Dear Entrepreneur and Sales Professional,

Four years ago -- May 7, 1997, in Peoria, Illinois, to be exact -- my faltering sales career made a turnaround after I heard a 1 hour, 15 minute speech.

Please understand, I've been a tape and book junkie for ten years. I listened to Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins and Tom Peters and Harvey McKay and Les Brown and every other sales / motivational guy on the planet.

I snatched up every piece of information I could, if I thought it would help.

But this message was as close as anything's ever come to striking a "magic formula."

I applied new ideas to the business that I was already in, and it made a huge difference.  It literally transformed the way that I think about sales and marketing.

Let me explain…

Like I said, it was May 1997.  My wife, Laura, had left her job as a legal secretary the previous year to become a full time mom, resulting in a substantial loss in income for us.  We had a 14 month old daughter that I was crazy about, but whose diapers and doctor visits proved to be an additional burden on our already thin budget.

I drove a seven year old Ford Taurus with 120,000 miles and a transmission that had recently gone out.  Laura’s car was a 13 year old Toyota with 150,000 miles!

Just before Laura quit her job to have the baby, we had come really close to finally getting out of debt.  But the baby came and our property taxes went up, and my sales job, which I’d had for 18 months, was starting to get worse, not better, as I shall explain. 

We also had a business that we ran from home, but it was costing us more money than it was making.

We were buying groceries with credit cards, and accumulating debt at an alarming pace. 

I was scared, and all I knew how to do was listen to more motivational tapes, make more phone calls, see more people, and try to ignore our growing financial problems, because facing them directly would only further discourage me in my efforts to succeed.

Previously I had worked as a design engineer, and made the switch to sales when my wife became pregnant.  I knew the potential existed to make a lot more money in sales, and I wanted her to stay home and be a full time mom. 

My prior experience in direct sales and mlm business were a definite asset - I had already overcome many fears about making phone calls, shaking hands, prospecting, seeing positive opportunity in negative situations, crashing through brick walls, etc.

Making the big bucks at my new sales job

My job was to be in front of people constantly, helping them solve their problems and offering them what I had to sell.  Ideally, I would have 3-4 appointments each day, which would translate to 15-20 each week, 60-80 meetings each month. 

Considering that each customer might represent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of business, this should be pretty easy, I thought.  Watch out, Mr. Checking account.  The big bucks are about to start rolling in!

The Drudgery of Cold Prospecting ‘Grunt Work’

Reality was a bit different, however.  Some days I would spend all day on the phone, talking to purchasing agents, engineers, maintenance guys, whoever would take my calls.  I looked for any source of names or leads I could possibly come up with.  Some of the companies I sold for did advertising, and leads would come in from time to time. 

Sometimes we'd get a whole stack of leads from a trade show.  Most people would say, "oh, I was just looking, don't need anything right now, thanks for calling..." or if I did meet with them, they weren't ready to make any kind of decision right now etc. etc. -- and 1-2 appointments per day was par for the course. 

They tended to be low quality appointments. 

I kept looking for more and more ways to find people.  We had an Illinois manufacturers directory, a monstrous book about 2" thick that had all sorts of information and key contacts.  I'd call these guys and ask them questions, fax them or mail information, and sometimes eventually get appointments.  Everyone was always busy, and the people I most needed to talk with were the busiest.

I would call up distributors I knew to do joint sales calls.  If I bought them lunch, they would usually go.  But sometimes, working with them was so political that it was hardly worth the trouble.

My boss called me into his office one day.  "Perry, you're a hard working guy and I don't have any problem with your work ethic.  You're a good employee.  But I'd like you to get out and see people a little more, I think that will help your sales."

I thought, “I’m trying as hard as I can to do just that – but this is like pushing an avalanche back up the hill.”

But I didn’t say it.  I just decided to try harder.

Working harder, harder, harder...

I felt guilty.  I wasn't pulling my own weight and I knew it.  I needed to sell more.  I notched it up.  I listened to more tapes.  I bought all kinds of motivational and sales tapes - Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Tom Hopkins, Dexter Yager.  I read books on closing sales. 

My wife went to the library and checked out stuff for me to read and listen to.  I got even more motivated to make more phone calls, set more goals, work harder, work longer.  I rarely took vacation days, and if so, only one day at a time.  I drove all over Chicago, visiting companies, exhibiting at trade shows.

