How to Send a Large Direct Mail Campaign for Free

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to Powerful Business Strategies, where you will find out that everything you have ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Finally, a show where you'll learn the right way to grow your business by learning business and financial strategies that your competition isn't doing. And now here's your host.

0:47 Resident of Next Step CFO Michael Barbarita and joining Michael for today's show as an executive moderator is chooky. Obia, Yes, yes, yes, this is chokey, and I believe that gratitude is undefeated and growth is about the next step. It is an honor for me to moderate today's discussion with my good friend Michael Michael, how are you. Great, chokey, how's it going. It's coding well, it's going well. Good, And as Cherkey said, my name is Michael Babarita, President of Next Step CFO, and Next Step CFO is a fractional CFO and strategic implementation firm. Our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business owners achieve the time, freedom, and consistent profits to build a legacy and the light they desire.

1:39 Our mission is dedicated to guiding small business owners to leveraging their time, exploding their profits, and building that meaningful legacy. And the show Powerful Business Strategies in our book of the same name is a step toward accomplishing that vision and mission. So with that, I'd like to hand it back to my co author and moderator for the show, chuky Obill. Michael. It's truly an honor to collaborate with you. So today's episode fourteen. How energized are you about our episode fourteen? Sort of a milestone? Absolutely? Yeah, No, it's over over a quarter. There you go a quarter of a year. I love that you've spoken like a true strategic CFO.

2:22 I love that. So look, the title of this episode is how to send a large direct mail campaign for free and direct mail campaigning. I mean this is really born out of a lot of interest from the small and medium sized business owners that we work with Coast to Coast and Michael, before we jump into the heart of today's episode with your insights, your leadership perspectives, I've just got to drop a really quick kind of disclaimer. So, look, Michael and I are affiliated with a number of different organizations, and I currently serve as the managing director of business development for Vetter Price, a global business focused law firm. But it's truly a personal point of privilege to get to collaborate with Michael. Really Coast to Coast we moderate a number of business roundtables, and we document the best practices from those roundtables, and we feature these best practices in our book, Powerful Business Strategies. But please note that the views expressed in the show are our personal views based on successful experiences that we've had, and as the fearless moderator, my job is really just asking Michael the right questions, to take notes, share those notes, and to help you and me really learn and start to implement the best business strategies that the competition isn't doing.

3:48 So with that, Michael, I'll toss it back over to you. Thank you, Chocky. You know, Checky, We've been interviewing a lot of small business owners lately and they've been telling us. A lot of them, I've been telling us they have absolutely no marketing budget at all. Well, today we're going to help solve that problem for those business owners who are willing to do the work associated with the topic that we have chosen today. And today we're going to help you learn some interesting information about direct mail marketing and give you the ability to send direct mail to as many qualified prospects as you would like for free if you're willing to do the work. And one key to successful marketing is repetition. Why is repetition important because you never know where your prospect is on the buyer's journey, and it's mandatory that you position a compelling message with an irresistible offer in front of your prospects multiple times.

4:53 Because of the proliferation of marketing. Yeah, and your prospect might be at the point you never know your prospect is, and they might be at that point in their journey with them ready to make some type of vendor selection and by the way, I don't want to just think I don't know people to think that I'm just throwing words around with respect a buyer's journey, a compelling message, and irresistible offer. You know, a compelling message, a position of market dominance, irresistible offers, or a buyer's journey. These are all concepts and strategies that we have spoken about many times in previous shows, and we have entire shows dedicated to those topics at Powerful Business Strategies dot com. Absolutely, but today experts now say it takes multiple contacts or touch points to establish sufficient trust, respect and rapport to get a prospect to buy what you sell. So how can financially strap small business owners accomplience seemingly impossible task? Well, most of them attempt email solicitations, and I think a lot of us know how difficult that is. And you know you better have a list that has opted in email addresses, otherwise you might be doing something illegal. And then, furthermore, when you think about it, most of us delete email without even opening it. And the only exception to this

6:23 rule is to the use of joint venture partnership email lists and collaborations. And only then if your JV partner has a excellent relationship with their database because most of them don't. So believe it or not, many of the so called Internet gurus are at least to some degree, reverting back to good old direct mail. And yes, it can be expensive if it's not laser targeted to your specific ideal client. Now it's preferable to send out ten mailings to two thousand prospects versus sending out one mailing to twenty thousand.

