you will look back on as a turning point in your life, when your knowledge of your craft comes together as never before ... when you see a new universe of opportunity with a new, inner vision ... when your ability to convert your marketing knowledge into major wealth takes a quantum leap ... when you know in your heart that your future financial independence is secure because of the life-changing knowledge you have just acquired.
So settle back for a few minutes and read my rather thorough explanation of what is so different about what I teach ... and the difference it will make in your own success.
Master Secret #1:
The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®—
The Never-Before-Published Formula
Based on More Than $1 Billion Worth
of Scientific Testing
Just about 40 years ago, I broke into direct marketing working with two Hall of Fame legends, John Caples at BBDO and, later, David Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather.
With these two masters as my guiding lights, and others in the decades since, I have never escaped the direct marketing copy department.
As a result, for 40 years, I have written and methodically supervised well over $1 billion worth of scientific direct marketing for many of the smartest and most successful direct marketers in America. And even though I am retiring now, I still stay in touch and share advice with these top marketers, always keeping a weather eye on their latest test results.
This $1 billion+ worth of testing has revealed, clear as day, eight critical factors so influential, I call them the eight overwhelmingly dominant factors of generating maximum response.
I've woven all eight into what I call The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, which makes it very easy to apply each of the eight critical factors in your every marketing message.
Never before revealed, until this seminar, to anyone except my clients, this Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® is, in my view, the most consistently successful proprietary formula ever devised for creating breakthrough advertising ... boosting response, traffic, and revenue ... and gaining an overwhelming advantage against your competitors—be they other copywriters, products, or services.
The eight elements of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® are like puppet strings, and once you know how to pull on each, you can make the marketplace move to any melody you want to play.
It Took Me 10 Years and Millions of Dollars
in Testing to Piece This Puzzle Together
Actually, it took me the first 10 years of my career and tens of millions of dollars' worth of testing to put the pieces of this puzzle together.
In those young and heady days, I and my partners were wildly "test happy." We liked to test everything that could possibly—even remotely—influence response. That included all the usual suspects, such as headlines, designs, prices, premiums, offers, and so on. But we also ran quite a few "oddball" tests that most direct response ad agencies would never even think of trying, including some very unusual headlines and approaches to the writing of body copy.
To our surprise, we discovered that certain of these headlines and body copy treatments were mysterious anomalies—they "shouldn't" have worked very well at all according to conventional direct response wisdom. Yet every time I and my partners created headlines and layouts built around these "inexplicably powerful" factors, response would soar.
After more years of further testing, it all came together and made perfect sense, at least once you know The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® and how the eight factors reinforce one another and make the whole so much more powerful than any one part in boosting response.
The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® works for any product, in any market, for any piece of advertising you'll ever run. It's so reliable, it will let you know with almost unerring precision—even before you test!—how strong your advertising message is going to be.
If your message is weak in any of the eight key areas, you will know it instantly—just by reading your ad and seeing if each required element is present or not. That's how easy it is. This means you can now know exactly where and how any piece of copy needs to be strengthened to crank it up to maximum pulling power.
As I say, it took me a long 10 years of trial and error to piece this formula together, and then the next 20 years to refine it.
I Was Just an Average Copywriter
for the First 10 Years of My Career
I mention this because, for the first 10 years of my career, if truth be told, I was really just an average copywriter. But, once I based my copywriting and marketing on the Gibraltar foundation of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, I became almost unbeatable, winning about 85 percent of the time, usually against the best copywriting competition in America. (And you needn't take my word for this ... as you can tell from the supporting comments in the boxes of this letter.)
There are some major marketers for whom I've never lost a split-run test, even when tested repeatedly against several of the best copywriters in the world.
To put this in perspective, one of my ablest competitors over the years, the superstar copywriter Doug D'Anna, has written ...
"If a copywriter beats the control one out of four times, you've got a really
good copywriter. If he beats it two out of four times, you've got a great
copywriter. If he beats it seven out of eight times, you've got Gary
Bencivenga."
I've often been asked how I've been able to win so consistently. Until now, I've never revealed the secret. Why should I, when I've had to compete for royalties against the fastest guns in the West, East, North, and South?
I wish I could say it's my writing talent. But, as you can tell from my plain, graceless sentences, I write with none of David Ogilvy's eloquence, nor Gene Schwartz's emotional fire, nor Gary Halbert's drama, nor Ted Nicholas' infectious optimism, nor John Caples' storytelling magic.
But that's the liberating, "common-man" beauty of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®. You don't need to be a great writer to create blockbuster winners. That's because ...
The Real Secret to Creating
Blockbuster Advertising Consistently Is . . .
... knowing exactly what to say to your target market to trigger breakthrough response. It is not how eloquently, cleverly, emotionally, or creatively you say it, although those qualities do help make your ad more enjoyable and appealing to read. But for triggering response, those qualities are vastly overrated.
The most critical factor by far in being able to generate record-breaking response is knowing exactly what to say.
It's the same as in personal selling. You don't need a silver tongue to be a selling superstar, either in person or in print. In fact, the great majority of the highest-paid superstars of selling in every field are not the best-looking, smoothest-talking, or most creative people you'll ever encounter. They are surprisingly ordinary souls who know how to do two things exceedingly well—
- They know how to establish rapport and build trust with their prospects.
- They know exactly what to say to elicit a "yes" response far more frequently than their peers.
In short, they know what to say to very effectively open the sale and then to close it. And that is precisely what The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® teaches you to do in your own market, regardless of what product or service you sell.