Big deals down the toilet

From time to time, a really huge, incredible opportunity would present itself.  Some situation where the customer needed hundreds of thousands of dollars of something, maybe more.  But they needed specialized support.  My manufacturers would promise it, but somehow it would always fall through at the last minute. 

Like a 1.1 million dollar equipment proposal at a huge steel mill:  The customer called me to see what I could offer and I showed up with an excellent solution.  I wrote a killer proposal.  I was poised to pocket over $50,000 on just one single sale.   I was salivating because I knew I could close this deal and finally prove that I could be successful in this job.

(Note: This particular customer had called me first, not the other way around.  This had happened almost by accident, but it was one of the reasons I was in a position to win.  In the Magnetic Marketing Kit, you’ll find out how to make this happen on purpose.)

Suddenly my engineer who was working on the project got distracted with another project and the whole thing went spiraling down the flusher.  Gone forever.  Meanwhile, I still wasn't earning enough commission to cover my base salary.  I was under more pressure than ever to get more appointments, see more people, close more sales, and make more money.  But the harder I tried, the worse things got.

Me, the 'new kid on the block' trying to sell new technology

I identified a hot new kind of product I could sell, that all the magazines in my industry were writing about.  People were interested in hearing about it when I called them.  I would go in and show them what they could do with it, and they would get very excited about it.  And I was nearly the only guy in town who knew how to sell it.

But then their boss, or existing vendor, would convince them that this really wasn't such a good idea - or in the case of one customer, the guy turned around and bought the stuff from his old buddy he'd been doing business with for years - not me - and still my wallet had nothing in it but hungry moths.

I was so frustrated.  I just didn't know what to do.  I didn't know why I had to work so hard just to get one or two appointments.  I didn't understand how I could educate and inform customers so thoroughly and then they'd give the order to somebody else.  There had to be a better way.  But I didn't know what it was.

(In retrospect: “Information” can be used to annoy people, or it can be used to make them eat out of your hand.  This tape talks about how that’s done.  Wish I’d heard this two years sooner!!!)

Another trip, another motivational seminar...

My constant quest for information and education took me to a Peter Lowe "Success 97" seminar in Peoria, Illinois.  It was refreshing to get good ideas and motivation.  They had all kinds of superstar folks there - Barbara Bush, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Lou Holtz. 

Then at the end of the day, maybe 4pm - just after the last break, before the final speaker - most of the people in the audience were already feeling sufficiently motivated and started leaving—like, visibly leaving. 

Of course I'd paid $55 to be there and wasn't going to miss a single word. 

So while throngs of people, less ‘hungry’ than me, were walking up the aisles, out the door, and into the parking lot, this guy named Dan Kennedy began his presentation with an explanation of "Why you should stay here and listen to this guy."

5 Minutes into his speech, I was hanging on to every word!

I stuck around and listened.  And Dan made some outrageous statements. 

He said that any salesperson or business owner could grow their income in only 21 days, guaranteed, if they followed his system and used his marketing concepts to grow their business.  An outrageous statement, yes, but the ideas he presented were very, very different from anyone else I'd heard.  But they absolutely made sense.

All I understood up to that point was working hard and working harder and driving more miles and having a great attitude.  Making more phone calls.  Seeing more people.  Shaking more hands.  Generating more quotes.  Thinking pure thoughts.  Praying without ceasing.  Saying "positive affirmations" to myself.  Winning more friends and influencing more people.  Driving more miles.  Smiling brighter smiles. 

And I was killing myself in the process, and going into debt as an added bonus…

Working hard & being motivated vs. working smart

Dan Kennedy didn't say word one about being motivated.  He talked about working smart. 

(This system, by the way, is not a motivational system.  It’s a “Get really really smart about what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to” system.  Again, listen to it ten times if you need to.  But I only had to hear it once to be convinced that my approach to sales needed to drastically change as soon as possible!)

Dan talked about formulating clearly understood, emotionally appealing marketing messages.  He talked about using direct mail and other media to cause interested, qualified prospects to call me, instead of me calling them.  He talked about database marketing, and re-inventing your entire business by presenting it differently. 