7:08 Interesting. Yeah, but even two thousand can seem daunting logistically and financially to a small business owner. However, if you're willing to devote a little time and effort to this direct mail's marketing strategy, the cause for you to read multiple prospects multiple times will be just your time sweat equity if you will. And before I go through how to make your direct mail campaign free, there are a few things that you need to know about direct mail. First, you need to understand who your ideal client is. Now, if you ever had the opportunity to work with us, one thing that we make sure we guide you to do is preparing a customer avatar. Now, a customer avatar is a representation of your ideal client, and this is the client that actually wants what you sell versus needs what you sell. Let me give you an example I need to have if I need to have a dentist fill a cavity, I certainly don't want that. On the other hand, no one really needs whiter teeth, but most people want wider teeth. So if you can see the difference in those two situations, wants are based on emotion and needs are based on logic, and discovering your ideal client depends on your ability to discover the demographic which are the physical traits, as well as the psychographics which

8:39 are the emotional traits that make up your ideal client. And the client avatar helps you focus on those demographic or physical traits and psychographic and emotional traits. Great. So look, Michael, Yeah, we've been going at this for some time here, and we'll get in a number of comments and some good questions. So let's break this up a little bit and just inject some of these questions from the business owners that are listening and really interested in this topic. So first things first, this doesn't take away from a digital online strategy.

9:19 Correct, We're getting some of those kind. Of you know, like you know, we've talked about a lot with the buyer's journey, you know, drift campaigns and those types of things. It doesn't eliminate it, not at all. But what it does for those people who are doing nothing or don't feel like they could do anything, or don't have a list that is opted in and feel a little edgy about doing you know, some spammy emailing. This is the strategy. It's really designed around those people with no budgets. Brilliant. So regardless of business owner, this could be additive, right, This could be a value. Add Yes, this could be definitely added for some and some some of a lot of the business owners that we've been talking to have absolutely no, zero, zero money to do any marketing. Yeah, and so this is this fits.

10:12 This is playing this. Song absolutely and that Michael, the other comments that we're in is actually a compliment to you. Right, Folks are saying the timing of this is really on point because they're getting into Q four, you know a lot of pressures around how their annual performance is looking like. And you know, folks are saying, this might be the way to maybe hit some of those numbers. But maybe can you just reflect on the timing of this, particularly with the holiday season and waste to maybe take advantage of that. Well, I think, you know, depending upon how long it takes for you to coordinate it. Uh, you know, now is certainly the time, you know, if it takes like we're at October seventh, So if it takes a month to coordinate it month, month and a half, you'd be right on for the holidays.

11:01 Brilliant good stuff, Michael, thank you. Second, the other thing that getting back to what you need to know about direct mail. Before I impart the strategy, you must map out the decision making process. You know, all human beings want the best deal. The best deal doesn't mean the lowest price, but it does mean the most value for the price they pay. What we've seen in our research for the book called Powerful Business Strategies is that prospects will pay twice the price of your competitors if they see five times the value for the price you're charging them. Wow. And you know, and we had a special show dedicated to adding more value. But prospects decide to buy based on value. So map out your ideal clients consider valuable to them in their specific situation.

