If You Want Things To Change…………..

Ok, we, or rather, I have decided that I am going with a high ticket business because it is easier, quicker and less expensive than trying to create my own from scratch. I won’t need the membership software, the landing pages, all the rest of the bumff that goes into creating and selling a product. It’s not easy and it takes a lot of time and money.

Now, as well as looking for a high ticket business to get into (and, ideally one offering 100% commission), it was also important for me to find a business that didn’t have just one product. I needed multiple products along with multiple price  out of every 100 people who decide to buy something I am offering, there will always be at least two who decide on the most expensive thing I can offer them.

I learned this very early in my parenting days, we call it the 20% rule. We, I, found out very soon when I put my hand up at a parents’ meeting that in virtually every organisation there are 20% who actually get things done. They are the people who turn up week after week and get the grass mown or the hall painted or staffing the market stalls. Don’t ask me why, it is just the way things turn out in volunteering.

When it comes to buying, I think it’s closer to 10%. Ten out of every hundred customers will want, and buy, the most expensive item you can offer them. They want to buy a product (and the service that goes with it) that will give them a higher quality of assistance and experience. Just like the guys who buy the private boxes at the game, whether it be football, basketball, soccer or baseball. Sure, some of them buy so they can be seen, but most do it because they want to get the best experience out of it and they can afford it!

It’s interesting, don’t you think? Now if you have a product range with price points from $49 through to $2900, who do you think will be the most valuable customers, the ten who buy the $2900 item or the 90 who buy the $49 product? Well, you can work it out for yourself.

The important part of all this is that you, or in this case, I need to have multiple products set at different (and higher) price points because there will be people who want, and in fact, demand, a better service, experience, opportunity than others. And if I am not supplying it, you can bet your sweet posterior that someone else is!

Another part of the whole selling, or buying, experience is an interesting one. The stats bear out the fact that it is much easier to sell an existing customer a new product than it is to acquire a new customer. You want your customers to be repeat customers! They will only buy from you again if the first purchase was worth what they paid for it, in other words, they trust you.

Seth Goodin said that in order for any one to live well they just need 1,000 True Fans, and that’s not that many when you think about it. A True Fan is described as being someone who will buy everything that you put on the market place regardless of price, availability, they even have a Google alert out with your name on it, just so that they don’t miss something.

Wouldn’t that be nice! And it’s achievable, just by acquiring one True Fan every day it would only take three years. Think of it, One Thousand people buying everything you put out! Very nice, unlikely for me, but very nice! Let’s face it, if I could find just ten good people a month, I would be made.

I have spoken with several people who, once they switched from ‘old-style’ marketing of $20, $30 and $50 products, struggling to make $2k a month; to the high ticket model which allows them to make commissions in the thousands of dollars per customer, their peace of mind and income went up exponentially. That sort of income can be leveraged!

If you want to scale up to a large business that will allow you to quit your job, or if you are like I was, living on a fixed income, this is the easy way to do it. If you want to struggle to make a living like 90% of the marketers out there, keep on doing what you are doing (you know what they say, ” If you want things to change, you have to change some things!”) no-one will stop you.

Having just one product and just one price point is not going to cut it and I know of no better business than this one. I will also be on hand to show the way, get you rolling and keep pushing you right to the top, so make the choice to change your life and get started. As before, you can contact me via Skype on christopher-hooker.

The Name Of The Game Is………………

MONEY!

Now I’m sorry if that upsets you or offends your sensibilities but that is what it is really all about. Most business people believe that the primary reason for the existence of their business is to provide a service or to produce various products.

WRONG!

The reason you are in business and what you are in business for are two different things. As a business owner, it is crucial that you don’t confuse the two, totally different, concepts. You may well, through your business, supply one, or a whole suite of services. A different owner, or yourself if you are sufficiently diversified, will manufacture or fabricate a range of products for sale to either consumers or to other businesses.

You could even be doing both, producing a product and providing a service. It is important that you realise that what you do is different from why you do it!

The name of the game is Making Money. Nothing else. If you think otherwise, you won’t be in business for very long and you will be working for someone else who does understand the concept. Every shop in the high street, every company in the Industrial Estate, runs on profit, the profit made from selling the service or product that is supplied from there.