He gave powerful proof that his ideas really do work in real, every day businesses.  He talked about the difference between being an "unwelcome pest" vs. being an invited, "welcome guest" and how dramatic the difference is when you're perceived as an expert, problem-solver and consultant rather than a salesman.

To put it another way, if you do marketing correctly up front, you can radically, dramatically change your experience as a sales person for the better, all the way through the sales cycle and throughout the relationship, long term.

You can literally create a situation where virtually every single customer calls you, instead of you calling them, and your job is to figure out who to spend your time with.

(That’s how it works for me today.)

And by the way, it’s much easier to improve the sales process by starting at the beginning than by adding some clever close or trick at the end, don’t you agree?

Recklessly spending advertising dollars?

Oh yes, and another topic he covered: Advertising.  The nervous, uncertain feeling that a business owner has when he writes a check to an ad agency or yellow pages rep, having no idea whether it's going to pay off or not -- and worse, not being sure will ever be able to tell if the advertising is even doing its job after he's spent the money. 

But Dan insisted that it was possible to make every advertising dollar 100% accountable, and generate positive Return On Investment on every dollar spent.

I took 2 pages of notes, but quickly realized that there was much more to Dan's concept than I could possibly absorb in an hour.  So at the end of his presentation, I rushed down and spent hundreds of dollars (charged to one credit card that was not yet over the limit) for his Magnetic Marketing System.

That money was the best investment I've ever made in my professional career.

Dan's Magnetic Marketing System helped me begin to understand why what I was doing in sales was not working.  In hindsight, these were my problems:

·         A salesperson should not spend his time prospecting (making cold calls, “dialing for dollars” etc.) any more than absolutely necessary.  His time is too valuable and expensive.  He should only spend time in with qualified, interested potential clients, discussing his solutions for their problems.  A good marketing system, that helps customers find the salesman, can do this for far less money than paying the salesman to find the customers.  My problem was that I was spending so much time prospecting, I didn't have time to sell.

·         Once an effective marketing system is in place, a salesman or saleswoman can spend twice as much time in front of customers and make at least twice as much money.  That's what I needed to do: spend more time selling, less time prospecting.

·         There's a hidden benefit to this: When the customer finds you, instead of you finding the customer, his perception of you is different.  He perceives you as a consultant, not a peddler.  Remember when I was out promoting new technology, and educating people about it?  I was really like a "self appointed guru" coming down from the top of my mountain and grabbing people, asking them to sit at my feet and learn.  But people don't go to gurus at the bottom of a mountain.  And customers don't respect peddlers as information sources. I was improperly positioned as a 'peddler' and could never accomplish what I was trying to achieve.

·         Dan's Magnetic Marketing System explained a plethora of clever mechanisms by which this perception of "valuable consultant" instead of "unwanted pest" can be dramatically enhanced, so that a customer thinks about you "in a vacuum" so that you are no longer “just another salesman” in his mind.  I needed to find out how to re-position myself as an expert.

Explaining this to the boss

The very next day, I went to back work and talked to my boss about this.  I hadn't absorbed very much at this point, but I attempted to describe it to him. 

He smiled at me.  He didn't really say much in response, but it was obvious he wasn't persuaded.  It was a "Yeah, some guy gave you some rose colored glasses, ain't that nice" sort of smile. 

He'd been selling for 30 years, very successfully, and wasn't open to trying anything new like this, especially if it came from me.  His attitude was, "yeah, I know you'd like to take the lazy man's short cut and have customers come to you, but it just don't work that way, pal."

Then Things Get Worse, Not Better

It couldn’t have been two weeks later when the roof caved in, so to speak: The manufacturer I sold the most product for “pulled the plug on me” because someone I thought was helping me, was actually giving my customers to his buddy and stabbing me in the back.

My boss thought I was a great guy.  And he didn’t really understand why things weren’t working for me, or why none of these customers seemed to want the hot new stuff I was selling.  But he had a meeting with me and explained that he had made a business decision to stop pursuing the kind of high-tech sales opportunities that I was working on.  He put me to work in another department.

Since he wasn’t open to trying any new ideas, I had no choices. 

I was in a real mess.  18 months in a brand new sales career and nothing to show for it; now I was in an assignment that I hated, and I was truly stuck.  My income wasn’t even close to meeting my bills, and I needed to find a new sales job that would pay a lot more than my previous one.  Good luck.

