On Saturday, Dec. 15th I attended Sterling Valentine’s VIP Launch Party & Workshop. It was fun and we had a great time. The group had about 35 people in attendance. The size made it easy to network, and meet people.
One person I got to meet was Ken McArthur. He is a great guy and very gracious with his time. It was exciting to get his business advice. This is the guy who consults with many of the top marketers, and gets high praise from them. So, I paid close attention to what he had to say, and am implementing his suggestions. It would be foolish not to…
I would like to thank Ken for his time and advice.
Ken has a book coming out called “Impact: How to Get Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World.” And he is giving away a free recording of him and Brendon Burchard. In the future there will be interviews with some very influential people, videos from some amazing experts, tons of great materials and news on the latest events.Go to this site below and get in on the free resources…
Free Gift From Ken
Keith
I get Ross Goldberg’s blog feed, and he made a post about Mark Joyner releasing a free blogging course.
You may or may not know that Mark Joyner is often referred to as the Godfather of Online Marketing. So, I jumped over to his site to see what was going on.
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
This weekend my wife was watching HSN and I sat down on the couch to watch with her… I was bored!
However my marketing radar went off about 2 minutes into the segment. They are master marketers… Watch when you have some time for a free sales seminar. They were pitching, presenting and closing. It was awe-inspiring. They have a little counter showing how many units are selling. When they say or show something that hits the right buttons… the numbers start to jump. And the host will immediately repeat whatever caused the spike.
What happen next really made me salivate from a pure marketing viewpoint. Up in the right hand corner pops up an icon that said select here to order. I was stunned… I picked up the remote control and pressed select.
You can order through cable! The ultimate in convenience…
You do have to have an account set up with HSN, you don’t have to wait on the phone anymore.
This is great example of opening up more avenues to accept customer orders.
Keith
Today Ryan Healy interviewed me and posted the MP3 on his blog…
http://ryanhealy.typepad.com/copywriting/2007/11/interview-with.html
The story behind the interview is back in September He made a post saying that the 1000th comment will get an interview. And I was the 1000th comment! He emailed me to tell me the good news. I don’t remember the post at all, and thought he was kidding. But he emailed me back and said he was not joking.
Since I had already had an interview on his blog in mid October about putting his action plan to work he suggested an audio interview. I thought that would be fun, and agreed.
I’ve listened to the audio, and I think I sound nervous… It was my first interview. The last month has seen a lot of 1st for me. But I guess that’s what happens when you take start a new venture.
I’m grateful to Ryan for doing both interviews, and would probably take a bullet for him… Provided the bullet was in the pinky, or small toe! 
Till next time…
Keith
P.S. I have a WSO on the warriorboard for my copywriting services. Here is the link: http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=202238&
If you know anyone looking for copywriting send over.
How Big Is Your Back end?
If you felt I’m asking a personal question, then you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Most businesses go after the hardest type of customers there to get. They spend way too much time and money focusing on this avenue of business. Can you guess what type of customer I’m talking about?
Yes, I’m talking about new customers. They are the hardest to get for 4 reasons:
- They are hard to find – In the great sea of unwashed masses it is hard to find your customers. Not many people can stand on a street corner and pick out who is likely to hire you, or buy your product. The surest way would be to stop each person and ask him or her… a survey. You would have to go through a lot of S**t to find the shinola. And that is what most new customer marketing does. This is very inefficient.
- It cost a lot of time and money – You spend more money chasing after new customers. Why? Because you are sorting through many people who are not interested, can’t afford it or they use someone else.
- You don’t know the quality of the customer – Is this customer you just got any good? Do they pay on time? Or at all? Are their expectations high, medium or low?
- They are the least profitable- It cost typically costs 4-5 times more to get a new customer vs. a repeat customer. And to add insult to injury Entrepreneur Magazine states that repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers.
So, repeat customers are cheaper to get buy from you, and they spend more…
There are companies that will take a slight loss on the front end because the back end is so profitable.
I was listening to the 12 Month Internet Millionaire put out by Russell Brunson. And on it Vincent James said that his goal was to break even on the front-end sale. If he broke even or made a small profit he knew he had a winner. Those recordings are awesome… I recommend getting them. Click here to see the page.
I have been amazed at the lack of plans most people have with the customer after they get them. I have asked many people this question, and I usually hear that they are just concentrating on getting them in the door.