Best of all, The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation® grows directly out of my own personal philosophy of how to succeed at anything in life, which is ...
Master Secret #2:
The "Make-It-Easy" Approach
to Breakthrough Marketing
I don't believe in hard. Nobody sticks with hard very long. I believe that those who've achieved incredibly difficult feats, such as Lance Armstrong, have found ways to make the extremely difficult a lot easier. And that separates them from—and allows them to outperform—those who never find ways to make the difficult easier.
Do you ever find marketing and copywriting hard? If so, you're not alone. Marketing can be a brutally tough way to earn your living, if you don't know a few simple secrets of how to make it much easier.
Believe me, I know. For roughly the first 10 or 11 years in this business, I found copywriting and marketing not just hard, but agonizingly, tortuously difficult. Sometimes my frustration made me depressed and brought me close to tears.
In my early years as a copywriter, working for Madison Avenue direct response ad agencies, many a late night would find me trying to stare down a blank page in a battle of wills.
I was always the first to blink. I could produce nothing, not even a first line of copy. Picasso once said that all art is merely the artist's reaction to the first line he paints on the canvas. But I couldn't even get my first line!
I smoked cigarettes back then, and I'd light up one after another. I'd curse my deadline. Curse my fate. Curse the stupid product I was trying to sell. Rearrange my desk drawer. Make a phone call. Read a magazine. Grab a snack. Wonder what else I could be doing at that moment and, for that matter, with my whole life. This would go on for hours, sometimes days, until my copy chief would inquire, "What the #%*! is taking you so long?"
In time, mercifully, I developed my Make-It-Easy System for marketing and copywriting, which I also reveal in the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar.
I learned, during these years, to look at every aspect of successful, breakthrough marketing and ask, how can I make this process easier?
In fact, that's how I came up with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®.
It happened when, at age 30, I was appointed copy chief at Callas, Powell, Rosenthal & Bloch, then a highly respected direct response New York ad agency owned by copywriting legend Dan Rosenthal.
I suddenly found myself in charge of an elite, fast-growing copy department and had to teach others the art and science of creating breakthrough direct marketing.
I quickly concluded that I couldn't teach an art—it's too subjective and intuitive.
I realized I had to turn the teaching of marketing and copywriting into a science, a repeatable set of principles that, if followed, can be counted on to yield the same predictable result of breakthrough response.
So I systematized the process and, most important, made everything about successful copywriting as easy as I could possibly make it ... so that even a wet-behind-the-ears kid just out of college could quickly learn the system and start creating breakthrough control packages virtually out of the gate.
This is exactly what happened with my staff. With just one regular weekly class of training in this method, every single writer in our copy department was soon belting home runs ...
- They often crushed by 50 percent, 75 percent, sometimes even 100–200 percent or more the former control packages of our new clients. Most of these clients had been in direct marketing for years and were astonished at the results our approach yielded, usually on our first try.
- Once instructed, my young tigers were also able to dramatically boost response rates and rejuvenate long-running control packages and space ads for our existing clients.
- Likewise, they were able to get fledgling entrepreneurs off to a flying start, launching new products so successfully that, in a few cases, these entrepreneurs went on to build direct marketing empires that made them fabulously wealthy.
No, We Didn't Win Every Time
Sometimes a client came to us with a new product that, after testing, proved to have little marketplace appeal. We learned that when a new product is so flawed that few people want it, even the most brilliant advertising won't sell it.
But with long-established products, where the only variable was the pulling power of our advertising, we almost never lost.
All thanks to a system of proven success factors made easy to apply and use.
And that's how I've always approached copywriting and marketing—how can we make it easier?
For Example, in the DVDs and Expanded Transcript
of The Bencivenga Seminar, I Teach You . . .
- The #1 easiest way to get a 50 to 100 percent boost in your results immediately.
- The easiest way to persuade your best prospects to desire your product intensely—so much so that they'll never truly feel satisfied with anyone else's similar product.
- The easiest way to beat out even the most ferocious competition in your marketplace, even when their marketing is brilliant, their budget huge, and their copy so persuasive, it could have been written by Claude Hopkins himself.
- The easiest way to control the process of persuasion rather than merely guess at it. You'll learn that persuasion, like music, comes down to a few simple notes. Master them, and you can play an infinite variety of melodies that are music to your prospects' ears.
- The easiest way to apply the secrets of Warren Buffett, America's smartest investor, to the process of marketing and wind up far richer. Very few marketers have ever thought of this.
- Where virtually all of your competitors' ads are weakest, and the easiest way to exploit this near-universal vulnerability to your great advantage.
- The easiest way to come up with powerful premiums to help sell a main product. (So effective, you'll find that prospects will often buy your main product just to get your free premium.)
- One of the easiest (and smartest) things I've ever done in my life that dramatically improved my ability to turn out control ads at will.
- The easiest way to beat—indeed, forever banish—procrastination, perhaps the #1 occupational hazard of copywriters and marketers with too many projects on their plates.
- A simple technique that will let you gauge, with almost mathematical precision, how your ad is going to perform when it hits the marketplace. And you can do this completely on your own, without any focus group, survey, or any other means. It is something you can do in five minutes at your desk all by yourself—anywhere, anytime—and know instantly how your headline or entire ad is going to perform.
- And finally, the easiest way to be a master of persuasion—the simple, 12-word sentence that will make you one of the most persuasive people on the planet, no matter what field you're in. This is the "master secret" of perhaps the most persuasive man of the 20th century (and an adviser to six presidents). You'll see how to apply his 12-word secret of persuasion to marketing ... and greatly increase your response on any project.