12:02 You know, just to give you a quick example, a daycare mother with a six month old infant will value a daycare that offers sufficient trained staff to show additional love, care and support for the kids that they keep. On the other hand, you know, there's a daycare mom with a four year old child that will value a daycare that specializes in offering educational programs for preschooler's like for example, you know what mom wouldn't want their child to be reading at a first grade level prior to kindergarten. And by the way, it may be necessary for the business owners to create new innovations to their current business model in order to provide their prospects with value. Sometimes it takes a change in the operating basis and so that I know that creates certain challenges. But you know, if you're going to do something special, if you're going to do something special to add value to a to a customer or a client, that could require some changes to the way you operate the way you uh, you know, you're the logistical way you operate.

13:12 Yeah, that's a really good point. So it looks like we're getting some appreciative comments just based on that. Michael, really quick question here this might go back to something you said earlier. So just this idea of really adding more value right and getting after that that contact or customer list you set psychographics and demographics, can we just find you and maybe define that a little bit for folks. Yeah, so demographics things like age, yeah, age, geography, you know where they geographically located? Are they male, female? That type of thing. Psychographics are more a triggers. Interesting, Yeah, like for example, what makes them happy, what makes them sad?

14:08 What are their challenges? Who are the people that they listen to, who are the people they trust? Those are the those are more emotional and psycho psychographic triggers. So yeah, so the uh, the customer Avatar identifies both of those things all in one, all in one document. Nice. Uh, And that's something we help business owners with great. But for the business owner who accepts the challenge of implementing those innovations and changing their operating basis, they're going to dominate. They will dominate their market. And once the innovations are in place, they need to create that compelling message, which is a third thing. Now that this would this should be easy to do since innovations typically separate the business from all its competitors, and writing a compelling message.

15:02 Message becomes as simple as stating the facts and listing the differences between you and your competition. And furthermore, you can go to one of our past shows that we dedicate only to compelling office and if time allows, I will summarize things like compelling offers and the conversion formula. So in the meantime, let me give you an example of adding more value through innovation. And I understand that by today's standards when I'm this example that I'm going to give you isn't realistic yet, but it makes the point of the great advantage that you have when you add more value to your product or service. So, as you know, there are a multitude of Toyota dealers selling cameras, and not only that, uh you know they're there, their competitors are also selling uh, similar priced models as well.

15:59 And so if we just if we just take something like, let's just take the Nissan Ultima and the Chevy Malibu is just two of them. But what would happen if the and those are similarly priced models as the camera? But what would happen if the engineers a Toyota crack the mileage code and created a camera that got two hundred miles per gallon? Would that separate them from all their competitors? Would they be able to charge more for that car than all the others? Would that marketing be really hard to write? Well hardly? I mean it would be as simple as this. We sell Toyota cameras. Now they get two hundred miles per gallon, and we're only twenty percent higher in price than our competitors comparable models one one, So you see what I mean. So now you know? Now you know I mean it is once you come up with an innovation or a way to add value, it's not that difficult to communicate it. And so you know how they make these decisions before because you know what they what they value, and you've created the innovation, so the value can be placed into a compelling marketing message. Okay, So let's talk more about how to direct, how to send, and how to develop that direct mail piece for free. Okay. So the first step

17:32 is to create a list of additional products and services that your ideal clients are interested in. So, for example, if you're a landscaper, your ideal clients would be interested in adding a fence to their yard or perhaps a pool, maybe stonework, a barbecue pit, all right, patio deck. They also want their home painted. They might want their bathroom remodeled, their home inspected, install a security system them, and so on. Now, none of these are direct competitors with the landscaper, but they all should be targeting that same ideal client. So what I'm asking you is you to pick up your phone or send an email or a letter at the very least follow follow it up, preferably with a phone call and that letter. I'm going to explain in a moment.