I started looking.  Also, practically every night, I would get out that Magnetic Marketing Kit and figure out how I was going to avoid getting back into the same old sales problems all over again.  Even though I was seemingly stuck in that dead-end job, I was re-learning and re-thinking everything I thought I knew about sales.  And I was watching very carefully for a new opportunity.

The chance I'm looking for finally comes

One afternoon I found myself at a company in the same industry, which was selling the exact same kinds of solutions, in the same industry, to many of the same customers that I sold to before, but this company was in startup mode.  They were very nearly starting from scratch.  They needed a sales manager. 

They needed someone who could accomplish a lot without a ton of resources, because my marketing and travel budget were nearly zero.  They literally told me that I was going to have to sell this stuff without going and seeing people, because they couldn’t afford to send me.

And frankly, they couldn’t pay me any more than I was making before.  But if I performed, the commissions would make up the difference.

Of course the ‘natural’ thing would have been to keep doing things the same way as I had before – the same relentless, tireless cold calls and hard-core motivation.  I certainly knew how to do that.  As a matter of fact, I’m probably better at that than most people.  But I recognized that compared to “working smart,” simply working hard was just a recipe for failure. 

This new situation was an opportunity to put that “Magnetic Marketing” system to good use.  I accepted the position and went to work.

The limitation of “not going out to see people” meant that I wasn’t trying to knock down people’s doors and come into their office and waste their time.  It turned out to be an advantage, as I shall explain.

We started using our website as an educational tool.  Now it drew lots of potential customers because other web sites (over 100!) started linking to it.  Now we had a lead generation 'magnet' that positioned us as the 'experts' and brought us traffic literally from all over the world.

We created “information tools” such as Dan teaches in his system, and pretty soon magazines were doing write-ups on these tools, and people were calling us from around the country to get their hands on them.

We started making waves.  Business grew 300% in six months.  Our competitor, much larger than us, started noticing, and started reacting visibly.  We came up with more and more clever ways to attract educate customers without spending a lot of money.

My Finances Start Turning Around

With business growing the way it was, we were able to stop the hemorrhaging, so to speak, and stabilize our finances.  The stress level went down.  I was thrilled to suddenly find that what I was doing with marketing was effective, even to the point of arousing other peoples’ and companies’ attention and curiosity.

And my wife will tell you she much prefers living with a husband who’s confident and successful, compared to one who wakes up each morning, anxiously wondering who he’s going to see, what he’s going to sell, and how he’s going to pay the mortgage.

"You can get customers to PAY you to teach you about YOUR product, before they even buy it!"

Yes, that’s right.

One thing I learned from Dan was that customers will pay for things that everybody else tries to give them for free.  Well, I was tired of giving beautifully prepared presentations on neat new products and ideas, and not even being taken seriously.

So we developed a 3 day, $1500 training class.  The whole concept was patterned after Dan Kennedy's "marketing super conferences" and "boot camps."  I had a hunch we could get a dozen students in the class. 

We created some direct mail pieces, and with some experimentation with faxes & email and a consulting call to Dan Kennedy, we filled up the class and it was a success.  We did another and another, then a major trade organization gave us a contract to teach this class to their clients.

Over $100,000 later, we suddenly dominated a niche that didn't even exist six months before, and major companies (General Motors and Chrysler being two examples) were paying us to teach their employees how to use our products, before they even bought them. 

(If you know anything about the automotive business, you know that most companies are tripping all over themselves, giving stuff away, just trying to get GM's attention.)

What I learned from Dan is that giving stuff away is often the opposite of what you should do.  And these companies have become good customers for us, starting with a paid training class!

The Starving Home Business Turns Around, Too!

I mentioned that I had a home business on the side.  I applied some magnetic marketing techniques to that business and got some interesting results – in one case, a lead generation project that brought me new, interested customers for $1 per name.  I used to spend hours of ‘manual labor’ getting those customers!  Not bad.

Over time, I re-defined that business as I discovered a new type of customer that had a much more clearly defined need than the customers I was previously pursuing.  And even though it’s still a pretty minor effort, it went from losing money to making money. 

Today, it takes a little bit of my wife’s time and almost none of mine, and earns excellent money for what little time we put in to it.