Master Secret #3:
"The Blockbuster New Product" Secret
As you can see, I have tried through my whole career to take what's difficult about marketing, break it down, and make it a lot easier.
Now, one of the most difficult challenges in marketing, perhaps the hardest but also the most financially rewarding, is launching a successful new product.
Some experts say that, on average, only one out of seven new products succeeds. So the odds are normally overwhelmingly against you. But if you beat those odds, you can experience the marketing equivalent of hitting the lottery.
I have found a way to dramatically increase your odds of success in launching new products that can make you or your company much wealthier.
This astonishingly effective, easy-to-use, and truly secret strategy is different from anything ever written in direct marketing. Until this seminar, this strategy has never been revealed publicly anywhere on the planet or published in any book. And everyone at the seminar—as with all the information I shared—was sworn to secrecy never to publicize it.
As you'll fully appreciate when I give you this strategy, you will want to preserve it—just as I do!—for just the few of us who know about it. That's the enormous competitive advantage this strategy bestows upon anyone who knows it.
I learned this secret from the legendary Joseph Segel, the mega-millionaire founder of The Franklin Mint, when he and I worked together on one of his projects.
If you are planning to launch a new product and try this secret just once, you will be blown away by the difference it makes in response, often 100–300 percent or more.
What's so beautiful about this little secret is that it is equally powerful and reliable no matter what you want to sell—books, newsletters, golf clubs, videos, music club memberships, collectible plates, financial advice, e-books, land in Arizona, anything. This one secret is worth many times the price of this whole program, and I guarantee you've never heard it from anyone else, ever, no matter how many books you've read or seminars you've attended.
With this one strategy:
- You will raise the odds of a
blockbuster success severalfold. With
any new product, you can never be
guaranteed success, but this strategy
raises your odds to the max.
- You will dissolve price resistance and
may even be able to double or even
triple your original price point because
your product will create such white-hot demand from the core of your market.
- You will create intense desire for your new product and yours alone. In other
words, once you introduce your product this way, your market will never again
be satisfied with your competitors' products. Buyers will seek your product out
specifically, demanding exactly the unique features you described in your
advertising.
- You can easily lock in many years of repeat business from these same
customers—converting their loyalty into self-renewing rivers of revenue that
enrich you for decades. Your loyal customers will become the best annuity and
"retirement plan" you'll ever have.
- Not only will you likely achieve a blockbuster success, but once you do, your
new product will be relatively immune to knockoffs.
I know, you may be thinking that any product can be knocked off. Not so! Certainly not if you launch your product the way I describe. Do it this way and you will build a moat around your new product that can't be breached by those slick knockoff artists who slither through the weeds, waiting for a chance to cash in on other people's hard-won success. (I really dislike knockoff artists, and this strategy foils them as surely as a mama lioness guarding her cubs. Yet it has nothing to do with lawyers or legal roadblocks.)
Please understand, I'm not talking here about the "USP," the well-known principle of the "unique selling proposition" first formulated by the great Rosser Reeves and popularized by Jay Abraham. No, this goes beyond the "USP" and is much more powerful.
It's an advertising strategy so important—and so unknown—that if you follow it, it will literally change your whole approach to marketing for the rest of your life and make an enormous difference in your success and personal wealth. So priceless is this strategy that you must agree in writing never to publish or reprint it anywhere, as I'll explain below.
Master Secret #4:
"Wealth Is an Income Stream"
Speaking of building wealth with new products ...
What's the easiest and surest way to get rich in our business, as either a marketer or a copywriter?
Commit these five words to memory: "Wealth is an income stream."
This applies to both marketers and copywriters. Let me start with marketers.
The smartest marketers I've ever worked with—Tom Phillips (Phillips Publishing) ... Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz (Boardroom) ... Allie Ash and Walter Pearce (KCI) ... among many others—all know and practice this principle. If you're not applying it yourself to build your wealth, you should write it on your palm with a permanent red-ink marker and read it daily: Wealth is an income stream.
These smart marketers know that you don't build great wealth by merely creating a great product for a hungry crowd ... not even a great product for a hungry crowd and a great piece of copy to sell it.
No, you build great wealth by creating a product for a hungry crowd, plus a built-in way to keep that hungry crowd frozen in place and buying from you again and again whenever they're hungry. In other words, you want a marketing system that rewards you with substantial income right away, and then—much more important—rewards you repeatedly with an automatic back-end revenue stream.
That's how you leverage your wealth in direct marketing.
For example, if you have information to sell, you might choose to sell it either in the form of book, a special report, a newsletter, or perhaps even a membership site. How do you choose?
Well, if you apply the "Wealth is an income stream" principle, you'd know the answer immediately.
You would certainly not choose a book or special report. A newsletter or a membership site would be a far superior way to build your wealth.
Why?
When you successfully sell a book or report, you've got a product. But when you successfully sell a newsletter or membership site, you've got a business.
With the book or report, you make a onetime sale and it's over and done. To make more money, you have to write a new book or report, on a new topic, start a whole new selling process, get a whole new "yes" or "no" decision from your customers, many of whom may not care for the topic of your second book or report.
But with a newsletter or membership site, your first sale leads automatically to years of repeat sales. That's because a high percentage of your first-time buyers will renew their subscriptions automatically each year. So, with that first sale, you've locked in an automatic, self-renewing revenue stream, an annuity, that will keep pouring money into your pockets for many years to come without having to create a whole new product and marketing campaign.