18:27 But pick up the phone and call as many of these businesses as required until you find one and only one for each type of business that would be willing to partner with you on this direct mail marketing program. Now you should plan to find a minimum of ten non competitive businesses to partner with. Now you might be able to do less than ten, but ten is optimum. And by the way, this first step is similar to creating joint venture partnerships that we actually talked about last week in our last show. Now, each partner is responsible for designing a three x five sized postcard with a special offer listed on it. For their business and if they want, they can utilize both sides of the postcard. Now, what I'm proposing here is similar to what you often see in a val pack malely, but those have all different businesses in it, all different businesses. This is just going to focus on what your ideal clients want and so you'll agree with your partner to coordinate buying the prospect list from the list broker that FETs your ideal client description. You'll agree to arranging the printing of all the postcards and remember the partner is designing it. Getting

19:59 the postcards to the direct mail house. You'll also agree to and scheduling the various mailings over whatever timeframe the group decides is appropriate. So, in short, you're going to create your very own val pack business consortium with you with the HELM. Now, this is critical before you contact any of these potential partners, check out the costs for all of these services and arrange for bulk discounting with the printer and the mail house. This is this is this is the most critical step you can take before you contact anybody. You have to figure out all the costs involved in this whole campaign. Now I'm going to give you some examples of costs, but they're not likely the costs in your particular area. Every area I find is different. Also find out from the from your research of costs where the quantity price breaks out. Now, I'm going to give an example of a two thousand piece mailing, because as I said earlier, it's better to send a two thousand piece mailing to the same people ten times than it is to send one twenty thousand piece mailing.

21:15 So I'm going to give you an example of a two thousand piece mailing. But maybe there's a real favorable price break at twenty five hundred or fifteen hundred. So you've got to change that quantity accordingly according to what the direct mail house tells you what they're printing price breaks out. So know what your concept of everything up front, and be sure to look online as there are a multitude of revuable online printers and mass mailers offering bulk pricing discounts. Now, typically you could send out direct mail postcards for about seventy cents each, but that's when you send them individually. You're going to be sending all of your partner's postcards as well as your own in one single mailing. So if you target two thousand homes in your area that are your ideal clients, the total cost to mail these prospects one time probably in the area of three thousand dollars and I'm being a little high, but I'm using three thousand dollars including purchasing a multiple use mailing list. So naturally prices will vary depending upon your location. As I mentioned, and by the way, that price should also include the printing and mailing of your postcard as well. And your postcard is not going Your postcard is not going to be three by five like I said, your partner's postcard is going to be. Your

22:45 postcard will be a four x six full color postcard, so it stands out from the others. And please note that your partners may also create the same size postcard, but by you stating that you need three by five card, they will automatically request that they will automatically use that size. Now, they can always upgrade in the future if they so desire, but most won't. Most won't upbreak, and yours will stand out from the others when prospects open that mailing. So now this is important. You've got to get all your partners to agree that you will schedule a minimum of ten separate mailings for a total cost of thirty thousand dollars. Now, this is three thousand dollars per mailing times ten mailings.

23:39 Remember that repetition is important, and that's why we're doing ten mailings. Now, that's only three thousand dollars per business owner, and they can pay that on a per mailing basis if they want. You're just going to make sure that they commit to it. Ten separate mailings now may take up to five mins to complete. So that's allowed a six hundred dollars a month marketing budget for those partners. I mean, realistically, every every business in this consortium could easily gain a minimum of ten customers. That's a one half of one percent response, and that's that's pretty conservative because many of these direct mail campaigns average one percent, which would mean an average of twenty new clients for each of those prospects for each I'm sorry for each of those partners, and that's after a single mailing. So this is now a total of ten mailings. And by the way, look at your investment in all of this.