Profits come directly from sales and sales come directly from leads. Whether those leads are created by a customer walking past the shop window, looking in and having their salivary glands excited or a person browsing on his/her computer, seeing an advertisement or an article which interests them. They are both leads, different in type, obviously, but leads nonetheless.

No leads (customers), no sales (obviously), no profit (bugger!), no business (back to the J>O>B>!).

In order to make a profit, you must have sales and that means that you must have leads! One of the best ways to generate leads is by promotion and the primary purpose of promotion is to raise the profile of your business among the general public.

Shops can do that by having an enticing display in the shop window or by advertising, other businesses only have advertising, in any of the myriad forms (or all of them) to generate the leads that will bring customers.

When the public becomes aware of your business it will also become aware of whatever it is that you are trying to sell whether it be cup-cakes, the ingredients for them or the recipes for them or even the machinery that will mix the dough for them. Maybe you are trying to sell just the idea or the system for making excellent, reproducible cup-cakes.

In turn, this will wake a realisation among them that perhaps your products or services could solve a problem they are having or just satisfy a need they have. They might have neither a need nor a desire but simple curiosity may be enough to bring them to enquire of your business who you are and what do you do or make.

The visit is the important part. Every visitor is/was a lead. Why they visited in the first place is how you can turn the visit into a sale and thence, profit!

Paying customers are generated by leads.

 

Don’t be afraid to Fail!

I started in this business with no idea of what I was doing, where I was going or how to get there. Every Tom, Dick and Harry who came along with a ten dollar product, I bought it! I still didn’t make any money but I was learning. I didn’t realise I was learning, but that’s what it was.

I was learning how to fail!

I didn’t have the basics. I didn’t know how to set up a website (and to be honest, it’s a job I’d still prefer not to do!), I had no idea how to blog, to build a list, to get customers or even get people to talk to me.

Don’t be afraid to fail!

I can’t remember how many light bulbs Eddison made before he made one which worked, but it was a good few hundred. The same applied to Laurence Hargrave and the Wright brothers. They didn’t achieve flight the first time they tried, it took them years.

The first thing you have to learn about this business, any business, is that you will not succeed immediately. Of course, there is always the exception, but by and large, “overnight success” takes years of failure first.

There are ways to shorten the timeline required, not short cuts but techniques that have been worked out by others over many years and are available for the tyro to learn and use.

When I started I was forever receiving emails from Marketers telling me that ‘Affiliate Marketing’ was the key. I bought just about everything they showed me, all for small dollars, but that was the mindset I had at the time

After a few months it began to dawn on me that even if I made 50 sales a month I was only going to make $500 a month, and then I’d have to do it all over again!

It became obvious to me pretty quickly that if I was going to make any serious money out of this, there had to be a better strategy than selling someone else’s $50 or $100 product. I was going to have to produce my own product (Ebook, Instructional Course, Training Course, something like that.) or, latch on to another business which had its own high ticket products. (More on this later.)

To produce your own course or courses or Ebooks takes time, both for research and for actually doing the work and getting it all into shape. It takes money and knowledge to set up the website, membership site software, the merchant account, all of the “stuff” you see every day offering you the world for 2 hours work per day. (By the way, that’s not going to happen, not right away, unless you are either very, very lucky or very, very good!)

All in all, it boiled down to not being a good fit for me. I didn’t have the experience, knowledge or money to set something like that up from scratch. No, I had to find something that would allow me to sit on the shoulder of someone who had gone before, set the business up with all the webpages and systems required.

After a lot of research (and some soul-searching), along with the ‘due diligence’ required when you are going into this sort of thing, I had my mind made up.

A business system with high ticket products (in the thousands of dollars), well established with a reputation second to none and a good group of local people to bounce things around with. What’s more I felt an instant trusting connection with the head honcho when I heard him speak.

So many times I have listened to people expounding on the worth of their system, and so many times I have just not trusted them. I don’t know why, in all probability they are very worthwhile people, but every now and then you just get a feeling that you don’t really want to associate with a person.

Be that as it may, I have made my choice. I know who I am running with and who I expect to make a lot of money with. If you are interested in finding out more, by all means leave a comment and I will get back to you. You could Skype me at christopher-hooker, just bear in mind that my time zone is GMT+10. If I don’t answer immediately, don’t worry, I Will get back to you as soon as I can.

More soon.