Result: You'll grow a lot richer, much more easily, and have an extremely valuable, thriving business you can someday sell, instead of a pile of outdated books or reports collecting dust in inventory.
Books and reports do have their place, especially in establishing your credibility ... or as introductions to other back-end businesses. But they're a very hard way to build wealth by themselves.
As you'll come to fully appreciate with the DVDs and expanded, illustrated transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar, wealth is not just a onetime infusion of money. Real wealth is knowing that you've secured a healthy flow of money that keeps pouring into your life, this year, next year, and the year after that. That's real wealth because it bestows an ongoing river of revenue as well as the priceless security of feeling rich all the time.
Now let's take this a step further.
Even better than a newsletter is a newsletter that itself leads to further ancillary sales. A good example would be a health newsletter that brings in lots of money year after year from subscriptions ... and that also persuades people to buy your own proprietary vitamins and supplements. Now you have automatic revenue streams triggering lots of subsidiary automatic revenue steams, and you can keep the process going indefinitely.
In The Bencivenga Seminar DVDs and expanded transcript, I show how any marketer can use the mighty leverage of this principle to grow much richer.
And That Certainly Includes Copywriters!
If you're a copywriter, how can you apply the "Wealth is an income stream" principle to build your own wealth?
The best way I know is to help your clients multiply their wealth and have an arrangement that lets you share in that growing wealth.
At the encouragement of my friend Jay Abraham, this is what I started doing about 20 years ago and why I am able to now retire while I'm still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.
For more than 20 years now, ever since I became known for consistently producing breakthrough direct mail packages, my phone has never stopped ringing and my schedule has been booked for years in advance by clients willing and, in some cases eager, to share the extra profits my copy would create for them.
So, until my recent retirement, my standard, nonnegotiable charge for more than 20 years has been a $25,000 upfront, nonrefundable advance against future royalties of five cents for each direct mail package mailed.
The Real Money for Copywriters
Is in Royalties and Other Performance-Based
Compensation Agreements
When I started quoting (nervously, at first!) my $25,000-fee-plus-royalties rate for writing a direct mail package, my copywriter friends thought I'd gone mad. Back in the 1980s, creative fees were much lower than today and freelancers worked on a flat-fee basis. Several of my fellow copywriters called me to ask, "How can you charge $25,000?"
Their question showed how little they understood about wealth building. First, the $25,000 up-front fee that bowled them over was just to screen out the dreamers, tire-kickers, and time-wasters among potential clients. The real money was always in the royalties—and still is today.
Moreover, for major mailers whose revenues depend so heavily on a successful direct mail package, neither the $25,000 nor the royalties were ever a deterrent if I could consistently deliver success, which I and they both knew I could, mainly due to the unique power I demonstrated with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation®, which yields such remarkably consistent success.
Now, if you do the math, you'll see that five cents per piece mailed adds up quickly. If a client mails, say, five million pieces in a year, you've just made $250,000 that year from just that one piece of copy, and the meter starts rolling anew next year and the year after that and so on.
As long as your copy keeps working, you keep receiving royalty checks like clockwork, just as you would if you were an author with a best-selling novel or a rock star with a hit song.
If you've written a really compelling piece of copy for a mass-market product, and your client mails 50 million pieces in a year, you've just made $2,500,000 from that single piece of copy for just that year, from just one client.
In the DVDs and expanded transcript of The Bencivenga Seminar, you'll see that one of our liveliest discussions was about royalties and how copywriters can better help their clients get rich and share in those riches themselves.
In the audience were most of the highest-paid royalty copywriters in the world ... as well as the advertisers who pay the highest royalties.
Leading this private closed-door discussion, I revealed the best ways I've found to set up royalty arrangements ... how to know which clients will honor their agreements to pay you and which ones will likely try to wriggle out ... how you can prevent other writers from horning in on your royalties (by knocking off your copy) ... what royalties other writers are charging ... whether you can ask some of your clients but not others to pay royalties ... and many related questions.
Toward this end, at the seminar, we all discussed whole new ways of partnering between marketers and copywriters that can help both sides become a lot more productive and wealthy in today's new marketing environment.
For example, the direct mail royalties I've earned over the years have all been on a five-cents-per-piece-mailed agreement. But that doesn't work for Internet marketing, because there are no direct mail packages mailed!
In our pull-no-punches session between mega-successful copywriters and advertisers who pay copywriters the world's highest royalties and fees, we hit upon what I think does work to everyone's advantage better than anything before.
In fact, with a direct marketing product in which I'm still a partner, this is exactly the formula I've now adopted myself, and so have many who came to the seminar. Best of all, the advertisers love it, as it perfectly aligns both the copywriter's and the advertiser's incentive to maximize revenue for both. In fact, it makes advertisers thrilled to shower copywriters with wealth ... because in the process, they make much, much more.
Finally, we also discussed a fascinating and highly creative variety of creative compensation plans—some of which I've frankly never thought of—that other copywriters are using.
If you're a copywriter, these compensation ideas will give you enormous flexibility and motivation to review—and greatly enhance—your own fee structure. Even if you're not ready at this moment to change your fee structure, perhaps because you want to get a few more control packages under your belt, these discussions will give you an easy-to-follow roadmap for maximizing your income and wealth in your copywriting career.
And what if you're a marketer? You can profit greatly from this information as well, because you'll see how some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs incentivize their copywriters to become obsessed with making them more money, to "dream, live, and breathe" about new ways to make their marketing break the bank with additional profits for you.
If You're a Copywriter, Hear Me Out! You'll Never Get Rich on Flat Fees!