24:45 All you've invested in this entire process is your time and organizational skills, and your bigger postcard should pull more clients than your partners. Now your partners have of it, all of these cost costs involved, and you have certainly earned your free ride by coordinating this entire prospect and driving qualified prospects to them. So this represents a true win win scenario, especially for the business owners like so many that we have interviewed with zero marketing dollars. Now here's a second version of this that has been used successfully, and see what you think this is really the second version is really just for business to consumer businesses. But first you have to find out how many people are living in your trading area, and what you want are the number of residences you see, the post office will show you how to do what's called a dear resident mailing, and the post office will deliver your dear resident mailing really cheap if you're because you're trying to hit every household in a certain zip code or in a set of zip codes. And if you'd like to personalize the carrier envelope and just do a search under the category mailing list and you'll find a list of local companies

26:15 that can help you or if you want. One of the big mail mailing list houses is a company called Database USA, and they'll help you reach whatever target market you're looking for. So if you're looking for let's say, so let's say you find out that there's fifty five thousand residences in a particular trading area that you want to reach. What you do then is approach other businesses that would be interested in reaching these same people with a postcard advertisement and ask these businesses if they'd like to spend fifteen cents instead of seventy or eighty cents to reach these potential customers in this target market. And remember to only approach businesses that are not competing with yours or not competing collectively. Send a letter or email to these businesses. And I'm going to recite what the letter should be, and this is that letter that I referenced earlier that could be either in the form of an email, a letter, and what you could say on a phone call. So this is to find partners. Now, dear business owners, I'm sure you know how costly it is to mail a marketing letter to your target market.

27:35 Even a simple postcard will cost you fifty cents or more for each postcard that you send out, and if you mail a letter in an envelope, you'll spend at least ninety cents per letter, even if the mail is at bulk rade. What I'm proposing is that we conduct a co op mailing. I'm looking for ten businesses, none of which, sorry in this case, twelve businesses, but ten was for the first version, twelve is for this version, none of which are in competition with each other. To share the cost of the mailing. All of our postcards would go into the same envelope. This mailing will be hitting fifty five thousand homes in the and then you insert what area, city and state. But instead of paying a minimum forty nine thousand, which they would have to pay to breach fifty five thousand homes, your mailing will cost just a little over four thousand dollars. That's an estimate based on our current out of pocket costs. So you'll be hitting a home in the XYZ area for less than seven and a half cents. All you need to do is give me your postcard or what you want to say, and I'll print it for you. I have found this to be the most cost effective way to reach a target market which is in this Once again you name the area. But here's the hidden benefit of having twelve postcards arrive in one envelope. The postcards

29:08 bundled together are heavy and kind of land with a thud when the envelope is dropped on the kitchen table. This is attension getting and actually improves the response rate to the mailing significantly over what you would receive if your postcard just showed up in the mailbox by itself. So if this program that interests you, if it interests you, just give me a call and give your phone and give your phone number of course in the letter, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have and give you all the details. I encourage you to call me right away if you're interested, because I'll need your postcard ad by it. And you put the date right in there, giving the letter a sense of urgency in order to keep the mailing schedule. So now you can also get grouped together more than just postc cards in an envelope. You could also do it with little flyers or the letters or other types of advertising material. It doesn't have to be postcards, but postcards has seemed to work the best because you can use both the front and the back. And previously I said use a four six postcard. But when your partners use three by five and they see you using four by six, they may decide to try that for themselves. As I mentioned earlier, and I recommend that if the other mailings are in color and have been professionally designed, that you do the

30:38 opposite and use a standardized postcard in black and white. It just depends what they use, and you'll know what they use because you're organizing this whole thing, and this continues to ensure that your postcard stands out from all the others. Then to further differentiate your mailing piece, use the conversion formula and give them a compelling offer. Now, most of the other postcards produced by the partners will be produced by ad agencies or by themselves, and they'll be the typical four color artwork, and they'll have the standard starburst graphic that says ten percent or whatever discount that they want to offer. Yours is going to stand out just by the fact that it's going to be bigger and that it's going to have that conversion formula with that compelling offer. So getting this system up and running will take time, effort, and energy on your pot But for those of you who are small business owners with little to no marketing dollars, this is a strategy that's definitely definitely worth investigating it at a minimum, use this little trick to conduct your direct mail marketing campaigns for absolutely no out of pocket dollars. To you, it's not all that hard to find those ten to twelve businesses that I'll be more than happy to jump in and do a joint venture with you. Nice However, this fear is repeating. Make absolutely sure that before you approach