Not a good plan.
Stop what you are doing and come up with any plan to make another sale to your existing customers. It could be anything, just come up with something. You be surprised at the results. I remember the first time I sent out a backend offer to my window cleaning customers. One customer said to me it was about time I contacted them again. She told me she was waiting for me to ask her to call again, and she was not going to call until I did. That was an eye opener… a lesson I’ll never forget.
The moral of the story is… get a plan together to resell past customers. Any crappy plan will do at first. Then you can put together a detailed plan as you go.
Keith
Do you know why customers leave or fail to do business with a company in the first place?
According to the Small Business Administration 68% leave because of Perception of non-caring, 14% product dissatisfaction, 9% price, 5% friend’s recommendation, 3% move, 1% Death.
68%… WOW!
There is one huge reason is lack of follow up. Follow up is paying attention to your customers, making them feel important; you show you care about them. Everybody likes to feel special and when you pay attention to your customers they feel special.Follow up is not difficult and you should put a plan in place to prevent the 68% form leaving.
In his blog Dan Kennedy said this about follow up:
“Because virtually nobody does a decent job with follow-up, when you do, your competitive edge is huge and automatic.”
URL: The Power Of Follow-Up
Keith
“Let’s face it, small business owners sometimes don’t even have time to go to the bathroom, let alone market their company, service or product.” Are you marketing without a plan, and using one-off tactics, which is basically like throwing money to the wind?
From Go Big Network Blog
that perfectly describes my feelings some days.
It’s a mistake not to keep in touch with your customers. I know I’m guilty of that… especially on this blog. However my window cleaning business has suffer from inconsistent communications.
Business hums along when I’m reaching out and saying “Hi” at least once a month. However I found it hard to come up with something every month… and would let it slide when we got really busy. I would make the excuse that I was crunched for time.
Then I would be scrambling when the phones would slow down. The income was like a roller coaster. And the adrenaline was pumping at both ends… but not always for the same reason.
The problem was solved by accident one day. I was putting out a customer newsletter monthly. It was tough to write 4 pages to keep in touch with my customers. One day I tried a postcard newsletter. I was able to knock one out in about 20-30 minutes, and it was fun. The best part is I don’t feel any pressure to get it out anymore.
Hope this gives you some ideas,
Keith
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After months of hard work… I’m almost ready to release my 1st product for window cleaning marketing. It has taken longer than I expected, and I’m still 3 weeks before publication. The graphics are still being made, and I’m putting the finishing touches on the bonuses. It exciting to be close to the end… but putting it in the can looks so far away.
It’s called Window Cleaner Profits. I’ll reveal the strategies, tactics and tools the allowed me to build 3 window cleaning companies.
I have thrown up a simple sales page… with a special prepublication price. The plan is to leave this page up for a week or so… then it’s gone. I’ve included a special bonus for fast action. Go check it out:
http://www.windowcleanerprofits.com
Let me know your thoughts,
Keith
Hooray!
I’m celebrating…
And I’m going to give you a free tip… When you setup a blog - Don’t forget your password! And don’t forget the email you used to create the blog.
I forgot my password and haven’t been able to log on for a couple weeks. Today the password suddenly pop into my head. So, I tried it and boom I’m in!
I downloaded Roboform to prevent this from happening in the future. Plus, I wrote my password down and have it in a secure place.
Keith
Today I was at a house doing a bid. The customer had called yesterday and told me no one was going to be home. I told her it would be OK, I would leave the estimate in the front door. I drove over to her house got out and started walking around the house. It was a coloinal with storms, and divided double hung windows. Not exactly my favorite type of windows to clean. You can get into some hardcore wrestling matches trying to open those bad-boys.
I walked around the back of the house counting windows. Made my way around to the front of the house. As I approached the front door… You already know what happened next, don’t you?… Yes, the front door swung open and a women stated: “Who are you and what are you doing?”
After the heart attack… I filled her in on the details… I was called to come out and give a estimate for window cleaning… and I was told this was the address… and I the person on the phone told me no one was going to be home… and…
The woman told me she was the mother and she often house sat for her daughter. And she was surprised her daughter forgot to tell her I might be by today. I said no problem… sorry for the confusion. Gave her the estimate, got in my truck and left.
The lesson I learned was to always knock on the door before starting an estimate.
Keith