If you're a copywriter, no matter what your present compensation arrangement may be, please heed my words: You'll never get rich on flat fees! You must find a way to share in the wealth you create for your clients, or you may reach your own golden years with much less gold in your pocket and a nagging regret that you helped make others much richer, but never yourself.
In the seminar DVDs and expanded transcript, you'll also discover ...
- How I converted my flat-fee clients into fee-plus-royalties clients.
- Whether or not you should have a contract or a letter of agreement with your clients before you agree to work on royalties.
- The most important advice a great attorney once gave me about who to trust and who to not trust when you're to be paid via royalties. This can save you a tremendous amount of time and wasted effort as well as a great deal of heartache in avoiding those people who are destined to cheat you if you go into a royalty agreement with them.
- Should you have lawyers—both yours and your client's—negotiate your contract? Or might these "dueling pit bulls" often cause more ill will and blown deals than their possible "protection" is worth?
- The best defense against being cheated in a performance-based agreement is to do this ...
- Compensation deals you should walk away from ... and why.
- Perhaps the greatest marketing model ever created for marketing your product and generating an endless river of revenue from it.
- My proven checklist of ways that marketers, copywriters, and designers can make a lot more money.
- Why you must start compounding your wealth now ... and not put it off to the future. You'll see why, no matter what you're making, at least 10 percent of your gross annual income must be yours to salt away before you pay any bills or spend it. Anyone can and should save at least 10 percent of gross income. Pay yourself first ... and you'll discover to your delight that every dollar you save now will in time give birth (through the power of compounding) to lots of new "baby dollars." And then, like a proud grandparent, you'll happily watch those dollars spawn lots more "baby dollars" and so on—countless generations of new dollars to be born within your lifetime once you get this doubling-and-redoubling process started.
In other words, every $1,000 or $10,000 you save now will double, then double again, then double again, and keep on doubling—if you start now and give the process enough time to work its magic. Compound interest is such a mighty force in building wealth that Albert Einstein once called it "the eighth wonder of the world." I show how and why every copywriter and marketer needs to start doing it immediately—and automatically (don't even think twice about it!)—to retire much richer.
Negotiating Tips for Copywriters and Marketers
Speaking of your compensation, I also share with you ...
- How copywriters (and designers, too) can be more successful when negotiating with clients.
- How clients can get maximum value and better work for every dollar they pay to freelancers.
- A pearl of bargaining wisdom from the tough-as-nails negotiator George Meany, the former head of the AFL-CIO union. Here is his never-fail advice for anyone who wants to avoid being taken advantage of in any negotiation.
- Why, if you are a freelancer, you must never let one client become more than 50 percent of your income.
- Why I have always found it most successful—and highly recommend this to you—to have a consistent pricing policy for all clients. Most important of all—never let your pricing be hammered down by the toughest negotiators! Do so, and you will be rewarding the penny-pinching hagglers and punishing your best-paying clients. When you teach your clients how to hammer you down on price by rewarding such behavior, you will never see an end to their haggling. And it will cost you dearly.
- Why, if you're a copywriter, designer, or other freelancer, you should beware of this common technique used by clients to get a better price from you. It works with devastating effectiveness in getting you to lower your prices, unless you're prepared!
- Why, paradoxically, by yielding on your price, you will often ruin your chances of signing up a new client.
- How I persuaded my clients to be comfortable in allowing me to work simultaneously for their competitors. This is a very sensitive subject, and you may not think it's even possible for a client to want you to work for his or her competitors. But if you approach it this way, both you and your clients will wind up being much bigger winners.
- The best copywriter's broker that I know in the business. If you are a new or up-and-coming copywriter and want to break into the big time working for America's most generous royalty-paying advertisers, this is the man who can pull the strings for you and introduce you to the biggest and most lucrative clients in the world. I've known him for more than 30 years, and he's helped many a copywriter and designer become rich. I tell you who this man is and how to get in touch with him. (With him and the other professionals I recommend from my "million-dollar Rolodex," I have no financial interest whatsoever in any of their activities, so I can be totally unbiased in making these recommendations.)
- For example, in the DVD course I also name the consultants, designers, list brokers, and career-advancing resources that I most highly recommend.
Can You Imagine Yourself Making
$1 Million . . . or More . . .
from a Single Piece of Copy?
We're still talking here about Master Secret #4, "Wealth Is an Income Stream."
OK, here's an idea that can generate more money for you every year than you may ever have thought possible.
This idea came to me once when I wanted to set a really big goal for myself. How could I earn a million dollars from just one piece of copy?
I know that sounds impossible, just as it did to me when I first came up with this notion. As I show in the
DVD course, that is the usual knee-jerk reaction most of us have when we stretch for a really big goal. It's our habitual, "limited-mind-set" thinking.
But as I also teach in this DVD course, you must learn to ignore this automatic knee-jerk, self-limiting reaction and instead say firmly to your subconscious mind, "Not so fast! Let's imagine that I really have to come up with a way to do this ... that someone is holding a loaded gun to my head and will soon pull the trigger if I don't come up with some way to achieve this admittedly outlandish goal. Under those stark conditions—I must do it or die!—what could I possibly come up with?"
When I took that attitude, I did come up with something ...
I realized, "What if I could sell the same piece of copy for $1,000 to 1,000 different people? There is my million dollars for a single piece of copy!"
Now that is perfectly achievable, because in every field there are people in every community who need good advertising—be they real estate agents, stock brokers, financial planners, hardware store owners, chiropractors, dry cleaning store managers, you name it. And there are tens of thousands of these people in communities across America.