32:10 any of your partners that you have all the costs accumulated for every component of that direct mail piece, and your direct mail company will help you, will guide you as to what all those costs are what you have to go about getting for them. So now you have the ability to send direct mail to as many prospects as you want for free. And this show is designed to provide you with that paint by number ten plate to guide you in properly executing this strategy for your business and to do so with confidence and certainty. So follow up process and you'll soon position your business as a dominant player in your industry. And so what is really I think critically important here is that without an advertising budget, and direct mail, by the way, is a very effective form of advertising. When I was in the ski business, I used to use direct mail and it was my number one form of advertising, the best by far, because it was very targeted and you know, in that particular case, it was targeted to people who had purchased from our store in the past, and because we knew they were skiers. It just works so well. And so it's very important that you get a very targeted list and that you get I mentioned Database USA. They have

33:42 very targeted lists that you can use, and I've used those in the past and they're very, very good, very And so with the little time that we have left, I want to talk about the importance of using the convergent formula in your direct mail pieces. Great, so, Michael, just a quick maybe sure recommendation. So can we get to the business compliments and then we could end with the little. Bits you have. Because again, yeah, just given the interest look and by the way, just phenomenal, we're getting some activity from business owners just digesting a lot of these insights. One quick question, by the way, that letter script that you describe. Can folks email you directly and maybe get that script.

34:34 Or yes, yes they can. Your CFO at next Step CFO dot net. Y O, you are CFO at next Step CFO dot net, be happy to give it to them. Great. So look, five business compliments this week. Very excited. We'll start with Sandra. Sandra Wallman, who Michael I know you're quite familiar with. We have a great regard for Sandra and her team. She is a founder and owner of Hit the Spot Treats. In fact, she ows multiple businesses. Sound is just fantastic at being service minded. She's such a servant leader. Now, Hit Theespottreats dot com is a website and here's our value proposition. You as a business owner, small business owner, even mid sizer, bigger businesses that doesn't really matter, your business deserves to be remembered. And with Hit the Spot Treats Corporate Gratitude Initiative, you as a business owner, you could grow your client relationships through gifting with a sense of gratitude. In fact, getting started with a team at Hit the Spot Treats is very easy, very simple. They help you save time and they do this in a way that is very systematic, right, So they craft and work with you to kind of create that gift experience, and every gratitude box that you send to clients includes a donation to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. So again,

36:06 phenomenal work that Center and her team do. The second business owner is Michael Harrelson with Upcycled Waste. One of the things that Michael and I wanted to point out is just the service orientation of the folks at Upcycled Waste. They stand at the forefront of a pivotal shift that's happening in an industry. So that shift and sort of confluence of industrial materials processing as well as this idea of sustainable innovation, so really remarkable work. Larie Pernell is the third business owner that we want to complement and Louris and team. They are at a cle consulting firm.

36:47 In fact, that's the name of the business, it's cle Consulting, which really helps because given the work that they do, it's very mission driven, its very community focused. So I would highly recommend a visit to a cle consulting firm dot com. The fourth business owner is Dave Rice. Dave is a founder and principal consultant at Rubicon EHS. I don't need to really sing Dave and teams praises here. I think the work that they do on the EHS front it speaks for itself. I would highly recommend a checkout of that website, Rubicon EHS dot com. Last, but not least, Kurt Sendek and Kurtsondk is with three D Stone.

