Formulas for success don't work any more than diets do - if a diet worked, there'd only be one diet.
In 1985, we were going nowhere fast. When we shifted our focus to quality and service, rather than worrying about price, we became the most successful company of our kind in our area. - Larry Harmon
Strategic marketing alliances, rather than paid advertising.
His mailing to all the potential customers offering them a free lunch, no strings attached, no gimmicks, really, completely free, brought a flood of takers. And the deli delivered. So the customers kept coming back and telling their friends, and the business boomed virtually from day one.
We have a number of products which are habit-forming, and we refer to these are our opium.
We discovered that the best way to sell them was to use the sales techniques used by drug peddlers: Give away lots of free samples until the customer is hooked.
There are four main ways to gain ownership or exclusive control of a product: Create, Publish, Secure certain exclusive rights, Have it private labeled for you.
If you are going to create from scratch, my very best advice is to create to fit a known, identified, affordably reachable target market or to supply an established distribution pipeline.
"Millionaire consultant seeks inventors, manufacturers, importers, authors, etc with unique products suitable for promotion to homeowners, do-it-yourselfers, gardeners, and hobbyists. Send your information in confidence to:"
Most highly promotable products, services, or businesses have at least one of the these three ingredients:
- They solve an almost universal need and problem.
- They provide a much better way to perform a common task.
- They have some enormous emotional or impulse appeal that transcends logic and basic needs.
Hire people that are interested in your industry. Nothing you can do in a sales script can match the power of shared passion.
For starters, he created the Kit-Cat Fan Club...
Combining these three elements, our company instantly become "THE largest integrated seminar and publishing organization exclusively serving the chiropractic and dental professions," because we were the ONLY company doing that. We invented a new category.
There's great value in being perceived by your marketplace as the biggest and/or the best, as the leader of your field.
Inventing or Reinventing Products, Businesses, and Marketing Messages:
- Opposites: Burger King vs White Castle
- Magnify/Minimize: Footlong hotdog, minivan, big screen TV
- Adaptation: If it works in one business...The Drive In Window
- Exaggeration: Pearl Cream= Face Lift, Wilt Chamberlain drives a Volkswagen
- Add/Subtract: Fat Free Foods, Filled Donuts
- Combining: Laundromat-Tavern
- Rearranging: Calzone, Theater In The Round,
- General vs Special: Cleaning products, 80% are 99% the same, just different labels
- Time Frames: Dominos, SilmFast
- Packaging That Sells: Animals Crackers, Pez Candy, Duracell
- Specific Solutions: Waterproof, Doggie Door
- Coined Terminology: Schweppervescence
- Symbols: Pillsbury Dough Boy, Betty Crocker, NBC Peacock
- Technology: CDs, Diskettes, Direct to Email etc
Time; its what we have the least of; that's what we'll cheerfully pay to preserve.
If, instead of working on making more money, the average businessperson would spend an hour each and every day in quiet contemplation of how to be of greater and more creative service to his clientele, he and they would be the richer for it.
Foundations for a successful service business:
- 1. Need Driven
- 2. Want Driven
- 3. Time Savings Driven
- 4. Money Savings Driven
- 5. Strong competitive advantage
- 6. Link to a personal passion
- 7. Link to a personal specialized knowledge
Triple Hoop Advertising: Prospects have to take three steps to prove their interest before he aggressively pursues them.
Publicity because their one and only method of adding new customers.
If its a new idea, and you have limited resources, try a nontraditional path. Go through the back door instead of the front door. And never take no for an answer.
If you don't seriously offend at least one person a day, you're not saying or doing much.
[But providing something free if you call into his number] the insurance agent got more than 1800 calls, gaining 1800 potential clients names, addresses, telephone numbers, and interest.
Be provocative. I believe your customers, clients, and prospects will tolerate just about anything and everything but being bored.
If you really pin people down, even business owners and entrepreneurs, you'll fund most cannot clearly and concisely enunciate exactly what they are trying to accomplish this year, in three years, or in five years.
I'm absolutely sure that you can never make as much money running a business as you can selling a business.
If you are interested in developing and then selling a business...its important to understand that net income is rarely the most important success factor.
He was better financed, had better and newer technology, and lower prices. But I was a skilled, tough marketer and a thorn in the side of his business.
[When painting the picture to potential buyers] What I've done is good, but imagine what you could do!
Attract suitors, don't seek them.
"The whole world's looking at things through bifocals while I'm looking through binoculars." Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Odds are, in your current business...you have an asset, be it the customers, the product, or something else that could and should serve as the basis for a very creative synergistic expansion.
Favorite Millionaire Maker Strategies:
- #1 Diversify in marketing, to fully exploit total customer value.
- #2 Diversity is the opposite of laziness.
- #3 Gutsy (not wimpy) marketing.
- #4 Keep it simple [stupid].
- #5 Turn anger and resentment against an enemy into enormous opportunity.
- #6 Sell time.
- #7 Provide the customer with an exceptional guarantee.
- #8 Stake out a leadership position.
- #9 Being Alert.
- #10 Even if yours isn't a true service business, add and emphasize a service component.
- #11 Creative combining can create huge business breakthroughs.
- #12 Plus-ing.
- #13 It doesn't hurt to be Captain Outrageous.
- #14 Break the rules.
- #15 Listen to the customers first and most.
- #16 Tweak, tweak, tweak.
- #17 Clarity of purpose.
- #18 Consider priorities other than the fastest possible growth.
- #19 Are you sure you want to be pioneer?
- #20 Everybody as assets of experience and empathy that should be considered and valued when choosing business activities (passion sells).
- #21 Turn your passions into profits.
- #22 Remember that what you take for granted, because it is common knowledge to you, is a revelation, a secret of immense value to someone who doe snot know or understand it.
- #23 If you are going to invent, consider markets first.
- #24 Pay attention to developing trends.
- #25 Uncover hidden assets and opportunities.
- #26 If you don't ask, you can't get.
- #27 Think big!
- #28 Get others to do your selling for you.
- #29 Acquire customers for free any time, any way, every time, and every way you can.
- #30 Choose different information product formats and prices to fit the target markets, their price sensitivities, the value they'll derive from the information and other factors.
- #31 Sell the same information in a number of different formats, at a variety of different prices.
- #32 Develop vertical businesses within your business.
- #33 Private labeling is a fantastic way to get massive distribution fast.
- #34 Create your own toll booth.
- #35 Everybody can find a way to use publicity in your business.
- #36 You must find ways to use the power of television (now Internet).
- #37 Take full responsibility for the success or failure of your ideas.
- #38 Success breeds success.
- #39 Properly value information, especially when gained through failure.
- #40 Selling brilliantly won't make you a million if you're not buying smart.
- #41 Look for every way possible to keep y our capital out of dormant assets and into productive advertising, marketing, promotion, and sales efforts.
- #42 Smart investments in building value.
- #43 Use Synergy!!!
- #44 Discovering and using formulas.
- #45 It ain't over til its over.