In other words, you can create a marketing template, like a software program, for a given industry ... sell it to many different people in that same industry ... and make a small fortune.
Let's say you develop a highly successful program for
insurance agents. You can then sell it, say, for $5,000 to other agents. If you do that in each of 1,000 communities, you've just made yourself $5 million for a single piece of copy. The leverage is tremendous. What's more, you can also offer annual updates and new campaigns to keep this river of revenue pouring into your bank account like a perpetually flooding Mississippi River.
Once a local insurance broker tries your campaign and discovers, "Gee, you really do bring in great leads for me," he or she will want to spend another $5,000 with you next year to update it. And if you build up to 1,000 people paying you $5,000 a year, you have a $5 million renewable yearly income, just from updating a few good pieces of copy.
Now if that seems so far out of reach as to be unbelievable to you, that's your knee-jerk, "limited mind-set" doing its thing. If it makes you feel better, just to get started with the unlimited marketing mind-set that I teach, OK, go ahead and scale that $5 million number back to $1 million, if that's what it takes to get you started thinking bigger about your income.
Once you see how easily you can flex your income-generating muscles, you can then set the bigger goals I recommend. And I show you how to do this with zero fear of failure, by making failure a perfectly acceptable outcome. I know, this turns the usual approach to "goal setting"—with all its attendant deadlines and high-pressure self talk—merrily on its head. And that's precisely why you will now be empowered to start achieving outrageously successful goals as never before. I teach how to achieve these spectacular goals with zero pressure and fear of failure by making your attempt itself an exciting, nothing-to-lose, no-big-deal adventure. As you'll see for yourself the first time you try it in the way that I teach, this go-for-it, nothing-to-lose, no-deadlines-or-pressure- on-yourself mindset magically dissipates your subconscious resistance ... and, paradoxically, all but ensures your success.
Now, getting back to this idea of marketing templates, what I'm teaching here is not theory. Creating these marketing templates that you can resell over and over is such a lucrative way to build wealth that several copywriters at the seminar are already doing this in local markets. Best of all, it's even easier to do on the Internet than in traditional direct mail, as I explain in the DVDs and expanded transcript of the seminar.
I even show you the advertisement that I wrote in one field to make this happen. It attracted so much business from all across the country, I could barely put my phone down before it rang again with more people wanting to take me up on it. You'll receive a copy of this ad ... as well as my "greatest hits"—a collection of my strongest-pulling ads of all time.
Other Ways to Get
All the New Business You Can Handle
After I spent the first 10 years of my career working in America's top direct response ad agencies and learning at the feet of masters like David Ogilvy and John Caples, I decided to go out on my own as a freelancer. I was so nervous at first, because I had a mortgage and a family, including a medically involved daughter. I had to succeed.
Because I was blessed with great advice from legendary advertising masters in my early years, succeed I did. Soon after I launched my freelance copywriting business, I found myself booked up six months in advance.
But that wasn't enough security for me, so I tried some of the other new business secrets that had been shared with me by the most successful freelance consultants of that time.
They worked like a dream, and soon I was booked for two years in advance. I never looked back ... or had to worry about finances again. For virtually all my remaining 30 years as a freelancer, I had a waiting list of clients that stretched out to two years. Actually, the waiting list could have stretched even longer, but I wouldn't even maintain a waiting list beyond two years, as I felt this would be impractical and could be perceived as condescending to the good people who wanted to hire me. I never wanted to come across as arrogant, because I never liked it when people acted that way toward me.
In the DVD course, I describe how I managed to build a permanent waiting list of clients eager to hire me. Put these secrets into practice, and you'll never want for new clients. They will be lining up outside your door, ringing your phone off the hook, and spreading your name around the industry as one of the hottest freelancers to call.
For example, I tell you about the priceless advice that I received from legendary direct marketer Dick Benson, a consultant who was always in red-hot demand from clients throughout America. When I first went freelance myself, Benson told me how I could have all the clients I could handle, and his advice proved right on target. In all my years of copywriting, this has been the #1 way that I (and other successful writers I've known) have attracted as many clients as we can accept.
I also answer one of the most common of all questions from copywriters just starting out: "How do I get started attracting clients when I don't have any clients to begin with?" I address this difficult question and again pour out all my secrets for making this process much easier to land your first high-paying clients.
I also share ...
- A technique so powerful in attracting clients that it makes them want only you and no one else.
- How to sell without selling. Do you feel uncomfortable about selling your services? Most of us writers do, sometimes because we are introverts and sometimes because we don't want to seem too pushy. It's just not us.
But here's how to set things up so that your client sells himself or herself on your services. This is an ingenious technique that works like a charm in virtually any situation. I learned this secret from the man hailed as "America's greatest salesman," and it's so powerful because when your client (instead of you) sells himself on your services, he or she stays sold. I give you a word-for-word example of exactly what to say, just as this great salesman demonstrated once on TV. You'll see how easy it is ... how it removes all selling pressure ... and how it almost magically induces your clients to talk themselves into the sale. This is truly amazing and is the most valuable closing secret you can ever know. Apply it and watch your closing ratio soar.
- The triumph of the tortoise. How any copywriter can work his or her way up the ladder of important assignments—slowly but surely. Works with virtually any client, in any industry.
- The simple key to getting clients to offer you bigger and better assignments.
- The easiest way to become a hero to clients. Do this and they will always remember, be grateful, and start offering you bigger and better assignments.
- The more you do this, the more quickly your prospects will want to jump on whatever you offer.