37:31 They provide and design fascinating stone structures and this is something that you want to incorporate as part of your home improvement or business improvement plan. Absolutely worthwhile to touch base with Kurt and team. I will toss it back over to Michael. Michael, thank you, thank you. I love compliments. Yes, great, that's great. So I wanted to you know, I've thrown around some terms once again, you go back to Powerful Business Strategies dot com to listen to some more detail. But when I throw around terms like compelling offer, conversion formula, position of market, dominance, buyer's journey, UH, I want the I want people to understand that there are there are strategies behind every one of those UH terms and that when I mentioned the terms, I just feel like I'm just because we have new listeners all the time, and so they have that they're not as familiar with things like the conversion formula or position of market dominance, or the five components to a compelling offer. So I just want to you know, we only have a few minutes, and I want to just get to go through as much as I can with things like the conversion, especially the conversion formula and compelling offers.

38:55 So here's the thing about the conver formula. It's a four pot formula, and this is how you can get leads, this is how you can convert those leads into prospects. It's a four pot formula that allows you to address the prospects problem and solution and do so at just the right time as if you were in the prospect's mind. Now it must be followed like any other formula, and what it's designed to do is it's designed to first address two emotional issues to get into the head of the prospect. And that is the problem that the customer has and doesn't want. The solution they want, they can't find, and that is what the conversion formula is designed to do.

39:45 So it's designed to attack the emotional cords and then it will then logically show the prospect how what the reason why they should buy this solution, and so let me go through formula. The formula starts with what's called the captivate. That's the headline, which happens to be the problem that the customer has and doesn't want. It's designed to stop the prospect in their tracks, interrupt them, if you will. This headline or problem is the first thing that you say out of your mouth or that a person sees or hears from you on your business. Now it must really identify the problem they have, as you only have three to five seconds to keep their attention.

40:32 And you know a lot of people will say, like painters might say, well, the problem that the customer has is they can't the customer doesn't know what color paint to select. Well, any painter can solve that problem. And so it has to be something that either that painter doesn't promote, might very well do it but doesn't promote it, or some problem that you you have seen your customers have and that should be addressed. The second step in the conversion formula is called fascinate. Now that you interrupted the prospect with the problem, you have to keep their intention and you have to engage them with a sub headline or the second thing they see, which happens to be the solution to the problem that they can't find.

41:22 And so this is how you enter the conversation that's taking place in the mind of the prospect to captivate and fascinate. And so I'm going to repeat it one more time. These two parts of the conversion formula are the key to successful market And if these two parts of the conversion formula are not doing their job, we never get to the third part and the fourth part. And we have a special name for these two parts. It's called the position of market dominance. So you need to get the position of market dominance right, which is to captivate problem the customer has and doesn't want, and to fascinateution they want they can't find. Otherwise, if you don't get those right, the formula falls apart. Many times we see people starting with the fascinate. It's notting with the solution. You can start with us, you can't. You cannot give a solution when you don't. You can't brag about a solution when you don't state the problem. It works best when you state the problem than the solution.

42:28 And the third step is to educate. Now that we've engaged, interrupted and engaged, captivated and fascinated the customer prospect, we now have their attention. We have the time to give that prospect more information about how we go about solving the problem. So once again, to captivate and fascinate hits the emotional cord the problem they have. They don't want in a solution that hits the emotional button, the logical button when they have to explain it to their spouse on why they purchase this product or service. That's the educate.

43:09 The educate provides the logical component. And then finally we have to end the conversion formula with an offer that's so compelling and so irresistible that the prospect would be foolish not to take it. Now, I don't want to just say that, I want to talk about the five components of a compelling offer. So the clothes needs to be compelling, and so here are the five components. This is what makes up and by the way, you can use one or more of these components. Number one is scarcity an urgency. Scarcity is when you proclaim that there's a limited availability of your product, for example, there are only three special hair brushes left. Urgency is when you put a time limit on the offer. You know, when I was in the ski business, our most scessful sales were four day sales. They were start on Thursday and then on Sunday, but there was a time limit. If you weren't at the store Thursday through Sunday, you lost out on the opportunity to save money. Now, in one of the sales that we had, we consistently a certain time period of the year. We consistently did one million dollars in four days because the deals were great and the urgency and scarcity were intense. The second component of a compelling offer is a risk reversal, where the seller in the transaction takes most or all the risk. These can come in the form of a guarantee. Like you know,