I'll spare you the details of other things I've been doing.  But here's a summary of what's happened as a result of the 'Magnetic Marketing' concepts described on this tape you’re listening to:

·         It’s literally been years since I’ve had to maneuver and manipulate myself to ‘get in front of a customer.’  I almost never "cold call" customers or do prospecting anymore.  Customers call me and my staff, seeking advice and expertise.  Often they ask when we could be available to give presentations to their engineering and product development staff.

·         Customers pay for training and education, and perceive us as the 'experts.'

·         Sales have grown 1000% in the last 2 years, from 'startup mode' to 'rising star' in the marketplace.  Needless to say, my income has increased substantially!

·         People from other companies in our industry, even trade organizations, ask us for marketing and strategic advice

·         One of my email lead generation projects brought a 43% response, clearly identifying which people we should spend our time with.

·         We've gained insight on how to develop products from the ground up so that they appeal to customer's emotional needs, making those products much easier to publicize, sell and demonstrate

·         Instead of selling products and technology, we sell money and information.  This strategy is one of the cornerstones of Magnetic Marketing.

Use the system.  It’s literally packed with information.  And it’s real information, too, not just a bunch of teasers.  You can actually listen to this, apply ideas and start making money.

Of course the Magnetic Marketing System is packed with a host of examples and marketing / advertising templates you can apply to your business.

I believe this toolkit can make the same difference for you, regardless of what kind of business you own or what you sell.  I believe that so much that I made special arrangements with Dan Kennedy's publisher to offer these kits to my customers.  So what do you have to lose?  Get your hands on one now, before you spend another minute prospecting for more business!

Discover The Secrets of Magnetic Marketing: Driving Profitability and Time Effectiveness for Business Owners and Sales People

Contents:

·         102 Moneymaking, magnetic marketing sales letters, ads, flyers & other exhibits

·         The equivalent of over $100,000 in professional copywriting, consulting and analysis

·         Over 80 original COPYRIGHT FREE marketing documents & exhibits you can copy and use, organized by 6 different business/sales career categories - matching over 90% of all businesses in America

·         6 audio cassettes, including: #1: Cafeteria Tape, a walk-through of your tools in the kit; #2-#5: "Crash Course" - the equal of a $700.00-per-hour consulting session where your questions are answered! #6: Fast Start Tape. 

·         Your choice of several strategic books and special reports from Dan Kennedy

·         "Critique Coupons" valued at $300, entitling you to submit pieces of advertising or marketing material to Dan Kennedy for comment & review.  Dan charges over $25,000 just to write a sales letter!  His recommendations can dramatically enhance your efforts in creating effective marketing material.

·         The magnetic marketing toolkit with 102 Moneymaking, magnetic marketing sales letters, ads, flyers & other exhibits

·         The equivalent of over $100,000 in professional copywriting, consulting and analysis

·         Over 80 original COPYRIGHT FREE marketing documents & exhibits you can copy and use, organized by 6 different business/sales career categories - matching over 90% of all businesses in America

·         6 audio cassettes, including: #1: Cafeteria Tape, a walk-through of your tools in the kit; #2-#5: "Crash Course" - the equal of a $700.00-per-hour consulting session where your questions are answered! #6: Fast Start Tape. 

·         Your choice of several strategic books and special reports from Dan Kennedy

·         "Critique Coupons" valued at $300, entitling you to submit pieces of advertising or marketing material to Dan Kennedy for comment & review.  Dan charges over $25,000 just to write a sales letter!  His recommendations can dramatically enhance your efforts in creating effective marketing material.

·         The Midas Touch Tapes (Marketing, Direct Marketing, and Sales)

·         Inner Circle 6 month membership

·         Ken McCarthy’s Internet Report

·         Joe Polish Tape

·         Ultimate Success Secret book

·         8 “No BS” reports

·         Paul Hartunian’s Free Publicity video

·         The SuperConference Tapes

Very Important: We have a very small number of these packages in stock, and once they’re gone, they’re GONE.  Order NOW before they disappear!!!

(Note: You can also purchase the Magnetic Marketing Kit and the Midas Touch Tapes, with no other bonuses, for $350.  If you wish to do so, make note of this on the order.  We also have a very small number of these.  And once they're gone, they're gone.)

Click Here to Order!