- How to build your reputation as a copywriting star by beating up on the weakest competition in the marketplace. Think about it—if you're starting out, why pick fights with the toughest heavyweights in the division? If you do, you'll likely earn a reputation as a loser, which you can't afford. But if you start out by beating up lots of weaklings instead, you'll build a reputation as a winner—and demand for your services will rise. Here's how to do it.
- Never act hungry! For example, if you give speeches at industry conferences, are you impressing potential clients ... or shooting yourself in the foot by coming across as a hungry writer beating the bushes for new business? My unequivocal advice on this.
- Why you should never compete on price. Clients don't want cheap. They want what works. They know full well that copy that bombs is terribly expensive and disheartening, regardless of what the copywriter charged. They want what's good, and they know that high quality doesn't come cheap. Here's how you can confidently make this psychology a part of your presentations and proposals ... enjoy stronger pricing power to earn higher fees ... and often completely eliminate price resistance before it comes up. The boost that these secrets will give to your self-confidence and ability to charge more will, all by itself, pay for this
DVD course many times over.
- Negotiating tactics for shy copywriters. Follow these principles, and you'll be one of the best negotiators in the business without ever seeming aggressive or pushy.
- Negotiating tricks that clients use against copywriters to get a better deal. Your only defense is to be prepared, as these tricks have seduced even the most in-demand writers into lowering their fees.
- Why your current negotiating skills may be chasing away potential clients! Have you failed to "close the sale" on potential copywriting assignments and couldn't figure out why? This is likely the reason, and I tell you how to cure the problem instantly.
- How to write proposals that almost always land the job. During my career I have been known for writing proposals that almost always persuade the prospective client to sign on the dotted line and send me a big check. Here are the secrets I used.
- Put this in your proposal, and believe me, your prospective clients will start to fall in love with you as soon as they read it.
- Then, add a section like this. Put this unusual, unorthodox copy in your proposals and, just as it happened for me, do not be surprised if you win almost every assignment you're up for. This one little section in my proposals proved irresistible to almost all my potential new clients, and I almost never failed to win the assignment.
- The easiest way to establish a good "chemistry" with prospective clients so that they immediately feel, "This is someone we want to work with."
- How to get the time you need to do the job right and not be pressured into deadlines that are too tight.
- What to do if you find yourself having agreed to a schedule that's utterly impossible to meet. Do this and your client will respect you all the more.
- A surprising rule of thumb that I have found amazingly accurate in determining exactly how long a job will take, no matter what the job is. I learned this from one of the world's top computer consultants, but it works in estimating the time needed for any project in any field. Try this and you will see for yourself. It takes a split second to calculate—right off the top of your head!—and is mystifying in its precision.
- Apply this secret, and you will come to consistently beat the vast majority of other copywriters competing against you. You will also have all the new clients you can handle as a happy side benefit.
- "Tell me, what do you do for a living?" If you're a copywriter, whenever someone asks you what you do for a living, never say that you are a copywriter or that you write direct mail. Say this instead and be prepared for them to want to hire you immediately, no matter what business they're in. This is a remarkably easy and effective way to build your copywriting practice and make your networking (at industry gatherings, social events, etc.) pay off as never before.
I Passionately Believe That
Copywriters, Designers,
and Marketers Deserve to Be Rich
Everything I've just mentioned is under the banner of Master Secret #4, "Wealth Is an Income Stream."
It's a major part of my DVD course because I believe passionately that copywriters, designers, and marketers deserve to be rich. And why not, if you're triggering lots of wealth for the clients you serve?
Selling is the highest-paid profession in the world, and if you know how to do it masterfully, as I teach, you deserve to be rich and certainly will be if you play your cards as I show you.
The key—your foundation for having enormous value in any marketplace—is knowing how to be a superstar salesperson in print.
Remember, as a copywriter, designer, or marketer, you are in effect a "salesperson" with the magical ability to knock on a thousand doors—or a million, or 10 million—at once and deliver a masterful sales presentation to all those prospects at the same time. Thanks to this "multiplier" effect of advertising, which can put your message in front of unlimited numbers of people all at once, you can close an unlimited number of sales all at once. So your leverage here in building wealth rapidly is enormous.
But everything depends on knowing how to sell skillfully. In the
DVD course, I share the most effective techniques I've ever learned to sell like a master in our overmarketed world.
These are secrets you don't normally find in advertising books or courses. That's because throughout my career I've been blessed to work with several of the greatest selling masters in the country. These are superstar salespeople who are masters of persuasion not in advertising but in personal selling. I've loved learning from these selling giants, because every time I'd learn a new secret from them, I'd usually be able to figure out a way to apply it in some way to boost the response of my direct marketing copy. Apply them yourself, as I show you, and the results will delight you.
Let's start with the best way I've ever found to open the sale and get past the "automatic rejection response" that is now second nature to your prospects, caused by overwhelming advertising clutter ...
Master Secret #5:
"The Cracker Jack Secret"
Over the last 12 years, this one secret has made more money for my clients and me than anything in all the best advertising books put together. It works for any product or service and is the most potent factor behind the biggest direct marketing creative breakthroughs of the past 50 years, but especially of the last 12 years, as the tsunami of clutter has swamped our prospects' lives. And it works even better online.
I won't give too much of it away here, but I will tell you why I named it "The Cracker Jack Secret."
Have you ever noticed that nobody, in the entire history of the world, has ever thrown away a Cracker Jack box without first getting their fingers sticky, rummaging inside to dig out their prize?