44:42 when I was in the ski business and I had what's called the ski guarantee. Ski the ski three times, you don't like it, bring it back for a brand new pair. That worked famously. I have construction clients that give five year warranties on their work. These guarantees are differentiators and they close more sales the other the other day I heard an ad for a psychic service. If the prediction does not come true, you get your money back. I mean that's that's a pretty good value. So, uh, that's a risk reversal. The third component of a compelling offer is adding low cost but high value to your product of service. So a toothpaste company would put a let's say, put a QR code on the tube of toothpaste.

45:29 That leads to a video that shows people four areas inside the mouth that are most neglected while brushing their teeth and the best way to brush those areas. Information is a great way to add more value. I was talking earlier about the about Toyota. If they could create and crack the mileage code, if they could come up with a way to have a card drive two hundred miles to the gallon, that was another you know, that was an example of innovation while while adding more value. The fourth component of a compelling offer is packaging and bundling multiple products and services together. A package always provides a strong perception of value and then finally, in difference to the outcome, any prospect can tell when you're pressing to make a sale, and as a result, they surmise that you don't have their best interest in mind. You have your best interest in mind, and you just want to sell something. That's a big problem. So by being indifferent to the outcome, it puts you on your prospect on the same side of the table. And getting to know the person in terms of their inspirations, goals, and objectives helps with this process. But here's something else. You know, most products or services require certain steps and a certain process.

46:52 And so one of the things that I've seen work well, and I've used this myself, is saying something like this, whether you work with me or someone else, you must go through these steps in order to succeed if you if you purchase this product or service. And by saying that, it's indifference whether you work with me or someone else, and if you say that throughout the presentation, throughout the sales process, that's being indifferent to the outcome. So once again, though we have shows dedicated to compelling offers and the conversion formula position of market dominance, I just wanted to mention one more thing, and that's the buyer's journey as we have a separate we have a separate show for that as well that we've already done, and so the buyer travels through this predictable information gathering stage on their way to a purchase. And here's the remarkable statistic that we found. Many studies were done on this, by the way, and they found that only one to three percent of buyers in any market and any moment are ready to buy.

48:08 Not the other ninety seven to ninety nine percent are on what we call the buyer's journey. And many people don't understand us because they're always going after that was now buyers that one to three percent, ninety seven to ninety nine percent of a market are on this journey where it starts out with a mild interest. You know, somebody just makes somebody aware of the product or service, and you know, they might look around and see what else is out there. But then as they go out down this journey, which could take anywhere from five fifteen minutes to fifteen years or more, they're asking why should I buy? What are the benefits of ownership? And then they're asking as they go down the journey, why shouldn't I buy? What are the objections? What is why? Why?

48:58 You know what if come up with these that they're coming up with these objections that need to be overcome, and then when they finally overcome that, who should they buy from? And that is you never know, and that's what we were talking about with the direct mail campaigns. You never know what position your prospect is in during the buyer's journey. And so once again I just wanted to talk about position of market, dominance, conversion formula, compelling offers, and a little bit about the buyer's journey because I made mention to the importance of utilizing those strategies even in a direct mail campaign or any type of advertising that you do. So once again, to get a copy of the book Powerful Business Strategies, simply go to our website www dot NEXTSTEPCFO dot net. It's totally complementary. And until next Monday at noon eas eatern time, but ch Chucky Obio. My name is Michael Barberita, and remember, don't keep doing what your competition is doing.

50:10 You have been listening to Powerful Business Strategies finding out that everything you ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Tune in next week and every week at noon Eastern time on W four CY Radio with your host Michael Barbarita of NeXTSTEP CFO and moderator Chucky Obio