To the best of anyone's knowledge, no Cracker Jack box has ever been thrown away unopened!
What does this have to do with you?
Well, if you send out direct mail or email, what's your biggest problem?
Exactly!
Thanks to clutter, right now, perhaps 95–99 percent of your prospects are throwing your messages away unopened.
So let's connect the dots ...
Up to 99 percent of your prospects throw your marketing materials away unopened. Yet nobody in the history of the world has ever thrown away an unopened Cracker Jack box.
Catch my drift?
Are you beginning to see that one of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make in marketing is to fail to put a valuable surprise inside every marketing piece you send out ... and let your prospects know there's a valuable surprise inside?
If you start applying the psychology of "The Cracker Jack Secret," as I show you in the
DVD course, your improvement in results will blow you away. You will make your envelopes and email almost irresistible to open. Just as with the Cracker Jack box, many of your prospects won't be able to throw your mail away, because they've first got to find that little surprise gift inside.
And I don't mean a gimmicky plastic trinket. The surprise you include in your direct mail package, space ad, or email can be anything your market values, especially a highly prized piece of information ... and especially something that demonstrates what you're selling and why it is so desirable.
What have tens of millions of dollars' worth of our tests shown about the best way to harness this powerhouse secret? I reveal all in the
DVD course.
As you'll see, I've taken this principle to extremes most marketers can't even imagine until they see my samples. The results, uniformly, have been off-the-charts explosive.
I seldom use the word "always" in advertising, as there are usually exceptions to any rule. But I have yet to find an exception to the response-boosting power of "The Cracker Jack Secret." I always use it in some way for my clients. For any clients who weren't using this secret before, it has always enabled me to smash their previous control.
Lots More Secrets of
Salesmanship in Advertising ...
from America's Superstars of Selling
Once you know how to use "The Cracker Jack Secret" to stand out from the clutter, bypass the "automatic rejection response," and capture your prospect's attention and interest, I show you lots of other techniques of brilliant salesmanship for converting that interest into powerful desire to buy your product or service. For example ...
- The Secret of the Wise Old Salesman. This wise old salesman was one of Merrill Lynch's most successful and richest stockbrokers. He had a simple technique he used to "bag the elephant," i.e., attract very wealthy accounts. The best part is, anyone can use this strategy and it works extremely effectively online.
- The five universal objections to every sale and how to counter each. These five most common objections are the five "exits" through which most of your prospects are escaping right now. By anticipating them in your sales pitch, you effectively seal off these five escape routes and dramatically raise your closing ratio.
- A formula for persuasion that is so powerful, you can merely "fill in the blanks" and easily come up with blockbuster ad after blockbuster ad.
For example, you'll see my simple formula for making price resistance melt like a cup of ice cream left in the summer sun. Hint: A great salesman once told me that price is a funny thing. When a qualified prospect says, "It's too expensive," what he or she is really saying is this...
- The best way to overcome a "killer" objection that people may raise with your product or service.
Perhaps the Greatest Secret Ever Discovered
for Making Anyone Say "Yes"
One of my favorite examples of applying the secrets of master salespeople to direct marketing is this next one. I genuinely believe it's nothing less than the greatest secret of seducing anyone into saying "yes." It was first described by one of the greatest super-salesmen of all time, who worked in life insurance, an extremely difficult field.
Nobody ever wants to sit still for a pitch from a life insurance agent. That's why before this salesman discovered this secret, he was doing so poorly that he was about to quit the business. But after he discovered this amazing little secret, he did so well that he shattered his company's sales records.
The best part is, this secret works with stunning effectiveness (maybe even more so) for direct marketers. In fact, any marketer who fails to use this strategy is at a severe disadvantage to those who do. It literally transforms your presentation and offer into something that almost anyone is irresistibly tempted to say "yes" to.
Psychological "Hot Buttons" That
Trigger Intense Desire and Immediate Action
OK, just to make sure we're still on focus, I'm still talking here about my best ideas for applying salesmanship in advertising.
Now, when working with several of America's best salespeople, I discovered that they shared a striking characteristic. They all knew certain principles of street-smart psychology that enabled them to influence others with exceptional effectiveness. One of them described these secrets as "psychological hot buttons," because once you know them, getting people to do what you want can often be as easy as pressing their "hot buttons."
Just one example—people desperately want to be consistent in their behavior ... and you'll learn how to use this universal desire to motivate people to desire what you offer as never before.
You'll also discover how to unleash the normally overlooked power of the "Zeigarnik Effect." The Zeigarnik Effect is named after the Russian psychologist who discovered that there is an almost irresistible drive within most people to finish incomplete tasks, sometimes against all reason and even when it makes no sense to complete the task. You'll see how you can use this in your continuity programs to keep people buying more products from you.
You'll also see why fear of loss is a much stronger motivator than desire for gain ... and how to use this fascinating bit of psychology to sell much more of whatever you offer.
And here's another psychological hot button I show you how to press. You may recognize this from your own experience. Let's say you're looking to buy a new home. You find one you like and are leaning towards making an offer, but you're in no hurry, because you're negotiating and resolved not to appear too eager. But then you get wind there's another buyer in the picture, a couple coming back to inspect the home for a third time. What happens? You suddenly want that home more than you ever wanted it before, and you immediately plan to raise your offer!
What happened? Competition for the object you want drives your desire much higher. Such is human nature, and I show you exactly how to exploit this secret to greatly intensify your prospects' desire for anything you want to sell.
Shamelessly manipulative? Perhaps. But it works like crazy, as do the other psychological hot buttons I share.
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